Well, good morning, everyone. It's good to be here again. It's always good to come and see old faces, see a lot of new faces as well. Praise the Lord for that.
So greetings from Trinity Reformed Baptist, of course. I just thought I would give just a quick update. Pastor Butler sent out an email or two this week regarding Ivy Roos, little Ivy, daughter of Ari and Marie, got very sick, septic, because of an ear infection. Thank you for your prayers on her behalf.
She came home from, she was in children. She came home Friday, has returned home. And I stopped by there. She was sleeping, so I didn't get to see her.
She was having a nap. But Marie said you wouldn't even know that she had been as sick and near to death as she was within a week. So praise the Lord. She's recovered.
Thank you again for your prayers for Ivy. With that, let's turn to our scriptures now. You can turn your Bibles to 1 Peter 2. So this morning, many of you were there, I gave a presentation on the Lord's work in the Gambia, a little country in West Africa, and how the Lord is working there.
So I thought together with that concept, this morning we would look at the theme of missions. And you can probably, if you were paying attention with some of the songs that we sang, you hear that concept of the Lord, the Lord of nations, and glory to the Lord of nations, and on all the earth is the Lord's and the nations belong to him, all within that vein of mission work. So that will be our theme this morning. Let's read from 1 Peter 2.
I'll read the first 10 verses here. 1 Peter 2,
Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 2:1–10
therefore laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, coming to him as to a living stone. rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. And you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore it is also contained in the scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect and precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame. Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious.
But to those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble being disobedient to the word to which they also were appointed. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people. that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Amen.
All right, well,
Pre-Sermon Prayer
let's pray before the preaching of the word. Our
Opening Prayer
Father in heaven, we come before you now, and Lord, we ask that you would be pleased to Dwell with us by your spirit, Lord, that you would be pleased by the power of your spirit to take your word and to feed your sheep here today, Lord, through the preaching of the word. I pray, Lord, that it would be that your people would leave here edified and strengthened and encouraged in our Savior, the Lord Jesus, and encouraged in the concept of mission work. Lord, I pray that sinners would hear the gospel and that sinners would be saved. Lord, sinners have already heard the gospel so clearly from Pastor Butler.
And Lord, I pray that that your spirit would work in those dark hearts to bring them into that marvelous light that Peter has just referred to. Lord, I pray that you'd be glorified. Give us strength for the preaching. Give us attention to to listen.
And and Lord, bless your word as it goes forth. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right, so this morning, Actually, let me ask you a question.
Introduction
If you're like me, you've probably had this experience before of your children collecting rocks, collecting nice stones that they see. Maybe you're at the beach, the river or something, And you're sitting in your chair, your kids are out, and they're looking in the rocks, and they're finding little stones that are little rocks that have something in them strikes their fancy. And they run to you, and they bring this rock, and they say, Dad, Mom, look at this cool rock I found. And they give it to you, and you have to hold it for safekeeping.
So you hold it, you look at it, and maybe there's not. You're not quite as intrigued by that particular rock as they were, but you see them and they run off and they go and they look for another one again and they come and bring it to you. Now imagine the next rock they come with and bring to you is a sapphire or something or a ruby or something. Now you're interested, aren't you?
Now there's something of value here that my child has brought to me. Imagine, kids, just imagine that for a second. If you were out collecting rocks and suddenly you found a gem, you see there's something different about this one. The other ones had cool patterns and speckles and things on them, but this one, it glints back at you.
It's shiny, there's something different. You know there's something valuable in this one. Now, Imagine you found one, and then you find another one, and you find another one, and you keep building this collection of these precious gems, rubies, and emeralds, and sapphires, and they're so shiny and nice. Now imagine you had a collection so big that you could build a house with all of these gems, with shiny, polished gems, beautiful.
It would be like a palace, right? You'd feel like a king if you had a house like that, of your precious gems that you had collected to build a house. Well, did you know that the Bible actually describes Jesus building his church exactly that way, of collecting precious treasures, precious gems, collecting them and gathering them and building them into a temple or a house or a palace where he can, where he will live. And that's a story we find in the Bible.
It's a story we find in the first chapters of Genesis all the way to the last chapters of Revelation. And today, we're gonna do something a little different than probably what I typically would do or what you're typically used to looking at a passage of scripture verse by verse. We're actually gonna go through the entire Bible. We won't be here all day, I promise you, but we're gonna go on a journey today from Genesis and we are gonna go all the way through to Genesis. to Revelation and trace this theme of building a temple for Christ, his church, of precious gems.
And what my goal is here is, as we'll see as we apply this to mission work, my goal is to stir up an excitement in us as the church to, that we are, as we'll see, we're on a treasure hunt. We really are on a treasure hunt as a church. That is our divine commission. So, and I want us to get, to be excited about that concept with the excitement that we might have if we were on a literal treasure hunt.
So we're gonna turn to a lot of passages. We're not gonna just stay in 1 Peter. You can keep a bookmark there because we're gonna come back, we'll come back to it for sure. We're gonna look, and we'll look at three different points here to understand this analogy of collecting precious gems, how that's an analogy to Christ building his church.
So
First Point: The Identity of the Gems
first, our first point will be the identity. So these precious gems that we're talking about, what's their identity? What are we talking about? Who are we talking about when we're talking about these precious stones, precious gems and gold as well, gold and silver, precious metals that make up this house?
The second will be the location. Where are they? Where do we go to find these precious treasures? And third is then, what is the means of collecting precious treasures, these precious stones?
What is the means? So the identity, the location, and the means. So first, the identity. In order to understand what we're talking about here, we need to understand their purpose.
Again, what are precious gems for? I've already alluded to it here. They're for building a temple. The precious treasure, we make a temple because it's beauty and value.
They're for temple building. So where's the first temple? that we find in the scriptures. Now, we have a lot of material to cover, so we're gonna move quickly. So I'm gonna assume that you know a lot of these themes and concepts here just from the regular preaching of the word and teaching here.
So when I ask, where's the first temple? We're gonna go right to the garden.
Eden as the First Temple
Genesis chapter two is the first temple. So what is a temple? Let's just break it down. What's a temple?
A temple is a place where man can go and where his God dwells and where man and his God can meet together. That's the basic concept of a temple, a place for man to go where his God dwells and there they meet together. So the garden, right, the Garden of Eden, it fits that criteria. So we see that in the garden, or in the creation narrative, the creation story, God has created the cosmos, the universe.
He's created beauty and order. He's finished his work, it says, of creating and making things, chapter two, verse three. He's all done, he's resting now from the work, all the things he's created and made. And he had, as I said, he had brought beauty, he had brought an order out of the nothingness and the disorder, chaos, nothingness that was there.
Now he's made this beautiful temple and he's called it very good. And the earth, the earth is his cosmic temple, but we have to get more specific than that. We have to be We have to realize that specifically the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden is God's temple where Him and man will dwell together, where He will be worshipped by His God. And again, I trust you're familiar with that concept, but Psalm 70, 78, verse 69, you don't have to turn there, I'll just read it.
He built his sanctuary, so he's talking about the temple in Jerusalem now. David says he built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth that he had established forever. So you see that connection there. Temple, we're going back to Garden of Eden is the first temple where God and man would dwell together.
But notice something, if you're in Genesis chapter two, look at verse five. before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown." So this means that not all of the earth is this amazing garden paradise where God and man are. It's located or it's limited to the Garden of Eden, which by all accounts in the scripture seems to be on a mountain. Ezekiel says it explicitly, actually, that it's on a mountain, this beautiful garden, and the area below the mountain is empty. There's nothing growing there, and it tells us why.
There's two reasons why. The Lord had not caused it to rain yet, but the other one is there's no man there to till the ground, to do the work of planting, so the man The man is, he has a task. And he's created, the next verse tells us, verse six solves the first problem, a mist goes up from the earth or a rain cloud or something that waters it. So problem one, that there's no rain on the earth is solved.
Problem two, there's no man there to do the work of tilling the ground for planting all these, this beautiful garden, or extending the borders of the garden, let's put it that way. Verse 7 solves that problem, as the Lord creates man. So we can conclude then that Adam, as the first man, is a temple builder. He is to build, he is to continue to extend the garden of Eden as a temple.
If you look at verse 10, a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. And the name of the first is Pishon. It is the one that skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good.
And delium and onyx stones are there also. Interesting. So there's gold in this area below the mountain, There's gold there, there's precious stones. Delium, or delium is how we say it.
If somebody ever asks you, was that a B or a D? You say B as in delium. It doesn't help. But delium now refers to resin from a tree that's kind of a sweet smelling.
Most likely it's referring to a precious stone of some sort. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of this, uses two different words. One, but primarily crystallou. Crystallos, pretty easy, crystal, right?
So it's probably some sort of like maybe diamond or something like that, some sort of a precious gem. And we have onyx there as well in this area. But notice something about the gold, about the land of Havila, there's gold there. And it says that there's the gold of that land is good.
Now why does it tell us that the gold in the land there is good? Is it because there's some good gold and there's some not good gold and this is the good stuff? No. It's because when God built His temple, His cosmic temple, Eden, He describes it as good, very good.
Adam then as commissioned by God to turn the earth, the rest of the earth into this cosmic temple. Listen to this, after the pattern that you see on the mountain, where else do we see that? I'm jumping ahead, but where else do we see that? Moses, right?
After the pattern, you go and build this house after the pattern I've shown you on the mountain. So again, just another connection for us. But Adam is commissioned by God to build this temple after what he sees on the mountain of Eden. And he's to do it in the manner God does, in a way that's good and beautiful. and pleasing, just like God had done it.
So by saying that the gold is good, and by implication we would say the zellium and onyx as well, these stones, by saying they're good, we can conclude that they are to be employed in the building process of this temple. Now, you're saying, I feel like you're making some big leaps, Pastor, here. It's true, but let's look at some more later revelation to see this theme become a bit more explicit with other temples that are being built. So I already mentioned Moses, that he was one temple builder, tabernacle, but let's look at the next temple, Solomon's Temple, 1 Chronicles chapter 29, starting at verse one.
I might just skim read this, so you follow with me.
Solomon's Temple and Precious Materials
Furthermore, King David said to all his assembly, my son Solomon, whom God has chosen, is young and inexperienced, the work is great, the temple is not for man, but it is for Yahweh. For the house of my God, I've prepared things with all my might, gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, onyx, glistening stones of various colors, all kinds of precious stones, marble slabs. I have set my affection on the house of God. I've given to the house of God over and above all that I have prepared, my special treasures of gold and silver, 3,000 talents of the gold of Ophir. 7,000 talents of silver, et cetera, et cetera.
He goes on. Whoever had, verse eight, look there, whoever had, or then the people come and contribute as well, we can't miss that. The leaders, they come, they offer willingly. They gave for the work of the house of God, 5,000 talents and 10,000 derricks of gold, 10,000 talents of silver, bronze, iron, precious stones.
They gave to the treasury of the house of the Lord. Then the people rejoiced for they had offered willingly because with a loyal heart, they had offered willingly to the Lord. And David also rejoiced greatly. So David is amassing. silver, gold, precious metals, precious stones for the purpose of building this temple.
So are we to understand Adam, then if we're jumping back to Adam for a moment, are we to understand that Adam is gonna build a literal building, a literal temple? I don't think so. I don't think he's building a literal building. I think it's thematic.
This is highly symbolic language here, tracing a theme that will terminate on Christ in the New Testament, building His church. But we have to understand, we're asking, what is the identity of these precious stones? Well, they're precious stones are used for the building of a temple. They're building blocks in a house for God, and that's what Peter's referring to in the passage that we read here.
You're building blocks. Coming to him as a living stone, chosen by God, precious, a precious stone, he's referring to Christ now, but he says you also, as living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house. So the stones are then the ones whom God brings into his church, those who are part of his church, his people, those whom he has chosen to dwell with forever. Houses, what are houses for?
Dwelling, right? Temple, house, dwelling, God dwelling with his people. And if we're to sum that up, how would we say, okay, what are we referring to? His chosen, his elect, his elect ones, his precious ones.
And notice how it calls them precious. If you look at verse seven, actually first look at verse three. I don't like the translation here. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, it doesn't use the word gracious, it uses the word precious.
If you have tasted that Christ is precious, if you have seen, understood who Christ is as the Son of God chosen and precious to come and build this church, and your Redeemer, your Savior, the one who's called you out of darkness into marvelous light, if you've tasted that He's precious, And then look at verse 7 as well. Therefore, to you who believe, if you have a New King James, you look there and the word he is in italics. That means it's not in the original language. And I think, again, I don't want to pick apart the translation too much, but to you who believe, is this value? you who believe that the value this this this you are the same you are precious that's what he's trying to say you have this honor or this value being a precious stone to you who believe so all those who believe can know they are the precious ones.
Now, we got to make sure that we are not doing this, getting our things backwards here. You do not have value. You are not precious in God's sight because you believed. believed because you are precious in God's sight, because God has chosen you. He's speaking of choosing here, of elect, of chosen.
God has chosen you before creation as his precious treasures. And therefore, he rescues us and he saves us and we have faith. So let's not get that wrong. But what we do need to understand is we are the precious gems that the scripture talks about throughout for the building of a temple.
It is God's chosen people, not because of something in us that makes us valuable, but because of the one to whom we belong. He is chosen, verse 6. He is precious. And if we belong to Him, this value, this honor then is yours as well.
You are then a precious gem, a living stone in the church of Christ. So we need to make sure we're clear on that. So what does that mean then? That means that the precious gems are not just the ones who have faith now already, It's all of God's elect and God's chosen who still have not come to faith in Christ, who are still out there in the darkness somewhere, unsaved, buried under layers of the curse, buried under the weight of death, in the darkness, right?
That's what Peter says here. He's called you out of darkness into light. These are gems that were once buried under the curse in darkness. But all of God's people, His chosen people, are precious in His sight.
Each one is a precious gem. That's the identity. And the reality is there's many, many out there still. still in the darkness. The building is still in progress, still looking for building materials to continue this building project.
The stones, these precious gems still need to be gathered, still need to be collected. So then we have to ask, well, where are they then?
Second Point: The Location of the Gems
What is their location? So if I told you If I told you that to go and go look for precious stones, if I said, go dig for buried treasure, you would say, where do we go? You would say, is there a treasure map of some sort to follow? And the Bible gives us a treasure map.
It tells us where these gems, these precious gems are. Let's go back to the Old Testament. We can read the treasure map when we trace this theme through the scriptures. And we look at, let's follow David and Solomon in their quest of building a temple for God and amassing all of this wealth, all of these riches, precious metals, gold, silver, all the things we read about already.
Now, we're not gonna go to the passages there. You're gonna have to trust me on this. We've seen David has amassed this huge amount of wealth for the temple. And where did it come from?
It came from all of David's conquests of all the nations around him. It came from Edom, it came from Moab, it came from Ammon. I didn't write down the reference in my Bible, or in my notes, which I should have, but you can see that in 1 Chronicles. All these places that it's come from, and they're all, it's Moab, Ammon, Philistia, Amalek, Syria, and then we have Solomon, and he also gathers wealth for this, and he gets it from Tyre, from Cush, from Sheba, from Arabia, from Tarshish, all the nations around Israel.
And here's something very fascinating. I had to discard about three pages of notes here so that we didn't go for two hours and then I would never get invited back. But this is fascinating, it's fascinating. Each one of these places that David and Solomon are gathering wealth from, amassing wealth from, are all listed in the table of nations in Genesis chapter 10. that takes place after the scattering of the nations or the separation of the people into all these different nations at the Tower of Babel.
And that's hugely significant for the story of redemption that we're tracing through here because it's taking us out of just out of the Old Testament context with David building his own temple, but it's taking us a step into the bigger picture with Babylon and the scattering of nations. And now David is gathering precious treasures from the scattered nations for the building of his of his temple. One cool point we're gonna, well, I'll point out, we read that Solomon and David both brought, primarily Solomon, I think, both brought a lot of gold from a place called Ophir. We don't really know where Ophir is.
Ophir, but when we go and if we look, where else does it mention Ophir in the scripture? In the table of nations, it mentions Ophir. It was a place of, so David is bringing much gold from Ophir for the temple. If you read in Genesis 10, Ophir has a brother named Havilah.
Where did we hear Havilah already? Genesis 2, the land of much gold, of good gold. So again, you see that connection, how it's connecting us to the whole scripture to show us that David and Solomon are temple builders, but they're typological temple builders. And they're doing in an outward typological way, what Adam failed to do, and they're pointing us ultimately to the greater than Solomon, the chief temple builder himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who comes to do, who's the last Adam, who comes to do and complete what the first Adam failed to do by building for himself a temple where God and man can dwell together.
So, just some fun connections to make here. But we're asking, we're asking, what is the location? Where did they go to gather precious gems, precious metals for the temple? All the nations.
All the nations. We see this played out in more detail if we look at the nation of Israel specifically, And we know the nation of Israel is represented as, or by 12 precious gemstones, right? Think of the high priest's garment, or his breastplate, sorry, Exodus 28, had all of these precious gems, 12 different precious gems, all inlaid with gold, and each one had engraved on there the name of one of the tribes of Israel. They're precious, they're represented by precious gems.
But in the Old Testament, in the Old Covenant, what did God do? He took the nation of Israel, and he placed them in a relationship with himself, just like the one he had done with Adam in the garden. And he gave them a law, and he said, you obey my law, and then I'll be in your midst, and you'll have this land, and you can build this temple, and I'll be there, and we'll dwell together. We'll have union if you obey my law.
But if you disobey my law, what would happen? What did he tell Israel? He said, I will cut you off from this land and from this temple that I have consecrated for my name. I would cut you off.
Just like Adam in the garden, right? If you sin, you are expelled out of the garden. You are cut off from this garden temple now and you are sent to go live in the wilderness apart from me. So you see the parallels.
And what did God say to Israel when he says, I'm gonna cut you off from this land and from this house or this temple that I have consecrated for my name, where would they go? I will scatter you among the nations. Scattered among the nations. As if, imagine a handful of precious gems tossed, scattered among the nations.
Given over to your enemies. The enemies would come, the enemies would plunder them, and they would be given over to those nations, and they would now be in bondage to those nations, and to the tyrant kings of the nations that surrounded them. And we know this is exactly what happened. And now, so you're starting to see the connection of gems and people.
Starting with Israel, they start to blur together. As I already said, Israel's representative, represented by precious gems. When the King of Babylon comes, Nebuchadnezzar, and he overthrows Israel, and he breaks down the walls, enters the city, what does the scripture tell us? It goes into detail to tell us about all the precious gems and treasures and riches that he took from the temple and brought it back to his land.
It takes pains to tell us that. Because it's picking up on this theme of the people being scattered. Because it wasn't just temple treasures that God is worried about, right? It's his people, his chosen people, Israel.
Turn to Lamentations chapter four for a moment. Lamentations four.
Lamentations and the Scattered Stones
How the gold has become dim. It's dark, it's no longer reflective and beautiful. Something's happened. How changed is the fine gold?
The stones of the sanctuary are scattered at the head of every street. We gotta do some translation work here again. By the way, you can trust your King James Bibles. I've been saying, oh, we need to re-translate it.
You can trust your King James Bibles, don't worry. But there are things here that I think, given this theme, we need to look at and understand a little bit differently here. If you have a New American Standard, or ESV, I believe, it says how the holy stones, or the sacred stones, are scattered. It's an adjective in the Hebrew.
Shouldn't be translated as sanctuary, should be translated as holy. The holy stones, or the sacred stones, or the precious stones, let's put it that way, are scattered at the head of every street." Again, street, the word for street, translated as street, is just the word for outside. Outside. Scattered without.
And the head there is referring to the king, the prince, it's the word prince. So let's read it in the Ryan Authorized Version. The sacred stones, have been poured out to the heads or the princes of the outsiders. And look at verse two, it's parallel.
The precious sons of Zion, valuable as fine gold. How they are regarded like clay pots in the hands of the clay potter. The precious treasures have been scattered, poured out. The precious treasures, which are the precious sons of Zion, have been scattered and into the nations of those who are outsiders, under the dominion of the heads of those nations. who knew not God, those ones who are in darkness.
So the precious gems, we're asking, where are they? Scattered among the nations. God's chosen people, where are they? Scattered among the nations.
But let's move on. What did God say in the Old Testament to his people Israel? After, once you violate my law, You're scattered, Deuteronomy 30 verse three.
Restoration Promise and the Nations
The Lord your God will gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. You've been scattered because of your sin, Israel. But I'm going, the one who scatters you is going to be the one who will now gather you again back to himself. Turn to Isaiah 54.
So Isaiah is speaking to the Israelites and telling them about this restoration. Verse one, sing, O barren, you have not born. Break forth into singing, cry aloud. There's good news coming here.
Now he's playing on a different theme in the beginning of a woman who's been exiled from her husband, who's gonna be restored into marriage. That's a different theme. But now look at verse 11. Excuse me, you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted.
Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems. I will lay your foundations with sapphires. I'll make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal and all of your walls of precious stones. And your children will be taught by the Lord and great will be the peace of your children.
So that promise, that promise of rebuilding a temple, of the people gathered back together, those precious gems gathered back together to be built into this glorious house where God would once again dwell with his people. So that's Israel in their old covenant context. But you see the parallels, how that's pointing us to mankind in general. We broke God's law.
Adam was driven out of the temple of Eden, away from the presence of God. As a result, all of mankind is given over to our enemy, the prince of the outsiders, Satan, death, all are in bondage. We're all in spiritual Babylon, held there by our sin. This kingdom of darkness, but God, has his chosen precious treasures out there.
And that remnant must be gathered and must be brought back to him because he's building his church. So where are they? Then, the location, scattered among the nations. Every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation of this world, the people of God are scattered among them.
That's our treasure map. The nations of this world, where do we go to find the people, the precious gems of God, the elect that are still in their darkness? Where do we go to find them? The nations, everywhere.
That's not to the exclusion of Canada. That's not to say, oh, we don't need to worry about witnessing and evangelizing in our own country anymore, and we just should be going to West Africa now. That's not what we're saying. But the reality is we need to be concerned about all the nations.
We need to be thinking this way. We need to realize God's people are out there. among the nations, still in their darkness, still in bondage.
Third Point: The Means of Gathering
So what do we do about it? Well, what are the means then of these, the means of gathering, of collecting these gems? Well, first we saw, as we've seen, the gems, they've been taken by the enemy. The temple treasures have been carried off.
So what's the first thing that needs to happen? The enemy needs to be overthrown, right? We need a David-like warrior to come and destroy the enemy so that we can plunder the goods. We need a Cyrus-like...
Liberator, God's chosen vessel, Isaiah 45. We don't have time to go there, read it for yourself. God has commissioned him to build a house for him. And he's gonna be the one to take all those temple treasures from Babylon and send them back for building, to build a house.
But we need Cyrus to come and liberate us, a Cyrus-like liberator to come and liberate us. from bondage so we can be brought back to build this house. We need, now listen to this, we need someone to bind the strong man so that his goods can be plundered. Who said that? Christ, right?
That's our Christ. Christ is the warrior. Christ is the hero, the liberator. He is God's chosen vessel.
Isn't that what Peter said? Chosen, precious in his sight. He's the one chosen to do this. God's chosen vessel to come and bind the strong man.
To overpower the enemy. And here's the great news. That's already happened. He's already done that for us on the cross.
Right, Christ, that was where Christ defeated Satan, defeated death by bearing the curse himself, by being swallowed up by death himself, but then rising from the dead in victory over death. That's Christ, that he, on the cross, he breached the gates of Hades, he broke down its doors, he took the keys, of death and Hades, and he has the power to unlock those who are held there. That's Christ, and it's happened. Through death, he destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and released those who, through fear or subjection of death, were all their life subject to bondage.
That's the author of Hebrews. Kids, we all love a good story about a dragon, right? A dragon who steals and collects and hoards a big mass of wealth for himself, right? And he goes into his cave, and that's where all, in his dark cave, and that's where all of his treasures are hidden, and he's holding them there until who comes?
What, a knight, right? A knight in shining armor comes and destroys that dragon, and then all those treasures can be taken out of his dark cave. Guess where those stories come from? They come from the scripture.
That's what Christ has done. He's destroyed, he's the warrior king. I don't want to call him a knight in shining armor, but he's the warrior king who has destroyed that dragon, that serpent of old. He's cast him down.
He's bound him. And now his goods can be plundered. Now those precious gems can go, or can be, we can go, and we can, and those precious gems can be taken. And we don't need to fear.
That's the reality. Why? Because the serpent, the dragon is dead, is overpower, he's bound. This morning we talked, I talked briefly about one of the pastors in the Gambia that we met.
His own words, I made a covenant with Satan as a drug trafficker, now leading the Reformation movement in the Gambia. There's no walls. that are left standing, that the Holy Spirit and Christ by the power of His Spirit can't overcome. The walls have been broken down. The power is gone.
God's people can't be left hanging there or being held there anymore because that dragon has been defanged, as the psalmist says. His fangs have been broken. And so now his goods can be plundered. Turn to Luke 11.
Jesus talking with the Pharisees. He's been accused of being on the side of Beelzebub. And then look at the little analogy he gives here. He's telling them what's happening.
As he's casting out demons, as he's freeing people from demon oppression in the outward sense, however that was in Jesus' day, he's saying this is what's going on, what I can do, what I'm here for on a spiritual level.
Christ Binding the Strong Man
When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace, but when one stronger than him comes and overcomes him, or as he says in Mark, binds him, And he takes from him his armor in which he trusted, and he divides the treasures, the spoils. Now look at verse 23. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. What's the implication?
If you are with Christ, if you belong to Christ, you need to be participating in the gathering. Because if you're not participating in the gathering, you may as well be scattering, he says. You need to participate in the gathering. If you are with Christ, you have been sent on a treasure hunt.
You've been sent by Christ to go and build his precious gem collection. In 1 Kings 5, It says that Solomon raised up a labor force of his own people to go to the mines of those nations that were around, those nations, the kingdoms that his warrior father David had overthrown, their kings. Solomon raises up his own labor force of his people to go to those nations, to go into the mines and there to mine for all the precious stones and gems that were to be brought back for the temple building. So we have a greater than Solomon as our king.
And he's raised up a labor force from among his own people, which is his own people. And we are to go into all the nations to go and gather those precious elect of His to be added as living stones, as Peter says, to His church. That's our commission. Now, how do we do that?
Well, how do you find gems and silver and gold? Are they just laying on the surface there for the picking? No, right? They're buried.
They're in the darkness. They need to be dug up. In other words, they need to be exposed to the light. Again, again, imagine being in a cave.
We go back to the dragon story again. In a cave, a dark cave. where the dragon's gone. But we know there's treasure in there. But what, we take a flashlight, right, and we shine it around, and we look, and we see a lot of just regular stones.
We shine the light, there's a lot of regular stones, but suddenly you see there's one that glistens, right? The light has entered it, and the light reflects now back to you, and it's glistening, and you know, oh, this one is different. This one is treasure, you found one. And we've been given a light, the gospel of Jesus Christ, right?
Paul calls it that in, is it 2 Corinthians 4, I think? The light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's what we've been given as a church. The church of Christ has been given the light, the flashlight, we've been given the commission Go, shine that light into the darkness, because there's precious treasures there.
Christ's treasures are there, and you need to go and gather them. You need to bring them into His church. And that's what I want to stir up in us today, that there's work to be done. There's treasure to be found.
That's what I really want us to understand or to get is, I didn't choose to preach this sermon because, just so we can leave here and say, wow, the Bible is so cool how it traces this whole, this theme all the way through and that's so neat. That is neat. Wow, how the Bible does that, for sure. And we could, like I said, I had to discard so many notes because there's so much, there's so much in here.
But I'm not preaching the sermon so that we leave here thinking, wow, the Bible's amazing. We ought to, absolutely. But I want us to leave here knowing why did the Bible use this theme to describe the work of God and missions? A treasure hunt.
It's, it's, there's value, right? We love, we love treasure. We love reading those stories. When you're a kid, you love reading stories about, about somebody who digs up treasure, right?
We, when we're adults, we watch, you know, Alaska shows about them mining for gold and because, because we like treasure, we get excited about it. We, we look at movements in history of gold rushes where people left everything to go and chase the, the, the, the, the fact that there was treasure somewhere. And that's what Christ wants us to have, is that same desire in our hearts. to go and mine for his precious treasures. You can read about it in Job.
We don't have time. Chapter 28, where Job talks about what people are willing to do to go and gather treasures. 28, I think. Swinging to and fro on a rope, dangling down into a pit. You know, it's dark, and there they are, mining, looking for treasures.
They're going to great lengths there. May we have that same desire to go and to see the work of Christ go throughout this world, to shine the light of the gospel to go and find those precious treasures of Christ. And the analogy goes on, we take them, we pull them out of the darkness and there's still so much dirt on them, right? And we have to clean them off.
And there's rough edges and we cut those rough edges off and we polish them until they're this glistening, beautiful stone. Kind of sounds just like the Great Commission, doesn't it? I could have just preached the Great Commission and that's great because it's inspired scripture. But when we see this theme and we apply that theme through how much more vivid does it become?
All authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth. What does that mean? Satan is destroyed. Christ is over him.
He has no more power. He has all authority. We don't need to fear. There's no wall.
There's no barrier. that could hinder this. Go and make disciples. Go. You know, treasure hunt.
Go get them. Find them. Take the gospel to them. Baptize them and teach them.
Clean them off. Polish them so that they shine like me. And lo, I am with you. Always, even till the end of the age, I will ensure your success.
I will ensure that not one of my precious treasures is left. Pastor Butler mentioned the sheep, the one sheep, right? Christ goes and gets. Christ will not leave one of his chosen out there.
We know we will be successful. in this endeavor, but we must go, and we must find them, and we see, we get a glimpse of the completed house. Revelation 21. Of the finished, of this work coming to an end. Verse 10,
Revelation 21: The Completed Temple
and he carried me, verse one, I saw new heavens, new earth, The first heaven and the first earth had passed away and they saw the holy city coming out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned. What do brides adorn themselves with? Jewels, treasures, right? For her husband.
Verse 10, now, he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain. He showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God and having the glory of God. Her light was like a precious stone, jasper, clear as crystal. She had a great and high wall, 12 gates, 12 angels dropped down.
As we keep going, verse 18, the construction of its wall was of jasper. The city was of pure gold. The foundation of the wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones, jasper, et cetera. He goes on.
And I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city had no need of the sun or the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. and the Lamb is its light. No need for a temple, why? Because the entire thing is a temple.
It's all a temple where God and the Lamb are there with the people of these stones in this glorious temple, the church, and Christ dwelling in her, united. That's the end. The completed temple. We know the mission will be successful, but we are still in the building process.
Christ is still building his church. We are the labor force that he has raised up.
Application: The Church on a Treasure Hunt
Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to be the ones on the front lines? Are we willing to be the ones to give up our precious treasure, our precious treasure of comfort, of Western comforts? And are we willing to give that up? to go and seek for Christ's treasure?
Are we willing to give of our literal treasures, gold, silver, money, to not be consumed with laying up treasures for ourselves on earth, but to support those on the front lines who are laying up treasures in heaven, doing the work of missions? Are we willing to instill in our children the excitement of this treasure hunt that we're on? and perhaps send them off to the nations? Our children that are so precious to us, aren't they? We wanna hold them dear, we want them to grow up, we want them to have grandkids that we can spend this time with.
They're so precious to us. But would we be willing to risk, or to give up our precious children to instill in them an excitement to go to the nations, to gather precious gems for Christ? Are we willing to do this? I read in, actually, let's go there, 1 Chronicles 29 verse 17.
I know also, my God, so this is after we read the beginning earlier, where David has amassed all of this wealth, and there's so much joy, and the people have offered so willingly, verse nine says, and look at what David says in verse 17. I know, my God, you test the heart, and you have pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of my heart, I have willingly offered these things. Now with joy, I have seen your people who are present here offer so willingly, To you, may we as the church of Christ in this lower world, may we, could it be said of us, so willingly offer up, give up our treasures so that we can participate in this divine treasure hunt that we have been sent on.
There's nothing in the world more precious than what Christ calls precious. And if that's His people that are still out there, may we have a spiritual gold fever to see souls saved to the uttermost parts of the earth. May we be like our children in the intro. Remember I said that experience of our children coming to us so excited to show us a nice stone.
May we have that same excitement to show our Father and say, we found another one. Because we know our Father delights in them, right? Because they are precious, because they are His chosen. And may we look with eager anticipation, with confidence in the success of knowing the success of the mission, no matter how hard it may be, arriving to till we get to that completion no matter how hard that journey is but may we know may we have confidence may we look eagerly to that to that day when the job is done and the last of Christ's treasures has been collected and then, like a bride adorned with costly gems, as a bride adorned for her husband, we get to meet our bridegroom and dwell with him forever in glory.
That's the end of all this. May God bless this to our souls. Let us pray.
Closing Prayer
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, Lord, your word that reveals to us that we are precious in your sight, that your people are still scattered throughout this world in darkness. They're precious in your sight. And that your own son, your own precious son, came, rescued us, has broken down those walls, has destroyed that great enemy of our souls, death and Satan, has the victory. Lord, may we be excited to know that we are on a treasure hunt.
And may we, Father, take up this great commission you have given to us. And may you bless the means and may you rescue your souls from darkness. And Lord, we look forward to glory, to be with you forever, world without end, amen, amen. Father, we pray this in the name of our Savior, our Redeemer, the warrior, hero, who's rescued us, called us from darkness into marvelous light.
Lord, may we proclaim his praises to the nations, and we pray this in his name, amen.