Material: August 2010

Treasuring Christ (Key)

-The kingdom of God should be counted as a treasure in our hearts. (Matt. 13:44-46)

-Definition: To count Christ as such a joy that nothing else bares any preeminence in our hearts other than him. (Phil. 3: 1-16)

Alternate Def: To place Christ as such a value that we would give everything we have and even to suffer in everything in order that we might be fully satisfied in him

-We should treasure Christ so highly that NOTHING else matters. What does this mean? Is Christ really more valuable than an ipod, a car, baseball, golf, drugs, approval, self-satisfaction, or comort. The answer…. Christ is more valuable than any of those things combined multiplied by whatever the biggest number our mortal minds can come up with and then more. Christ has been, still is, and will always be more valuable than anything we have, even our own lives. That is a realization that we must come to or our lives on this planet as far as eternity is concerned will surely amount to nothing in the grand scheme of eternity.

If then Christ is so important, how does this apply to us, what does it look like to flesh this idea of treasuring Christ out look like? We will look at some evidences of evidences of a Chist-treasuring life. In doing so, we will examine some of the lives of some of the old saints as examples of these attributes.

Three evidences of a life that treasures Christ: (some but not all)

1. No Fear

A life that treasures Christ does not fear loss of anything. We should be so satisfied in Christ that the fear of losing anything would not so much as cross our minds. Christ is everything and nothing else is worthy of any significance.

What does this look like fleshed out

Examples: Peter (Acts 4&5)

Peter, in my own personal study, has personified to me what a life that doesn’t fear losing anything. He in fact gives up everything for Christ. We clearly see in Acts 4:9-22, 5:27-32. He did not fear what people thought about what he had to say. He was going to say it anyway, We see that in this passage Peter stands boldly in front of the high priests and proclaims the importance of the Gospel in his life. They charged him not to speak in the name of Jesus Christ, and what did he say in response? He did not say that’s fine just let us go, he did not say sure just do not kill us please, no,, he said I am sorry Mr. High Priest I really do not care whether or not you can have me killed or what ever you can do to me because I cannot help but speak about the things I have seen and heard. He had some moxy, a pride not in himself but in the savior. How many of us would stand in front of the Sanhedrin and profess the name of Jesus Christ even when death was a very real threat.

Moving on…

John Patton

John Paton was a man who lived in the eighteen hundreds. He was brought up in a Christian home and sought God most of his life.. He had a prospering ministry in the city in which he lived and was content to stay there as long as need be. Unexpectedly he got a divine calling to go overseas. Fortunately for him the place to which he was called was the same island in between Hawaii and Australia that was rampant with cannibals. Just to bring this into perspective, nineteen years before he left for the island of Tanner, two other missionaries tried to win the island for Christ. Well what happened to those missionaries, they were killed within minutes of coming on to the islands being beaten with clubs and then eaten by the cannibals who lived there. This tragic set of events was merely nineteen years old, still fresh. If I heard that story, I would have to admit going to that island would be fairly terrifying but Patton was so set on going that he let nothing stand in his way. The opposition was so great against him that he even doubted whether or not this was the divine will of God or just the will of his own. The church so heavily disagreed with his decision that in one instant a Mr. Dickson exploded at Patton, “The cannibals! You will be eaten by cannibals!” How would you react to this statement? Scared, doubtful, and angry. To Mr, Dickson’s surprise, Patton, rather coolly, replied,

“Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.”

Wow, Patton would go on to give his life away for the islands off of Australia. He truly lived without out fear, even without the fear of being eaten by heathens.

It is clear that these men did not fear death. They did not fear losing anything, even there own lives, remarkable. These two knew what it meant to treasure Christ even when we would cower in fear under the extremity of their situations.

2.Steadfastness in Christ

A life that treasures Christ does not waver or regress. It does not shake, it does not falter, but rather, it stands like a house built on a firm foundation. When the winds come and the waves crash, it remains steadfast.

This is important. We must never falter or break stride, but rather we must continue. This path we are walking is a narrow one and it is ever slimming. It will never get easier but only harder. We must continue on the path no matter the circumstance because if we truly treasure Christ, then no worldly worry or trouble will ever cause us to look back to our old lives. We must put our hand to the plow. If Christ is truly our treasure then the work in our own hearts will be more than worth the reward.

Again, examples:

-The apostles

We see that the apostles were turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6). In the earlier chapters we see a rigorous picture of steadfastness in Christ that is mind-blowing. We see, at the end of the fifth chapter of Acts, a picture of what a Christ-treasuring firmness rooted in the Gospel looks like. The apostles did not csease preaching the word boldly, we will come back to this story later.

- William Wilberforce

A politician turned evangelist in Parliament in the seventeen- hundreds, Wilberforce stood steadfast in the word of God. For a great number of years in his life he fought the slave trade in Great Britain because of scriptural convictions that had been placed on his heart. He fought this issue and would eventually prevail, but the picture that I want us to get of a life that treasured Christ is this. Even when his supporters were leaving him and it was only him fighting, he would not stop coming. One mane said this about his ability to perservere

“It is necessary to watch him as he is blessed with a very sufficient quantity of that Enthusiastic spirit, which so far from yielding that it grows more vigorous from blows.”

You knock him down and he gets back up again. Let it be said about us in our walks that when we get knocked down that we might never waver in getting back up again to complete the work that God has called us to. We might need to ask ourselves where this extreme depiction of perseverance in Wilberforce’s life came from. Quite simply it came from, as many of his friends documented, from a overwhelming joy in Christ.

He knew what it meant to treasure Christ.

2. Willingness to suffer for the name.

A life that treasures Christ will suffer for it. It’s that simple, its not easy to follow after Christ. Trials do and will come, the end. Therefore, it is important how we maintain and handle ourselves as we go through them, that is will me collapse or by the grace of God shall we stand, proving our faith to be sure. This is the ultimate test of Christ-treasuring life; that we might find joy in the one who was and is and is to come even in the most treacherous of trials. (2 Cor. 13:5, James 1:2-4, 1 Pet. 1: 6-9)

Examples:

-The apostles

I skipped over this part earlier because I did not want to ruin the surprise. We see in this passage, that the apostles stood firm on their faith in front of the Sanhedrin and the court ruled that they might be beaten or scourged for their “heresies”( that is standing on the name of Jesus Christ). The beating here is referring to a beating similar to the one given to Jesus before he was crucified. It consisted of three lash cycles with a leather whip of cane rod, two shots to the back and one to the neck and could consist of up to 13 cycles. But the apostles having received this beating did not falter instead they rejoiced at the thought of being counted worthy to suffer for the name…. that’s amazing. I want to treasure Christ like that..

- Paul (Phil. 3: 4-11; 2 Cor. 11: 23-27)

Paul, the writer of our theme passage, is an amazing example of someone who knew what it meant to treasure Christ. Read Phil. 3: 4-11 Suffering is not just referring to physical pain but also it refers to the tearing down of our emotions and pride. Paul had room for pride. He was a man who, some scholars believe, had the entire mosaic law memorized, he even says that under the law he is blamesless. He gave up his status for the sake of Christ and counted everything other than Christ as dung. This is amazing. I am broken over this. But it did not end there, Paul did suffer many times physically, he is actually writing this letter from prison. In his second letter to the Corinthians he writes about some of these sufferings

“Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. “

(2Co 11:24-27)

Paul knew what it meant to suffer for the name of Jesus. What truly impresses me though is this. That even in these trials he longs for more hardships, so that he might continue to share in the sufferings of Christ. That by any means possible he might attain the prize. That’s amazing, oh that’s amazing, I long to have a fire that shall not dwindle even in the most agonizing of pain. Paul treasured the chest talked about in Mattl 13 so much that he would willingly go through anything to get it and it would be his joy to do so. So should we, if we truly treasure the Christ, be willing to suffer for his name, that is the name of Jesus Christ.

Now we ask the Question why? Why should we treasure Christ, why should we suffer, why should we perservere, why should we have no fear? The reason is simple, yet complex, the answer to why we should treasure Christ is…

Why is this action of treasuring Christ so important or necessary?

- Answer: We should long to treasure Christ, because he has already treasured us and made us his own. (Phil. 3:12; 1 Pet. 1:9; Deut. 7: 6-7)

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

(Php 3:12)

This was the key to Paul’s treasure, this is what drove him, He knew that Christ loved him more than he could imagine and it was his joy to return the favor.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

(1Pe 2:9)

"For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you”

(Deu 7:6-8a)

This should drive us, if nothing else, the fact that Christ loved us so much that he would call us into his marvelous light.

Material

Friday, August 20, 2010

Treasuring Christ (power point)

Treasuring Christ (talk notes)

Treasuring Christ (worksheet)