What Would You Do For Your Treasure?

For today's post, I feel like going back to my sermon notes in my Kindle from Ryan's lesson last night. God really used my husband's message to the youth to open my eyes last night.

The main passage he read from was Matthew 13:44-46:

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field. “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!

The first question Ryan asked was "What is the Kingdom of God?" On earth, it is the Body of Christ - the Church. We are God's Kingdom here on earth. When we are born again, we enter into this earthly Kingdom of God. In Eternity, the Kingdom of God is Heaven. Everything else will be destroyed. It is only those who enter into the Kingdom of God on Earth, that will join in with the Kingdom of God in Heaven. Jesus says “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). What he is saying is that may God's earthly kingdom (the church) reflect God's heavenly kingdom.

The second question Ryan asked the youth was "What are we willing to give up to get that?" Simple enough, he explained that none of us in the room have every truly been asked to give up everything like the two men in the parable. We cannot comprehend the choice of being asked to give up everything like they did. Ryan then pointed out Romans 12: 1 -2:

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

You see, we ARE called to give up everthing. We are called to become living sacrifices. To give up our lives. To die in our sin, and be raise as a new creation in Jesus Christ. It is not we who live these lives now. It is Christ who lives in us. Our lives are not our own. It now belongs to Christ. A living sacrifice is what we english teachers call an oxymoron. That is, the words "living" and "sacrifice" should be contradictory. They are, indeed, opposites. For in the Old Testament, when something was sacrificed, it was killed. Death was the outcome of a sacrifice. Whether it was an animal or a crop offering. The crops were cut from their lifeforce, the roots.

Ryan ended the same way I ended my last post. As Christians, we are just like the two men in the parable above. We have found a treasure of great value - Christ. We should not only give up everything to get this treasure, we should tell everyone we know about the treasure we have found! If you were to wake up tomorrow and find out you have become a millionaire overnight, you wouldn't keep it quiet! You would want to scream and shout about it! I know I would. We are called in the Great Commission to go and tell! Baptise and make disciples!

What will you do with YOUR treasure?