Big Idea: God entrusts every human being with invaluable resources, gifts, and most importantly the seed of the kingdom of God. We must invest our gifts. When we do, God blesses us with even more. If we don’t invest what he’s given us, then God takes away even what we he had entrusted to us. When you put money in the bank, you expect interest. When a farmer sows seed in his field, he plants the seed expecting it to produce fruit. God entrusts you and I with an amazing wealth of gifts, talents and resources – many of them spiritual. He expect a return on his investment.

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We’re in our fourth week of a series I’m calling the Kingdom of God. For Jesus the Kingdom of God was his self proclaimed reason for coming. Let’s jump right in.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Matthew 13:44 (NIV)

I’d like to highlight four things this parable tells us about the kingdom of God.

First, apparently the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, as the other three gospel writers name it, is EXTREMELY valuable. It is so valuable that you’d give up everything to get it. It is so valuable that all the things that you currently have – houses, cars, boats, all your hobbies, all your jewelry, everything you have in your bank account, your 401k, you’d give it all up if you could just get this. The kingdom of God is so valuable that you’d become homeless, empty your bank account, your retirement account, and sell all your possessions, if you could just get IT – if you could just get the kingdom of God.

What’s interesting is that the parable doesn’t give us any indications as to whether the man was a rich man – upper class, or a poor man – lower class, or a guy who was a middle class guy with a middle-of-the-road amount of money. All we’re told is that he was joyfully willing to sell everything that he had in order to buy the field that the treasure was in. We’re not sure how much the field cost, but we know that it will cost us everything in order to find the kingdom of God.

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