First, we must understand that the Kingdom is not a faraway place. The Kingdom is here and now and it will be find by any and all who seek diligently for it. The Kingdom is like a great treasure that consists of many different things. And God keeps it buried. Why is it buried? Why isn’t it easy to find? Wouldn’t it be kinder of God to make finding the Kingdom easy for us? Well, anything you find easily is easily lost. And even though God offers us all He has in Christ, the mentality of the Kingdom is not one of entitlement. He who seeks will find, not he who sits.

What was the man’s reason for giving up all he owned to buy the field? So that he could keep plowing to see what else he could plow out of the field. Keep plowing. That’s a lesson we all need to learn if we want to see the Kingdom reach into every area of our lives. Life with God is a never-ending discovery of things about God and who we are in Him. If we are willing to keep on plowing, we will find the full blessing of the Kingdom. But it takes work. There is a cost in bringing God’s redemptive work into every area of our world.

Verses 45 and 46 tell of another man and another treasure. Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it! Pearls seem pretty commonplace to us today, but in Jesus’ time it was dangerous to get pearls. You had to be willing to take risks. Pearls are hidden in deep, dark places and are hard to find – but they come out perfect. They don’t need to be cut like diamonds or refined like gold – they are perfectly made inside the oyster that holds them.

God loves to hide pearls in obscurity. Think of David, in the farthest fields tending his father’s sheep, writing songs to the Lord. The least of his brethren, yet chosen by God to lead Israel because of his heart. The path to his destiny was long and not easy. God surrounded David the way an oyster surrounds a pearl, shaping him to become “a man after God’s own heart.” Do you feel obscure and overlooked? No matter what men think, you are not. Allow the process to continue to shape you. The treasure of your best life can be found and your pearl will shine. Just keep plowing.

The High Priest was responsible for many things, but it all boiled down to one main thing: he alone spoke to God for the people, and He alone heard from God for the people; now fast forward to 2012. Some Christians and churches still believe the pastor or priest talks to, and listens to God for them. Hebrews 5 says that’s a problem, we should be doing our own hearing and speaking. Jesus came to be the final High Priest, but when Jesus left the earth, He appointed a new priest – me and you. When Jesus left the Holy Spirit came to help us hear God’s voice so now we can go to God, one-on-one. We speak to Him in prayer, and He speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. That only works if we pray, and we read, but do we?

Most of us now, and most of the Hebrews then understood that, so why is the message repeated for all of us to hear? The answer is, because we know it, but we run from it. We prayed, and trusted God for something – something big, or something small, it doesn’t matter – we trusted Him, and it all fell through. We may never know why, but at that moment, the fear, and doubt, and hurt crept in; and we stopped speaking, and we stopped hearing, and we stopped growing – or worse, we started sliding backward. Do we know we can still pray, of course. Do we know God is still there, yes, but we stop trusting Him with our lives and our futures.

Read Hebrews five; actually read chapters one through five, none of them are long so it will only take you a few minutes, but it’s a few minutes that can restore your hope, and trust, and confidence in God’s Word for your life; not the preacher, or the priest, or the reverend – you.

God’s Word is ALIVE – it can give you life. His Word is ACTIVE – it works today, and every day. The Word is POWERFUL – it is stronger than your worst problem. God’s Word is a SWORD – the sword cuts, and penetrates all the way to our heart. The Word is our JUDGE, and here it is critical to understand that John chapter one says, Jesus is the Word, which means He is the judge. But this Judge faced pain like we face, and has encountered sin like we do, but He won! So when we come before Jesus as Judge, we face a Judge Who has already been where we are – He was the priest, now we are the priest. So He offers mercy when we’ve done wrong, and He gives grace when we need help doing right. Talk to Him again and don’t be afraid; read the Word, and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit’s voice.

You are the priest. Lay your wrongs on the altar, then receive God’s forgiveness and blessing at the altar, and let them begin a Hebrews 5 change in you.

Verses Used:
*Hebrew 5:5-14

Christ gave the church “gifts” mentioned in Ephesians 4:11 including “the apostles, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers” to equip God’s people to build up the Church, the body of Christ. Apostles are culture changers; people involved in governmental oversight, overseeing new works and new territory. Prophets are given to the Church to provide insight. All of these gifts work together in subjection to order to cause growth in God’s people. Pastors are the gateway into the Church. Pastors have a heart for God’s people and are there to take you on your Christian journey. However, pastors can’t do all the work to facilitate your growth. Growth is facilitated by commitment to the Bible and prayer. Merely coming to church is equivalent to barely making it in your Christian walk.

What does maturity mean? The road to maturity begins with service. There is a point in your Christian walk where you should go from taking to giving; from consuming to creating. Be mature and start to serve in God’s house. Don’t let the little things that trip you up this year, trip you up next year. As in marriage, working through issues now prevents encountering the same problems later.

When you are a baby, someone feeds you. Most Christians stay in the “feed me” stage and don’t experience the growth and journey God wants to take them on. Growth is painful and difficult; it stresses our faith. When you ride on the coattails of someone else’s faith you won’t have what you need on the inside of you when your storm comes. Our faith in what God says is the only thing that can get us through.

Ephesians 4:16 says “He makes the whole body fit together perfectly.” Not only are there functional body parts, there are joints and ligaments that are essential for perfect health. Joints supply movement; ligaments supply the connection between bones. Ligaments are the real-deal relationships that hold the body together. Our goal is to build a local body that will work; that can reach our community; that can make a difference. The power of the local body is that in one’s weakness the other is strengthened.

Many think “I don’t know where I fit” and use that as a reason to not commit or grow in the body of Christ. The appendix is a useless part of the body. It only gets infected and causes you pain. There is no such thing as an appendix in the body of Christ. Some folks live to be that pain by lashing out when hurting and God can remove that as one has an appendix removed. When an infected appendix is not removed, it infects the whole body ultimately causing death. You can decide to be a part of the functioning body of Christ. When you make that decision you move from immaturity to maturity.

Verses Used:
*Ephesians 4:11-16
*Colossians 2:19

I can’t help but see many parallels between Jesus’s death and resurrection and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Just as Jesus carried his own cross at his death; Isaac obediently carried the wood that was meant for his own death. Just as Jesus obeyed His father in the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity; Isaac obeyed his father even as the sword was over him. The place where Isaac was sacrificed, Mount Moriah, became the site of the Temple of Solomon. It is believed that the crucifixion was at the summit of Mount Moriah.

Abraham’s dream for years was a son. As his “dream” and heart were tested on Mount Moriah God proved faithful and provided true to his promise. Like Abraham, God puts dreams in our hearts. Our dreams can be tested. This testing can be painful at the time but through this testing comes endurance. Through endurance comes God’s provision. God will always provide! All Abraham had was belief and a promise. His only response to God telling him to sacrifice Isaac was “we will go to worship and we will return!”. Church, this should be our response when we go through our own trials and testing! We will worship and we will believe! This is all God requires. Today, Easter Sunday, represents a moment of remembrance of when God took the keys of Hell and rose to conquer death! All he requires for us to have access to this love is to “just believe”!