Buy The Field

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." (Matt 13:44)

The man in the parable bought the field in order to have the treasure. The treasure exists not on its own but in the context of the field. We must purchase the field if we are to have the treasure.

The field represents various things - the Word, the church, and life itself.

We must immerse ourselves in the Word to find all the riches of the treasures that are in Christ. The written Word is God's full revelation to man. Never can we trust in voices and leanings and illuminations, as good as they are, to guide us into truth. Every impression we have must be held up to the Word and be tested whether it be true or not. Nor can we leave it totally to others to teach us - the Lord will be our teacher. He that wrote the book will disclose it to us.

We must buy the church and bury ourselves in it to have the treasure of Christ in all His glory. This thing is bigger than any one of us; we need each other and must love and care for one another. We must expose ourselves to all the problems that come with the church - people that aren't like us, people with problems, people with different backgrounds and viewpoints, people that don't necessarily care for us all that much.

How do we grow? By loving and caring and tending and going out of ourselves and learning to love. By feeding and being fed, by opening up our lives to others, by weeping with those that weep and rejoicing with those that rejoice. By considering others as better than ourselves, by honoring the least among us. By coming together in committed relationship, by reaching out together, by being intentional in our love for one another. Church is family - you don't get to choose your family, and you don't get to choose your brothers and sisters in Christ. And you don't get to walk away from them when they do something you don't like.

We must see our entire lives - every day, even the cloudy ones - as being in His loving care. We all love the mountain top, but David knew that we walk through valleys, and said "For thou art with me." To find out that the Lord is with me even in the valley of the shadow of death is one of the greatest things we can know. That will take us beyond cotton candy Christianity into substance and truth.