Treasuring the Truth

Matthew 13. And, before we read that passage, I'd just like to tell you a little bit of a story. When I was a little kid, people still say I am, I really loved. I was an eighties kid. I really loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Does anyone know what that is?

Oh, I say you know as well. That's cool. A cartoon ninja turtles. It's the best combination of things. Ninja, turtles, mutant, it was all there.

And my mom bought us each brother an action figure. And I was a little farm kid, so we would be out playing in a huge acreage all day long. And our particular best spot was playing next to the duck pond. We had an enclosure for ducks. And in that pond, wasn't very big or very deep.

We'd play with our action figures. Now, this pond was probably that much water and the rest duck poo, but, you know, you can imagine these action figures just jumping in and playing. At one point, I lost my action figure, my Leonardo in this duck pond. And, you know, it was litres and litres of water and, like I said, duck poo. And I couldn't find it.

And I actually gave up on looking for it at one point. I just couldn't find it. And months, think even years later, we were playing in this pond again. Lo and behold, I found it. And I remember the absolute joy of rediscovering something that I thought had been lost forever.

This amazing feeling of satisfaction, of just feeling that things had been made right again. This morning, we're going to be looking at a similar example in Matthew 13. And it's only two verses, but it's a very short parable that Jesus tells about what the kingdom of God is like. If you have your Bible, look at Matthew 13 from verse 44. Excuse me.

Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." Again, "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it." The parable of the hidden treasure.

In Matthew 13, we find several parables that Jesus tells about the kingdom of God. We find that Jesus explains throughout this entire chapter several great teachings about the kingship of God and what His rule will look like. In chapter 13, Jesus says that the kingdom of God is a field that is sown with seed, and some of the seed falls on rocky soil. Some of this seed falls on soil that has thorns and thistles growing on it. Some of the soil falls along the path running next to the field, and some of the seed falls on good soil.

The seed that falls on the rocky ground sprouts quickly, but then withers very quickly because of the heat. Other seed falls on the hard path, and the birds come and pick it off and eat it. Other seed falls on soil that is overgrown with weeds and choke out the sprouting seeds. And then the seed that falls on the good soil bears a crop that multiplies that original seed by 100 or 60 or 30 times what was sown. The kingdom of God in chapter 13 is also referred to as a field that is sown with wheat, with good seed.

And after the farmer has gone to bed, his enemy comes and sows weeds, sows the seeds of weeds amongst the good seed. When the farmer wakes up, the wheat and the weeds have started sprouting together, and he can't distinguish the two. So he lets them grow up side by side, fighting each other for soil and for moisture, and competing against each other. Finally, Jesus says that the kingdom is like a mustard seed that is a very small seed at the beginning, but grows to be a massive bush or tree in the end. The kingdom of God is like yeast in bread dough.

You put a small bit of the yeast in the dough and yet it makes a huge difference. So the kingdom of God may be small and unimpressive, but it will grow large. It might be small, but it is powerful. So Jesus builds and builds and builds this image of the kingdom until he comes to this part where he talks about the kingdom being like a treasure that is hidden in a field. He says, leading up to this, there will be believers and unbelievers.

Good wheat and weeds. Jesus says there will be good soil and bad soil. Receptive hearts or hardened hearts. The kingdom of God remains invisible and insignificant until it sprouts and it grows large, until it rises like yeast in bread. Jesus says there will be opposition to the kingdom.

Weeds will try to compete against the wheat. Non-believers will try and force out the believers in this world. And then we come to Matthew 13 verse 44. The kingdom is like finding Leonardo. It's like finding a chest of gold or a long lost artefact.

And someone finds it in the most unexpected of places, in a plot of land that seemingly no one cares about because otherwise someone would have owned that piece of land. He finds it perhaps by chance, perhaps by intention, we don't know, but he's absolutely thrilled when he does find it. The Bible states explicitly that in his joy, he goes and sells all he has and he buys this plot of land. In his joy. Now there's something significant that Jesus wants to point out for us about the kingdom that he hasn't mentioned before in his teachings coming up to this point.

Jesus again uses the imagery that's familiar to his audience. Remember his audience are farmers and fishermen and down to earth, earthy people. And Jesus uses the metaphor again of a field, but he describes something that no one would have expected: buried treasure. The kingdom is said to be buried treasure.

In those days, they didn't necessarily have good access to banks. They didn't have internet banking or whatever. So sometimes people did literally go and bury things in their backyard to save it. And so sometimes these people would die or whatever and it would be lost. No one would know where it is.

No one would know it existed. In this case, this is unclaimed treasure and it's been hidden and unseen and unvalued for many years. For a long time, it's been ignored and people have doubted its existence. When Jesus says this, we have to remember that there had been four hundred years where God had not spoken. The Bible says there had been no prophets, where there had been no word of God. People were at this point of believing that the kingdom of God that had been promised in the Old Testament was lost forever.

That they had stuffed it up so bad, had been taken away into exile, and God had rejected them. For four hundred years, this treasure was lost. But Jesus says that when this treasure is discovered, it's like finding Leonardo the Ninja Turtle. The joy and the absolute sense of wholeness again is incredible. It's uncontainable.

And this person goes to acquire this treasure at all costs. At all costs. In his joy, the Bible says, he goes and sells everything. In his joy, meaning because of his joy at finding this, he goes and does this. It's not that he has joy and then does it.

It's because of this joy. The discovery of the existence of the kingdom is something of incredible joy. There's no sense here of any obligation. No sense of grumbling. No sense of negativity, of pouting, of tantrum throwing.

There's no cynicism at all here. It is pure and unadulterated joy. The kingdom of God is received with joy. So we have to ask why. What is it about this that would have made this person so happy?

What is it about the kingdom that would make a person so joyful? The first reason is because it was lost. It was lost. It was hidden. It was unvalued.

It was unseen. It was written off. But when it's discovered, it is loved. It is valued. It is desired.

It's longed for. It's yearned for. Do you remember that moment when you first discovered this truth? Do you remember that moment where the kingdom of God, where the good news of Jesus Christ, and what He has invited us into, when you first realised that? Where that penny dropped for the first time?

Do you remember that feeling? That joy? That satisfaction? Perhaps you discovered it when you were looking for something else. Perhaps this man was just ploughing in the field and he hit it and there it was.

Perhaps you were just going about doing your daily tasks. Or perhaps you had heard legends about it. Stories. Perhaps people had drawn maps for you. X marks the spot.

You knew it existed somewhere, somehow, but you didn't really think you could find it. The Bible says that at that moment where we hear the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news that the good King has come to restore His kingdom, when we heard the story of a good King that has come to establish His kingdom of peace and justice, the Bible says at that moment, it's like discovering long lost treasure. We see that the treasure has an inherent value. It has a value inherent in itself.

Although it had been hidden from the person, although it had not been valued before, it doesn't mean that the treasure wasn't valuable. The treasure itself, when it was discovered, was priceless. It was valuable. So much so that the person was willing to scrape everything he had together, went on eBay and sold it all. In economics, there's something that is called opportunity cost.

Joe just had his economics exam this week, so he can tell us all about it. Opportunity cost is the total cost of something which we give up to obtain something else. Let me explain that again. Opportunity cost is the total cost of what we give up for something. So for example, if I decide to go to the beach today, part of the cost is me driving there, is the fuel I pay to get there.

But the opportunity cost is what it cost me to sacrifice my time and my energy to go to the beach when I could have spent it making money, working at Maccas. So the cost is that money that I could have made doing something else. That is the opportunity cost. When the person found the treasure, he gave up all that he had. He sold everything he had.

That opportunity cost was huge. Imagine if you sold everything you had. What could you have done with all that money? You could be touring around the world for twenty years or something. I don't know.

Maybe if you're Rob. All he had was spent acquiring this one piece of treasure. Imagine what he could have done with all that money. But for him, it was worth it. Because of his joy, in his joy, he sold everything he had to buy this piece of land, not for the land, but for what was in it.

The kingdom of God for us, the disciples of Jesus, is priceless. But it comes at a cost. When you entered into that kingdom, your values radically changed, didn't it? From the outside, people look at a disciple and all they see is the opportunity cost. They see, well, it means that you go to church when you could be on a jet ski on the Broadwater.

When you could be eating fudge on Mount Tambourine. It means you indulge less in all sorts of stuff that people around you say is normal and makes life worth living. It means you don't indulge in that sort of stuff. Being in the kingdom of God means you throw your hard earned money into an organisation like a church and get nothing in return. You don't even get a little reserved sign on your pew.

From the outside, the disciples and the citizens of the kingdom of God look crazy. They sacrifice. They limit themselves. They don't overindulge. They act carefully.

They think deeply. They relate with other people purposefully. From the outside, the cost seems so high. But you know what a disciple says? It's worth it.

It is worth it. Jesus said, "Why gain the whole world, yet lose or forfeit your very self?" The cost is worth it because a treasure is priceless. The heart of discipleship, Jesus said, is remembering the joy of that treasure. Remembering the joy of that treasure.

When you discovered it for the first time, you were willing to forsake your sin, to change your lifestyle, to worship God with an unending, relentless joy. The heart of discipleship and life in the kingdom of God is remembering the joy of that priceless treasure. If you have that, your faith will never be boring. The kingdom of God is priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

There's also a warning here that I want to point out, concerning this joy. In verse 20, just a few verses before, we hear about the story of the sower, that the seed that's sown on various soils. And in verse 20, this seed falls onto rocky ground. And Jesus explains that there are some people who hear the gospel and receive it in all joy. He uses that word, the same word.

They respond to it with joy, but then quickly fall away because of persecution or because life is difficult as a Christian. The warning is that joy in and of itself can be short lived. Joy in and of itself does not point to the effectiveness of the gospel in our lives. Joy can be short lived. The difference between the seed on the rocky soil and the seed on the good soil lies with its roots.

The good soil receives the gospel and understands it. It receives the seed and there is space for it to grow. And the roots can go deep, deep into the hearts of the disciple. It grows with the gospel. Disciples know the gospel.

They understand it. And in that understanding, there is joy. Does that make sense? Joy and understanding go hand in hand. You can have joy, but it can wither.

How's our joy? Do you still value this discovery of the kingdom? The long lost treasure that was found? The Leonardo that was given up on? What did you give up for the kingdom?

Did you give up a cushy job? Did you give up a pay packet? Perhaps you lost an inheritance from a family who disowned you for your faith. Perhaps you lost friends and family. Here's my question.

Would you do it again? Or do you have buyer's remorse? Have we not witnessed? Have you not witnessed God's faithfulness in your life? Have you not been able to thank Him for a life under His protection in the kingdom of light?

This morning, I want to tell you that we should remember with joy the kingdom of God. We should remember with joy that we belong to a kingdom of peace. A new world order where sin and death is in the process of being vanquished. It's in the process of being dealt with, done away with, for it to never ever have the same effect that it's had on us before. A new world order where values of justice and righteousness, integrity, honesty, and holiness are the norm.

If you've been in this kingdom for a while, you may be getting used to it. If you've been in this kingdom for a while, you may forget just how good we have it here. But you need only to poke your head out those gates, look on the other side of the train tracks and see how empty and pointless life is without God. Do you still value this kingdom of God, friends?

Do you live in it with all joy? I had this sermon topic chosen out a few weeks before. And in that time, probably a month ago, in that time, our church council, session asked me to, asked, I guess, us whether we could do the budget meeting today before I go on holiday. And as I was preparing this, I just thought this is not a coincidence that God has led us to this passage here this morning. Session didn't know the sermon topic, but I think we are hearing God's word speaking about joyful response of a person to the kingdom for a particular reason.

God has been so good to us this year. God has been so good to NCC this year. We've seen growth in the numbers of this church since this time last year, and me standing up here and seeing a full church like it is today is so humbling. I joined up here about this time last year, and it was half of what I see here today. We've had a weekly youth group starting this year, the beginning of this year, and we're averaging 15 to 20 kids some nights.

We've held prayer breakfasts, carol nights, survey Sundays, and fellowship nights. We've had people plugged into cell groups, which provide pastoral care and spiritual growth to a large percentage of this church. We have a neat facility, good equipment. We have a dedicated worship team that punches well above their weight in terms of just the talent that comes from a small church like ours. We've had a sizable budget increase last year.

Our church council said we want to be able to employ a half time pastor. And so last year, we took on a sizable increase, but we've matched it. We've matched it. We budgeted for a significant shortfall, but our giving has been consistent enough to see us through the year with only a small deficit. God has been so good to this church.

And as a church, I wanna say we've been faithful to that calling of God on us as well. Thank you. But this year, we're going to be stretching ourselves again. And we're going to believe that God will continue to be faithful. And we're going to believe that He will continue to grow us.

And I believe that we will continue to be faithful to Him. John, after the sermon, is going to come share with us what's happening, but in short, we're going to try and increase our budget by about 20%, increasing what we believe we're gonna be able to get in and what we're going to spend from about 80,000 to 100,000. Now, that's still a small budget for a church, believe it or not. That's a small budget for a small church. But that's in line with our decision as a church leadership and our decision as a church really that we wanna grow this church over three years to the point where we can afford a full time pastor.

And my personal goal is that, you know, at the end of three years, if I was to be called somewhere else, I would know that someone would be able to come in here full time and we wouldn't have any problems calling a full time pastor here. So that's why we're challenging it. That's why we're pushing the envelope again. We don't talk about money very much in this church. Some people say we should talk about it some more.

If you go to other churches, you'll hear a mini sermon on giving every single week. Some churches will tell you, give so that you will be blessed. We believe the Bible says you have already been blessed, so give. I like the parable of the lost treasure. The amazing thing is this: the kingdom of God is free.

The kingdom of God is free. Yet there is a cost involved. The grace of God is free. I will go to the burning stake for that. Yet we have to accept it and we have to receive it.

The sacrifice of Christ was free, but it wasn't cheap. There is a cost involved. As we're reminded this morning of the joy of discovering His kingdom that once was lost to us, but has been found and been revealed to us, we're also reminded that we can have joy in this kingdom. And because of that joy, we'll come offering our time, offering our energy, offering our expertise, offering our finances.

God blesses us each in different ways. But what is not different is giving with joy. Not out of obligation, not out of grumbling, but the joy of someone who has discovered a treasure that is beyond price. A treasure that is worth everything we have, even our very selves. In his joy, the man went and sold all he had and bought that field.