Will You Hold The Pearl?

For my 12-year-old’s birthday, I took him and his brothers to the toy store for a shopping spree.  (I’ve never been on one myself and I remember always wanting to be granted a shopping spree when I was a kid.  I didn’t really realize it was a shopping spree until about halfway through it.  It was weird and great to know that my wife and I could give them this amazing treat!)

My boys really like Disney’s Infinity game and would rather play that than do pretty much anything else.  They love getting new characters and power discs that gain them new dimensions to the game.  It is getting summertime, my wife’s been working a lot of overtime, and there was a sale, so we decided to buy the boys every character, play set, power disc, and toy storage they didn’t already have.  We bought our children over $400 worth of merchandise that filled two of the store's largest garbage-can-sized bags and told them that we would be giving these to them over the next few months and years for birthdays, Christmases, Easters, holidays.  Though the boys weren’t openly grumping about all the other toys at the store that we weren’t putting in the cart, I thought I saw downcast faces and the formations of unthankful hearts.  I thought they’d be happier – more ecstatic.  And, while checking out at the toy store, the boys came to me with and wanted me to buy them even more toys.  They didn’t seem thankful for the cartload of toys I was currently in the process of buying them.  I told them that for the rest of the day, we were going to practice being thankful.  Every time we’d walk to and from a store, while riding in the car, or went to the movie theater to pre-buy tickets to the new Marvel movie we would be going to later that week, we’d constantly be thinking of and saying things that we were thankful for.  And we did.  They were starting to get the hang of it.  They were getting a hold of the Pearl.

Many people are confused by the seeming duality of earning their own salvation and... earning their own salvation.  It’s the difference between meriting and securing your own salvation – attaining it – and keeping your own salvation once you have it.  You can’t earn your own salvation, but you have to do things to keep your salvation once it’s been given to you.

Some people mistakenly believe that if they do enough good works, or live in some specific kind of way, they can gain for themselves salvation.  They believe that as children, they can somehow drive to the toy store, go on a shopping spree, and transport all their booty back home by themselves.  Many of God’s children believe that they are somehow really the Father.  That puts them in the place of God.  As much as we’d like to believe that we are God or can make ourselves into God all on our own, it’s just not possible without the help of God.  We are infants who want to clean our own diaper, but all we can do is lie in our own filth.  We need a loving giver to come down to our level, pick us up, clean us, and give us life.  I had a college professor once explain it to me this way:  We are all dead people.  Cold corpses lying on the ground.  We’ve been given the option to turn on a light by a switch in the room in order to see, get warmth, and to live.  But a dead man can’t move so much as a finger to switch the switch.  We must first be given life.  After that, we can with our free-will either turn the light on in our lives – because the power is there, it’s in the walls, coursing through the wires to the light and switch – or we can choose to just leave the light off and live in the cold darkness, empty.  Dying once again without any change, without any hope.  We need a good Dad to first buy that new toy for us, wrap it, put our name on it, and give it to us, so we can unwrap that gift, and start playing with it.  We cannot gain, earn, or get the possibility of salvation for ourselves.  It must be given to us.

Other children of God think that now that the Father has given us this new, shiny gift, that it can’t be taken away from them.  And it can’t.  But their earthly logic doesn’t stop there, because it can be lost.  They surmise and believe that if the gift of Salvation can’t be taken away, that automatically means we can’t lose our Salvation, and that is where the thought stumbles.  So many people in the church don’t even realize this very important and necessary distinction.  We can lose our salvation; it just can’t be taken away from us.  (It’s simple; it’s just hard.)  We can lose our salvation, but only by our own hand.

God has given us the gift.  We have it all ready for us.  God has bought our gift, wrapped it, put our name on it, and left it at the gate of heaven for us when we get there.  It’s like he also bought tickets for us in advance and they are waiting for us now at the gate.

After a while though, God saw we weren’t remembering that we had this gift waiting for us.  Many of us didn’t even know we had a gift waiting for us anymore.  But again, God shows us he is so good in that he didn’t want us to have to wait for the gift.  So, he gave us a reminder.  He gave us eternal life early.  He gave us salvation, the treasure of our lives early, and it wasn’t even our birthday!  (Actually, the day he gave us this gift became our spiritual birthday.)  He took the gift from the gate, brought it to us, and put it in our hands.  He gave the gift to us.  He said it was ours now, and he backed away.  It's as if he said, ‘No matter what I do from now on, I can never take this gift back out of your hands.  It’s yours.  I’ve given it away to you.’  This means that no one else, not God, not even the enemy, can take our salvation from us.  But, we can lose the gift we’ve been given.  It happens as losing always does: we set the thing down, take our eyes off it, forget about it, forget to take care of it.

There is a story Jesus told about a man who came across a large treasure in a field.  And a pearl merchant that happened to come across the most expensive and biggest pearl he’d ever seen.  (Probably the biggest in the world.)  Just taking the treasure wouldn't mean the man owned it outright though, and wouldn’t, not really.  Even if he just took the treasure to his home, it would still really be the property of whoever owned the field.  (He found it in a field that he didn’t own and technically that meant that whatever was in the field was owned by the owner of that field.)

He probably feared being found out.  In fact, if anyone else knew about the existence of such a treasure, they would surely try to claim it before he could.  What if someone else already knew about the treasure?  He didn’t want to take the chance that someone else might find the treasure before he could get it legally.  He didn’t just want to steal the treasure or get it by any unofficial means so that by some loophole in the future some authority could come and seize it from him, taking it back to it’s original owner.  No.  This treasure was more than a penny on the ground or some pop can he could turn in for the recycling money.  This treasure was too valuable, too precious to take any chances with.  And too great to wait.  He needed to see if he could buy the treasure.  Or, better understood, see if he could own the treasure legally.

So, he wondered what he could do to legally get this treasure for himself.  The treasure was buried in a field.  A field he didn’t own.  If he owned this field, he’d own the treasure.  So, he found out how much the field cost.  It was more money than he had, but about how much he was totally worth.  He went, sold everything he had, came back, bought that field, and gained the treasure.  (Now, if you didn't buy the field, you could go to the field whenever you were able or had time, to enjoy the treasure, but it wouldn’t be truly yours.  And if someday the treasure was gone, discovered and taken by someone else, you could no longer enjoy it.)

Buying the field and making the treasure your own means living in a way that will keep the treasure with you without fear of it being taken from you.  Daily holding the treasure before your eyes, not setting it down for any reason.  That is the part you must do after you’ve been given the gift.  If you wouldn’t lose it, you must keep it safe.  You must sacrifice daily to keep that treasure in tiptop shape.  You must do this with all treasures you hold dear – your spouse, kids, family, people – but more important with your own salvation.  And never do anything to invalidate your claim on your treasure.

If my kids behave badly, hurting their brothers, or abusing their toys, I may suspend their use of the toy, or limit their involvement with their brothers for a time – until they’ve learned to obey; to do it right, and live with love.  If you were granted a license to drive but repeatedly infract the stipulations about that license, you can eventually get your license taken away from you.  You would have to reacquire it through a long and arduous repentance process.  (It’s much easier to not lose your license in the first place.)

Again, the goodness of God shines through here.  I’ve noticed that God often one-ups himself.  Not only does God give you a driver’s license, but the car as well.  Not only does he give us the treasure, but a whole field to enjoy, just for good measure.  That’s God’s Good Measure.  Poured on, shaken down, packed tight, overflowing.

The thing is, this treasure we’ve found that’s waiting for us comes with a price.  It comes with self-sacrifice.  The cost is self-sacrifice.  The self-sacrifice of Jesus to buy it and our self-sacrifice to own and maintain it.  We didn’t make the Pearl, assemble the treasure – the Salvation – bury it as a discovery surprise, or put it in our own path to find, but in order to claim it as our own, we have to surrender everything we have and everything we are to be able to hold onto it without anyone being able to make a future claim against us.

And the treasure is heavy.  We need both our hands and our full strength to hold it.  It’s going to need our full attention and why not?  Why would we ever risk losing hold or sight of such a precious gift by turning our back on it or even setting it down?  We let go of it because, like little children, want even more.  Even though our Dad took us on a shopping spree and bought us what we really wanted, even before it’s paid for, we want a couple of more, or even just one more toy.  Just one more, shiny end-cap, point-of-sale item that is really just for show and will break about 45 minutes after taking it out of the box – basically just meant to separate us from our money.

And this world has become that way because we have enemies here.  And once they find out that we have a great treasure, they don’t want us to keep it.  The Enemy, the world, and our own flesh will try to distract us so that we drop our new-found treasure and look away to the shiny imitation that in the moment we are tempted to think is better than what we currently hold.  And why shouldn't we get it all?  We think we deserve all we can get.  “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  When you let go of the one bird to reach for and take hold of the other two, all three fly away.  “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” but people always think they can.  This is one of the biggest entitlement lies from the father of lies.

There is no doubt that his distractions from this world are enticing.  The enemy makes them that way.  He can’t take the treasure away from us, but he can get us to give it up or set it down by tricking us.  The only way he can get us to give up our treasure is if he can get us to set it down for awhile, maybe longer, maybe for so long, we forget where we put it, and then we’ve lost it again.  We need to go on another search and again give everything we have and are to just lay claim to the treasure.  That is, if we can find another treasure.  Many times this good fortune comes around only once.

When we found the treasure, bought the field, moved our household and began living in a new place, on new land, God washed our hands clean of all the dirt of sin and then sprinkled the blood of Jesus on our hands to coat them with a smooth, nonstick surface.  The enemy can’t make dirt stick to our hands when they are coated with the blood of Jesus.  The only way the enemy can get new dirt to stick to our hands is if we choose to wipe off the blood of Jesus ourselves, forfeiting all it’s protective benefits.  If the enemy can get us to make the wrong choice, it’s still always a choice that we make.

We can’t have our salvation treasure taken from us if we buy the field it’s in by giving over all of ourselves, but we can lose it ourselves by the choices we make – by taking some of ourselves back.  “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

We can lose our salvation – the gift our Dad gave us – by not making the personal sacrifice of giving everything we are and have to keep it as our own.  It’s simple.  It’s just hard.  It’s a simple way to live and simple to do, it’s just hard to actually commit and do it.

What holds many of us back is that we all think we are kings and queens.  And, being royalty, we think we are all entitled to whatever we want – that our way is the right way for us and for everybody else to live.  If you scratch the surface of any sin, you will find Pride underneath.  'My neighbor is playing his music too loud, I’m calling the cops.  I should have what I want and that’s quiet, so my neighbor must bend to my will.  I’m important, he is not' – that’s Pride.  'My loved one hurt me, so I’m not going to forgive them.  I don’t have to.  They should apologize, and, if they don’t, I won’t forgive them, and maybe I’ll even remind them by leaving hints or taking small revenges on them to help 'educate' them, because I am the one in the right.  I am great and deserve love and respect, not them' – Pride.  'I don’t have to be kind, or gentle, self-controlled, hopeful, caring, generous, compassionate, because everyone else needs to be those things toward me because I…' Pride.  It’s only when we take the crown off our own head and allow God to be the King in our place, that we surrender our will to his will.  It’s only then that we really can start to become and bear the good fruit of the very essence of God.

When we leave this world, we will be holding one of two things: handfuls of this world's replicas and imitations, or the real, genuine, authentic gift of God - the treasure of Salvation.  “We cannot have two masters.  We cannot serve both God of Heaven and this world.”  The treasure our Heavenly Dad gives us is also so big you cannot grasp it with just one hand.  You will need both hands to lift and hold it all.  If you reach for the things of this world while holding the treasure, the Pearl will slip from your fingers like Sauron's One Ring.  We cannot juggle the two.  One will fall away from us.  Which one will you be carrying through this life?  You cannot hold two.