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WHY IS IT ALWAYS BURIED TREASURE?

It seems like most good things don't come easy. Good grades take study. Raises come when you work hard. And treasure, for some reason, is always buried. Why is that? And why did Jesus, in teaching important truths, so often hide them in these very stories?

We've been studying together all week about hidden treasure, and one of the great sagas of all time comes to us from the Klondike River and the huge mother lode of gold found on Eldorado Creek, also known as Bonanza Creek or Rabbit Creek. Just those names conjure up mental images of the wild and woolly west in Alaska, don't they? There's an old Indian legend from the Tagish Athabascan people about how one of their own, named Skookum Jim, found all the gold. According to the story, he met an apparition called "Wealth Woman," but at first she was just a frog in a deep pit.

"Jim rescues the frog, takes her to a place where she can clean herself, talks to frog, and then gives her a gift tied around her head." This is from an Internet story detailing the history of it all. "Later Jim dreams of a beautiful woman who has shiny things on her body that sparkle like gold. The woman introduces herself as his aunty, the head of the Frog nation, and she thanks him for saving her life. Gifts will be given to you, she says, if you don't tell anyone." There's a bit more here, so bear with me: "Frog woman comes to him again and tells him to go to the creek that runs out of the mountain and look for a reddish streak under the water." Guess what that's going to be? "Take a drink," the story continues. "You'll find something there, but don't tell anyone."

Well, it sounds like an Internet legend, but what Skookum Jim, and his Indian sister, Kate, who married a prospector named George Carmack, found in actuality in Bonanza Creek, was $30 million worth of gold. That's right. One hundred and five years ago today, August 31, 1896, one of the great discoveries of all time took place. Miners who used to nearly starve to death to get four or five cents' worth of gold in a pan suddenly had four or five hundred dollars' worth of gold dust in each one. In today's currency, it would be close to a billion dollars.

Well, as the Bible has been teaching us all week, if you have a shot at a mother lode like that, you do just about anything you need to do. If it's cold in Alaska, you bundle up and go anyway. Back in 1896, the laws at that time didn't allow Indians to register a claim, or women either. So these prospectors got around that by having George Carmack stake claims and then assign shares or part interests to the others in their party of five. And there were many, many men and women with gold fever who were willing to do what the Word of God advises — "Joyfully sell everything you have" — in order to get the rich reward of eternal life.

Notice that in these stories, the gold is always hidden. It's not just "treasure," it's "buried treasure." Indiana Jones never finds the jewels just lying on a table in his own back yard. They're always in a snake-infested cave, or in the deepest bowels of an archeological dig somewhere, or in the booby-trapped dark recesses of an Amazon jungle.

Now, if it's true, as we studied yesterday, that the field — where the treasure is buried — is actually the Bible itself, we have to ask this question: Why is the good news of eternal life often a HIDDEN treasure? Why is it tucked away where you have to dig?

Interestingly, Jesus Christ Himself, in telling these Matthew 13 stories, addresses that exact question Himself right here in this very chapter. After one of His strange little stories, the disciples flat-out asked Him:

"Why speakest thou unto them in parables?"

The King James there makes it sound even harder, doesn't it? "But, Jesus, why do You use these stories about farmers sowing seeds among the thorns and stony places? And that story about the wheat and the tares? We don't get that one. And the one about buried treasure. Jesus, the POINT of Your story is buried treasure! We're not tracking with You, Lord! Why do You cloak your vital truths in these strange little anecdotes?"

A bit later this year, when the much-awaited fantasy film, The Fellowship of the Ring, hits theaters, I'm sure moviegoers will be asking: "What was old J. R. R. Tolkien trying to tell us? He was a religious man. Does Sauron represent the devil? What does the magic ring represent? Is Frodo Baggins a type of Jesus figure?" And the crowd listening to Jesus were much the same. "Jesus, just tell us what You're trying to say! Stop hiding it in a story!"
Over at the very tail end of the book of Romans — which is itself a tough piece of study — chapter 16, the Apostle Paul describes the story of God's kingdom this way:

"Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the MYSTERY hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known."

And the NIV scholars make this comment about the "hiddenness" of the gospel:

"The so-called mystery religions of Paul's day used the Greek word mysterion in the sense of something that was to be revealed only to the initiated."

And sometimes this or that religion — even, I confess, Christianity — comes across this way. There's a secret handshake. Mysterious Bible codes. Strange beasts in Daniel and Revelation and preachers who claim they've deciphered the symbols. People dunking each other in pools of water, or having bread and wine with their church service. It all looks very strange indeed, like a mysterious organization just for the select few.

However, the NIV students have a Part Two to their comment about mysterion:

"Paul himself, however, used [this word] to refer to something formerly hidden or obscure but now revealed by God for all to know and understand."

I can tell you this, friend. Jesus wanted everyone to understand His kingdom and to join His kingdom. "I'm not willing that any should perish," He declared. "Whosoever will, may partake of the water of life." The Bible is crystal clear about that. Why, then, did Jesus use these hidden stories? Let me share from the Clear Word paraphrase His own answer, and this is right in Matthew 13:

"[Jesus] said to [the disciples], ‘You don't need My help to understand what I'm trying to say because you really want to know what it means. It's only those who don't really want to know who can't understand. The person who is guided by the Holy Spirit will receive all the insight he needs to understand what I'm saying, but anyone who doesn't depend on the Holy Spirit to help him understand will soon lose the little insight he does have. The reason I use everyday illustrations is to give the Holy Spirit room to work on people's hearts and minds. I can tell who really wants to understand and who does not."

Jesus might well have been thinking of the religious leaders — the hypocrites and the Pharisees — as well as the Roman soldiers, perhaps. "They don't see, and they don't want to see," He concluded sadly. "But if I proclaim the full message straight out, it will just bring opposition, and cut My work short." So He wisely used these quiet little stories, these hidden treasures, and then, with a knowing glance or a nod, waited to see the gleam of understanding in the eyes of those who really wanted to know, really wanted to understand and to find the hidden treasure.

In an insightful 19th-century book entitled Christ's Object Lessons, the author suggests that the gospel is really there to be found, but that the shovel and pick-ax are necessary. I mean, John 3:16 is right in front of our eyes; it's even on our television sets during the Stanley Cup playoffs. But you still have to get out a Bible and look it up.

"God does not conceal His truth from men," she writes. "By their own course of action they make it obscure to themselves."

Either by sheer laziness or by living disobedient lives, we can make the Bible impossible to comprehend. Later in the same chapter, this writer adds:

"[The Bible] is an inexhaustible treasure; but men fail to find this treasure because they do not search until it is within their possession."

One last point. Treasure is often buried so that only those who value it WILL find it. But it also follows that you have to understand what IS treasure! When is the substance in your pan pure gold as opposed to fool's gold? In fact, in the very next story Jesus told, a man who knew pearls and shopped for pearls found a rare beauty. Knowing it was rare, knowing it was worth a fortune, that's exactly what he spent for it. And so it is here. You have to know that eternal life is worth something, and that a friendship with Jesus Christ is worth something, or you won't dig and you won't spend. The Internet stories about the Eldorado Gold Rush tell us that this Skookum Jim was given paper money by the people who bought out his stake. Paper money? What's that? He didn't know any better, so he tacked these strange pieces of paper up all over his cabin there in the Klondike. He was surrounded by a mind-boggling fortune, and didn't know it.

Friend, may that never be said of us.