So at his height, Pablo Escobar
was the seventh richest person in the world, which is
really hard to believe and hard to even fathom that
this drug trafficker who built a cocaine empire
became the seventh wealthiest person in the entire world,
according to Forbes magazine. At the height of his success,
he was raking in, they say, about $420 million
every single week. It's hard to even get your head
around that kind of a number, over $400 million coming
in every single week. Of course, this led to
a net worth at the time of his death of something
around $30 billion, which, in today's currency,
with inflation, we're talking like $50 billion. It's just ridiculous money. In fact, it was so much money
that it became a problem. Because what do you do
with all that money? And his brother
was an accountant, and wrote a book after his
brother's death and kind of revealed some of the
things that they tried to do. You know, they tried to put
as much as they could in, you know, banks overseas. But Pablo insisted that
he be the only one that had the account numbers. So when he died, so
much of that wealth is literally just sitting
there frozen in accounts that no one knows
even how to access. So what they did with
a lot of the money-- and this is just
absolutely crazy-- is they just buried it. Real creative, right? They just literally like, let's
just dig a hole in the ground. And so that's what
they would do. They would bundle
it and all that. And this is actually one
of the craziest details, to sort of like show you how
much money we're talking about, when 420 million is coming in. I mean, you can
only spend so much on cars and planes and the
two submarines that he had. [LAUGHTER] He also started his own
personal zoo in Colombia, when he wasn't buying
islands that were used for great festivals later. [LAUGHTER] But basically-- for
wealthy millennials who needed something fun to
do, all right, on Netflix. But basically,
they were spending at the peak of the craziness
of this narco money coming in, $2,500 every single
year on rubber bands. Just to bundle the benjamins. [LAUGHTER] Can you imagine $2,500
worth of rubber bands? Just to bundle together all
the cash that most of it was just literally
going into the ground. In the book, his brother says
that they would write off 10% of it, about, every
single year because that's how much the rats would eat. They would come back to
these cash deposits later, and they would find rats just
feeding on bundled $100 bills. And so 10% or so, oh, that's
a whole different mentality of what a company-- you
know, grocery stores lose food that expires,
but Pablo's cash was getting eaten
by rats, right? This is crazy. Years after his death-- in, of course, 1993, he was
killed at the age of 44. And this isn't the glorifying
Pablo Escobar hour. I mean, he was responsible
for upwards of 7,000 deaths, all right? So I'm going somewhere,
I promise you. Some of you are like, what
the heck is happening? What kind of church is this? And others of you are like,
this is the greatest sermon of my entire life. So it just really depends on
what interests you, I suppose. But there was a farmer. A farmer was just sort
of preparing his field on a new plantation
that he purchased, an oil palm plantation. And he purchased
it from land that was repossessed and recovered
by the Colombian government when they seized all of his land,
seized all of his property. They were stunned that
they only found $8 million. Now, imagine, he was worth
upwards of 30 billion, but only eight million was ever
recovered by law enforcement and drug enforcement agencies. So so much of it is
just still out there. But sort of a clue emerged
when this Colombian farmer, you know, he's got
an excavator going and, clink, it hits
something metal. Like, classic, right? This is Pirates of the
Caribbean edition, right? Clink. Right along. And it was-- the whole field,
literally the whole field was full of those Walter White,
Heisenberg metal barrels, right? And casual reference, some
of you got it, some of you have no idea what
I'm talking about. Crystal blue persuasion
barrels, right? And so he pops these things out. And turns out these metal
barrels held $600 million. And this was just one of many
of the cash deposits sprinkled, they believe, all over
Colombia, perhaps Mexico. Money from Pablo
Escobar's hiding has been found as far
as in Miami, Florida. Now, I want you to bring
that with me, that idea. Not Pablo Escobar
and his submarines. I want you to bring
the idea of a farmer in a field working the ground
in the soil on this land, and all of a sudden,
what does he find? Well, title of my message is
Buried Treasure, for that is, in fact, exactly what's
on Paul's mind as he, in 2 Corinthians 4 verses
six and seven, our passage for today, says "for it
is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,
who has shown in our hearts--" look at this--
"to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure
in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power
may be of God and not of us." Father, I pray
just for a minute, as we just consider
these two verses and let them just roll
around in our hearts, I pray that you would
speak something new to us, show us something
different, help us to make sense of the madness
and oftentimes craziness of our lives, where
what we dreamed of is often very different from
what we're experiencing. And help us to see that, in
you, our life can make sense. In you, we can find the
fountains of living water that we can't find
out in this world. We pray for you just to open
up our eyes and our hearts. We pray for our lungs to expand
with fresh air and new life, and you to give us
a different kind of passion, perhaps, than
what we originally hoped for. Light us up, God, with
your light from above. We ask this in Jesus' name. And we all said together, amen. In this passage, what we
find is this statement-- this statement is true-- that just like that
farm in Colombia, the church, as seen
through God's eyes, is a place full of
buried treasure. Now, in the New Testament-- and
we've been kind of camped out on this idea-- we have these two
sister analogies used to explain the church. We have a structure
and we have soil. We have house and we have land. We have both the metaphor
of a building that's built full of living
stones, but we also have this metaphor
of land, where you and I are all parts of the
soil that are in this field. So we're living stones, but
we're also earthen vessels. That's what this passage says. We're God's home, yes. And that's how they
become connected, because yes, we're God's home. But listen, we are his
home made out of mud. Made out of earth. Now, in the most
literal sense, this is actually biologically true. If you look at what composes our
body, it is very much the same as the ground. And that's why we so
easily, after we die, we return ashes to ashes--
finish it with me if you know it-- and dust to dust. That's how we
started out, y'all. Talk about starting from
the bottom, now we're here. Genesis chapter two
puts it this way. "The Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground." You can picture him there,
gathering the dust into a pile. And then what did he do? "He breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life. And then man became a light--
a life-- a full of-- full-- a living being." All right. This is the hard words. It's got multiple
syllables, right? Pray for me. Now, if you could
have paused time-- and maybe you were an angel,
because there was no one else there to witness this moment. God had just finished
creating the world. He had just finished breathing
the Milky Way into formation, and all that he did in the
Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon and the Mariana Trench. I mean, just think
about all this. And he's finished this world. He's divided water
from land, and he's created all these
animals and birds of the air and fish of the sea. But now, he has turned
to what he has dubbed the crown jewel of creation. Not because we are more
powerful than the angels. No, we've been set a little
lower than the angels. But what caused us to be a
cut above was, out of all the things that God had it in
his mind to create in those six days, we were the
only thing that were trusted with the most
important thing that there is. We were made in God's image. Trusted with his likeness. And as he said, so to
speak, to all of creation. But now watch this. He began to pile
some dust together. And then if you would have
just looked right there and seen him stooped over with
this, all you would have seen is a pile of dust. But God looked longingly at it. And he would have explained,
I don't see a pile of dirt, I see a home for my breath. Dang. Wow. And so he breathed
into our nostrils, and so we rose, and so
we are, to this day, a home for God's breath. And that is true individually. It's even more so
true corporately. For as Jesus put it-- this
is Matthew chapter 18-- "where two or more are
gathered together in my name, I am there with
them in the midst." That's the power of the church. That's the power of our
gathering together to worship. That's the power of coming
together in small groups to have a cup of
coffee together, to talk about the
reality of life together, to commiserate when life
is awesome and terrible and something in between. That's the joy of life together. That's the joy of
serving together. That's the joy of
giving together. That's the joy of sacrifice. That's the joy of
all that we get to do planted in
the house of God. As earthen vessels turned
into living stones, all individually full
of the Holy Spirit, but coming together
somehow, some way able to experience the
transcendent glory, the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But it's a treasure we
have in earthen vessels. The irony, the interesting
thing about that is that that puts the
excellency and the power, all of the
superlatives go on what goes inside the container,
what goes inside the package. It's the Splenda you
want, not the paper. It's the drink you
want, not the straw. The canal is never the point. The pipe was never the point. All the pipes that went
when your house was plumbed, it was never about the pipes. You know, like, I'm gonna
have the best network of PVC anyone's ever seen. Great, you gonna get water? Nah. No, it's always about
what flows through you. You see, the emphasis
in this passage is never to make us feel
like we're a big deal. It's never about you. It's always about what God
wants to put in you, what God wants to do through you. You and I are still dirt. We're just piles of dirt. But we're dirt full
of God's breath. We're dirt full of God's power. We're dirt that God
has set his name upon. We're dirt that God's
given a commission to. We're dirt that he's called
to this dance of life with him and relationship with him and
community together with him. The power, the
excellency, the authority, it all comes from
what's inside us. We have this treasure
in earthen vessels. Y'all, it's buried treasure. It's treasure deep
down inside of us. The excellence is about what's
inside of us, and not about us. But I love the word
earthen vessels. Earthen. We have a treasure
of earthen vessels. Because it doesn't just
speak to our origin story, it doesn't just help us to be
emotionally set for end game because we saw Captain
America won and suffered through Red Skull, right? We're not just reminded
here of the Genesis account of mankind in this passage. What we're also given is a
picture of the need for us to come together, because
Paul intentionally picked a word that did not
speak fully of a vessel, but instead spoke of it as
its individual component. You see, the word for earthen
vessels in the original Greek would actually be better
translated as pot shard. Shard. Come on, turn to your
neighbor and say shard. Right? Its a great word, shard, right? A shard is a fracture. A shard is a broken
piece of pottery. In fact, in that
day, writing utensils were so expensive and
difficult to get your hands on, you could actually
write on a pot. And if a pot was
broken, they would never just throw the pieces away. They would always retain
the individual fragments. And that was what they used for
scrap paper back in the day, because you could write
on it for a little bit. So a broken pot, have no fear. And by the way, he had
lots of choices for pots that he would speak to. The pot that he chose was
their version of Tupperware. It was basically what
you'd throw olive oil in, you'd throw leftovers in, you'd
throw a little bit of wine in, you'd throw a little
bit of grain in. It was the kind of
utility workhorse pot that you have in that drawer
somewhere in your kitchen. And you're always
trying to figure out which lid goes on which one. And now there's nine
different brands and you're kind of frustrated
because someone brought something over at one
point, and it's not even in the Hefty brand. It's in the Tupperware brand. And how you seal them. And they all have a
secret place you've got to push to get them
to do a little burp. And then they seal good. You know what I'm talking about? So that's what-- when
he said earthen vessels, that's what he meant. But it's not even
the whole thing. It's just a piece of it. Yeah. So again, no one
loves the Tupperware, they love what they
put in the Tupperware. You love you some leftovers
like I love it, right? In the morning on
Black Friday, there's nothing better in the world than
some Thanksgiving leftovers, right? But the excellence
is never the vessel, it's what the vessel contains. Right. I want some sweet potatoes. I want some macaroni and cheese. You see what I'm saying? And so you think about
what he's saying, he's saying it's
not about us, it's about what goes inside of us. But it's not that
any of us can contain all of what God wants
to do through us, it's all of us coming together
like all the individual shards of pottery. God's written something on
you, written something on you, written something on you,
written something on me. And when we come together,
we can hold the power and the glory of God in a way
that we cannot by ourselves. Oh, I'm preaching so good on
a nine o'clock Sunday morning. [CLAPPING] So that's what this
passage is telling us. And that's how God wants
us to live transformed, mad about the house, realizing
and aware of the fact that we're meant to come
together as one to hold this buried treasure. The knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ that others
might see him as we all take our place as the shard. And when you leave
your shard unfilled, there's a hole in the pot
where you were meant to go. There's a leakiness
to the pot where you were meant to be
there serving in that spot prayer-wise,
serving in that spot through taking your
place in our fast when it comes at the
beginning of the year, serving in sacrificial
giving, serving in faithful,
continual generosity, serving rostered on the team,
serving in that small group so someone else can come into
that group and hear that story. How touched were you? Everything changed when someone
said, would you go to coffee, I care about what
the crap's going on-- I mean, just give me a break. Give me five minutes to
have a ugly cry for a second up in here, because that's
the power of a cup of coffee. So let me ask you
this question-- who are you not providing that for? Who's not provide-- you
see what I'm saying? Let's not fill-- let's not leave
our part of the pot undone. Let's be the shard. Come on, be the shard. Fill the place. [CLAPPING] We have this treasure
in earthen vessels. So once you get that, once that
revelation snaps into place, what happens? It changes the way
you speak, number one. It'll change the way you
speak about the church. I think it's real
easy to get flippant and, you know, it
happens all the time. And I don't mean any disrespect
at all, but I meet people a lot of times who are super
excited about now they go to our church. And they feel somehow
their obligation is to spend the first
few minutes maybe running their mouth
down on the last couple churches they went to
and what they didn't do, that's why they're here. And I just always
have to just really, as respectfully as I can, say
we speak so well of that church, hope it's well. If God called you here, great,
but that's not our spirit, that's not our heart,
that's not our mentality. But just as often,
as I'm meeting people and they'll be then telling me
why they don't go to our Church anymore and this and that. And I'm just telling
you something. Here's how I speak
about the Church. This is the bride of Jesus. This is the bride of Jesus. So if I'm going to
talk about the Church-- a gathering full of people
who are honoring Christ-- I am going to see that-- I'm going to speak about
that as the bride of Christ. And that is a real
forgiving lens. Why? Because what does a bride wear? What does a bride wear? A bride wears
something like that. Now that's my wife 15 years
ago on our wedding day. And dear God, Lord
Jesus, have mercy. If he didn't just spoil me
like crazy with His grace from above that He would
trust me with such an angel as Jennifer Lusko to let
be my wife and be my bride and let me serve her
these last 15 years. I just want to thank God
in the presence of you all for this woman. All right. Now someone told me to take a
mental picture when she shows up at the top of the aisle. And so I did. I don't have to look at that
picture to see that picture. I can see that. It is burned into the
deepest parts of my soul-- my wife on this day-- when now
I saw this one that I would come together with and be one with
and serve with and love with and dream with
and cry with and-- take it away. It's too much. I can't look at that anymore. All right. So here's the reality. As good as my wife looks in
a wedding dress that day, God sees you as the
Church every day. No, I don't think you got it. You'd be in a fetal position
crying because of that love. It is too much for you. You don't have it. So here's what
I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say,
on your worst day. On your first day
in your bathing suit after a long winter day. When you're like, oh Jesus. This is not good, right? On that day, God sees
you as the bride wearing white on her wedding day. And you have to realize,
the wedding dress-- my wife looks great in
everything she wears. So everything I'm about to say
has nothing to do with her. All right? The wedding dress is the
single most forgiving garment that's ever been invented
and it was for a reason. Everyone looks good
in a wedding dress. I heard a pastor one time
say, even Dennis Rodman looked good in a
wedding dress, right? You think about it, it's true. Like, dang. Right? That's incredible. So why? Because it doesn't show you
what you really look like. It makes you look like an angel. Right? What is it? It's like the shape of a bell. And it's got a train that goes
sometimes 12 yards, right? And there's lace involved. And it's so overpoweringly
glowy that you can't help but be like, there's a radiance. You're just shining. No, she's just wearing
a wedding dress, right? No, there's a special
angel kiss on brides. Or it's the dress, right? I don't know. Which is it? Both. But that's the point. And the reality is we
picked this garment to enhance the aura
of that moment. And it's not for no
reason that God says, when He pictures the Church,
He sees a bride adorned as a woman on her wedding day. And what Jesus is
saying, is my heart leaps when I think about you gathering
together to worship me. My heart leaps when I think-- So what does He think
about the Church? Is He like, oh. Well, you did this
last Thursday. And you missed last-- no. He's like the bride
on our wedding day. It covers over the
multitude of sin. So how are we going to
speak about the Church? As the bride of Christ. I love this Church. I love the gatherings,
imperfect as they are. They're covered in
a wedding dress. There's a beauty to it. There's a joy to it. What else do we have? The Church is God's plan
A to save the world. And there is no plan
B. It was the cross. That's the hope of humanity. It's the empty tomb. And now He's trusted
that message to us all. Now the angels,
quite frankly, don't know what He's doing sometimes. You did what? After all this, you
came, you died, you rose, you gave the message to who? We had done so much
better of a job. Why would you give it to them? They're just a pile of dirt. And God says, that's
a home for my breath. Be careful who
you're talking about. That's the bride of Christ. It's been trusted to us. We have this treasure
in earthen vessels. So how we're going to
speak about the Church? With gratitude. How are we going to
speak about the Church? We're going to choose to do
what I do when my wife and I are in a fight. I remember her on
our wedding day. And even when I'm frustrated. Even when I'm frazzled. Even when she's frazzled. When I'm wrong, when
she's-- that's the moment. It's remember the joys. Go back to the beginning. It's do the first things. I see her as the bride
on her wedding day. I don't treat her like
I want to in the moment. I treat her like that woman
deserves to be treated. And she does the same. And that's the service,
together honoring Jesus. It changes the game. And that spirit needs to
infect the local Church. I don't got ears to
hear someone talking bad about the bride of Jesus. You go, come on, Jesus, yes. Church, no. Really? Tell me how that
conversation is going to go. Jesus, thanks for
everything you did. Love you. By the way, hate your wife. Right? Your relationship can't
do well when you hate the thing He loves the most. What is Jesus passionate about? Building His Church. Using His Church. Changing the world
through His Church. Come on, who's thankful
for the local Church? Who's thankful for
Fresh Life Church? I'm thankful for it. I love it. My life's been blessed by it. It's what I'm going
to give my life to. I believe that God is using us. We're messed up. Yep. We're full of sinners. Totally. But let's build it. Let's be mad about the house. All right. OK. So that's how we're
going to speak about it. And that's also going to
drive how we sacrifice for it. I'm going to sacrifice for it. When you're building
a house, you just know it's going to be expensive. And you just know-- if you talk
to some people on our teams, some people in our lives who
maybe just built a house. And they're so excited because
they got that down payment. They worked hard for it. And when you're
building something, you have this
long-term mentality that we're doing
something big here. And so we'll get Dave
Ramsey for a second. We're going to live
like no one else. Right? Eventually, we'll
give like no one else. And in the meantime,
we're not going out to eat like anybody else, right? There's things you do. And when you have something
in your heart and mind, you sacrifice for it. And sacrifice always
makes sense in the context of a bigger picture-- in the context of a
bigger perspective. So what is that that we're-- as a Church-- all
willing to sacrifice for. Not only through the
regular generosity-- to our regular tithes that keep
the ministry going, but also the ongoing as we can--
as God blesses us. And God would
speak to our hearts with spurts of radical
sacrificial generosity, both planned and the
spontaneous variety. Why would we do that? Because in our
mind, we're always hoping for that bigger picture. Which is what? Legacy. Legacy. Not just the
ministry we're doing, the ministry we're
not doing yet. We're not going, wow. That's great. We got a prison
Church in Deer Lodge and we've seen
hundreds of inmates give their lives to Jesus. Because we go, what
about the prisons we don't have Church in? You don't have a heart for
the state prison in Oregon? What about the one in Utah? We don't have a ministry
mentality for Wyoming? Doesn't our heart
burn for the locations we haven't opened yet? I was having dinner
with some friends and I told them that one of the
things that I would joke with is Fresh Life San Diego. Fresh Life San Diego. What about San Diego? We're trying to build leaders
because what about Fresh Life San Diego? Which not only am I going
to apply as the campus pastor for that one when it
comes, but the mentality for us is never about what we're doing. It's what we haven't
yet done yet. It's a legacy. It's a bigger picture. It's a perspective to expand. We're always in a perpetual
state of addition. We need to create more
bandwidth and margins and raise up more
leaders and all of us give more so that we can do the
ministry we're not yet doing. Well, this Church is so big. Really? It's a tiny Church. There's like 8 billion
people in this world and we only get 70
years to reach them all. So what are we doing? There's not a moment to lose. We've got to have the
spirit of sacrifice so there can be legacy. Do you know there's only
two places in the world to see hippopotamuses
is in the wild? Two. One is Africa. The other is South America. Because Pablo
Escobar built a zoo. And he had elephants and he had
rhinos and all kind of animal. That when the
Colombian government seized his zoo-- his lands, they
turned over most of the animals to the Colombian Zoo. But there were
four hippopotamuses they didn't know what to do
with and the zoo had no way to contain them and so they
decided to just let them free. Flash forward almost 30
years, and there are-- what's described by some as-- a bomb waiting to explode in
the hippopotamus crisis of South America. Because their populations
are expanding. They've been found as
far as 100 miles away from where they were
originally let go. They have no natural predator. Where in Africa,
as young kids, they could be eaten by a
lion or a crocodile. In South America, there are
no such things so they thrive. In Africa, there's natural
rhythms and cycles of drought that keep the
population in check. There's no such drought
in South America. And so basically, the
conditions under which they live has been described
as a hippo heaven. And all of these hippos are
living their best life now. Hashtag. Right? So you have now what is going
to be quickly escalating and spiraling into
a habitat shift. And they say it could wipe out
the manatees, but don't worry. If we just turn back
to plastic straws, I think we could
kill the hippos. So here's what's crazy. The ultimate, long-term
legacy of Pablo Escobar might be the introduction
of hippos to South America. It may be too late. It may be a thing where they
eventually-- ultimately-- are dominating in
that entire continent. So here's my question to you. What will be said of us
30 years after we're dead? Because it's coming. There's going to be a day when
we've been dead for 30 years. And all I'm saying is, let's
live so that we did something and built something so that
our great-grandchildren might be reached by those who
are part of the work that were reached under our watch. Let's dig deeper. Let's build a little bit more. Let's give a little
bit more with a spirit of sacrificial generosity so
there might be the legacy. I don't want the
story of my life to just be the story of hippos. I want to reach some
people for Christ. Sacrifice. This also will change
how we handle setbacks. Talk about a house? You know what I've learned
about building a house? There are setbacks. It takes longer. It costs more. This is anecdotal at this point. Right? People always say to me,
you know it takes longer? And I'm like, yeah. It probably costs more, too. Yeah, it costs more. And then, hey-- Setbacks. It's a real thing. You start out and
you're like, oh, man. We're going to do the
granite countertops. We're going to--
no expense spared. We're going to do this
and this and this. By the end, you like,
how much does that cost? I didn't say we wanted. No, we don't want that. Get rid of that. No, we can't do that. Right? Setbacks. Setbacks. It gets crazy. [INAUDIBLE] how far you can be
from the sidewalk because that can be an issue too. What are the setbacks? Oh, we didn't think
about the setbacks. And all of these
things come into play. And there's difficulties. And guess what? I don't know if you know this,
but when you build the Church, there are setbacks also. It doesn't always go
according to plan. There's difficulties. There's hiccups. There's glitches. In what we're doing
and changing lives-- in what we're doing together
in seeing the knowledge of the glory of God and
the face of Jesus Christ-- It'd be great if He trusted
it to China vessels. It'd be great if He trusted
it to ceramic vessels. But He had to have the gall to
trust it to earthen vessels. And do you know what
dirty people do? Dirty things. This just in. As a result, we
get disappointed. And that's a good thing,
believe it or not. At least that's what
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said. He said-- and he put
it better than I did. He said this. "Church is a place where
our dreams are shattered. And that is a good thing." Why? Because all of us
come into Church with different expectations,
whether they're realistic or not. Of how we're going
to be treated. How we'll advance
through the ranks. Perhaps what songs will be sung. The style of communication
or the methods that are used to convey the message. And here's the interesting
thing that I've discovered. They are almost always-- the ones that are
most appropriate-- are whatever ones were being
utilized the day you got saved. Whatever it was that touched
you is what always should be done to reach someone new. In your mind. Why? Because we are ultimately-- just
take us with a grain of salt-- selfish. But here's a little
tidbit for us all. The bait is never for
the fish in the boat. It's always for the
ones still in the water. Newsflash, all
denominations ever. Right? The style of accomplishing the
job of getting the message out as fishers of men should
never be with a mentality of what do those people-- It should always be a
mentality of keeping it fresh. Keeping it current
with style and culture to reach and communicate
an unchanging gospel to an ever-changing
world and society. And so the setbacks
come when style changes. And well, you know-- whatever it is. And so all of sudden,
our dreams are shattered. But Dietrich says
that's a good thing. Why? Because only then, when
our false expectations are punctured, are we
poised and positioned to actually receive
the grace of God in the goodness of each other. Because in the reality of the
nitty-gritty of life together and the friction and
the sparks at times, there we are poised to actually
experience a powerful move of the Holy Spirit. Or as Paul put it
in the same chapter that we've been reading. This idea of being hard-pressed,
he says, on every side, experiencing every
kind of pressure, but we'll discover
we're not crushed. Look at this. At times we don't
know what to do but quitting is not an option. We are persecuted by others,
but God has not forsaken us. We may be knocked
down, but guess what? We are not out. We continually
share in the death of Jesus in our own bodies
so that the Resurrection life of Jesus will be revealed
through our humanity. We have this treasure
in earthen vessels. The humanness of us all is at
times what causes us to say, you know what? Forget it. I'll just go find
a different Church. Or I'm just giving up on Church. But that's quitting. And what He says is
quitting's not an option. And when we-- instead of
running away and going to find someone who will
pour honey into our ears and tell us what
we want to hear. When we actually double
down and bear down on the discomfort and the
difficult conversations and the reality of
doing life together. And we keep serving and keep
going and keep dreaming. Then-- when our dreams
are shattered-- can we actually experience
the grace of God in the midst of our humanity. And watch God's spirit
move in a powerful way-- in a vibrant way-- even at times
through dysfunctional people. And that's the
power and capacity that can be seen and
experienced in the local Church. Like nowhere else
can it be seen. And so that's how
we face setbacks. We face setbacks
knowing-- listen to me. There's gold in the walls. And there's treasure
in the attic. Buried treasure. We just need to get to it. We need to fight for it. We need to keep going,
believing it's there. Believing something's possible. When we're hurt, we're
going to work through it in a healthy way. We're going to pray. We're going to serve. We're going to repent. We're going to keep
going, keep dreaming. There's gold in these walls. I'm telling you, you
are an earthen vessel that contains the knowledge
of the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ. There's leadership gold in you. There's something that could
unlock something for you at business. I believe that. There's a God
dream in your heart that when you're
poised and positioned as a son or daughter of
the house, all of a sudden it can shift in what takes
place outside of the house. There's gold in the walls. There's treasure in the attic. It wasn't five years
ago that I read in the news of this couple that
was frustrated one day to find their roof was leaking. Ugh. Ugh-- You didn't go with me. Ugh. Right? So they opened the
door they'd never opened before in their house. It had always been locked
since they lived there. Inside was a rare
Caravaggio painting. An Italian masterpiece estimated
to be worth over $136 million. They never would have gotten to
the treasure had there not been the leaky ceiling. So the leaks and the breaks and
the fights and the falling out. If we don't quit but
instead if we double down, they're the opportunity to
discover the masterpiece that God has in mind
for making of us all. Do you receive it? Say "amen" if you do. Don't leave me alone up here
all excited because man, my cup's running over. All right. We're going to be done in
just a second, but lastly-- none of the three things
that I just told you-- setbacks and sacrifice
and how we speak-- can happen if it's not
for the way we see. If this doesn't change
the way we see our Church. If it doesn't change
the way we see the soil. And I'm going to
close by telling you how I came to write the
sermon of buried treasure. I was in my neighborhood
and I noticed that there was a new
house being constructed. And I watched a
woman park a minivan and get out of her vehicle
and delicately step over all sorts of debris and
rubble and construction stuff. And this woman-- I don't even know why
she was doing this walk. It seemed like she was floating. She seemed like a bride
on her wedding day. I'm not joking you. And I was just stopped dead
in my tracks watching her with her phone start taking
pictures of the dirt. And I looked and I'm like,
is there a shape in it? Is it a cloud? What is-- And man, she just looked
at this photograph and then she's just taking more. And all of a sudden I
realized this is a homeowner. She had finished
her day of work. And so now she's come by to
see what they did that day. And I almost got-- my eyes started almost
leaking for a second when I was watching
her watch the dirt. And God just spoke to my heart. Levi, she doesn't
see what you see. You see dirt. She sees where her
grandchildren are going to play. You see scaffolding and mulch. She sees sleepovers
and Saturday brunch. You see nothing but excavation. She sees a place where her
family's going to entertain. She sees a place where
her and her husband are going to sit on the
porch and drink tea and watch the kids play. She sees a home. All you see is mess. You see, everything changes
when you're mad about the house.
