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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Isaac Eliot

One Price Fits All

Before we begin our message this morning, I'm going to invite you to bow your heads with me for an additional word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this beautiful Sabbath.

We ask you to speak to us through the pages of Your Word today.

And may we come away from this place reminded of our need to surrender all to You.

Our message this morning is entitled, 1 Price Fits All.

And there was a man by the name of Jim who lived in Shreveport, Louisiana.

About 11 years ago, he bought a metal detector.

And so Jim took that metal detector out by his home and he was detecting there on 1 of the streets in Shreveport.

And you know between the curb and the sidewalk there's usually this little strip of grass, you ever seen that?

And so he was going through there and he found something metal.

So he dug it up and it was a belt buckle.

So he cleaned it up and he took it into an appraiser.

Turned out this was a Civil War era belt buckle.

His appraiser said you could probably get 5 or 6000 dollars for it.

But he said you should try to do a bidding war among collectors.

He ended up selling that belt buckle for $23, 000.

I got these stories from an Adventist gentleman who owns his own metal detector store out in Colorado.

But there's another gentleman, his name was Steve, he bought a metal detector And in 3 months, in 3 months in California, he found 15 ounces of gold.

Does anyone know what gold is trading for these days?

Gold is trading, yesterday I checked, it was $822 an ounce.

So you do a little bit of math, 3 months, 15 ounces.

Incidentally, for this past summer, I have been living on a gold mine, literally.

It's an abandoned gold mine in Northern California.

My father-in-law has a 105 acre, he owns 2 mines.

And what happened In California, as you know, there was a huge gold rush and there was a lot of gold to be found.

After America moved off of the gold standard, a lot of these mines found it financially unrewarding to continue mining.

And so many of these mines were just abandoned.

But there is still gold to be found there today.

And you know, I, while we were there, we actually didn't really think much about mining.

When friends would come over, we would take them out panning.

And we have everything, you know, we have the dredgers, we have the sluice box, We have everything.

But it's hard work and I'm kind of lazy and I didn't really want to do it, you know.

So most of the summer I didn't do anything.

But right before we left, right before we were getting ready to go back to hit the road again to do evangelism, My wife and I, 1 day we were at our creek, we were swimming, and we decided just to pan for fun.

So we were just panning for fun, you know, and we were just playing around and dump buckets of sediment, and then we would shake it all out, and we'd get rid of the lighter stuff and we'd look, nothing.

I was just tired of panning, and my wife took this bucket and she just dumped it into my pan.

So I was doing it and I was panning, and I wasn't even – I was doing it half-heartedly, I was just fooling around.

But there in the very bottom was that glimmer of gold.

You know, there is a distinctive glimmer to gold.

And after, you know, for the whole summer, nothing.

And then on the very last day, when we were just getting ready to go, there it was.

I bring these stories to your attention because of a parable that Jesus told in Matthew 13.

I'm going to invite you to open there with me.

Matthew 13 and verse 44 brings a story about finding treasure in the ground.

The Bible says, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field.

The witch, when a man hath found, He hideth, and for the joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." Now, I want to focus on this passage today, but there's something you should know.

And I believe that these 7 parables are progressive in nature.

I also believe that they have prophetic significance.

Now this story focuses on a treasure that a man finds in a field.

Now I don't know what it's like to find a $23, 000 belt buckle, I don't know what it's like to find 15 ounces of gold, But I can imagine in some way the excitement that must have been experienced when a person finds something.

Have you ever found money on the ground before?

You know, maybe it's only a dollar or $20 or $5, but do you remember that feeling, you know, in your stomach, it's like, wow, you know, and perhaps this man felt something akin to that.

Now, obviously, this story was designed to teach a spiritual lesson.

So the question is, what was Jesus trying to illustrate with this particular story?

Now remember that in parables, physical objects have a spiritual meaning.

In other words, these symbols, the field, the treasure, selling all that they have, they don't denote literal events, rather they symbolize spiritual things, and we want to understand what those represent.

So the first thing I did is I looked at this expression, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

And the first thing I did was I went through the Bible and I looked for treasure and I looked for what it would mean symbolically.

And what you'll discover is that in the Bible, the Bible uses the word treasure about 35 times.

And so, you know, there's a lot of choices.

Can someone tell me what is specifically unique about the treasure in Matthew 13, verse 44?

So that narrows the field a little bit because I'm not just looking for a treasure, I'm looking for a hidden treasure.

And that's when I found Colossians 2, verse 3.

Please take your Bible, keep your finger in Matthew 13 and open with me to Colossians chapter 2 and verse 3.

The Bible talks about a hidden treasure here.

It says, in whom are hid all the treasures of… what 2 things everybody?

Now tell me, is there a treasure mentioned in Colossians 2, 3, yes or no?

The Bible explains that the treasure in Colossians 2 verse 3, it says that the treasure represents what?

Now, I know, I know, when you think of treasure, you like me conjure up images of this decaying teakwood box with heavy brass straps around it and a lock that looks fragile enough that if you hit it hard enough it would break open.

Okay, when we think of treasure, we think of like gems, we think of gold.

The Bible talks about treasure being wisdom and knowledge.

Now surely, you must be thinking to yourself, why does the Bible call wisdom and knowledge?

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One Price Fits All

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