THE BRINGING TO LIGHT OF THE TREASURE
THE BRINGING TO LIGHT OF THE TREASURE
Matthew 13:44; Acts 13:4-7; Acts 13:12; Acts 13:52; Acts 14:8 - 10
I intend to speak tonight, as seeking to present Christ as glad tidings, from the standpoint of His valuation of believers. This verse in Matthew 13 speaks about a treasure, and the Lord likens Himself to a man who has found it. As coming into this world and becoming Man, great thoughts filled His mind. As Man He stood in relation to all men, and as Son of Man He inherited all that attached to man from the divine side. He did not inherit man’s sins, but He took on these in due course, for they were a liability on the race. When Adam was formed he was free from indebtedness; he was set up by his Creator without any liabilities; but in due course he involved himself, and became heavily indebted. Christ, as becoming Man, took account of all this. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners”, Hebrews 7:26. One who “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth”, 1 Peter 2:22 and He was at any time at liberty to return whence He came, to go back to His Father. But we see Him at one time in the temple looking around, meaning that He was taking things into account as they were; and so in a wider way, He looked around in the world, and took account of everything, and began to act as One who would befriend this great debtor, One who would discharge his liabilities, his obligations. To do that He could not return to heaven without dying. This involved a great sacrifice on His part. Here He puts it in the terms of goods, or the value of goods: He does not value Himself here; it says, “For the joy of it goes and sells all whatever he has”.
[p. 414] In order to do this He had to die, because the things that He had He inherited from God’s side, and it was in dying that He surrendered them all, gave up everything that belonged to Him as a Man.
He inherited all that attached to man as in creation, and what belonged to Him as a Jew, as the Messiah. All these things were, as it were, ‘sold’, in order to get this new thing that was hidden in the field. Who hid it there is not disclosed. We are told in the Old Testament that “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing”, Proverbs 25:2. The mystery was “hid in God” Ephesians 3:9; He kept it hidden for centuries. He did not tell Adam, or Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, anything about it; they were His friends, but He hid it. We are not told here who hid the treasure, but it was hidden, and the Lord pictures Himself as finding it. Of course, divinely He knew everything, but He became Man, and at times He limits Himself. No one else would limit Him but Himself; but He does limit Himself marvellously — Here He speaks of Himself as in the position of finding something that someone had hidden, and, carrying the idea of limitation through, His thought was to get control of this field. You say He had control of it creatively. Well, He is limiting Himself in the figure here, which is needful in order to get the truth into our little minds. If God were to come down and attempt to speak to us from His infinite point of view, we could not follow; but He comes down to our little minds to get into them. It is in this sense that the Lord says that He bought the field; He sold all that He had, for it is a business matter, as I might say, and He bought the field. He had the wherewithal to do that, and He did it. He is not saying that He gave up Himself, but it is implied. It is to get one thought into our minds, that there is such a treasure in a field, someone having hidden [p. 415] it there, and the owner of the field, of course, owned the treasure. The Lord is endeavouring to get this into our minds. So He buys the field, and hence can operate in it.
To use a further thought figuratively, if there were a gold mine in a man’s field, or a silver mine, or oil, coal or other such things, he would operate it; whatever is in the field is within the claims of the owner of the field. But the Lord is not seen here as operating in that sense at all. There may be many other things in the field that are not hidden. A prospector would find all these minerals to which I have alluded, for some have great skill, even finding water hundreds of feet down in fields; but the Lord is not picturing that at all. What He has in His mind is this treasure which someone has hidden, and it is in a field, and He has acquired the supreme right to that field and all that is in it, and now He is to claim the treasure. To make the thing simple, speaking to believers, I would say, the treasure is ourselves, When God hid it there, it was potential, but He had the thing in His mind. It was a treasure, and He would use it in due course. And now Jesus pictures Himself as finding this treasure. You say, How did He find it? Well, He found Peter: he is one of the first He finds according to this gospel. Peter was a fisherman, and the Lord found him fishing, and He called him. Had I been there and known Peter previously, I might have said, Lord, there is not much there; I know that man, a swearer, a liar, a man who goes in for rough things! The Lord called him, saying, “Come after me!” That was the test; and Peter came after the Lord. The Lord said, I will make you something! Not all the universities in the world could make him what the Lord proposed to make him. He says, “I will make you fishers of men”! Matthew 4:19. Later on He would [p. 416] say to Peter, You are a stone: you are Peter! No geologist ever found such a stone as this. Never was such material found by any geologist as this. Well, I am only illustrating to you what this treasure is: Peter illustrates it.
I could go on and take up John and James in this way, for the Lord called them too, and they followed Him. John is another variety of this treasure; he is the most lovable of men. Sometimes natural men are lovely from an external point of view, even the man who went away from the Lord when He told him to sell all that he had. The Lord had been doing this, and He says to him, “Sell whatever thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me, taking up the cross”, Mark 10:21. He did not do that, but still the Lord looked on him and loved him. There was something to love in that sense, but it is only on the surface. The man who goes away from Christ in misery because the Lord tells him this is not lovable any more; but he was such a beautiful specimen of creation that it says the Lord loved him. But when we come to John, one of those early finds of Christ’s, he is characteristically “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. John 19:26, John 21:7 John 21:20.
What I have said illustrates to you, I am sure, what this treasure means. It is varied, and the Lord says, Now, I want the whole right to this field, I have bought it! So He is not intruding upon anybody’s property. You see, if I met you on the street, and gave you a little book about Jesus, you might turn away with disgust, and throw it on the side-walk, if you took it at all. Well, if you do that you are really in my mind disregarding divine rights. The Lord has bought you provisionally, not yet finally, because this purchase does not secure you eternally at all; it is provisional. He has bought [p. 417] the whole race, you might say, to acquire rights over it just for a while, because there is something there that He regards as treasure. How much refuse you often see at the mouths of mines, mountains of useless stuff excavated for the sake of one little bit of gold! At Johannesburg they dig down six thousand feet for a bit of gold. There are mountains of stuff there, no good to anyone, but still, gold is there. These gold prospectors buy the land; they have a right there. That is the point. The Lord has something in His mind, and the next verse to the one we read in Matthew 13 speaks of a pearl. That is one idea; the treasure may be varied. The Lord has that in His mind, and I am here tonight in a little way, as hundreds of others are in rooms like this, to bring these facts before people, with a view to getting some of this treasure for Christ. He is looking for it and He knows just what He wants. He knew what He sought for, and He found it. It was what He found illustratively in Peter. It is not a Jewish idea; it is another idea altogether, a matter of secrecy, having reference to the assembly. It is “the mystery”, really. It is all a matter of secrecy, but there is definiteness to get the thing, and how great pains have been taken since the Lord Jesus died to acquire the field! The Holy Spirit Himself, the great divine Searcher, has come down, to preclude, in a way, any possibility of anyone escaping His touch. He strives with all. Paul, in order to make the matter clear, says, “For God is one, and the mediator of God and men one, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony to be rendered in its own times”, 1 Timothy 2:5,6. So it is that from that day to this the testimony is being rendered in order to get this out which the Lord found. He found it in Peter, James, John, Matthew, Bartholomew, Mary and thousands of others. It is something that was not there before; that is the way it is put. It is a find.
[p. 418] Now these passages in the Acts help us to see how the Lord was going about this matter. These servants, Saul and Barnabas, accompanied by John Mark, are sent out. The Holy Spirit had been down here with perfect first-hand knowledge of the whole race. Let no one think he can escape His search! The Holy Spirit is not locating you to judge you, He is seeking to get you in view of this treasure being secured. That is His business: He is a divine Person here on the principle of search. We read of the woman who swept the house for the piece of silver; it is a thorough search for the thing that is there. In Matthew 13 the treasure is hidden carefully by somebody, and then found by somebody and carefully hidden again, and the whole field bought. So the Holy Spirit is down here on the principle of search. This little meeting is on that principle; the Holy Spirit is endeavouring to get somebody. The point of this meeting is to get some of this precious treasure for Christ.
So these men in Acts 13 went off, sent by the Holy Spirit. They were not free-lances in their preaching, going where they would, but they are sent by the Holy Spirit. The point in His sending is that He knows where the treasure is which He is searching out. The Holy Spirit is a divine Person with first-hand knowledge of the whole position: He knows where to send people. It does not say here that the Lord sent them, but the Holy Spirit did so — a rare thing; but it gives you the view I am presenting tonight. The Holy Spirit is operating as knowing the whole field, having first-hand knowledge of it, and He knows where are the varieties of the treasure.
The first man we get here is the proconsul; he is distinguished, a great man, as one of the Cabinet in London, the proconsul of the island. He is said to be an intelligent man: that is the point. He has [p. 419] been to college, so to speak, and has learned the sciences. But the point is not what man had made him, but what God made him. He is said to be an intelligent man; that is not simply that he knows things, but he has the power to know things, the ability to recognise things and to value things. But he is at a great disadvantage — this bit of gold, this treasure. We see presently that it is secured, apparently the only bit on the island! They went the whole length of the island, and the first man they met was Bar-jesus, a terrible thing! He speaks well, you say. But Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. His name takes up the thought of sonship, and he is doing all he can to keep the proconsul from the faith. Satan is not very far away from us tonight, but the more saints present at a meeting like this, the less power he has. If there is anyone here not interested, Satan has power with you. He is usually nearby when God is working, when He is gathering some of this treasure.
So Bar-jesus is set to turn the proconsul away from the faith. It says, “But Elymas the magician (for so his name is by interpretation) opposed them”, — that is, Paul and Barnabas — “seeking to turn away the proconsul from the faith”. Acts 13:8. I must not be too long in my definitions, but ‘faith’ here refers to the great christian doctrine. The doctrine of the gospel had already been unfolded, and now was being preached, perhaps in the best possible way, by Paul and Barnabas. Satan is against that; and it is all the more urgent that we should keep to the faith, the truth of the gospel. Paul says to the Galatians: “If any one announce to you as glad tidings anything besides what ye have received, let him be accursed” Galatians 1:9. He does not put it off either; he means right now, “Let him be accursed”, that is the one who would preach to them any other glad tidings than that which had been preached unto them, so [p. 420] confident was Paul that he had the full truth. It was “the faith”, from which Elymas the magician was endeavouring to turn the proconsul away. Satan’s business here tonight is to turn away the mind of anyone who is listening, to divert you from the faith. He endeavours to divert you from what I am saying. Paul dealt with this man Elymas, but I do not go into that. We read in Acts 13:12, “Then the proconsul seeing what had happened, believed, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord”. He was an intelligent man as a part of the treasure. It is what the Lord is seeking. He seeks in believers that they should be intelligent. This man was intelligent, and now when he saw the power of God operating against the enemy, when he saw what happened to Elymas, he was astonished at the teaching — not the power, notice! It was the teaching that struck him; and one would hope that as I am speaking to you what is said may strike you as different from what you may have been accustomed to — different teaching.
The gospel implies teaching, and we must be intelligent if we are to be of any value in the assembly, for that is the point in the treasure. Matthew 13:46 speaks of one idea, the pearl, whereas the treasure may be varied, and it is. We read in Acts 1 of one hundred and twenty persons who are all distinguished. Those persons were the result of the Lord’s ministry. So the Lord wants intelligent people. You say, I am a poor, ignorant christian! Well, it may be so, but it should not be! The Lord is endeavouring to instruct you. It was said of old: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”. Hosea 4:6. Satan has the advantage where people are ignorant. Indeed, it is a very solemn thing, for the Spirit of God says, “If any be ignorant, let him be ignorant”, 1 Corinthians 14:38. Who would be included in that? Persons who come to the meetings, and who listen, but who [p. 421] never get the good of the truth, never take it in, never practise it. Some day the Lord will say to such, You are to be ignorant! That would be judicial, a most solemn thing! But this man, Sergius Paulus, is not going to be ignorant; he is an intelligent man already, and now he is amazed at the teaching of the Lord. You see, he is, as I may say, secured. The Lord needs you, He needs your intelligence. I am speaking now to believers, for many think it is optional whether I understand the truth or not. It is not optional. If you keep on being ignorant, you may stay there. I am not saying a true believer can be lost, but I am saying what the Spirit of God says in 1 Corinthians 14:38, “If any be ignorant, let him be ignorant”. You say, Would you not preach the gospel to that man? If I knew that man I would not; he is done for! How solemn to be neglecting what the Spirit of God is engaged with! The Spirit of God is here to teach us: why should I not be taught?
Then the next kind of people you get in relation to the gospel are happy: “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit”, Acts 13:52. Some people are filled with joy, and are not filled with the Holy Spirit. The gospel is intended to make people happy, but the power for happiness is the Holy Spirit. There may be somebody here who is quite intelligent in the doctrine, who could tell me the facts of the gospel, and yet has not the Holy Spirit, but whose heart is cold; there is not a bit of joy in his heart! This part of the chapter is to show that the gospel, in securing the treasure, secures people who are happy too, but happy in a holy way. Heaven is not to be filled with doleful people, with depressed people. I am no testimony in the gospel if I am of that character. I should have joy in my soul. Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always”. Philippians 4:4. You say, I have been bereaved of my wife. Well, the Lord will weep [p. 422] with you; but nothing should take away your joy in the Holy Spirit. Has the Holy Spirit ceased acting in me because I have been bereaved? No! It is the testimony of the gospel, and I need the Holy Spirit.
In chapter 14 we see a man who had faith. Of course, all these persons had faith, but faith is another variety of this treasure, all making for the assembly. These features will all come out in our meetings in persons, real believers. We shall be intelligent, happy in the Spirit, and finally, we shall have faith. That is the next thing. Some people know the gospel in the terms of it, but faith is lacking. Of course, you cannot get anything from God apart from faith. I was speaking earlier of the provisional thing, of the world being reconciled to God. That is provisional; it cannot last; but while the world is in reconciliation provisionally there will not be the antichrist active properly; that is a great comfort at the present time. Not only that, but while that provisional purchase of the field is in force where the Lord is operating to get out the treasure — for what He is aiming at all the time is this treasure — one idea is in His heart, and the one idea is the pearl. No one would divide a pearl; you could a diamond, but not a pearl. A pearl is a very interesting thing, too, in a natural way, but infinitely more interesting in a spiritual setting. It represents one great idea. A man who has understanding as to pearls is seeking goodly pearls, and he finds one, as we read in Matthew 13:46. These details are to bring out how interested the Lord is in us, how He would secure us as belonging to this treasure.
This man of whom we read next in Acts 14:8 is a man who has faith: “A certain man in Lystra, impotent in his feet, sat, being lame from his mother’s womb, who had never walked. This man heard Paul speaking, who, fixing his eyes on him, and seeing that he had faith to be healed”. Now you see the [p. 423] kind of man he is! Paul represents Christ; he is moving in the energy of the Spirit, and he sees that the man has faith. Mind you, the man is not doing anything yet, but as having faith, he is part of the treasure.
Faith will not be needed in heaven, but the point is what the Lord has down here: He wants us for that purpose. The hymn we sang at the beginning of the meeting did not quite suit me because it makes too much of the believer going to heaven. We ought to have more in mind what God is going on with down here. He needs us down here for the assembly; He needs an intelligent man, He needs a happy man who has the Spirit. It does not say that the proconsul had, but the disciples in verse 52 had the Holy Spirit and were joyful. Then He needs a man who has faith, for the dispensation of God is in faith (1 Timothy 1:4). He is operating on that principle, and He wants people who have faith. If we are to be used of God we must have faith. Paul sees that this man at Lystra has it. There was that treasure in Lystra, that bit of gold, and Paul and Barnabas were sent of the Holy Spirit to get that. The Lord wants you not only to have faith to believe the gospel, but to be a man of faith. So in Acts 6 we get a man like Stephen, one of the seven appointed to be deacons, to look after the saints, and serve the saints. It says, “They chose Stephen, a man full of faith”, Acts 6:5. Even to prepare food for the saints at a meeting like this, you need faith, or you are not serving rightly. You say, Anybody can do that! Can they? God does not want ‘anybody’. He wants persons moving in service on the principle of faith. His service is carried on outside the world on the principle of faith. Every young person here who is sincere wants to be in that, and to have faith for it. Of course, you need faith to be saved. The Lord said to the woman in Simon the Pharisee’s house, just as she left, “Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace”, Luke 7:50. He says, You have faith for salvation. He does not say, You have faith to be a minister, like Paul and Barnabas, but, You have faith for salvation. But what I am speaking of now goes beyond that. Here is a man who is characteristically a possessor of faith. Faith is the gift of God, of course, but why should I be without it? Why should I pose as a christian without it? Not only should I have faith for believing the gospel, but faith to be a man for God here in His dispensation which is in faith. That is needed: that is part of the treasure.
The Lord is operating here in Painswick to get somebody, perhaps to get all of us. I ask constantly that my faith may be increased. We need it; we are in difficult times. This man was not doing anything but sitting, being a cripple from his infancy, having never walked: “This man heard Paul speaking, who, fixing his eyes on him, and seeing that he had faith”. He had it: it is a characteristic thought. It is another feature of the treasure, and surely everybody as I am speaking would say, I would like to be thoroughly in that, so that I may walk by faith, do my business by faith, rule my house by faith, move in relation to the people of God by faith! That is the idea; because it is needed for the treasure now. The Lord values the treasure as having these elements, and the Spirit of God knows where they are, and the evangelist is like the woman sweeping the house to get them. So this man is secured, for it says, “Seeing that he had faith to be healed said with a loud voice, Rise up straight upon thy feet: and he sprang up and walked”. He is a conscript, but a conscript for the army of faith, in relation to God’s world. I suppose the word was authoritative: “Rise up straight upon thy feet”, He was secured for the testimony, for this wonderful dispensation in which we are; and it was not an optional matter with him.
[p. 425] You will say, no doubt, that I have preached more about the assembly than about the gospel, but the gospel and the assembly go together. The assembly is the great objective in view in securing souls by the gospel. Of course, we are secured for heaven; we shall go up together. Let no one here think he will go up by himself! When we go to heaven, we go all together. Scripture never says that when I die I go to heaven; it tells me that I shall go to be with the Lord, with Christ. When we go to heaven we shall go together, as it says, “We ... ..shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we shall be always with the Lord”, 1 Thessalonians 4:17. May God bless the word!