At Cherry Tree Court this morning, Dave spoke from Matt 13:44-46, looking at two short parables describing the treasure that we find in God and in His kingdom. The farmer found something valuable by accident; the gemmologist something valuable through searching, but either way, finding Christ is the most wonderful thing which can happen to us. Nothing else compares to the treasure we find in Jesus. Paul reminds us (Phil 3:8) that everything else is to be counted loss; he is a model for us to copy because his entire focus was on the joy of knowing Jesus.
Finding treasure may be easy, but possessing it is costly. The gemmologist had to sell everything he had to get the pearl of great value; everything else was secondary compared to this jewel. We have to learn to distinguish between the excellent and the good, between the best and second best, for we must lose our lives and give up everything to follow Jesus. The price of salvation was paid by Jesus, but there is a cost to discipleship which must be counted. However, the joy of knowing Jesus makes this cost no hardship to us in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing Him as Lord.
If we want to develop this closeness and know the best treasure, we have to:
- rid our lives of competing distractions
- spend time alone with God in prayer and in reading the Word, for we cannot know someone without spending time with them
- confess our sins and make a clean break with sin.
How much we value our relationship with God will determine whether we find the best treasure or not.