What is the most valuable thing that you own? What's the most valuable thing you own? For a lot of us, it's probably our house. It's crazy. The value of houses.
Now I remember my mortgage, what it was just five years ago. It's like how many times. I don't want to talk about how many times more I pay in a monthly mortgage these days. Maybe, maybe for you, for some of you, you're blessed with a beach house because of the location of it. It's more valuable because of.
Because of being right there on the beach. For some of you younger people that don't quite yet own a home yet, you know, you. You know how valuable it is and you are trying to get there and it seems like a hand. I don't. The way it's going, I'm not sure if I'm going to ever own a home.
That's a sad thing that we're entering in a season of our. Of our. Of our country where home ownership is difficult to come by. Maybe for you, like, it's just your car that's the most valuable thing that you own. My first car that I owned paid $1,000 for it, and I drove it till it wouldn't drive anymore.
And they hauled it away and I had to pay them $300 to haul it away. Man, I missed that car. That was a sweet, sweet car. When I was in high school, there was a guy at my church that loved to invest in people. Very relational guy.
And he knew that I was a guy that was. That could have made use of some money. So he offered me to come and wash. He had some tractors that he collected, some old school tractors. He was a big collector.
And he had this car, this 56 Mercury that he owned. And here's a picture of one very, very similar. It's like orange and cream of the creamsicle car, the sweet car. And let's take a look at. Let's appreciate American manufacturing from the 50s.
Look at the details on that. Like, we don't make cars like that anymore, right? Like, this is an amazing. Look at. That is a hood ornament right there.
We don't even have hood ornaments anymore. It doesn't seem like. And I would wash this car and he would. It was a great time that we would spend together because about every 15 minutes when I was washing his tractors in this car, he would come out with root beer or orange and cream soda in a glass jar. Now, that's a lot more popular now.
But back then it was tough to Find Cokes in a jar. And he would bring it out every 15 minutes. All right, Mitchell, it's time for a break. I'm like, all right, you're the boss. I'm working for you.
I will take a break every 15 minutes and drink a soda. I will take that for sure. And what's cool about that's not his car. That's a picture of a car. Very similar, but with his car that he owned for a long, long time.
Over 50 years. He dated his wife in that car. He graduated from high school in that car. He got. He got married in that car.
That's the car he drove away from the chapel in. He brought his kids home from the hospital in that car. And he told me, he said the reason he held onto it for all these years is forever. It felt like he couldn't afford to get rid of the car. They could never put himself in a situation where he could sell it and not need it.
Then it got to the point where the car grew so much in value that he didn't want to get rid of it. And of course, it had these sentimental value and things that we own, of course they have a monetary value, things that we could sell and get a return for. But they're also things that we value within themselves. And today we're going to be talking about treasure that we treasure and the most valuable treasure that we can have. So to start, definition of treasure, it can be a noun or a verb.
You have a noun definition of someone or something that is deeply loved, helpful, or irreplaceable. You have the verb form as well, to keep, protect, or care for something carefully because it means a lot to you. There are also some things you probably don't have yet that you still value. I still view myself as a 25 year old man, even though I'm past that. And I still remember, like thinking about things that I was saving up for, that I was working for, that I value, that were not yet mine.
I planned for them, I would look for them like, man, when the time comes, like, here's the thing that I want. You may sacrifice to get them, like you hope to be able to one day have these things. And the first passage that we're going to look at today is a story that Jesus told that it's a parable that's meant to reveal something that's going on within our hearts. And it uses this concept of treasure to teach about the value of the kingdom of heaven. And he's telling a bunch of different parables back to back to back to teach about the kingdom of heaven.
So we're going to be in Matthew chapter 13 starting in verse 44 today. And Jesus, he's teaching and his listeners hear the story. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again. And then in his joy he went and sold all he had and he 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 he bought it. In these stories, Jesus is really revealing some truth about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. Of God, the rule of God in our lives. And what he's trying to teach with these two stories is the rule of God in your life is more valuable than anything that you can own.
It's more valuable than the stuff that you treasure, the stuff that you could get a lot of money for. And to know Jesus is to know the rule of God, the reign of God in our life. Jesus ushered in the kingdom of heaven. One of the first things he says is in his ministry says repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. And so Jesus is saying, hey, I am ushering this new kingdom.
And in this story I'm telling you it is more valuable than anything you can own. To know Jesus, this is a hard truth, is worth selling everything that you have. That's a good deal. Jesus is the most valuable treasure. You're probably here because you just, you, you agree with the statement that Jesus is the most valuable treas.
But I wonder what the original listeners of these two stories, when they heard it, when they were listening to Jesus tell these two stories about the treasure hidden in a field and this pearl and Jesus got to the part where these guys sold everything that they had. I wonder what came to mind that they thought that these guys owned. And no doubt it's different for them and what they imagine compared to what we may imagine listening to these stories, right? Who may look at them like, oh man, Tesla. I don't.
He gave away his Tesla. He gave away his beach house, he gave away his fine jewelry. He gave away everything that this guy had. He gave it away to get this treasure. Everything that the other guy had to get this pearl.
He gave it away. He sold it. He didn't give it away. He sold it so that he could have enough money to purchase the pearl. So today, to help us dig into to what scripture has for us today, I want us to inventory our treasure.
Take some inventory of your Treasure. What do you have that's valuable? When you hear about these guys giving or selling everything that they had, what comes to mind for you and the things that you own? Maybe it's some money, maybe it's something similar to a 56 Mercury, maybe vacation homes. My mom, she had a boss one time that he was a dentist and he would look for thousand dollar bills and he would collect thousand dollar bills.
And that was the thing that he really, that was his treasure. That was his kind of his thing. He loved thousand dollar bills. He had a whole network of friends and community that he was involved in, message boards and they would go and like look together for these different thousand dollar bills. And I didn't even know thousand dollars bills existed before then.
And here's something that blew my 12 year old mind was that thousand dollar bills are worth More than $1,000. How does that even work?
And the reason for that is, is because they don't make them. They just make a limited amount. And so then they increase in value because people are willing to pay more than just $1,000 for them. So what treasure do you have? What are the things that you value in your life?
They may not have as much monetary value, but what are the things that you treasure? Maybe it's your career. We live in a little bubble here where career is very important. Who you work for important, the position you hold within your company, important. You may have worked hard to get there.
You treasure it. Maybe it's your neighborhood. I will say this about north Raleigh. I said, y' all in first service. I say we, we are weird about our neighborhoods.
Did y' all know that we are weird? One of the first questions you ask when you meet someone, you say, oh, where do you live? Oh, what neighborhood? What neighborhood do you live in? Like what?
In Arkansas we don't even have neighborhoods. We just live out in the open field in the hills. Just kidding. We have neighborhoods, but we're not, we don't. We're not asking each other what neighborhoods we live in, but we have some sort of.
We treasure our neighborhoods. Last night we were trick or treating, going around our loop where we used to live in the same neighborhood where we still live. And just thinking about, man, how cool is this? It's like out of our, where we trick or treats, like out of a movie. It's like the picturesque scene of the kids trick or treating and running from house to house and the parents keeping up.
And I valued last night. It was something that I really treasured. For some of us, it's our reputation. We protect it, we value it. Maybe health and fitness, marriage, family, comfort, security.
And maybe you don't. Out of this list that we talked about, maybe you don't have some of these things yet and you're pursuing them, but you still treasure them even though they're not yet yours. You're sacrificing, you're saving, you're looking. And this is important for us to note that these things, all the things that we mentioned, they're not bad. So if you have these things, don't hear me and say, okay, Mitchell wants me to go and sell everything that I own because that's what Jesus wants me to do.
That's not what I'm saying. However, where you get into trouble is when you appraise them at a higher value than they deserve. We just wrecked our car that we had for three weeks, a week and a half ago, I guess, and we had the car a few weeks. We know the value of the car and the appraisal. We got the packet from finding the insurance.
That's a clown show. But whatever.
They give us this packet of how much they say that it's worth. And I'm like, y' all are just making this up like it is.
And we do that with our own stuff, right? Like, we appraise value of the things that we treasure that we say is important in our life. And what Jesus is trying to get out in this parable, he's saying, hey, you're going to get your life all kinds of messed up whenever you appraise this wrong. Whenever you look at your treasure, the things that are good, things that are blessings from God, and you assign them a value that's just inappropriate. It's just too high.
You can so easily have a false confidence to what it actually provides for you. So you need to appraise your treasure. You need to be careful with the value you assign to it and critique it and know that how much you are valuing at what is it worth? What can it do? And here's the question.
If you lost it, what would you have if that treasure just disappeared tomorrow? And here, for the young person that's trying to get some treasure in their life, if you don't ever get it, what will you have?
Why do we want these things? Why? Why aren't we tempted to hold on to them? Why do we assign them a value that's too high? Why do we work so hard for them?
There's even a sensation where we can become fixated on these things and we just Become like this one dimensional person that that's all we talk about are these things that we value or are pursuing. One of the reasons for this, there's a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is confidence. It gives us this sense of confidence, this perceived confidence. And we like confidence. Because the world can be a tough place to find any kind of confidence in, to feel secure, to feel like everything is going to be okay.
And you probably know some people, that's all they're doing every day. They're just trying to make themselves feel okay. And so we do that in ways by assigning some value to some good things in our life that are not meant to provide the kind of security that we hope they're going to provide. The things that we can value in our lives, while most of them are good things, are not meant to replace the kind of confidence that can only come from knowing Jesus. And our main text today, the Apostle Paul, he does a bit of I love this passage because he does a little bit of inventory of his life and things that are valuable in his life, and then he appraises the value of those things.
But then he warns us about the kind of confidence that you get from such things and that you should not have that kind of confidence. And so we're going to be in Philippians chapter three is where we're going to be starting in verse one to get some context for this verse. Paul's writing from he's imprisoned by the Roman Empire, he's in big trouble with Rome. And he is writing these letters that he is excited because God is using his imprisonment to see his even the guards and the family members of the guards that are imprisoning him to come to know Jesus. And so he's in a really good mood despite his circumstances.
And he writes this really encouraging letter to these people he knows and he knows and loves really well in the letter to the Philippians. But he's confronting something at this point in the letter that has been a problem for him and he's trying to address it very specifically and he's angry about it. And you can find other letters where he talks more explicitly and even graphically about it. But he says in verse one of chapter three, says further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again.
It is a safeguard to you. And this is where he gets to the confrontation. He says, watch out for those dogs. This is not dogs. Like, hey, you're my dog, Bryce.
This is an Insult. This is a terrible insult. And he's saying, watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. It's not hyperbole. He's referring to circumcision.
And he says, for it is we who are the circumcision, who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh. And so what Paul is saying, he's saying, hey, there's some people within our network and there's some leaders amongst you that are saying that they are preaching the true Gospel, but they are saying that you need to trust in Jesus plus be circumcised. And Paul's saying here, nope, those guys are nothing but mutilators of the flesh. He's saying that they are putting confidence in what they're doing with their physical bodies and making them think that they are right with God because of their faith in Jesus. Plus you, you need this other thing.
And Paul's saying, nope, those guys are terrible, evil doers, mutilators of the flesh. He says, we are the circumcision, not because of some physical act that we've done. Because we boast in Christ, we put no confidence in the flesh. Verse 4. Though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
He's saying, hey, I know who these guys are. I am very familiar with the way that they think about the Gospel. And he's saying that I myself have reasons for the kind of confidence that they have. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on inventories. His the reasons he has to be confident the way that these guys are confident.
He says in verse five, circumcised on the eighth day. That's by the book of the people of Israel. He was born in the right ethnicity of the tribe of Benjamin, a very special tribe amongst the 12 tribes of Israel. He's a Hebrew of Hebrews. He says in regards to the law, a Pharisee.
He reached the top of his religious organization and he was a top dog. And that is something that is hard to accomplish. You got to sacrifice and you got to study and you got to change your life in a way for you to get to that point. And he got there. As for zeal persecuting the church, he saw this enemy of his religion and he went after it with fervor.
He says, as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. No one could point to my life and tell me where I was a law breaker. According to the Jewish law, 613 of them. And he's saying, hey, no one could point to me and say, hey, you are doing this wrong or you are doing that wrong. Paul has all these reasons.
He's inventorying the reasons that he has to be confident according to what these guys are saying. He's criticizing the leaders who are confident in this physical reality of their literal circumcision. But he asked this question within this letter. He says, but spiritually, what does that do for you? What does circumcision actually do for you?
Spiritually, it may be this physical thing, but what does it change about your heart? Paul says he has the greatest reason to be confident if that's the score that we're keeping.
He inventories some of these things. These are highly valued in religious, Jewish religious circles. And he also, here's another important thing. He had valued these things. He recognizes them as valuable from a personal standpoint.
He worked hard for them. He benefited from them. But listen to what Paul says about the value of these things compared to the value of knowing Jesus. He says in verse seven. But whatever were gains to me, however I benefited from these things, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
Here's some economic language. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I'm going to stop right there. He all the things that he just inventoried in the previous section.
When he came to Christ and he began to follow Christ and pursue Christ's mission for his life, he forfeited all those things. He didn't have that anymore. And he considered it a loss, and he lost all those things. And he says in the second half of that verse, I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own that I pursued so hard and worked so hard for.
He said, I not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis not of being good enough, not on accomplishing, not on reputation, but the basis of faith. Complete dependence on the work of Christ. And these people that he's challenging are wildly uncomfortable with this idea that they don't have to do anything but place their faith in Jesus. They want to take the gospel of Jesus, which is just trust in him so you can receive his righteousness. They want to add something to it.
And Paul is saying, hey, nope, I could have done that very easily, but I Understand, I lost all of that. And here's. If you look at that word garbage in verse eight, what Paul is trying to explain here is that there is a treasure in our life that has. There is treasure in our lives that has value. But Paul says, compare to knowing Jesus, those things are trash.
They are compost. They're what you throw out because it's too disgusting. And actually, if you look at the Greek word, it is the word. This is my phrase from my millennial adolescence. These things are doo doo.
These things are disgusting things compared to knowing Jesus.
Why does Paul say that? How can this be true? If we devote our lives to things that the world tells us has great value, things that we benefit from, things that we feel secure in, things that people tell us are good people, applaud us for doing these things. And they look and say, that's a good guy, or, that's a nice lady. And all these.
If Paul is saying, hey, all those things that you can work so hard for and devote your life to and sacrifice for and look for, and strive after and value and protect, compared to knowing Jesus, they're trash. Why does he say that?
I'll ask another question. If you only had Jesus, if you were like the two guys in the parable that we read at the beginning, and you got rid of everything. You went home today, you listed your house that sold this afternoon. You posted all your clothes on Facebook Marketplace, you sold your car, you quit your job, somehow you lost your family, all those things. If you had nothing, if you were just standing there stark naked like you were in the beginning of your life, but you still had Jesus, what would you have from the world?
It looks like you got nothing. You're naked, dude.
It looks like you got absolutely nothing.
You know, in my younger life, when I was in college, I went to college. I didn't even. When I got to University of Arkansas, I didn't even fill out an application. My roommate filled it out for me, the housing application. He filled it out for me, the fafsa.
My dad filled it out. I was a bum. I was a bum, as bums can get at that age. And I remember being tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and really curious, not curious, anxious about the rest of my. What the rest of my life was going to look like because it didn't look good.
I was a history major who had never written a paper in his life. That's a bad place to be.
And Carrie, I knew that. I wanted to marry Carrie. She just wanted to be friends with. She Was very firm about that. She was like just friends.
My parents were in the middle of being divorced from one another.
I'm about 40 grand in debt. I'm making $400 a month. My rent is 375.
My brother, who struggles with mental health at this time was in and out of mental health facilities. There was nothing in my life that I could point to and get some confidence from. The Razorbacks were good in football. That was about the only thing. She goes a long way, but only goes so far.
And I got to the point where I wasn't enjoying my life very much. I was swallowed up by anxiety. And to be honest with you, there was aand you may know this story, so I apologize. There was a guy that I knew that I didn't like very much who I thought in my flesh, do not. This is sinful.
Do not hear me say this from a place of righteousness. I looked, I was like, that guy's a loser. And I looked at on his Facebook. There used to be a thing that you could just write like 15 characters or something like that. And it said living the life is what it said under his profile picture.
I thought, man, if that guy's living the life, what's wrong with me? And I really struggled with that and I really wrestled with that. And God brought me to a place. The Holy Spirit spoke so clearly to me in that season of life where I realized I had nothing that I wanted in life but Jesus. But what I had in Jesus was a spiritual confidence that was a righteousness that didn't come from my ability to perform, but was given to me because I had a heavenly father who loved me and sent Jesus to die for me and give it to me.
Had a relationship with God as my heavenly father. Had brothers and sisters that cared about me. And man, the way that God used people to flood my life with his truth and his grace, it was a life changing thing. And even though I didn't have anything that would point to me and say, hey, this guy has got a lot of treasure in his life, this guy. Things are going well and I knew that I had salvation.
I had been saved as a 9 year old and I had been trying to follow Jesus my whole life and I had eternity. I had this new life, but man, I was struggling to enjoy it. And I was wondering what's. And it just hit me one day like a tidal wave. I'm rich, baby.
I am rich. I don't need romance. I don't need to know my career. I don't Need a car. I don't need all these different things.
I have Jesus.
And you may have convinced yourself this morning you got a bunch of stuff worth valuing, but the truth is, compared to knowing Jesus, that stuff is doo doo. That stuff is garbage. It needs to be thrown out. Compared to knowing Jesus, those may be good things, but compared to knowing Jesus, you need to treasure the most valuable treasure. A lot of us, you can just look at the way that we talk to each other.
Look at the way that we vent about our lives. Look at the way that we prioritize. We are. We are appraising the value of knowing Jesus at such a low level.
I'm frustrated about the appraisal of my Honda Odyssey, but, man, they're valuing way too low. We value knowing Christ at this thing. We don't treasure it. It's some things like, well, I don't want to go to hell, so I want to go to heaven. I don't want to be in trouble with God, so I'm going to believe in Jesus.
Knowing Christ as the most valuable treasure should change everything. And so when the storms come and bad things happen to you and your life ain't going the way that you want it to go, and you're not receiving the treasure that you so much sacrificed for and desired to, that you can look at this and say, I'm rich. I have everything I need in Christ. That's tough. That's tough.
And I wrestle with the remainder of this passage from Paul because I thought. I read this passage and I'm familiar with it, and I like it because it's encouraging. And Philippians is such an encouraging letter. But then you look at it in its full context and where Paul is, where he's writing it, and what's happened in his life. He's imprisoned by the Roman Empire.
He's endured some terrible things. He's been beaten, he's been shipwrecked, he's been stoned. All these different things. And he's writing this letter, and he writes these words. In verse 10, it says, I want to know Christ.
Yes. To know the power of his resurrection. Okay, I like that. I want to know the power of his resurrection, too. When I die one of these days, I'm excited about the experience that this life that I'm living now will give way to eternal life.
That's exciting. And participation in his sufferings. Hold on.
Becoming like him in his death. Whoa.
And somehow attaining the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, I press on to take a hold of that which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me, heavenward Christ Jesus. We look at this and we look at it with rose colored glasses.
And that one of these days things are going to get better. One of these days God's going to wipe away every tear. What Paul is talking about, he's definitely talking about that. But what we don't need to skip over is the things that he's mentioning here. He's saying that I have been beaten, I have been stoned, people have been trying to kill me since the day I started following Jesus.
And now I'm in a Roman prison and I am in a terrible spot from the world standpoint in that I'm probably not going to get out of here and be executed by the Roman Empire. And he's saying here, he's saying, but I press on towards the goal. I press on behind me is all this suffering for the sake of Christ. Ahead of me is suffering for the sake of Christ.
I desire to participate in these sufferings. I desire to press on toward the goal. I desire to experience the kind of death that my Lord and Savior experienced. I do not have a category for this.
I've lived a Christian or a good comfy life trying to be a Christian. I've never had to experience any sort of like physical persecution or legal persecution for what I believe in Jesus. And Paul's saying here, he says, I want to know the power of Jesus resurrection. I want to participate in his sufferings. I want to die like Jesus.
Not because he was somehow weirdly obsessed with pain. No, he was obsessed with Jesus.
Let's read Matthew's account of Jesus suffering for quick reference of what Paul is talking about here and Matthew 27, Jesus, he's been arrested. And the people, the crowd that's gathered outside of Jesus trial, they choose to release another prisoner, Barabbas. Instead of Jesus being released, they want to see Jesus crucified. They're crying out for his execution on a cross. In verse 26 of Matthew 27, says, Then he handed, he released Barabbas to them, but he had Jesus flogged, which means he had him whipped, his back ripped open, bleeding.
He handed them over to be crucified. Then the governor's soldiers, they took Jesus into the praetorium and they gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him and was mocking him. Then they twisted a crown of thorns and they pressed it on his head. Then they put a staff in his right hand and they knelt in front of him and.
And mocked him and said. Hail, King of the Jews, they said. And they spit on him and they took the staff and they struck him on the head again and again. And after they mocked him, they took off the robe, put on his own clothes, and then they led him away to crucify him. If you don't know what that is.
They nailed his hands and his feet to two pieces of wood.
Paul is writing this letter that we look at and we. It's an encouraging letter from a dark place. And he's saying, jesus suffering and his death, man. If that's what it takes to know Jesus more, I want that. I want to know Jesus.
Why would Paul desire this? Oftentimes we with things that we treasure, we desire to know every detail.
We desire to look at the things that we treasure and say, man, I love this part. I love this part. I love the cream interior of the audience. Maybe you saw the cream interior of that 56th Mercury, that hood ornament, the white wall tires, the details. Paul saying here, the details of Jesus life I'm interested in.
I want to know him.
I want to know what it's like to experience what he experienced, to follow him wherever he calls me, and especially to the places that look like the places that he went to. Paul, he gives up his status, his identity in their culture, a life of comfort, a life of normalcy that I desperately want to have. The desire to die of an old age in his warm bed, surrounded by loved ones. He gave all that up. Why?
He says those things are trash compared to knowing Jesus. Arrested. He knows Jesus more because his Savior was arrested, beaten. He knows Jesus more because his Savior was beaten, condemned to die. He knows Jesus more because Jesus was condemned to die, executed, which tradition tells us is exactly what happened to Paul.
He knows Jesus more because of those experiences.
Nothing. And I mean this in the absolute sense of the world, no thing stood in Paul's way of knowing Jesus more. Nothing discomfort. His reputation, his status, A brutal life, a criminal's execution.
Paul's like that man who found that pearl, found that great treasure, gave up everything to get it. Because Jesus, he's the most valuable treasure.
I want us to take back. Take us back to a place that we may need to be reminded of when Jesus first saved you. Back in September, we had a first fruits was our monthly worship gathering that we spent a lot of time in prayer and singing together and meditation. And Jock Murray, one of the elders here that used to serve on the elder team, very recently he came up to me and he just started. He prayed over me.
And something he said just tore me to pieces emotionally. He said, God, I thank you for saving Mitchell.
If you believe in Jesus, you've placed your faith in Him. He saved you. He's changed your eternity. He can change everything about your life because His Holy Spirit lives within you. Not because you earned it, but because of your faith in Jesus.
What a treasure it is to know Jesus, that no matter what happens in our life, we, we have the Holy Spirit of God living within us. We are filled with his purpose. We have this relationship with a heavenly Father as a created being that he has given great things to do and participate in his kingdom. And man, man, man, man, we undervalue that so much. And the only way that you can get that, and you shouldn't pursue that in and of itself, but you should treasure Jesus because He's the most valuable treasure you can have in this life.
Life. He offers things that nothing else can offer. What an honor it is to know Jesus. What a privilege it is to know the King of the Universe and his Holy Spirit living within us.
You see, Jesus, he gave up his life so that we could know him. He was arrested for you, he was beaten for you, executed for you. And he's resurrected through that resurrection. You can live a life knowing the most valuable treasure in reality, and you can make your life about that. And when the storms come and things are not the way that you want it to be, you know, man, I'm rich.
I'm rich.
Holy Father, I thank you for the most valuable treasures being offered to us.
And I ask, Father, that the things that we are appraising is higher than that, the things that are competing with the value of knowing you, that you just take those things and you let us see how much more valuable knowing Jesus is. And we can get to a point where we see these things as good. But man, compared to knowing your son, it's trash. It's garbage.
I just ask that you take the believers in this room, you help us to treasure who you are and see Jesus as the most valuable treasure that, that you give us so many good things in this life of man. Knowing you, that's it. It's the most valuable thing.
Holy Father, take our pursuits in life, put them in the appropriate place.
Take the things that are like truly, truly good. Families, relationships, the jobs you've blessed us with, we'll put them in the light in comparison of knowing Jesus. Allow that to change. The way that we live, the way that we posture ourselves, what we're pursuing, how we relate to people, how we work at our jobs. Allow that to change.
I just pray that you just help us to treasure you more than anything. To treasure. Knowing Jesus is the most valuable treasure. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, Amen.
