[0:00] Keep thinking of those words we just sang, with everything, with everything, we will shout to your glory.
[0:11] We will shout to your praise. What does that really mean? What does that look like in our lives today in 2013, Hong Kong, as we head into the Christmas season already, things are up everywhere, and we're realizing and seeing things we need to buy and things we need to consume, and treasures that are hidden, and we're looking for things that have incredible value.
[0:42] We're looking for things that are deals to everybody else, but to us, they have incredible worth and value. We're looking at the last week of Jesus' life.
[0:56] He's been leading this large crowd of people to Jerusalem. He knows what's going on. Some of them might have an idea, but what we see later on is they really don't have any idea of what's going on.
[1:11] And the treasure they're hoping for when they come to the kingdom, where when the kingdom comes to them, when he exalts himself in the temple is power and strength and force and control.
[1:25] And what Jesus is continually showing us and continually showing his people is that his kingdom isn't like that. And if we think it's like that, then we're wrong. What he says is instead God's kingdom is like a baby born in a manger, not in a palace.
[1:43] It's a suffering servant who comes on the back of a donkey instead of a riding white stallion with power and shields and a warrior. And Jesus is telling them, he's telling us that his kingdom is this spiritual kingdom.
[1:59] That it's going to come slowly and steadily, but it will grow into this amazing plant, this family that will take over the earth.
[2:11] It will transform everything. And so he continues to teach them these truths through these parables. And these parables are just stories. These parables are stories that everyone in his time would know and that we should know.
[2:23] But he brings in spiritual truth in there and he interweaves how God's kingdom is actually working. We've looked at three parables today. I have stayed up a couple nights, actually.
[2:38] One of them was waiting for Christina to get home from the States and hoping that everything will be okay. And that I have some help. But the other part is figuring out how to present this passage.
[2:49] Worried that we might miss it. Worried that the words that I say might not be exactly what Christ wants you to hear. Because there's confusion in dialect.
[3:01] There's confusion in speech. There's confusion in cultures. And my prayer is that as we listen to God's word, that we would allow his Holy Spirit to talk to us and to change us.
[3:14] And that we would ask questions right now. What does with everything mean to you? Right now, what is the treasure?
[3:26] What is the hope? What is it that you're putting all in on? That you're hoping that God will come through for you and do? And Jesus is talking to his disciples.
[3:38] He's talking to us and he's teaching us these things. And in these parables, there's three things I want us to see or understand or try to begin to get our head around. Take that next step in our spiritual journey about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.
[3:51] They're going to be interchangeable. Usually when you're talking to a Jew, you don't say the kingdom of God because it's God's name. And you don't want to blaspheme. So you would normally say the kingdom of heaven. And it's interchanged in this Gospels of Matthew.
[4:03] And he says the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes and sometimes he says the kingdom of God. And sometimes he says a relationship with God. But they're the same thing. And we realize this kingdom is happening right now.
[4:16] It's spiritual. It's all around us. But it's not fully. It's not yet. That it's going to come back and come fully sometime in the future. And we're looking at these passages trying to understand, well, then how does that affect my life?
[4:28] And what should I do with God's word in this process in the here and now? So there's three things that stick out to me this week as we've been kind of pondering this and looking at this.
[4:40] And these things are that the kingdom of God is often hidden. It's invisible. And it's not easy for some people to see. And when it shows itself, it shows itself in unexpected ways.
[4:55] We see in here that the kingdom of God is priceless. That when people see it, it causes something radical to happen in their life. They do crazy things.
[5:06] Crazy man things, right? They do things that if you don't know what's going on and you look at them, you're saying, that guy's a fool. But this is what the kingdom of God does. It's so precious that it causes us to do crazy things.
[5:21] And then we see that when the third thing is that the kingdom of God, or when we get it, when we get the treasure, or maybe I should say when the treasure or the kingdom gets us, when the kingdom gets us, it transforms everything.
[5:32] It changes everything in us. It changes who we are. It changes our source of joy. It becomes this treasure so priceless that we do anything to get more of it and to hold on to it.
[5:49] First, the kingdom of treasure, the kingdom of God is invisible. And sometimes people don't see it. And sometimes it's seen in unexpected ways.
[6:00] Remember, Jesus is teaching his disciples. He's teaching us about his kingdom. And so he uses these parables. And you look in verse 44, and what you see is the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and he hid again.
[6:13] Now there's some questions about, was he ethical? What's happening there? If he wasn't ethical, he would have just taken the treasure because he was a worker. He was just digging in this field. And so he finds it, and he hides it.
[6:24] He finds it unexpectedly, and everybody listening to Jesus would have understood what was going on. I mean, Israel is this land bridge between Europe and Africa and Asia, and armies for thousands of years have been whipping through there.
[6:38] It's kind of like the only other country I think is comparable to it is maybe like Poland. You know, Poland just has the armies going through back and forth, back and forth. It's the land bridge. And so when people are there and they have a treasure, they don't take it to a bank.
[6:51] I mean, there weren't banks in Jesus' day, but they wouldn't take it to a bank because banks weren't safe, because they would just get rolled over by the army coming through the next week. And so Josephus, who's a Jewish historian who was captured by the Romans, he's given us a lot of insight into life back then.
[7:06] And he basically says that people, what they would normally do is they would bury treasure in their house. They'd bury it in the wall of their house or in the floor of their house. But if they were in a war-ravaged area, that would be impractical because houses were always raised, and people would always break down the walls looking for them.
[7:22] And so the best thing that people would do is they would hide these treasures in a field. Usually they would hide them in two places, he said, if they were really smart. Because fields were massive, people didn't have time to go through those.
[7:34] And what happened is armies came, and armies went, and people died, and treasures were buried, and people were taken away in captivity, and people forgot where the treasures were. And so there was treasures everywhere.
[7:44] In verse 45, he says, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls. But the word he actually uses for merchant is wholesaler.
[7:55] That this person is a bargain seeker. He's looking for things. We know that he's incredibly wealthy. Because to be a pearl merchant in Jesus' day, it was one of the most costly things to own.
[8:06] But he's a bargain hunter. He's going out there. He's like the show of the pickers. He's going into people's houses and trying to find junk and trying to see if he can kind of turn it and make a quick profit. But he's out there, and he's looking, and he's digging through these pearls.
[8:20] Every one of you were given one when you came in, and you were told that it was a treasure of great value, and to be careful and hold on to it. And so he's digging through these things, and all of a sudden he comes across something so unexpected, so amazing, so out of control.
[8:35] It was there in front of everybody's eyes. Everybody could have seen it, but they didn't see it because it was hiding itself. And Jesus says his kingdom, having a relationship with him, spiritual truths, the value of knowing him is not often obvious to everybody.
[9:00] He says many people are going to walk by. Many people are going to walk over. Many people are going to walk around. Many people are not going to see. They're not going to look. They're not going to care. I mean, some people, they're going to come in.
[9:11] They're going to look for things. They're going to look for peace. They're going to look for hope. They're going to look for a date. They're going to look for a spouse. They're going to look for power. They're going to look for success. Some people might even come in, and they might even look for religion.
[9:24] They might look for ways to do things, a list of do's and don'ts. And if they can do these things and they do enough of the do's and not enough of the don'ts, the things and a little of the don'ts, Then they can accomplish all these things.
[9:36] And then somehow God just kind of magically owes them because they've done so many great things in their life. But these people, they don't really value Jesus.
[9:49] They don't value a relationship with him. I wonder how many people walked by the treasure in the field and didn't see it. I wonder how many people dug through the pile of pearls and never saw that pearl that was of incredible value.
[10:09] I wonder how many people walk by churches every Sunday and wonder, why would somebody go in there?
[10:22] Why would I waste my time going to church? I mean, I got rugby practice. I don't have time for these type of things. I got other treasures. I want to cling on to.
[10:37] The question today for us is, what treasure are we holding on to right now? I'm not going to ask you to yell it out.
[10:48] I'm not going to ask you to write down a piece of paper. All you know, you know it in your heart. But what is that treasure you're holding on to? Is it Jesus? Or is it something else?
[11:07] What are we clinging on to? The next thing the parables tell us is that the kingdom of God, when it comes, when the treasure shows itself, when it exposes itself to us, that it causes us to do radical things.
[11:18] It causes us to do crazy things because we see this priceless treasure, and it's amazing. Now, we don't know in verse 44 what the treasure was. We don't know what was hidden in there. It could have been gold. It could have been clothing.
[11:28] It could have been a mantle. It could have been anything. We don't know. But we do know what 45 and 46 are. I mean, in Jesus' day, pearls were amazingly precious. I mean, they were the most expensive thing you could own in Jesus' day.
[11:42] The Talmud, which is the collection of Jewish writings by scholars and rabbis, they basically say that pearls are beyond price. And so when Jesus uses these analogies of pearls, everybody would have gone, whoa.
[11:56] That's the most expensive thing there is. I mean, we're told by historians that Romans worship pearls, that one of the emperor's wives had this outfit that she would wear off into gatherings, and it was made totally by pearls, and it was worth about $300 million.
[12:10] We're told that sometimes when they had banquets, that people would actually take a glass of vinegar and dissolve pearls in it and drink it to show how wealthy they are. I mean, we do that sometimes. You know, in Hong Kong, we scatter gold over cakes, right, and let people eat the gold and show how wealthy we are.
[12:26] Well, on Jesus' day, what they did was they drank pearls to show their wealth. One historian said that the Romans got this practice from the Egyptians who created it to this massive, massive art of worshiping pearls.
[12:44] And we're told by Pliny, who was this historian back then, he says the person who worshipped them the most was Cleopatra. And she had these pearls that were amazing. In fact, he says to us that she had one pearl that was worth 25 million days' wages.
[13:01] 25 million days' wages. How much do you make in a day?
[13:14] Her pearl was worth 25 million denarii. Historians tell us that that would have been about $4 billion today. One pearl.
[13:24] And pearls were incredibly costly. They were incredibly dangerous. We're told that, you know, I've been reading about this, and I can tell you anything you want to know about pearls now. You know, Christina's kind of cluing in on these things before we bought these pearls and all the different types of pearls.
[13:38] And, you know, it takes about 1,000 clams to get one pearl. And usually in Jesus' day, what they did to get pearls was they would just tie a rope and a rope around a guy's legs. And they got them in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean and sometimes the Indian Ocean.
[13:50] And they would tie a rope around the guy's legs with this massive rock. And they would just push the rock over the boat. And the guy would just go, bloop. And he would go all the way down, like a quick descent, all the way down. And he had a knife in his hand all the way down to the floor.
[14:02] And he hit the floor. And if it wasn't too deep, he could survive. He would cut the rope. And then he would swim around. And he would shuck as many pearls as he could get. And if he found a pearl, he would try to make his way up.
[14:14] And the survival rate for pearl drivers was zero. And so everybody in Jesus' day knew that when he says that this pearl guy found this pearl of incredible value, that it was amazing because pearls were perfect.
[14:30] You couldn't add to their beauty. You couldn't take away to their beauty. It was everything. And Jesus tells us that when people find the perfect thing, when they find the perfect treasure, when they find the kingdom of God, they do crazy things.
[14:42] They act out of control. The passage says that they sold everything. In Aramaic and in Greek and in Hebrew, when I broke down the words, it means everything.
[14:53] They sold everything. They sold their underwear. They sold whatever they had, anything that was a possession of theirs, they sold that so that they could get that treasure. I mean, it was out of control. It would be like me. Let's say I'm walking down the street and I see this old watch shop that I go to because I like to look at antique watches.
[15:11] And I see something in there and I come back home that day and I've listed everything that we have on Asia Expat and Craigslist and all these things. And Christina comes in and my books are there with price tags on them and everything else is there and price tags.
[15:23] And she's looking at me, what are you doing? And I said, well, I just, I just, we got to buy this watch store. See, that little, that little dumpy one we walk by all the time. We have to buy it.
[15:36] You're selling your underwear. Yeah, I only need one pair. And she takes two or three more and kind of puts them off to the side. No, you need more than that. But we're selling everything. And she goes, well, how could you possibly, why do you want to do that?
[15:49] I said, I walked in there and I was digging through the treasure and stuff and I found the most expensive watch in the world. It is the most expensive, the most precious watch in the world.
[16:01] And no one knows it's in there and we got to buy this shop because he's going out of business. And if we don't buy it, somebody else is going to get it. And no matter what it's worth, we got to get it. Now, some of you are thinking, what's the most expensive watch in the world?
[16:13] I'm wondering if I should tell you that or not. I guarantee you'll never get it. But what he's saying is that I sold everything to get that watch shop because there's this watch in there that's worth everything.
[16:26] Are you saying that it's like you? You find out from your friend that your apartment that you don't own, you're renting it, is being sold off to the developers.
[16:39] And the developers are going to come in and no one knows that, but every apartment in your block is going to be worth 1,000 times more than it's worth now. And so you're just selling everything.
[16:49] You're borrowing money from your aunts and your uncles and your relatives and you're like, we got to buy this apartment. They're like, why? It's just a small little dumpy apartment. I understand that. It's like 400 square feet, but we got to buy it. It's going to change everything.
[17:03] And so they risked everything. There was no buyer's remorse when they bought these things as we often have. The passage says that they risked it all because they knew that it was worth all.
[17:15] And Jesus says that his kingdom, having a relationship with him, understanding spiritual truths, being counted among God's people, being counted among God's children, being taking part in God's plan, sacrificing the things that the world deems important, but we know are worthless.
[17:42] He says all of those things, they don't even compare to having a relationship with him. Now, please hear me.
[17:56] I'm not saying that you can earn or buy your salvation because salvation is from God alone. And it's a gift.
[18:06] And we can do nothing to earn it. But there is something involved in receiving it. You remember the story of the rich young ruler in Luke 18?
[18:19] I mean, we studied it like two months ago. Luke 18, they're going to Jerusalem, and this rich young ruler comes to Jesus, and he says, Hey, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
[18:36] What must I do to get the kingdom of God? Now, remember, he's very wealthy. And Jesus asked him some questions. You know the story. Go back and read it. Luke 18, you've got to read it tonight before you go to bed.
[18:48] Jesus says, Well, love your neighbor and love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and body. And the guy who was very confident and very proudful and very intelligent and very rich said, I did that.
[19:01] But what he didn't know is Jesus knew what his treasure was. So Jesus looked into his heart. And he knew that he couldn't give him the treasure of the kingdom if there was another treasure already there.
[19:17] And Jesus said to him, Well, one thing you have to do then, you need to sell all that you have and come and follow me. Remember what the passage says?
[19:33] It says he walked away sad because the treasure he had was more important to him than the treasure of the kingdom.
[19:46] His treasure, Jesus tells us, was wealth. Now there's some people you know.
[20:00] Some people I know. Maybe there's some people in our churches who want to be a part of both kingdoms. They want to be a part of God's kingdom.
[20:12] But there's something holding them back from their old life, from their old way of living. There's something from their old treasure that they continue to hang on to and cling on to.
[20:24] And so they want to be a part of both worlds. They want to be a part of both kingdoms. They want to have the kingdom of God. They want to have Jesus. They want to have a relationship with him. They want to fill that treasure up into their life.
[20:35] But they also want to hold the other treasures in their life, their idols and the things that used to give them happiness and power and importance. And Jesus says in the passage that the only way you can receive his kingdom is by a transference of treasures.
[20:57] that we have to see him as so precious that whatever we have to give away is nothing.
[21:13] Let me ask you the question. When you look at the parables in verses 44, 45, 46, 47, when the guys are selling everything, is that a sacrifice for them?
[21:27] I mean, when I'm coming home and I'm selling everything to buy the watch shop because I want to get that 1963 Omega Speedmaster that Neil Armstrong wore on the moon, the most expensive watch in the world, and I know it's there, the most precious thing.
[21:53] There'll never be another watch like that. And I'm selling my underwear and everything else. Is that really a sacrifice? The passage asks us, what are our treasures?
[22:16] The passage asks us, what do we sacrifice for his kingdom? What is there that we sacrifice for his kingdom?
[22:28] What is it that we've given away because we realize that it's a treasure that we've held onto, and if we hold onto that treasure, then we can't truly receive all of the treasure that God has for us. 1990, I had the incredible privilege of living in mainland China, and I was teaching in a university, and God had brought some people into my life, students, and just saw our relationship change and the gospel come into their life, and this one guy in particular, I'll just call him Tex, because we didn't ever call people by their real name.
[23:06] And Tex and I had been meeting for about six months. He was an amazingly brilliant student. He was on the fast track to becoming a government official. He was actually about to get entrance into the Communist Party.
[23:19] He was the first person from his village to go to university. And we were sharing just the gospel and the Bible and things like that.
[23:33] And there was a part of me that was afraid to ask him, does he want the treasure of Christ? I'll confess that. Because I knew that he would have to give up everything.
[23:49] And when I looked at my life, I felt kind of shameful. Because as I looked at my life, I really didn't really give up hardly anything compared to what Tex would have to give up.
[24:09] And so we got together that Thursday night and we were talking through these parables. And we came to the point and I asked him, what is your treasure in?
[24:22] And he shared. I said, what does this passage tell us our treasure should be in? And he said, Jesus. I said, do you want to invite Christ into your life?
[24:38] And he looked at me and he said, Tobin, if I do that, it will cost me everything.
[24:51] I'll lose my scholarships. I'll lose my entrance into the Communist Party, which was a big thing in 1980s, early 90s. I'll lose my family's respect.
[25:03] My family will be shamed in the village because they're the first people to send someone to higher education and everybody looks at them and my parents take incredible pride from all of this.
[25:17] If I do that, I will risk everything. And I said, yeah. Maybe.
[25:28] And then he looked at me and he says, but if what you're telling me is true and I don't do it, I've already lost everything that really means anything.
[25:46] I looked at him and I said, yeah. Right. Jesus says that when we see the kingdom, it will cause us to do crazy, crazy things and we will sacrifice everything for him.
[26:10] Our actions outwardly will look foolish. People will not understand it. They will wonder. They will just say, you've had so much and you've given up certain things and you might have to say, yeah, maybe, maybe you're right.
[26:28] But you gain everything. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. What have we given up for God's kingdom?
[26:49] What's the treasures that you've hold on to and you continue to hold on to that are so precious that are more precious than Jesus?
[27:04] Maybe another way to ask this, and I've been asking myself this, is has anybody ever called you a fool because of your faith?
[27:20] Has anybody ever said the things that you're doing right now will end your career and you will be foolish? Jesus says that sometimes when we find the treasure that it is so precious it will cause us to do things that will make us look foolish, in front of other people.
[27:45] Finally, we see in this passage what he says here is that when we get the treasure, when we get this treasure into our life that it changes everything. It's going to change all of us. In verses 44 it says this, in verse 46 it says this, you read verse 44 and 45, what does he say?
[27:59] He says, he went out and he hid it again and for the joy over it he goes and he sells everything that he has and he buys that field. And the idea again is joy. What does that joy look like?
[28:10] And the thing that weirds me out sometimes when I read this passage is that he had joy before he had the field. I mean, he's selling everything and he doesn't even have what he's getting or hoping to get.
[28:23] And as he does it, his life is changing and the treasure becomes so important to him. It's his goal, it's his thought, it's this thing that will change everything that it's not a sacrifice and as he's moving in that direction his life is changing and he realizes that it's the best thing that he's going to do, it's the best trade that he's ever had, it's the best transaction that he'll ever make because he knows what is coming and his life is now characterized by joy.
[28:51] Joy. That's a very interesting word, isn't it? I mean, you should probably ask yourself or ask ourselves what does it mean for us to have joy today? I mean, sometimes we translate it as being happy and fun and great and what a joyous day.
[29:08] That's not how the Bible translates it. C.S. Lewis says it like this, he says, joy is this deep inner longing that you have. Joy is this ache and you're on this journey and you're trying to feel this ache inside of you and sometimes people can be in their homes and feel empty.
[29:28] Sometimes people can be with their husbands or their wives and they can feel empty. Sometimes people can be the top of the company and they feel empty. Sometimes the people can have all the money they'll ever need and the three houses and everything else and they feel empty.
[29:42] And Lewis says that that's because we don't have joy and joy is this deep longing that we get when we know that we found the perfect thing to satisfy our souls.
[30:03] How are we doing in the joy department? Do you feel joy today? I mean, are we happy as God's people for all that God has done for us?
[30:17] Do we understand how precious we are to Him? Do we understand what He's done to bring His Son? Do we feel this understanding and we look towards the future and realize that everything is going to be okay? Jesus is asking in the parable and He's asking us in our life as we live out life, He's basically asking us what brings us joy?
[30:38] I mean, what are we hoping in? what is it that we are hoping will bring us joy in our life? And He says here in this passage that this treasure that they're looking for, His kingdom, a relationship with Him, knowing Him and loving Him transforms our lives.
[31:06] And Lewis says, it meets that deep longing perfectly. Maybe a great question for you as you go to work next week as you're talking to people about things and you're wondering how do you talk about the gospel of people, just start talking about joy.
[31:24] And have a kind of idea of what joy really means. It doesn't just mean happiness. It means feeling that emptiness in your life. And ask that person, what brings you joy? What are you holding on to that will bring you joy?
[31:45] Maybe if you're a single and you're out at Lan Kui Fung and you're talking to your friends and you ask that guy or that cute girl, hey, what brings you joy?
[31:57] And they say, you do. You do. My wife's laughing. I never use that line on my wife, I promise.
[32:11] But what the passage says is if that person says that you need to run away because there's no way you are going to meet that deep, empty longing in another person.
[32:30] maybe if you're really brave kids, you're some kids still in here, go to your parents tonight and say, hey, what brings you joy?
[32:42] And your parents say, getting you into Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, that right nursery school, getting those grades, seeing you do the best you can, having you perform.
[32:58] That's what brings me joy. Kids, if your parents say that, you look at them in the face and say, mom and dad, I love you, but I'm not God.
[33:15] And one day, I'm going to let you down. And if you're looking for me to feel that deep, longing, empty space in your life, I'm going to fail you.
[33:34] Because the only thing that can do that is Jesus. Please hear my heart here. I'm talking to you and I'm talking to me.
[33:47] But often when I talk to Christians, what I hear are things like this. I've lost my joy. I don't have joy anymore in coming to church.
[34:00] I have no joy in the community of the believers. I really don't receive or get any joy from serving in the church. I totally have no joy in tithing and giving my money.
[34:13] Why should I give my money? Because I worked so hard and earned it. I have no joy in giving my money to God's work. I have no joy in reading God's word. I really have no joy in praying because it seems like God never answers what I ask for.
[34:31] You know, when I think about it in my Christian life, everything seems to be a sacrifice. Have you ever said that?
[34:45] I have. And I wonder when I say that, have I lost sight of the true treasure that Jesus talks about in these parables?
[35:03] I wonder sometimes deep in my heart if I say that, that maybe I'm thinking of and dreaming of other treasures and things that used to give me fulfillment, that used to give me happiness, that used to give me what I thought was joy.
[35:17] You know, sometimes I even find myself starting to buy those things back. You ever done that? You come to a place where you feel so empty and so unjoyful that you start searching for things that used to give you happiness and meaning and relationships.
[35:37] maybe there's people in here who've never given up anything. Maybe there's people in the churches that come because they just like the music, they like hanging out with people, it's a great business opportunity, it's just a great thing but when they look at their life, they've really never entered into a spiritual world, they've never felt the joy that Lewis or Christ is talking about with that treasure that fills us completely and totally.
[36:08] Maybe we've never done that. Verse 47 says, again the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea and gathering fish of every kind and when it's filled it's drew up onto the beach and they sat down and they gathered the good fish into the container and the bad fish they threw away and so it will be at the end of the age where angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous.
[36:36] You ever wonder why he says there's people who are unrighteous among the righteous? He's saying there's some people in the fellowship who still are clinging to the treasures that used to give them so much hope and joy and they look at Christ and they realize it's not worth it, it's not worth it.
[36:55] But I like being around Christians because they make me feel good about myself. The passage says here that in that day there will be a big dragnet that will come and all of those people will disappear because their treasure was someplace else.
[37:14] My prayer for us as a church family and as brothers and sisters is that we would look at these parables and we'd understand what the true treasure is.
[37:33] He's not talking about getting the perfect spouse. He's not talking about getting the perfect job. He's not talking about being secure. He's not talking about even having good health. He's not talking about getting that Rolex that you want.
[37:44] or having God answer all your prayers. But the treasure he's talking about is so much more greater than any of those things.
[37:55] And the treasure is Jesus. God is offering to us a relationship through his son Jesus Christ.
[38:11] And the question is do we see that as a treasure? Do we see that as precious will we take it? when you came in?
[38:26] When you came in every one of you should have gotten a pearl. Jesus says his kingdom is so much more valuable than that pearl.
[38:39] the Bible tells us that we actually have a true older brother a true pearl merchant a true worker in the field someone who for the joy set before him gave up everything to buy you.
[39:10] How does that make you feel? the God from heaven who had everything perfect relationship had everything when he looked out he saw you he realized that you were so much more precious and he gave it all so that you might know him.
[39:41] and the treasure of being called his children and entered into a relationship with him. My prayer is that we would find joy in the true treasure and we would share that joy with the people around us so they would know Jesus too.
[40:11] how we doing? Everybody's really quiet. My hope is you're going oh my gosh I never realized that's how God sees me.
[40:27] Oh man I never realized that that's what God did for me. Oh man even in my sin and when I'm choosing not to value him as a treasure he sees me as this treasure that's so amazing that he sacrifices everything for me.
[40:54] My hope is that you would carry this pearl around this week keep it in your pocket keep it in your purse we touch it once a day say more valuable more valuable more valuable more valuable Father we just thank you for this day we thank you for your mercy and for your grace realizing Lord that each of us is on a journey the next step looks so different for each one of us but the truth is is that you value us more than the most precious things we can even imagine and so you send us your son
[41:55] I pray for those of us in here who struggle with this I pray Lord that they would see as Lewis said that those things that we cling to on this world will soon depart and they will leave us empty I pray for those of us who've never seen Jesus as precious and wonderful and beautiful that you would open our eyes to this truth and that we would start to explore this truth and that we'd ask questions of why why why why am I so precious to God and I pray for those of us in here Lord who've realized that preciousness but sometimes just in the living of life we lose joy because we don't have people around us speaking truth and the gospel and encouraging us maybe we just we've gone on a long journey away from you what was precious once now seems to be okay when I pray for those of us who are in here like that that we would realize again what greater treasure you offer us and how amazing you are help us to repent of our sin our selfishness our self-reliance help us help us to repent of the treasures we cling to so quickly because they will just disappear help us to focus on your son the true pressure the true precious treasure who came to buy us father we love you we pray all these things in your son
[43:45] Jesus name amen amen a cyan one one one one was ou envojd