The Ultimate Treasure in Life (Matthew 13:44-46)
Delight Yourself in the Lord
The Ultimate Treasure in Life
Matthew 13:44–46
 
Last week we begin a new series exploring the idea of finding our ultimate pleasure in life through our relationship with God. The Psalmist said, "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart."
 
That is not a blanket promise to feed fleshly appetites; far from it. It is instead an invitation to not only know God, but to know and enjoy the life He promises both now and for eternity.
 
As we learned, God is the happiest being in the universe. He is happy because He takes perfect pleasure in His glory as it is reflected in His perfect Son. God is happy because He is sovereign and therefore He can overcome every obstacle to his joy. And God is happy to share with us His happiness.
 
Think about it like this: God calls men and women to himself, not because He has a deficiency that he needs to fill but out of fullness that he loves to share.
 
Now obviously, not everyone in the world is happy. They aren't happy on a physical level and they certainly aren't happy in an eternal way either. The reasons there are so many unhappy people is because they are not meeting the condition that God prescribes for happiness.
 
Remember, the Psalmist said, "Delight yourself also in the Lord."
That is a command that must be obeyed. And it is in the doing of the command that the joy of the Lord is discovered. But many people aren't happy and never will be happy because they refuse to be obedient. Nobody is going to tell them what to do!
 
Therefore they search for happiness in riches and revenge and recreation, and sadly, they never find it. Therefore, they can't be blessed by God's mercy or enjoy His grace. Instead, they are lost and what they need more than anything else in their search for happiness and joy is conversion to Christ.
 
That's what I want to talk about this evening. Now I'm going to make a statement and I want you to make sure you listen closely to what I'm going to say because I don't want you to mishear or misunderstand what I'm saying.
 
The way to be saved is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, right? In fact, Acts 16:30 is the only place in the New Testament where the specific question, "What must I do to be saved?", is asked. And in answer to the Philippian jailer who asked that question, Paul replied, verse 31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household."
 
  1. there is no doubt about the scriptural accuracy of that answer. It is true, it is right and it is scriptural. However, I'm not sure the best way to witness to lost people about our faith is to ask them if they believe in Jesus.
 
 
 
  1. say that because we live in a Christianized society that knows the terminology. There are multiplied thousands of lost people think they do believe in Jesus. And many of them do believe in Jesus in a historical or non-theological kind of way.
 
So the command, “Believe in Jesus and you shall be saved,” is virtually meaningless to the average Joe. Drunks on the street say they do. Unmarried couples sleeping together say they do. Elderly people who haven’t sought worship or fellowship for forty years say they do. Every stripe of world-loving church attendees say they do.
 
So my responsibility as a preacher of the gospel and a teacher of the church or a witness in a home is not just to repeat precious biblical sentences, as true as they may be, but to instead, speak the truth of those sentences in a way that will prick the conscience of the hearer and help them understand their need for Christ.
 
So what I have to try to do is take an essential teaching of Scripture and make it as pointed as I can in the hope that some hearts will be stabbed broad awake.
 
So how about this as a tool for evangelism? Do you find your ultimate delight and pleasure in the world through your relationship with Jesus? Would you say you are delighting in the Lord? Are you happy in Jesus?
 
The answers to those questions are much more indicative of a person's relationship with God than asking if they believe in Jesus or if there was a time when they professed their faith in Him.
So this evening let's think about salvation and what it means in terms of Delighting Ourselves in the Lord. There are some essential truths that help us to understand the conversion is necessary. For instance, the first truth we have to face as human beings is that
 
1. God is our Creator
 
and as such, we owe Him heartfelt gratitude for all we have.
 
The best evidence for this is in your own heart and life. Did you ever do something kind for someone and they didn't even bother to say "thanks"? Doesn't that make you mad?
 
So why do we get mad about that? Why do we automatically pass judgment on the person who snubs you when you have done him a favor?
 
Is it because you got spanked as a child for not saying thank you? I doubt it. The reason we respond like we do is because we are created in God’s image, and that part of God that is within us prompts our hearts to make the judgment that ingrates are guilty!
 
Because we are made in the image of God is why we automatically and involuntarily hold someone guilty when they are blessed and graced by something that is done for them without being thankful. And because of our own reaction we know that there is a God to whom we owe our gratitude.
 
 
It would be absolutely hypocritical to think that God expects any less gratitude for his gifts than you do for yours.
 
What did the Psalmist say in 107:1? “Oh give thanks to the Lord". Why? "For he is good: for his mercy endures forever”.
 
Therefore, if you will simply own up to the moral standards which you automatically make on your neighbor, you will not be able to escape the fact that the law of God is written on your heart and it says: a creature owes his Creator gratitude and thanks in direct proportion to his dependence and God’s goodness.
 
Here's the second thing we need to keep in mind about the necessity of conversion:
 
2. Everyone's a Sinner
 
Not only is it wrong to be unthankful, everyone is guilty of being unthankful. If we're honest about it, we know that we have not given to God what we demand for ourselves when we are offended.
 
And we know that in the same way we hold other s guilty for being ungrateful, God holds us guilty for our ingratitude to Him.
 
In fact, that is exactly what Paul said to the Romans in
 
Romans 1:18–21
 
 
 
That means when every human being stands before God to give an account of his life, God will not have to use one sentence of Scripture to show people their guilt and why they deserve condemnation. He can simply ask them three questions:
 
- First, was it not clear enough in nature that everything you had was a gift, that as my creature you were dependent on me for life and breath and everything?
 
Second, did not the sense of justice that I placed in you always hold other people guilty when they lacked the gratitude they should have had in response to a great kindness?
 
- And third, has your life been filled with the joy of gratitude toward me in proportion to my kindness to you?
 
I didn't think so. Which brings us to the third great truth regarding conversion and that is
 
3. We deserve God's Wrath
 
And in particular, Paul points out, we deserve it because we did not give God the glory. We were ungrateful and unthankful.
 
We don't ignore insults to our own character, and God won't either. The sin against God is much greater than the offense against us, therefore, the case must be settled in a fair and just way. And unfortunately, the wages of sin is eternal death.
 
 
Now that is extremely bad news. The most terrifying news in the world is that we have fallen under the condemnation of our Creator and that he is bound by his own righteous character to preserve the worth of his glory by pouring out his wrath on the sin of our ingratitude
 
But there is a fourth great truth that no one can ever learn from nature or from their own consciences. It is a truth that has to be told to neighbors and preached in churches and carried by missionaries
and that truth is that
 
4. Christ took Our Place
 
That is the good news, the gospel message, that God has designed a way to satisfy the demands of his righteousness without condemning the whole human race.
 
He has taken it upon himself apart from any good found in us to accomplish our salvation. The wisdom of God has ordained a way for the love of God to deliver us from the wrath of God without compromising the righteousness of God. And what is this wisdom?
 
1 Corinthians 1:23–24
 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God crucified, is the Wisdom of God, by which the love of God can save sinners from the wrath of God, and all the while uphold and demonstrate the righteousness of God.
 
Here's how Paul said it in
 
Romans 3:25–26
How can God exonerate sinners who have been ungrateful for his glory and yet demonstrate his righteous and unswerving commitment to his glory?
 
Answer:
 
God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
 
Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. (Romans 8:3)
 
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. (1 Peter 2:24)
 
Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. (1 Peter 3:18)
 
If the most terrifying news in the world is that we have fallen under the wrath and condemnation of our Creator and that He is bound by his own righteous character to preserve the worth of His glory by pouring out His wrath on the sin of our ingratitude, then the best news in all the world is that God was willing to sentence his own Son in our place and thus satisfy His allegiance to his own glory and still save sinners like you and me!
 
But not all sinners get this. Everybody is not saved from God’s wrath just because Christ died for sinners. And this is the fifth great truth we need to hear:
 
5. There is a condition you have to meet in order to be saved.
 
As I said earlier, “What must I do to be saved?” is probably the most important question any human can ask. Let’s look for a moment at the different ways God answers that question in his Word.
 
- The answer in Acts 16:31 is “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.”
 
- The answer in John 1:12 is that we must receive Christ: “To all who received him . . . he gave power to become children of God.”
 
- The answer in Acts 3:19 is, repent! That is, turn away from sin.
 
“Repent therefore, and turn again that your sins may be blotted out.”
 
- The answer in Hebrews 5:9 is obedience to Christ.
 
“Jesus became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.”
 
Jesus himself answered the question in a variety of ways. For example, he said in Matthew 18:3 that childlikeness is the condition for salvation:
 
Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
 
In Mark 8:34–35, the condition is self-denial — the willingness to lose your earthly life for Christ:
 
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
 
In Matthew 10:37, Jesus says the condition is loving him more than anyone else:
 
He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Also see 1 Corinthians 16:22; 2 Timothy 4:8)
 
And in Luke 14:33, the condition for salvation is that we be free from the love of our possessions:
 
Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
 
These are some of the conditions that the New Testament says we must meet in order to benefit from the death of Christ and be saved. We must believe on him, receive him, turn from our sin, obey him, humble ourselves like little children, and love him more than we love our family, our possessions, or our own life. This is what it means to be converted to Christ. And this alone is the way of life everlasting.
 
Now, by now you are probably thinking, "But I thought you were going to talk about what it means to delight yourself in the Lord". What does all this discussion about salvation and conversion have to do with that?
 
 
It has to do with it in this way:
 
There is one Condition for Salvation that Jesus shared that holds all the other conditions together. It unites them and in fact, becomes the primary motivation that drives a person to seek salvation like nothing else and it's given in a little one-verse parable found in
 
Matthew 13:44
 
This parable describes how a person is converted and brought into the kingdom of heaven. He discovers a treasure and is driven by joy for what he's discovered to sell all he has in order to have this treasure.
 
What does that mean? It means you are converted to Christ when Christ becomes for you a treasure chest of holy joy that you must have, regardless of the cost.
 
And the new birth of this holy affection is the common root of all the conditions of salvation. We are born again, converted, when Christ becomes a treasure in whom we find so much delight that trusting him, obeying him, and turning from all that belittles him becomes our normal habit.
 
Someone may ask, "But isn't it possible to make a decision for Christ without the incentive of joy?” I doubt that very much. But the issue this morning is not: “Can you make a decision for Christ without the incentive of joy?” Rather, the issue is: “Should you?” Would it do you any good if you could?
 
Is there any evidence in Scripture that God will accept people who come to him out of any other motive than the desire for joy in him? Someone will say, “Our aim in life should be to please God and not ourselves.”
 
True, but what pleases God? Hebrews 11:6:
 
Without faith it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
 
You cannot please God unless you come to him in search of reward. What did Jesus say to Peter when Peter focused on his sacrificial self-denial and said, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you” (Matthew 19:27)?
 
Jesus saw the seeds of pride. Peter was bragging! Following you has cost us more than it's cost anybody else! We've given everything!
 
So how did Jesus deal with this pride? He said:
 
There is no one who has left anything for my sake who will not receive a hundredfold . . . now, and in the age to come, eternal life.
 
In so many words, Jesus says, "You know Peter, if you don’t come to me because I am a greater treasure than all those things you have left, then you don’t come to me at all. It is pride that wants to be anything more than a little baby branch sucking righteousness, peace, and joy from Christ the vine.
 
The condition of salvation is that you come to Christ in search of reward and that you find in him a treasure chest of holy joy.
 
When you think about it, every biblical invitation of the gospel is rooted in the promise of lavish treasure. And no matter what it costs you to follow Christ, He is more than worth it.
 
Let me close with the invitation given through Isaiah in the first three verses of chapter 55.
 
Isaiah 55:1–3
 
Let's pray.