Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - How To Find Real Treasure

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 1, 1998. Series: Jesus – On Finding God. Scripture: Matthew 13:44-46. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Why does the truth of the gospel make some people uneasy? Most are comfortable talking about spiritual searching, but when Jesus claims that he is the only path to salvation, many people view that as oppressive. Today, Tim Keller shows us how the gospel is not arrogant, but instead is humble, gracious, and available to anyone. It is an exclusive truth, but it is the most inclusive, exclusive truth in the world.

Get on your magnifying glasses and find the scripture text on which the teaching's based. It's Matthew 13, verses 44 to 46, just three verses, but there's two whole parables in here, two of the shortest parables anywhere in here. That's just two whole parables. It's the parable of the great, the great, the parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great price. The kingdom of heaven, said Jesus, is like a 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. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. This is God's word. We're in a time of spiritual searching. Every single week, I'm tempted to give you an example of the last, you know, the next new thing I see of the columns and secular papers and magazines on spirituality, books being sold everywhere in all the major bookstores on searching for meaning and searching for God and searching for spiritual

reality. And what we're doing is we're taking some of the places where Jesus talks about spiritual finding. I mean, if this is a time of spiritual searching, let's see what Jesus has to say about it. And notice we have two examples of it. Two times, two places where you see the word find, found. They found treasure. And this treasure is the kingdom of God. It's a spiritual reality. The grace of God. And in two cases, they find it. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to take a look tonight at some principles that Jesus gives us in these two little parables about how you can break through and find spiritual reality. So that religion isn't just a, you know, just a set of rules. It's not just a tradition. It's not just a warm, toasty feeling, but it's spiritual reality,

the kingdom of God in your life. How do you find that? And there's two principles here. It's a very, very, these are very short little stories, very short little parables, but they're, they have two basic principles. The first one is, spiritual treasure is always hidden in unexpected places. It's always hidden. Notice in the first story, it's real explicit. This person is working in a field, and he finds it, and it's a total shock, so it's a complete accident. Totally unexpected.

But if you look carefully, it's even true in the second. case because it says there's a merchant who is looking for fine pearls, but he finds one of great value. And the word fine means he's out there looking for deals, but then he finds one of superlative value. So in both cases, we see that they find the great treasure unexpectedly. So the first principle is spiritual treasure is never where you think it is. It's always in hidden the unexpected places. The second principle is that when you find real spiritual treasure, there's one way you know you have, and that is every part of your life is revolutionized. Spiritual treasure never improves you. It always completely remakes you. Notice there's

tremendous number of differences between these two people. In one case, as we already saw, the treasure is found completely by accident. It's a person who's sort of digging in a field and suddenly, wham, there's a treasure. The merchant is actually kind of deliberately looking for it. In one case, we probably have a man who's of common, or maybe even poor man, but certainly a common working man, because anybody working in a field would, you know, be a common working man, whereas we know that pearl merchants were people of incredible wealth. In the first case, we also see that when the worker goes to buy the field,

The owner of the field does not know the value of the field. But it's pretty clear in the second case that the only reason that a pearl merchant would have to sell everything he has in order to buy a pearl is because the seller of the pearl does know how valuable it is. And there's all these differences. One is a rich man, one's probably a poor man. One is deliberate. One finds it by accident.

One has a seller who doesn't know what's going on. One is a seller who really does know. So in other words, everything's different about it. these two guys. But when they actually get a hold of spiritual treasure, their lives are completely changed because they sell everything. See? Everything. Both times, he sold all he had in order to get that field. In other words, in order to get this treasure, everything goes on the block. Everything about their lives are changed. There's no half ways on spiritual treasure. Spiritual treasure will never, if real. Just change you in a little way. It won't just improve you. It won't be one more sort of self-help

book on your shelf. Here's my dieting. Here's how to win friends and influence people. And here's the Bible. And there they are. No. So the two principles are, spiritual treasure is never found where you expect it. It's always hidden. And secondly, if it's real, it'll utterly change your life, top to bottom, left to right, inside out. every way. Now let's take a look at each of those, because there's only two principles. Let's take a look at each. Now, the first principle is that treasure, the pearl and the treasure, are hidden, but let's especially look at the first of the two stories, because that's where you really see it. Let's just ask a question about this situation. In fact, a few things might have been raised in your mind right away about it.

First of all, it says, a man found treasure hidden in a field, and someone says, boy, that's pretty unlikely. Well, not then it wasn't. Here's why. They didn't have banks back then. You didn't have a bank. All right. So what did you do with your wealth when you didn't have a bank? Well, you hid your wealth, usually in your home. But what would you do if you knew that there was an army coming or there were raiders coming or there were looters coming? And if you know anything about history, you know that this happened all the time. Whenever there was a marauding army coming, another group that was coming to take over in Palestine, you know, was one of the most fought over parts of the whole world.

What would you do then? Well, you didn't hide it in your home. You buried it. And you hoped you survived the raid. You hoped you survived the battle. And very often you didn't. And as a result, it wasn't all that uncommon to find buried treasure

and to realize that whoever, you know, buried there, obviously, almost for sure, is dead. It's gone. It's been forgotten. Nobody knows where it is, of course. It wouldn't have helped any, you know, if you bury your treasure, you don't tell anybody where it is. There's not much use in burying it. And if you happen to die or get killed in the raid, so there we go.

And as a result, it wasn't all that unusual. And because of that, there was the Jewish law, which said, finders keepers. The Jewish law said, no matter where you found it, if you found it, it was yours. But because at this time, the Jews were under Roman occupation, and because Roman laws on finding were kind of of ambiguous. This man knows that what he's found is his by rights, but he also knows, unless he buys the field, he can't be totally sure that someone won't try to contest his claim. And so off he goes. And when he goes into town, you know, to buy the field, can you just imagine, you know, these are small towns, all these are towns are small, and everybody knows everything.

And so the next thing you know, you hear, it's all over town, they're saying, do you know, old Joe has pulled every cent he owns out of his mattress. and he's gone and he's buying that lot on the edge of town. What lot on the edge of town? You know, that lot over there? That lot? I had a garden there once. I mean, the soil is kind of stony.

It's kind of rocky. What in the world does he want to do something like that? He's nuts. But old Joe is smiling. Because he knows what the rest of the world doesn't, and that is beneath the field, beneath the soil, beneath the ordinariness. There is an incredible value. Now, here's the principle.

The Bible tells us over and over and over again that Jesus always hides spiritual treasure under a field of ordinariness, and you will never find it unless you penetrate it. The world doesn't want to do it, and you've got that same mindset. You're part of the world, but that's the only way you're ever going to find it. What do I mean?

Well, first, the world always looks on the surface of things. the world is completely wedded to assessing value on the basis of externals and superficials. Absolutely. I mean, I shouldn't have to tell people in New York about this, but frankly, it's everywhere, and it's always been everywhere. Your value is assessed on the basis, if you have good value, if you're considered a person of value, then you will be good-looking. You will have articulateness. You will have confidence.

You will have polish, you will have smarts, you will have money, you will have status, and you will have connections to the right people, and you'll have connections to the right institutions. Right? That's how people judge. It's all the base of externals and superficialities, and Jesus Christ absolutely refuses. In fact, deliberately, Jesus Christ deliberately, insists that if you're going to find my spiritual treasure, you're going to have to get over that. He hides spiritual treasure under a field of ordinariness.

Now, you say, would you please get down to concrete? Okay, first of all, three ways. Let me show you. First of all, Jesus hides spiritual treasure under ordinary people. The fact is that God has a tendency simply because he's trying to shatter the world's superficial standards. He tends to work with people that the world considers losers by its external standards. You know, you go to the place, you go to First Corinthians 1. First Corinthians 1. What does Paul say? He says, he's talking to the Corinthians Christians. And he says, my brethren, remember who you were before God called you. Not many of you are wise, according to the world. Not many of you are strong. Not many of you are of noble birth. But God chose the weak to shame the strong. God chose the foolish to shame the wise. God chose the despised even the things that are. God chose the despised even the things that are. or not to bring to nothing the things that are. What does that mean? What it means is God has a

tendency because the world's superficial and external ways of judging value are so utterly wrong that God has a tendency to choose people and work with people who really, on the surface anyway, aren't anything special. There's nobody who's ever written this better, better than C.S. Lewis in screw tape letters. And you know, Scroo tape is a senior devil. And the screw tape letters are letters from a senior devil to a junior devil. He's got a nephew who's out on the tempting field.

And he's working with a human being who unfortunately is showing some spiritual interest. So screw tape writes his nephew and says, I've got some ideas on how you can destroy your humans' budding spiritual interest. And this is what he says. Work very hard on the

disappointment or anti-climax that will be coming during his first few weeks at church. When he looks around him at those people who sing out of tune, who have shoes that squeak, who have double chins, or odd clothes,

he will very easily believe that their religion must therefore somehow be ridiculous. Now, you know, the only reason to screw tape can say this is going to happen, and the only reason this does happen is because we are so obsessed with surfaces. We're so obsessed with what's on the surface

not what's underneath. I mean, he's absolutely right. He says, if you look at a, you know, you come to church and you look around and the people have bad breath and they have double chins and they don't wear very sleek clothes. They're not, they're not very cool. And it says the logic will be, well, somehow these people's religion must be stupid, but that, that logic is stupid. That's ridiculous reasoning. God, Jesus Christ, tends to bury his, um, um, his treasure under ordinary people. That's not all. Secondly, he also tends to bury, he buries his spiritual treasure, not just in ordinary people, but in an ordinary message. Now, here's what I mean by that. An ordinary message is this, the gospel. Put it this way. One of the reasons why

everybody's laughing at Old Joe, and probably one of the reasons why, even when they finally find out, eventually they're going to find out that there's treasure in that field that old Joe bought, Nobody believes the treasure can be that accessible. Nobody believes that this old lot that I walk by every day on the way to work, or maybe right through on the way to work, that there was a billion dollars in treasures underneath. We just don't believe it. Why not?

Because treasures are buried in remote mountains far away. They're never buried right here. I'm never walking on top of it. It could never be in the accessible familiar. Now, let's look at the gospel for a minute. listen to the gospel Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins so if you believe in him

God accepts you by grace and you listen to that and you say and that's it that's the secret to life that's the secret to the universe come on give me a book on nine levels

of spiritual consciousness that I have to strive for and it may take me all of my life to get up to God that's just you know that's it that can't be it now listen Christian friends, I don't want you to get off the hook here. If you think I'm talking to people who don't believe in the Bible or don't believe in Jesus Christ,

well, I am. If you're here, and you're not sure you're a Christian or you're not sure you believe in Christianity, one of the things you're going to really have to get over is the simplicity and the ordinariness of the gospel. You've probably heard what I just said before. Jesus Christ died on the cross to your sins. If you believe in him, God will accept you and forgive you out of grace. You've probably heard that. right? It's just like an old field. You walk by it? But I want to talk to Christians for a second,

because I want to tell you something about me. I'm just the same way in this. For many years, I walked right by the gospel. I walked right over the gospel every day. I heard it all the time. And like most Christians, I said this. Okay, I believe the gospel now. Fine. But let's get on to the deep stuff. See? Let's get on to real spiritual power. How do you really change? How do you really deal with? How do you change the world? The gospel is the way to get into the kingdom. Gospel is the way you get saved. That's fine. Yes. I know that. But now let's get on to something deep. I want something deeper. And I was walking right by. I wasn't looking underneath. You see, then one day, I read a verse that really rattled me. And the verse is this. It's in 1st Peter,

chapter 1, verse 12. And this is what Peter says. It was told to you by those who preached to you by the Holy Spirit, the gospel, into which even the angels long to look. And I began to think about that. The gospel, yeah, Jesus tied on the cross for your sins. The gospel, into which angels long to look. Now, think about angels. Think of who these, these are. Angels have lived for years and years, centuries and centuries. Think of the intellect of the angels. Think of the wisdom of the angels. and they are continually longing to meditate on and look into the gospel. They keep digging in and digging in and digging in, and they never get by, they never get tired of it. They never fail to find new beauties in it.

They never fail to find new amazing things in it. And I began to say, no, wait a minute, if the angels are doing nothing, if they never get beyond the gospel, if they just find this, this just is the treasure, maybe they know some, I don't. And they do know something I didn't. But I've begun to get the hang of it. Let me put it to you this way. When you hear Jesus Christ died on the cross

for my sins so that I can accept me by grace if I believe in him, do you realize that that is the answer to all your problems? That is the answer to every problem because you haven't dug in and pulled out of that what you need. That's the reason you have the problems that you have today. This is the solution to every one of your problems.

This is the way through every one of your obstacles. This is the solution to every one of the world's problems. This is the way through every one of the world's obstacles. And if what you think, in response to what I just said, is that, boy, that's overblown. You haven't dug in. You're walking right over the lot. Please, join the angels. Begin to realize that God, Jesus Christ, buries his treasure under a field of ordinariness.

Don't be like everybody else and just walk on by, walk on by. But thirdly, Jesus Christ buries his treasure, not just in ordinary people and an ordinary message, but he buries it in himself. And he came as the most ordinary of people. Everything, everything about Jesus Christ completely resist the world's obsession with surfaces, with image, with glitter. see with looks Jesus Christ we know was physically homely Isaiah 53 he had no beauty or comeliness

so that we would desire him Jesus Christ was born poor his parents when they made the offering at his circumcision they just offered two pigeons only for the poorest people made that offering his pupils his disciples were all losers they're all jerks and he died on the cross

the most common criminal execution of a common criminal. Jesus Christ was utterly ordinary, and this is William Lane in the Book of Mark, said, why is it that in spite of all the miracles, in spite of raising people from the dead, William Lane, in his commentary on the Book of Mark, says, why was it that basically he was rejected?

And the answer is, because the world cannot penetrate the veil of ordinariness around him. Remember what Pilate said in Jesus Christ Superstar? Okay. Oh, so this is Jesus Christ. Well, I'm really quite surprised. You look so small. Not like a king at all.

Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible, but it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book, Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctant. to trust and obey him, and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross. During the month of May, we'll send you a copy of rediscovering Jonah as our

thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Now, if this is true, let's apply this and move on to the second principle. But if this is true, if Jesus, if a spiritual treasure is always, always, always hidden in ordinary people, in an ordinary message, and in an ordinary Savior himself, what does should that mean? Okay, on the one hand, for those of you who are not sure whether you're Christians, you're not sure whether you believe, or maybe somebody's brought you to church, maybe tonight's the first time. You know, maybe I haven't been to church in a long time. maybe you're a spiritual seeker maybe you're searching you know maybe you're one of the people who

are saying i'd like to have some spiritual grounding all right well let me just suggest something to you didn't it happen you walked in and what did you do did you say boy i'd like to find out what the truth is no you didn't i like to hear the arguments no you didn't you looked around and you said are these the kind of people i want to be in the same room with sure you did because you assume that if people have double chins or they have bad breath or they don't quite look very sleek, that somehow their religion must be ridiculous. You're blinded then by the standards of the world. That doesn't have to be true. Who says that somebody finds spiritual reality? They have to be sleek. Jesus wasn't, and he had the most spiritual reality of anyone. You need to get by that. You need to penetrate

the veil of ordinariness, the field of ordinariness, or you're never going to find spiritual treasure. But Christians, something to you. If you, Let me just say two things. Of all people, on the one hand, because of the incarnation, because we have the only God that claims even, I mean, there's not even, and no other religion even claims this, we're the only God who said, I let go of my glory and became ordinary. I came down.

If we believe that, then first of all, we must be absolutely free from concern and obsession with image and glitter when it comes to who we hang out with. we should not develop friendships on the basis of people that we want to be with socially. You know, there should be up, you know, I want somebody who's in a cool circle. I want to hang out with them. But in fact, I'll go a little further. If you want to apply this principle to yourself, I know, I know, I've been here for too long.

The Christians, in spite of the fact that they're Christians, are so, they miss this principle so much, they are so obsessed with looks and income. When you're sizing up potential spouses that you're going right by all kinds of very ordinary looking fields filled with treasure. You're going right by all kinds of people that will be wonderful spouses. But they don't have on the surface the looks or they don't have the income. And you just won't look underneath. Come on. One more thing.

not only should we of all people be unconcerned about image and service when it comes to relationships, but we must also be unconcerned about image and surfaces when it comes to looking at ourselves. What do you want from God? When Jesus Christ comes into your life, almost always, to start with, we say, now, I've given my life to him. Now he's going to start answering my prayers. And what are your prayers always about? They're always about hitting home run. They're always about career.

They're always about looks. They're always about, you know, love. They're always about all the things that Jesus Christ says aren't the important things. Instead, what Jesus Christ can do for you and should do for you, and what you should be pulling from to do for you is to make you a field that might be kind of ordinary in the outside, but filled with treasure. And C.S. Lewis, in his book, Great Divorce, there's a place where, in the Great Divorce where there's a young man here who goes to heaven with a guide. He's not from

heaven, but he goes. It's really a dream sequence. And he's walking around, he's looking, and suddenly around the corner comes this enormous parade, this enormous entourage, this enormous parade of people. And there's boys and girls dancing around some central figure, and there's men and women dancing around some central figure. And she's beautiful. And she comes around the corner and the guy who's the narrator says I could hardly look at her the unbearable beauty of her face and she was just filled with light and so she he turns to his guide and he says is this is this not at all said my guide well it's someone you've never heard of he said her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived in Golders Green well she seems I said to my guide

to have been a person of great importance. And he looked at me and he said, have you not heard that fame up here and fame on earth are two quite different things? Well, but who are all these young men and women on each side? They are her sons and daughters, said my guide. Well, she must have had a pretty big family.

Well, every boy that met her became her son. Every girl became her daughter. She had no children of her own. Well, wasn't that hard on their parents, I said to my guide. No, there are those who steal other parents' children, other parents' children, but her love was of a different kind, those on whom it fell, went back to their natural parents loving them more, and few men looked on her without loving her, but it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer to their own wives. And now the abundance

of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them. Already there is joy enough in her little finger to awaken all the dead things of the universe into life. Now what was Sarah Smith of Golders Green? Who is this? Well, it's a fictional character, but who is she? She was a nobody. She lived in Golders Green, which is a nowhere, a little town. She never got married. She never made any money.

But she became someone of such enormous love. And she changed so many people's lives because of love, the joy of the peace, and the joy in her. Have you not heard that fame in heaven and fame on earth are two very, very different things? What should you be asking for? Why are you so unhappy? because this and that and this and that hasn't gone right in your life. Why are you saying, oh, Lord God, what good is it to be a Christian when all these things go wrong for me? What do you want from him? What are you praying for? What are you after? Don't you want him to make you a person of

incredible preciousness and value and worth? You should be after exactly what she was, and that is, treasure in an ordinary field. You should be after becoming a person of incredible quality and beauty on the inside. A person of enormous peace and of enormous courage. That's really what lasts. That's the only glory that isn't just coding. It's the only glory that really is glory. Now, the other principle, the first principle, see what the first principle is? Spiritual treasure is always hidden under a field of ordinariness. You're going to have to get over the world standards if you're ever going to find it. The second, and in some ways this is awfully obvious, but let's dwell on it for a little bit. The second,

is if you ever really find spiritual treasure, the way you know you find spiritual treasure, it's it changes your life utterly and totally. I mean, put it to you this way. Three things happened to both these men. I mean, everything else is different, really. There's a lot of differences here. But three things happen to these men. First of all, they assess the value of the treasure with their minds. They assess the value with their minds. Then secondly, they feel the value in their hearts. And then thirdly, they live out the value by the way in which they live their lives. Now, what do I mean? Well, their attitude toward everything else in their life is utterly changed when they see this treasure, especially the pearl merchant. Pearl Merchant was a person

of enormous wealth. Any pearl merchant was, and yet he was willing to liquidate everything he had to get the beauty of this pearl. Their attitudes toward everything else in their life, is different. You know, imagine, let me ask you this, imagine if you were dying of a disease, and someone came and said, I've got some medicine that will cure you. You said, wonderful.

This is incredible. And you said, but it's very, very expensive. You're going to have to sell your house in order to get it. You're going to have to sell your CD collection in order to get it. You're going to have to, you know, empty, you know, this and that. you're going to have to give all these things up. What would you say? Well, you know, your CD collection used to be very important to you, but somehow now it doesn't seem so important. And you would look and say, hey, that medicine now is so precious to me that all these other things that used to be so

important to me, I don't even care about them now. What good are they if I don't have this? Now, what happens is how do you get this comprehensive change in the attitude? toward everything in your life. And the answer is this. The key to going from assessment of the value with their mind to a new approach to life where nothing else in their life really has a hold on them anymore. Their attitude toward everything else is, hey, it's expendable. The only was when you solve what the medicine can do, suddenly when you see this medicine,

that's when your attitude toward everything else changes. What is the spiritual analogy? It's this. He went with joy to sell everything he had. Now, what that means is the reason he was able to do a transfer of wealth,

his material wealth, in both cases, they took all their material wealth. Old Joe took his money out of his mattress and put it into the field. The pearl merchant liquidated all of his money and put it in the pearl. But the reason,

reason they were able to do a transfer of material wealth was because in their heart they had done already a transfer of emotional wealth. Do you hear me? Something had already happened inside. They transfer their emotional wealth. What do I mean by that? Well, every heart has got its wealth in something. You know, this year has been a little scary for people that have had their money in the stock market for years. And suddenly everybody said, do I take my money out of the stock market? put it into bonds or something else, what do I do with it? I put it into real estate. I mean, that's the issue. In the same way, your heart has all of its emotional value, all of its emotional treasure in something. Now, how do you know where it is? I'll give you two little quick tests. You can tell

where your heart's got its emotional value, all of its emotional wealth. First of all, the solitude test. Archbishop William Temple said, if you want to know what you really worship, if you want to know what you really treasure, if you want to know what your real God is, where does your mind go during solitude? When you don't have to think of anything else. When there's nothing that's making you think of something, when your mind can go wherever you want it to go, where does it go? What do you fantasize about? Effortlessly. What do you worry about? Efferlessly. So first, there's the solitude test. And secondly, there's the nightmare test. And the nightmare test is, what is it that if you should lose it

would mean that you would rather just about throw yourself off a bridge what is it that would be your greatest nightmare and whatever that greatest nightmare is or whatever you know depends on what the solitude test shows what the nightmare test shows that is where the emotional wealth of your heart is now if you come to God and you will not transfer your emotional wealth if you won't put your wealth, if you keep your wealth in things and you come to God and you say, I'm going to get religious, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to obey the Ten Commandments,

I'm going to pray, I'm going to read the Bible, and you can do all these things. Why? That's the question. There's two ways to come. On the one hand, you can come not having made the transfer of your emotional wealth. Your emotional, your heart's treasure is still in the things of this world. and you come to God basically to say, what do I have to do to please you so that you will give me these things? So you will answer my prayers. So I'll have my career, so I'll have my professional success,

so I'll have my friends, so I'll have my health, so I have my looks, so I have my family, so I get married, so I have my children. What do I have to do? And that is a fear-based religion, which is filled with being judgmental, it's filled with burdensomeness. You never, but most of all, it's always partial. You never give God everything. Because basically what you're saying is, well, I'm doing something for you.

Now you do something for me. You're always grumpy because you're doing this for everything you possibly can, but you haven't transferred your emotional wealth. It's still in these things. And therefore, you're going out maybe and you're trying to serve God, but there's no joy in it. But the other possibility is to do what they did. They look at the value of what's given.

They look at the value of what's been shed. And what happens in their heart, the reason they're able to go out in joy and give up their savings, enjoy and liquidate everything, is because they're able to do the material transfer wealth because they've already done the emotional transfer of wealth. You see that. In other words, old Joe doesn't go down to buy the field.

It's got a billion-dollar treasure in. It doesn't say, oh, these 10,000. $1,000, it's going to be so hard. I saved every one of them. These little $5 bills and $10 bills are so precious to me. Oh, this is going to be so hard. I don't know if I, you know, what do you say to somebody like that? Do you say, well, Joe, you're going to have to try harder? No, you say, Joe, think. Just think. You have to make the emotional training. You have to say, look at the value of what's been offered. And a Christian is somebody who doesn't keep his emotional wealth or her emotional wealth in the things and go to God and say, what do I have to do? But you see

what Jesus Christ did for you. You see that he and he alone has given you the medicine that will save you. If I took you to the beach and I said, let's go to the beach tonight at 8 o'clock, and the third wave that comes in, I want to sell it to you, would you pay me anything for it? He'd say, no, I don't think so, but I can't keep the wave. I can't keep, it's just going to go right back out. I can't nail it, I can't put it a buy, I can't do it. Would you please think about this for a second? your life life is a wave and everything you've got your emotional wealth in your career your children your health your looks romance married money it's all going out it's just going out slowly why would you put anything into that

Jesus Christ comes and says you can have real glory through me and if you understand what he did for you and how it he poured himself out for you, that will become the medicine that makes everything else expendable, and you will lay it all down, and you'll be willing to say, do anything with anything I have, take anything that I have. You'll give it all to him. What does that mean? It means to be willing to obey God about what he tells you in any area of your life, and to accept what God sends you in every area of your life. To say, look, this isn't my treasure.

I like these things, but this is my treasure. When you look and say, what good is my CD collection? What good is anything unless I have that medicine? That medicine is precious to me. A Christian is someone who says, who knows what it says in First Peter, to you who believe he is precious. The only way you know,

you've made the emotional transfer of your wealth from the things of this world into Jesus himself is you will know that you will be willing to lay down everything for him without condition and there'll be a total revolution in your life. But if you're always grumpy at God, I'm always saying, I've tried this and I've tried that, you know, it's hard and it's very hard, I mean, goodness gracious, I'm young, I'd like to sow my wild oats, maybe later when I might be able to do this or that.

you haven't even thought about the real issue. The real issue is, are you willing to look at the pearl? Are you willing to look at the treasure? You're willing to look at it to see its value until there's an emotional transfer of wealth that'll revolutionize your whole life? Nobody has ever really looked at Jesus Christ and understood who he is and what he's saying and responded moderately to him. read the Bible anybody who ever heard Jesus Christ anybody they either ran away from him in fear or they tried to kill him in anger or they threw everything down and they gave him everything and anybody who doesn't do one of those three things

is not listening anybody who says oh I don't want to have to give up my $10,000 for a billion you're just not counting the billion dollars anybody who will not give himself or herself utterly to him has not realized that he gave himself utterly for you. Anyone who's not willing to give him everything doesn't realize what he gave us. Spiritual treasure is always hidden in a field of ordinariness, and if you've got it, it will change you completely.

And if you say, boy, that hasn't happened to me. Keep digging. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for granting to us these truths help us to God ourselves with the truths that your great teacher Jesus Christ gave us so that we can find spiritual treasure too. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast.

If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it, and to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime. Visit gospelandlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast, were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.