“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”
2 Timothy 1:7

The Treasure

Posted on May 7, 2008, 11:53 am, by Dustin Wright, under Faith.

Treasure MapWhat would you do if you found a treasure so valuable that the loss of everything else to gain it would be gladly accepted? Wouldn’t you live your life in such a way that everything you did, and thought about would be centered around that treasure? Wouldn’t it cause you do do crazy things to gain it and to show it off once it was gained? I think so. And it’s my belief that that treasure which is more valuable, more life giving and sustaining, and more worthy of all of our dreams and affections is none other than Jesus Christ.

I think the issue with so many people, including many Christians that I know (and myself from time to time), is that they can get so caught up in the great things that God has done and the things that He has created, and their affections end up terminating on those things. And when they end there it makes it really difficult to see the treasure of who He is because they are blinded by what He made.

From time to time I hear and read of (and from) Christians that are all about doing, and they argue that knowing Christ intimately is not as important as acting like they think He would. I think that trying to guess what Jesus would do and letting our hearts tell us what good thing He would want us to do, rather than putting a high value on knowing Him, as He is revealed in the Bible, is a very risky thing to do, because it makes our experience with Christ subject to whatever we think is morally correct or right.

Many people believe that Jesus would want them to do this or that because of the What-Would-Jesus-Do-? attitude that has permeated religion and has taught us that He would do anything that is good. And we define good in our hearts the same way that the culture does because too many Sunday school teachers and preachers have let us down by shying away from their biblical responsibility to teach us of Christ and to uphold the Bible as the way to know Him and have instead replaced the Biblical knowledge of Him with a subjective, culturally moral, idea that scarcely resembles the Jesus of the Bible.

The problem with letting our hearts lead us in our pursuit of Him is that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (

Jeremiah 17:9

9 The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it? (ESV)

)” Our hearts lie, and are easily led astray by other seemingly good things, from Him who is good.

There is this idea, among more liberal thinking Christians, that knowing Jesus through thorough exegesis of the scriptures in a sermon or the personal study of scriptures is not of as much value as just doing the good that we think He would want us to do. Some of them would go even further and say that Bible study and a focus on spiritual living is wasting the life that God has given to you to do the things that they determine are good to do.

I think that the American church is suffocating real and fulfilling life in Christ for the sake of morality. And, I believe, that what comes from a focus on moral things to the neglect of the mention and revealing of Christ through the Bible is that whole generations of people begin to think that we are here to be good people, first and foremost, and forget that it is for the very reason that we are not good that Christ had to die. And so in order to accomplish the most good in their eyes and to avoid people jumping ship, the Christ of the Bible is replaced with Bono or other humanitarians who everyone can unite behind because their message is basic and universal. But preach Jesus and no one wants to hear it, and therefore all of the “good” that they want to do will have less of a pool from which to draw volunteers.

So I think, to some extent, whether consciously or not, many in the church have decided that not as much good can be accomplished under the banner of Christ, and so therefore the church should unite under other banners that the culture can accept. And so Christ takes second chair to morality because it, unlike Christ, is defined on a personal and cultural basis without regard to the way that God wired the universe to be.

The truth is that the treasure is Christ. Not just the good things that He calls us to. Our dreams and affections, our hopes and desires, in Him are fulfilled. The more that I know of Him through the scriptures and good Bible teaching, the more I am moved by Him to affect those around me with the hope of Christ and share the treasure of infinite value with them.

I think it is also a bit faithless to suggest that because Christians in the past made church about memorizing this or doing that to the neglect of the hurting in the culture around them, that all who put a high value in knowing the Word of God will neglect the lost as well. I have been accused of this by a number of people, in a number of different ways, which I think is really unfair. I don’t believe that wanting deeper sermons or better teaching should label someone as indifferent to the plight of the poor and hopeless. I will grant that in the past many churchmen focused on being religious while the world around them perished, but I don’t agree with the notion that all who have a desire to know Christ more fully through sermons or Bible reading or prayer are of same mindset as those who came before. Yes, I am sure, that some are. I am sure that religion today is just as rampant and fruitless as it has been for many years, but to assume that at the mention of the Bible or the request for “longer sermons with better teaching” makes someone a religious and faithless spiritual wimp is ridiculous.

It is my perspective that good, deep, Bible teaching, whether or not Greek root words are discussed, shines a light on the Glory of Christ and moves people toward Him. And when they come to know Him more intimately the way that He is revealed through the Bible, and not just through the lenses of who we want Him to be, He is honored and we are moved to display hope and to do good to those in need. Because of Jesus, not because the rest of the world agrees it needs to be done. Christians, I believe, should be moved by the person of Christ, revealed in the scriptures, to do the works of Christ for those whom His heart beats, for the glory of His name.

The great thing is that doing good, for the Christian totally surrendered to the will of Christ, is infinitely bigger than anything the world, apart from Him, can accomplish. And I believe, that if people came in contact with who Jesus really is, as revealed through the Bible, they would see Him as the great treasure for which every loss would be cheerfully accepted that we might be able to say with Paul that

whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:7-11

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (ESV)

To me, the treasure is worth it. To me, Jesus is worth it. And I want to know Him more. I know, for me personally, that being in a church, where Christ was not exalted as king and as the great treasure that He is on a regular basis, my soul grew a bit calloused, and ironically, amidst the constant calls to do something good for other people, my affection for the lost suffered because of my distance from Christ. But I find that any sermon that shows Christ as king and reveals His character from the pages of the Bible causes compassion in me that apart from the character of Christ being exalted is missing within me.

So, for me, and I believe all who have genuinely met Christ, my heart is broken more for the things that break His heart when I am constantly reminded of His grace in my own life. When Jesus is preached as the only treasure of eternal value, people who see and understand that to be true, will be far less tied to this world and much more open to doing the things of Christ to the glory of His name no matter what the cost. They will rise and sell everything if necessary, the will suffer ridicule if necessary. Because nothing is as valuable as Christ. He is the treasure.

Share on Facebook

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 11:53 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Let me just say up front that I was neither offended or hurt by your post and I agree that everyone deserves a pass to vent every once in a while, it keeps us sane. And also, like your post, (which is I guess was deleted recently) what I wrote was not a response or rebuttal directed at you, but at an idea that a number of people that I have talked with recently hold to. So yes, some of it was a response to your post, but most of it was directed at other people.

    To be completely honest, I did originally get a bit offended and upset by your post, and so, knowing my tendencies toward venting in anger, I waited a few weeks to respond, because as any of us who maintain a blog know, we all write things in our anger that we otherwise would not, and in the process can end up hurting other people, and that was not what I wanted to do with you, as I count you as a good friend and someone that I respect. Those few weeks allowed me to cool down the fast firing, badly worded responses that my sinful mind continued to urge me toward.

    Hoping I got the best of them, I wrote this post as an argument for the value of Christ as supreme in the lives of believers that don't just believe, but act upon their faith because they had come in contact with Him who is worth infinitely more than their stuff.

    I agree that you and I have never had any theological discussions, and that might be because we served next to each other and saw the other's (not the people who are stuck on the Island in Lost) heart for the Lord made visible through service, so theology wasn't necessary in our relationship. That said, I do feel like it is legitimate to respond to what theology a person puts forward (whether in print, conversation or action) with your own opinions. I did not intend, nor do I think I implied that I know all of your theology from a single post which I knew was just a way to blow off steam. But you did show some theology in your post and I was, in part, responding to what was written, not what I assumed you thought about everything.

    Todd, I thank God for you passion for the glory of His name, I have never questioned your heart. I think these conversations are important, for both of us, and our limited readership, because "iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17). I hope that I didn't offend you either, and I hope that from here on out that you feel free to challenge me on anything that I say, not because I long for confrontation, but because from time to time I will be off, and I will need someone to challenge me on it so that I will think deeply about what it is that I believe and adjust where I stand, if necessary.

    So, I respect you greatly. But come on, Joel Osteen?
  • The funny thing about your rebuttal post is that I don't disagree with you, and that as I said I wasn't targeting any one person. You and I never had the conversation I posted about. It was actually a hodge podge of several conversations I have had recently with people who have left FMN(and there have been a ton lately...)

    The root problem of both your discussion and mine is that we are not the target audience of almost ANY church anywhere. We're arguing over different sides of the same coin. Most pastors aren't worried about marginalizing you or me because we're going to do what God has called us to regardless of their sermons. We're going to read our bibles and further develop our relationship with Christ. The target is, and should be, those pew sitting, Sunday Christian who as you wrote are content with being good, moral people. They unfortunately have to preach to the lowest common denominator.

    I'm not the biggest Joel Osteen fan in the world, but most Christians would do themselves a great service by reading "Your Best Life Now". The lack of "victorious living" in today's church is sickening. That's why most lost people want to hang out with other lost people around the margarita machine. If more Christians actually had a relationship with Christ and cherished the treasure you wrote about, they would need a stick to beat people off who wanted some of what they had.

    James 2:14 says, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?" The real problem is that most have neither. My only contention is that if the "average" person in church on any given Sunday is not remotely concerned with making themselves "saltier", by encouraging them to get out of the "shaker" they may find themselves in more positions to have God reveal himself to them than simply through the Bible that they aren't going to read, or don't understand. There is a lot of spiritual growth that can come from "seeing" what God has done.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Copyright © 2010 - Greg Johnson