Buying Real Treasure - Mathew 19:16-30
Treasure
is a word centered on our values. As the saying goes, “One man's
trash is another man's treasure,” because we place different values
on items and issues. We see different possibilities in the
opportunities and resources around us, and we impute different values
on them in accordance with our desires and the use we have for the
resources at hand. When it comes to the gospel of Jesus, however,
there are a whole new set of priorities with which we are called to
assess life and those things we might consider worth treasuring.
Nationally,
we are in conflict with Jesus' gospel. We have several conflicts, but
one perhaps stands out above the rest. Our economy, the “American
Dream,” and the priorities of our business interests center around
profit-making as the highest of our public values. Jesus, on the
other hand, simply refuses to allow economic profit and amassing
wealth be centerpieces for those who would be faithful to his life
and teaching. While we crave wealth for the security and power it
brings, Jesus calls us to dependence. He calls us to reassess our
priorities and redefine our greatest treasures.
In
Matthew 19 we find a record of Jesus' encounter with a wealthy man of
importance. Jesus did not seek him out, but he approached Jesus
publicly to seek Jesus' counsel on securing his future with God.
“Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
For
many, the question itself is filled with theological problems, for we
understand salvation as a gift of God's grace, not a product of the
quality of our deeds. Jesus' conversation with the man does not
really proceed along those lines. Rather than address those issues of
doctrine and theology, Jesus' conversation with the man is much more
focused on the expectations of traditional Jewish doctrine itself. He
points the man back to the standard definitions of what it meant to
be good in the eyes of his own tradition....
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