A Mystery of Hidden Treasure
Pastor Bill Zacharda
August 10, 2008
Colossians 1:24-2:4
Introduction: Today I’ll tell you a mystery. To solve this mystery is to find “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Are you curious? Now the word mystery means something that baffles or perplexes and can not be fully understood by reason. But in the Bible, the word mystery means a spiritual truth that can only be known by revelation, but still cannot be fully understood by reason. So faith is necessary.
Would you like to have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? I would. There are mysteries that have intrigued me all of my life. You tell me. Where did we come from? How does one sperm and one egg make a unique human being like you? Why does one human being becomes a monster like Adolph Hitler and another human being becomes an angel like Mother Teresa? Why is there evil in our world? Why is there such great suffering in life? Is there life after death? Are all human beings immortal? Is there a place called heaven? If so, what will we be doing for all eternity? Is there a God? How can there be one God in three parts, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Who is this man called Jesus who is both human and divine? Does God care about me among all the billions of people who now live and have ever lived? The best of minds have tried to find answers to these mysteries. Generation after generation of scholars have been baffled. The result of being confronted with mystery has been the creation of the great religions of the world.
1. These are not issues that we think about every day. In fact many people just push them out of their minds because they are too big to ever answer. I don’t. Paul didn’t. They constantly intrigued him. These big questions that impact every person was the basis of his ministry. He wanted to make known to everyone the mystery hidden for ages and generations that God now revealed to him. He says that it’s a revealed mystery and God has now revealed the mystery to the Gentiles and not just the Jews. And all of the gentiles said, Amen! He says that the mystery of death and the afterlife has been revealed. Death is not the end of life but that, having an immortal soul, we will all be raised to eternal life or to eternal damnation. Paul struggled to put the revealed mystery into one clear and concise sentence and the Holy Spirit gave him these words: “To them [the saints] God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” In a word, the mystery is “Christ in you” and he is “the hope of glory.”
2. In his book, Souls on Fire, Elie Weissel tells a great story. In far away Krakau, in days when sleep was often disturbed by dreams, there lived one Issac, son of Yechel. Issac was a poor man whose family seldom ate their fill. One night in a vivid dream Issac saw the distant city of Prague. He saw a river flowing through the city and under a particular bridge he saw a buried treasure. When he woke the next morning the dream had not faded. It’s clear and vivid images remained etched in his mind. That night the dream returned. Every night for two weeks Isaac had the same dream in which he saw the city of Prague, the river, the bridge and the buried treasure beneath the bridge.
Finally he decided to walk all the way to see for himself if the dream might be real. After several days he arrived in the city. Even tho he had never been there, he recognized it and knew it well from his dream. He found the bridge and went under it to search for the treasure, and then suddenly he was grabbed by the back of his neck by a soldier who dragged him away to prison for interrogation. The soldier sat him in a chair and said: “All right Jew what were you doing prowling around under that bridge?” Not knowing what else to say Isaac decided to tell the truth, “I had a dream that there was buried treasure under that bridge and I was looking for it.”
Immediately the soldier burst forth into mocking laughter, “You stupid Jew don’t you know that you can’t believe what you see in your dreams. Why for the last two weeks I myself had a dream every night that far away in the city of Krakau, in the house of some Jew named Isaac son of Yechel, there is a treasure buried beneath the sink in his house. Wouldn’t it be the most idiotic of actions if I were to go all the way to Krakau to look for some Jew that doesn’t exist. There may be a thousand Isaac, son of Yechel. I could waste a lifetime looking for a treasure that isn’t there.” With uproarious laughter the soldier stood him up, opened the door, gave him a good kick and and let him go.
Naturally, Isaac, son of Yechel, walked back to Krakau, back to his house, where he looked beneath the sink in his own kitchen, found the treasure buried there, and lived to a ripe old age as a rich man. The treasure was at home all along. The treasure was found in the home of a Jew and, the secret of it’s whereabouts was revealed to a Gentile. Unfortunately, doubts, prejudices, and pride kept the soldier from the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It keeps people away even today. This is a wonderful story for people who have dreams on finding answers to where we have come from and where we are going, on why people have to suffer, on whether there is a heaven. Our treasure is right in front of us in Jesus Christ. We don’t have to look anywhere else.
3. I loved the teachings of this years VBS curriculum. The same teachings, but only in greater detail, are found in the Book of Colossians. There’s a lot of mysteries in life, but Paul says that Jesus is the only mystery we need to know. He’s the treasure chest that, once found, gives us all the wisdom and knowledge that we need. All the wisdom and knowledge is in Colossians for the taking. Chapter 1: Jesus is Lord of Creation and reconciliation; Chapter 2: Jesus is the fulness of God, the forgiveness of sin and the victory over evil; Chapter 3: Jesus is the resurrection and the life; Chapter 4: Jesus is the one worthy of our obedience. Here in Colossians, more than any other book in the Bible, we are told that all these questions revolve around one person, Jesus Christ, the cosmic Christ. We know who created us and who reconciled us to God when we sinned. We know forgiveness and how we can forgive others. We know the resurrection and the everafter. We know one who is worthy of our obedience. There’s only one conclusion: CHOOSE JESUS!
4. Paul wrote the Colossians because false teachers were saying that Christ was not sufficient. They needed some supernatural spiritual experience. Paul tells them that they have all they need, or will ever need in Christ. The mystery of life and death has been revealed in Christ. The mystery of heaven has been revealed in Christ who is in them. Does that mean that Christ answers fully all the deep questions of life and death. No. He doesn’t tell us everything we would like to know. So, faith is needed. But it doesn’t mean that our faith is unreasonable or illogical. It just means that we can’t understand it all by reason. Where reason ends (and it must end because we are not an all-knowing God) our faith takes over.
In fact what’s most curious to me about human beings is that preachers can explain what the Bible says using reason and people can see for themselves how everything makes sense and yet when it comes to trusting God for all the details, they stop believing. Next week, I’ll talk about the missing ingredient in people’s lives, the power of the Holy Spirit!
For now let me just say that this “mystery revealed” is not a “me thing.” It’s an “us thing.” The great mystery Paul preached to the Jews is that Jesus was there for everyone. So when he wrote the Colossians he had three closely related goals in preaching the mysteries of Christ Jesus: 1. so that they would be encouraged in heart; 2. so that they would be united in love; and 3. so that they would understand the truth. That’s an us thing. It’s what makes us a great church here at Rose Hill. When we are united as we are there is great strength. That encourages our hearts which means that our faith is strengthened so that we understand the truth. So when false teachers come along, we will not be confused or divided. Living in the end times has this element of false, slick, teachers that tell people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. The only way to stand firm is Christ Jesus. I am confident that Rose Hill will stand firm in these end times.