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A SHOVEL AND A CONCORDANCE

Some scholars get excited when they find hidden "codes" in the Bible, where, starting with verse 17, and counting every 43rd letter - backwards - it spells out "George Bush." Well, maybe no big deal. But is it possible that God's Word itself IS the field where priceless treasure is buried?

You've all heard stories about people who had a very ordinary painting hanging on the wall of their house. And then one magical day, someone discovers that inside the frame, pasted against the back of the picture, is fifty thousand dollars. Or underneath the ordinary painting, once you scrape away the three dollars worth of cheap pigment, is an original Picasso or Rembrandt. And the poignant reality is that the hidden treasure has been there all along. "I walked right by that hidden safe a thousand times," the owner of the house says in awe. "And I never knew."

There's a fictional story out there that I'll confess I don't completely subscribe to. I'm talking about the Left Behind film and book series, and the topic of the secret rapture is one we're going to leave for another time. But I will say that Left Behind strongly urges its readers to get right with God, to make a commitment NOW, today, this very moment, to Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Believe me, that part I do like . . . very much indeed. I endorse it wholeheartedly. And there's a scene from Book #1, the original bestseller by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, where the airline pilot, Rayford Steele, is talking to the associate pastor of New Hope Village Church, Bruce Barnes. Bruce was "left behind," you see, when Pastor Vernon Billings and millions of others were suddenly gone, raptured. And he talks with this confused, lonely pilot and his teenage daughter, Chloe, about how he had simply not read and studied God's Word for himself.

"I hardly ever read my Bible," he confesses, "except when preparing a talk or lesson. I didn't have the ‘mind of Christ.'"

And then, for the rest of the book, this Pastor Barnes, and Rayford Steele, and Chloe, and the hero of the story, reporter Buck Williams, determine that they're not going to make the same mistake again. The treasure of truth, of a real — not superficial, not fake — relationship with Jesus, was hidden in the pages of this ancient Book, and they were going to commit themselves fully to finding that treasure.

As we spend two final days here in a much briefer story — one verse, just 35 words long — we unearth a very important truth about Jesus' parable of hidden treasure. And of course, as we hear these old tales from the master Storyteller Himself, we always want to know: What's the field stand for? What's the treasure stand for? Who's this guy out there digging in the field that doesn't belong to him? Etc. In the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries for Matthew, Richard T. France informs us that people in Jesus' day loved these stories because they were so real in that culture.

"Valuables such as coins or jewels were often hidden in a jar in the earth," he writes, "and discoveries of such treasure trove were a favorite theme of popular stories."

I suppose any Christian would read this brief parable about the hidden treasure, and rightly conclude: "Well, eternal life is the treasure. That's the gift, the jackpot. So I should be willing to do anything, sell any possession, move any mountain, in order to be saved and have eternal life." True enough. And these heroes and heroines in Left Behind come, rightly, to that conclusion too. But let's look at a second application, and see if you and I, along with Rayford and Chloe, have been sitting on a gold mine WE didn't know we had either.

In the great 19th-century Christian book, Christ's Object Lessons, the writer takes a lot of Jesus' parables and suggests new meanings. And here's what Ellen White has to say about the hidden treasure in the field:

"This parable illustrates the value of the heavenly treasure, and the effort that should be made to secure it," she writes. "The finder of the treasure in the field was ready to part with all that he had, ready to put forth untiring labor, in order to secure the hidden riches. So the finder of heavenly treasure will count no labor too great and no sacrifice too dear, in order to gain the treasures of truth." Now mark this down: "In the parable the field containing the treasure represents the Holy Scriptures. And the gospel is the treasure. The earth itself is not so interlaced with golden veins and filled with precious things as is the word of God."

Now frankly, this isn't one of the parables where Jesus does the disciples — and us — the favor of coming back and saying, "Okay, here's what it all means. The field is this, the gold is that," and so on. But certainly the gospel being the treasure — in other words, the plan of salvation, how we can have eternal life — certainly that is priceless to anyone who finds it. But what do you think about this idea that the field . . . is the Bible, the Word of God? Does that make sense?

It certainly worked out that way for the people in this fictional story, Left Behind. Even though I don't agree with all the scenarios in that book, I do say that God's plan for each of us IS found in the Bible. And now, today, is when we should be getting out shovels and pickaxes and studying those pages.

This same Christian writer, E. G. White, then suggests that the religious leaders in the time of Christ were like people who had treasure right in their own backyards, but didn't know it.

"A man might pass over the place where treasure had been concealed. In dire necessity he might sit down to rest at the foot of a tree, not knowing of the riches hidden in its roots. So it was with the [leaders in Israel.]"

We quoted a bit yesterday from a tremendous sermon we cut-and-pasted off the Internet, by Father Thomas Keating. And he has this to say about the fact that the treasure is right there under our noses:

"In Christianity the risk is that the treasure of eternal life is given without our seeking it. It is already there. The kingdom is among us and within us. It is a treasure that involves our participation in the divine life, to which no other conceivable god can compare." Then these telling words: "And for all practical purposes, most people are not interested."

Now, friend, we've always said on this program that if you're a thief hanging on a cross, John 3:16 is all you really need. "For God so loved the world . . ." Agreed? Or, if you could only memorize one Bible verse, you could hardly do better than Acts 16:31:

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

That's 11 words, and when it comes down to crunch time, 11 words are enough. But what a treasure we miss, what riches, what abundance, if we don't then dig deep and find ALL that God wants for us to discover in ALL of His Word! There's treasure there to save our lives, to make us whole, to bring us to Jesus, to teach us about the Kingdom. Just here in these parables — some long, some short, some complicated, some simple — we're finding out marvelous insights. New ideas that change how we live, how we order our lives. We'd be so impoverished if we didn't read them and study them and embrace them. And we need to do like the man in this story: get rid of whatever in life is keeping us from owning and plowing this field. If you have other books that keep you from this Book, sell them! Have a garage sale. If your cable TV keeps you from digging in the Word of God, then you better pull the plug. Or get up earlier in the morning. Or SOMETHING. But friend, there's gold in these 66 books. There's eternal life there. There's Jesus Christ there. And it's as near as your bookshelf.

I've told so often the story of Joy Swift, a young "mountain mama" who suddenly had four of her kids shot to death by a teenaged intruder, Billy Dyer. Three weeks later, her own teenage stepdaughter died of leukemia. And she was devastated. Being a mom had been her whole life. Now her family was gone, and she was consumed with nothing but grief and a blinding desire for revenge.

And then, there in that achingly lonely motel room, she had an encounter with God. His Spirit seemed to envelop her, promise her hope, the guarantee of a reunion someday. And as the soft light faded away, she picked up the motel room's Gideon Bible and began to read. She read straight through. She read page after page, promise after promise. And it stunned her that there was so much in this old King James book! Why hadn't she read it before? It was a blueprint for living. It told her how to forgive. It held out the promise that one day she would be with Stephanie, Steve, Greg, Stacy and Tonya again. And she freely confesses in her incredible bestseller, They're All Dead, Aren't They?, that she absolutely WOULD NOT have ever found wholeness . . . without the Bible. And I mean digging DEEP into it, wielding the shovel of desperate study, until she came to the treasure of Jesus Christ.