Sell it all

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

SELL IT ALL

Matt 13:44

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

NIV

There is discussion among our scholars as to what exactly Jesus meant by treasure hidden. The point of the discussion is to determine why the man had to buy the field. If he found a chest full of some sort of treasure, say a pot of gold, then he could just carry it off without having to purchase the land. However if this hidden treasure was a gold mine whereas he would have to dig up the field in order to extract all the gold available, then he would need to own such field. How we would know this hidden treasure was a gold mine we know not. This is not explained to us. But the point that is made by our Lord is that hidden treasure or rather that treasure hidden is the message of salvation. When we find that which is worth everything we have, we rid ourselves of that which we have in order to take hold of the salvation of our souls. This implies we rid ourselves of our former way of thinking, our former way of living in sin, and maybe even our former friends who take part in that sinful lifestyle. That is unless they too would like to share in the treasure hidden with us. That is also not to say that we abandon them, forsaking them, leaving them to perish. But the point is leaving behind anything and everyone in order to take possession of salvation. We cannot be partners both with God and with the world. We cannot serve two masters, God and money. There is a cost for this treasure hidden. We must value it more than anything else, above all the riches of the world. When the man has to dig up the field in order to get to the hidden treasure it is likened to us having to diligently dig through the scriptures to find all the wonderful truths for our lives. Not that just being saved isn’t enough, for surely it is has greater value than anything else. But once we found this treasure, this gold mine of worth, we need to explore every vein, searching every ounce of gold, of truth, it has to offer. That is why we need to whole field, the whole of scripture, so we can have it all. If the man sold everything he had, he gave up everything to have this treasure.  How can we then cling onto anything? How can we then keep part of the world’s ways? This could be a deep rabbit hole if we were to chase down every way we could still be involved or holding onto something we previously had instead of selling it all in order to have this salvation. But that might be a whole lot of different things for each person. We can only ponder on what that means to us personally. Is there anything else we need to sell?