A Word in Season: Hidden Treasure (Matthew 13:44)

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The other day I went to a car boot sale where people drive into a field and spread out things that they no longer need or want, anything they think they can sell from their cars onto tables and people bargain and barter and try and get whatever they can for as cheaply as possible while the sellers try and sell for as much as they can.

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As I walked into the field I met a friend who was also doing some browsing and he showed me a box.

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It was fairly battered, faded purple with some of the cover peeling away and a bit of mould underneath.

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Guess how much I paid for that, he said. Don't know, I answered. Twenty quid, he said. Twenty pounds.

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I said, okay. He opened the box and said, have a look at those. And inside there was a collection of fairly battered looking watches, maybe six or seven of them.

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Check them out, he said. And I did. One came out quite heavy and I looked at it more carefully.

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He said, that's not brass. It was a Rolex and he's fairly confident that with that name on the face and with the metal that it's made of that he has something worth far, far more than the twenty pounds that he paid for it.

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In fact I think if they'd pushed him he'd have paid more willingly. Now the

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Lord Jesus told a story in Matthew's Gospel in chapter 13 and verse 44. The kingdom of heaven being like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid.

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And for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

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Now the point of the parable is that the kingdom of heaven is of immeasurable value.

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It is worth anything and everything that we might have in order to obtain it.

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It's not telling us that you can purchase salvation. It's talking about the attitude, the disposition of the one who realises the value of coming into the kingdom of God.

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Of knowing him through his son the Lord Jesus Christ. Now perhaps you can imagine someone meeting my friend and saying, twenty pounds for that junk?

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Ah yes you might say, that's fine. I'm pretty confident he didn't tell the seller that he'd found a

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Rolex in the box. But the point is this, that he knew the value of what was there and so does the buyer in this parable.

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He knows the value of what is there and because of that everything else sinks into relative insignificance.

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Now do we understand the kingdom of God in that way? Do we understand it ourselves if we're believers, if we are

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Christians? Do we appreciate the fact that to obtain Christ in his kingdom, to know

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God and to be part of his family, that these things are more important, more valuable, more precious than anything else that the world has or can offer to us?

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Once we understand that, that's why we become Christians in the first place. If our reputations go, if people despise us, if we have to make other sacrifices, it's not necessarily easy and it's not necessarily that others will understand us.

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But because we know what is held out to us, nothing will stop us pursuing that.

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That's what you need if you're not yet a Christian. You need to understand the preciousness and the beauty and the wonder of God's salvation in Christ, the privilege and the glory of belonging to the kingdom of God, the present and eternal sweetness and blessing that follows on.

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Once you grasp that, once you understand that, nothing will stop you.

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Everything will go so long as you may obtain the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the point of this story is not to try and then pull the wool over people's eyes.

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It's not that we keep this treasure to ourselves. Instead, if we know the value of the kingdom of God, if we've discerned its preciousness, its beauty, its glory, its goodness, then we will tell others too.

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And they'll in turn be like that friend who knew the value of what was on offer and was willing to pay whatever it took to get it.

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We'll be like the man who found treasure hidden in a field which he found and hid.

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And because of joy over that treasure, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

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Whatever it takes that you may come to and close with Jesus Christ, it will be worth it.