Father Wants Us to Have the Treasure

9/20/2005

If you children disobey your parents, or do something sneaky or deceitful, or wrong in your heart or in your mind or with your actions, and you disobey and you get caught, what happens, usually by your parents?

You get disciplined.

Disciplined, be punished. Now, if you obey the commands, do you obey the commands… Remember that the commands of God are what? What are the commands of God?

A treasure map.

A treasure map. So if you obey the commands of God, you’re reading the treasure map and you are being lead toward the treasure. If you’re disciplined for disobeying the commands, why are they disciplining you? Because you disobeyed the commands? Or is there something else going on? Are you obeying the commands so you won’t be disciplined? Or are you obeying the commands so you can find the treasure that God intends for you? If your parents discipline you, are they disciplining you because you disobeyed the commands, or because they want you to find the treasure and you’re on the wrong path? You’re ignoring the treasure map. See, that’s the thing that Laurel was just saying. The commands aren’t an end in themselves. It’s not: “Obey so you won’t be disciplined.” “Obey so you can be rewarded.” It’s not about all of that. If you’re disciplined by your parents for disobeying, it’s because they want you to learn to follow the treasure map because they want you to have the treasure!

It says something almost identical to that in Hebrews Chapter 12, if you want to look it up. “The Father disciplines those whom He loves” because He wants us to have a treasure: a harvest of peace and righteousness. He wants us to have the treasure. And when we’re disciplined, it’s not because we did the wrong thing. And when we obey, it’s not so we can avoid being disciplined. That’s looking at it all wrong! You obey because that’s the treasure path. And you’re disciplined when you disobey, not because you were naughty, but because people who love you want you to have the treasure and they don’t want you to ignore the treasure map. And you can’t have the treasure of peace and joy and freedom and Life and Glory--you can’t have that without the treasure map! You can’t. Nobody ever gets it. The richest men on the earth have all committed suicide. The most gloriously successful people in the world are utterly miserable, disgusting wretches, and the face that you see on the television commercial is not the real them. They are miserable, nasty people. I can tell you about guys that have accomplished all kinds of great things in sports, from bicycling to whatever, that the people that have known them personally say, “This guy is one miserable, nasty, arrogant, foul, hateful person. You wouldn’t want to live with them.” They sure look good on television though, don’t they?

The thing is, there’s no treasure without God’s treasure map. Without obeying God, the God who designed you, who created you, you really will never have and cannot ever have peace and joy and freedom. If you have all the money and everything in the world (which you won’t have, by the way; hardly anybody does, but even if you could have it...), it wouldn’t make you happy inside. You’d still be miserable. That’s how God designed us. If you have Him, if He is your Very Great Reward, if He’s your treasure, then you will find the things that you were born for. If you don’t have Him, you will be forever unhappy and miserable and just torn to shreds. That’s how it works.

So if you are disciplined, it is not because you were naughty and you disobeyed and therefore you ought to be disciplined. That’s all kind of true, but that’s really shallow. The real reason why we are disciplined (Hebrews 12) is because “You are ignoring the treasure map again, and I love you too much to let you miss the treasure. That’s what I want for you. You were born for this treasure: the Treasure of intimacy with God, the Treasure of the freedom and the peace and the power and the strength that comes as an overcomer.” Now that doesn’t mean that there won’t be trials and pain and tribulation and suffering. Jesus had all of that.

But tell me Jesus was a failure or a loser? BALONEY! The man walked on water, He raised the dead, and even dying in shame, God rose Him up out of the grave, and His cold, dead, limp body was raised in resurrection power! To mere men it looked like He was going to lose, and they couldn’t even make Him lose by killing Him. That’s how strong the Victory is that’s in God.

Now we suffer here just as Jesus did. There’s no doubt about that. There is pain and heartache and confusion. There are issues, no doubt. But in the end, the people that walked with Him will know an inner power and a Life that mere mortals can never know. And they will be raised like Jesus out of a dead, cold, dank, musty tomb into resurrection power. Everybody else is just going to know the place prepared for the devil and his angels. There’s no victory in that.

So keep in mind that this whole process of obedience to commands of your parents, or God’s commands in a more general way through authority, through the scriptures, through the Life that God has put around us, that that’s not an end in itself- to be a good little boy or a good little girl. The process is that we can come into the place of destiny that God called us to. And if there is discipline it’s because God wants, and the people who love us WANT us to have the treasure, and we can’t if we ignore the map. It’s just that simple. That’s what it’s about. If you get bitter about being disciplined, or arrogant about being sneaky and not getting caught, that is so shallow! You’re missing the whole thing. It’s about the treasure! It isn’t about whether you got caught or didn’t get caught, got what you want or didn’t get what you want. It’s about the treasure! That’s the thing that God’s calling us to, and that’s the thing that David couldn’t say three sentences without repeating himself again and again and again and again! “It’s about the treasure guys! It’s about the treasure!”