The Treasure We've Lost

Lord, we just come before you right now and we do in fact pray to you that you would be our vision. We pray, Lord, that You would just continue to help us to be a people who behold you and to see you, Lord, with clarity through the eyes of faith. Lord, we thank you for all of the presentations thus far. We thank you for, your word being preached to us and now as we anticipate one final message from Milton Vincent, we ask Lord for your blessing upon him as he breaks open to us the bread.

of life. We pray, Lord, that You would help him to minister your word to us, Lord, in the power of the Spirit and with much conviction, Lord, we pray that You would open our hearts to receive what it is that you have for us, Lord, and we pray too, Lord, that the The messages that have been presented in this conference, Lord, would have an effect on us. We think about what Seth said, just the exhortation, to not just hear the word, but to actually do it, to not walk by, the, the, the man injured on the side of the road, but to actually step up and to do something, Lord, help us, Lord, to have faith that works, Lord, just so move in us and work in us and motivate us and give us passion and desire and give to us a sense of what you want for us to do for the greater cause of the kingdom of God and we pray, Father, that as Pastor Milton comes before us to minister the word that you would use even what he says to accomplish that in our lives, we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Well, it's been my privilege and you may be seated.

It's been my privilege to introduce to you all of the speakers over the course of the day, and it's my privilege as well to introduce to you Pastor Milton Vincent. The one thing that distinguishes him From all of the other speakers is that he is My pastor And When I think about that, I think about the fact that the day will come. When I stand before Christ, and I behold Him face to face. And I will Have been glad.

That God gave to me, this man. As my pastor. I've been at Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church since '93. and those are That's a, that's a fairly lengthy period of time.

And, and I'm just glad to introduce to you Pastor Milton Vincent. Thanks, bro. Appreciate it, man. Thank you, Carlos.

I hear that and I, I can't help but think of all the ways that I have failed over the years and even could have been a better pastor to, to you, Carlos, but thank you for that and I've seen this brother go through many ups and downs over the years and, God is just doing a wonderful work of grace in him, and it's been a joy to be a part of that and witness that. And Carlos, we wanna thank you for your leadership and all the work you've done in putting this conference together, for us.

And he'll probably say this later, but, this, something like this is the result of the work of many people, not just, Carlos, and I know he would feel that and probably will share that, a little bit, later. But I wanna thank you also for being here, you choosing to be here at a Get together like this over this long of a period of time and to hear essentially 5 hours of lectures on some of the topics that we're trying to engage.

I think your presence here today says a lot about you and I hope you feel like you have been well served with the time that you've invested here today and I'm, I'm blessed to be your brother and to be able to serve, you, for this, final session. I will say that a handful of people from Cornerstone are pretty excited about being able to rate me. And I don't, I don't know how to read their enthusiasm. But, that could be good or bad.

I was talking to someone just a little bit before this session and I wanted to look up something and so I just grabbed someone's, packet that was seated over there and I looked at it and I saw that they had already raided me. as very satisfied they had checked. So that's pretty amazing. If, if I'm that satisfying of a communicator before I even get up, so.

I will draw great encouragement from that. I, what I wanna do with this session essentially is just marinade in the good news of the gospel. And we, I've appreciated all of the speakers and the ways that they have really tied the gospel in, not just as an add-on, but really making it central to, to what they have communicated to us on the various topics that they have addressed. But what we'll do in this session is virtually from beginning to end, just, just enjoy the glories of the gospel.

And if you're a believer, rejoice in this. And if you are here today and you're asking questions about, about God and about how to be made right with Him, And you're checking things out. I hope that this message would be a help to you as well. I wanna speak to you on the subject of the treasure we've lost and how it's found.

And let me start off by showing you a picture of my dad. this is my dad around the time that, that I was born and that's why he's not smiling. No. My dad was a Marine for 20 years and he served during his career 3 tours of duty in Vietnam.

And so 3 years of my life, he was in Vietnam serving our country for an average length of 12 months each of those tours. he left for one of his tours in Vietnam when I was 18 months old. while he was gone, I apparently forgot that I had a dad. Because when he returned 12 months later, I did not know who this strange man was showing up in our house.

And kissing on my mom and trying to act all fatherly toward me. it took me a week, but eventually I was like, hey, I got a dad. And began to warm up to him. When my dad returned from Vietnam a later tour in Vietnam, my sister, who was 4 years younger than me, she experienced the same thing that I had only to a greater Degree.

When my dad returned from that tour, my little sister eyed him with suspicion. She did not know who this man was and she wanted nothing to do with him for an entire month. My dad did everything that he could to woo her to himself. He would smile at her, but she would not smile back.

He would try to hold her. And she would push him away. He would try to play with her, but she did not want to play with him. He would buy candy for her on his way home from work, and he would bring that candy home and give it to her, but she would not even touch the candy from my dad.

This went on for a full month. And my tough marine dad cried himself to sleep on a few of those nights. It was tough for him having a child who had forgotten about him and who did not know who he was. Eventually though, my sister's memory kicked in.

And she became convinced that this man was her dad, and after that, she was a daddy's girl. From then on, But here's my point and here's why I start with this, this afternoon. During my dad's absence in Vietnam, my sister and I were losing out on something very important. But we reached a point where we lost sight of what that precious thing was that we were living without, so much so that when my dad returned, we weren't sure.

If we wanted anything to do with him. We needed to be helped and fortunately, my dad was patient. He gave us space, he loved us, and my mom and dad helped us to learn to relate to this father of ours. The same is true for people the world over.

All of us in this room, everyone. In this riverside community and beyond, everyone around the globe has suffered a terrible loss. They're living without something absolutely vital. We have lost something, and I'm speaking mankind in general.

We have lost something deep. And profound and ancient. And that is relationship with our Father, God. This is the greatest treasure of all, a relationship with our Heavenly Father, and this is what I wanna talk to you about in this session.

I wanna talk to you about the treasure that we've lost and how it is found. There's a lot of lies and deceptions that are being spoken in our culture today. If we are to regain the treasure that we have lost, we need the truth, truth from God's word. And with the time we have in this session, I just wanna share with you 6 truths from God's word that will help us to comprehend the treasure that we've lost and how it is found.

Truth number one, and you can follow along with me in your notes. We were created by God to experience His glory. We were created by God to experience His glory. The very first words of the Bible are in the beginning, God.

The Bible never tries to prove the existence of God. God is just there from the beginning, long before mankind comes onto the scene. The Bible never tries to convince us that God exists. Instead, the Bible simply tells us that deep down, every person already knows that God exists.

And regarding this God, the Bible tells us that God created man. God created man, Genesis 1:27, which means that we human beings are not the product of random evolutionary chance. We are created by the wonderful creative handiwork of God. You are alive on this planet because God thought you up and brought you into existence.

In Genesis chapter one, the writer of Genesis tells us that God created man in His image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female, he created them. So according to the Bible, you are created by God in the very image of God. This means that in some very meaningful and unique ways, you were created by God to reflect the glory.

of God who created you. According to the Bible, mankind is the only part of God's creation that was created in the image of God. God did not create the sun or the moon in his image. He did not create any of the animals in his image.

He did not create the stars of heaven in his image, even though all of these entities greatly display his glory, but he created you. And me in his image. This means that as an image bearer of God, you have more glory inside of you than there is in all of the sun. Which is 27 million degrees at its core and over a million kilometers in diameter.

There is no doubt that the sun is a wonder of God's great creation. Yet the sun in all of its glory was not created in the image of God like you were. You reflect the glory of God in greater ways than the sun or even the brightest of the stars in the heavens. As one writer says, and I love this, this is R.

Kent Hughes, who says, though you could travel 100 times the speed of light past countless yellow orange stars to the edge of the galaxy and swoop down to the fiery glory located a few 100 light years below the plane of the Milky Way. Though you could slow to examine the host of hot young stars luminous among the gas and dust, though you could observe close up the protostars poised to burst forth from their dusty cocoons, though you could witness a star's birth in all your stellar journeys, you would never see anything equal to the wonder of a human being.

It's so true. The Bible teaches that you were created in the image of God, to bear God's image, to walk in relationship with Him, and to abide in His love and to reflect and display his glory.

You were created for a love relationship with God, a relationship. In which God crowns you with glory. And in which you glorify Him at every turn. With all of this being true about you, I'm here to tell you today that you are royalty.

You are royalty in a way that far surpasses any honor that anyone on earth could ever give to you. You are royalty with an honor given to you by the God of the universe who created you in His image. This is your original pedigree as a human being and it makes you worthy of respect. Speaking of God's honoring of mankind.

The ancient songwriter says to God in Psalm 8, You, God, have crowned him, speaking of mankind, with glory and majesty. You have made him to rule over the works of your hands. You have put all things. Under his feet.

You see, the Bible presents a wonderfully exalted view of mankind, far higher, far more exalted than anything that an atheistic non-theistic worldview could ever engender. Speaking to the graduating class at Rutgers University back in May of this year, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who himself is an agnostic, describes himself in this way. Listen to this agnostic's description of himself. This is as high as he can go.

In his thoughts about himself. I am a speck on a speck, orbiting a speck in the middle of deep spacey specklessness. I don't matter at all. But then I think, wait.

I have a brain and I can imagine all of this. That is wonderful. That is remarkable, that is venerable, worthy of respect. All that Bill Nye the Science Guy can say to you is, as a product of evolution, You have a brain, and you can think great thoughts, and for that reason, you are worthy of respect.

Compare this view of mankind to the view of Christianity. The Bible says you are a royal being created by God to be an image bearer of God and to enjoy and to reflect this glory of the God who created you. If you want to understand the treasure that has been lost and how it is found, this is a great place to start, to understand that you were created by God, to reflect. The glory of God.

But there's another truth that we need to understand if we wish to know the treasure that we've lost and how it is found, and that is that we have sinned and refused to glorify God. We have sinned and refuse to glorify God. In Romans 3:23, the Bible says, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul isn't saying, now, I'm just speaking personally as a Christian here.

I think that I have sinned. but I'm not gonna tell everyone else what to think. No, he's speaking of all of mankind. All have sinned.

That's the truth. And falls short of the glory of God. The essence of mankind's sin is described in Romans chapter 1, verse 21, where the text says, even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, and that's the beginning of the downward spiral. That is described in Romans one.

This refusal to fulfill our purpose and glorify God is the essence of our sin. I know that unfortunately, it is not fashionable nowadays to talk about sin. and we're paying a huge price as a culture for this refusal to use the word sin. Removing the word sin from our vocabulary has not made us more enlightened as a culture.

Actually, it's made us dumber. And more dangerous as a culture and there's actually a growing number of thinkers who are recognizing this fact. David Brooks, the New York Times op ed columnist. is not a Christian yet, but he finds himself warming more and more toward Christian doctrine.

In recent months, he has bemoaned the loss of words like sin from our vocabulary today, and he believes that our society is left impoverished as a result of the omission of the use of a word like sin. In his most recent book entitled Road to Character, he basically argues that you will never be able to improve as a human being unless you begin to use words like sin. He says in his book, sin is a necessary piece of our mental furniture. No matter how hard we strive to replace sin with non-moral words like mistake or error or weakness, that doesn't make life any less moral.

It just means that we have obscured the inescapable moral core of life with shallow language. It just means that we think and talk about these choices less clearly. And thus become increasingly blind to the moral stakes of everyday life. This is not some Christian preacher speaking.

David Brooks sounds almost like an Old Testament prophet when he says in the same book, today the word sin has lost its power and awesome intensity. And he argues that the word sin needs to be reclaimed by our culture. Brooks is a man who sees our society's moral fabric breaking down and no one seems to have the vocabulary to be able to quantify what we're witnessing today. Even this past week after Chris Harper Mercer shot and killed several students this past week at a community college up in Oregon.

The most that our president could say about the shooter's actions is that they reflect some sickness. In his mind and that he has a mental illness. You really see. The poverty of our vocabulary today when we're faced with great evils.

People, there's no way to describe it. If you take words like sin out of our vocabulary. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker is certainly right when he says that the plight of the modern person is that he is a sinner with no word for it. A sinner with no word for it.

What guys like Ernest Becker and David Brooks are coming back to is the ancient wisdom that is found in the Bible. The Bible renders us an invaluable service when it confronts us and tells us what we don't want to hear. And that is that our fundamental problem is that we are sinners who have sinned. Are you willing to be humble and let God speak to you about your sin?

Are you willing to let God get in your face and say, you have sinned? What is sin? The word sin means to miss the mark. That God has created us to hit.

And telling us that we have missed the mark, the Bible is not telling us that we aimed at the right mark and we just fell a little short or we missed the bull's eye. It means that we turned in the opposite direction of the right target and we aimed at another target of our own choosing in the opposite direction. We missed the right mark because we weren't even aiming at the right mark. We chose another mark instead.

And the mark that we have missed is a love relationship with God. A relationship in which we love God with all of our being and walk in His love for us, and in which we love our neighbor as ourselves. We didn't wanna do that, we didn't like that mark, so we turned in the opposite direction and we aimed at another mark instead. That's what the Bible means when it says that we have missed the mark.

In Isaiah 53:6, the prophet Isaiah says, all we like sheep have gone astray, and the idea is all of us like sheep have gone astray from the shepherd. There's a relationship there. There's a shepherd in this picture, and we have gone astray away from the shepherd, and each of us has turned. To his own way That's what sin is.

Sin is going our own way away from God. It is rejecting a relationship with God and going our own way apart from Him. You see, separation from God is not merely the consequence of sin. It is the essence of sin.

Sin is separating ourselves from God's thinking and choosing to think our own way. It is separating ourselves from God's commandments. And choosing to behave according to our own will, it is separating ourselves from God as the great love of our lives and replacing him with anything or anyone else in that supreme place of love. Sin is anything we do wherein we separate ourselves from God and live apart from a relationship with Him.

Sin is not simply breaking a rule or breaking a law. sometimes people talk about sin as if that's all it is. A man committing adultery on his wife is not simply guilty of breaking one of his wife's rules. Sin is disrespecting God and breaking faith with him.

It is choosing to live separately from the one who created us and who loves us. To every person in this room, I can say to you that God created you. He created every organ in your body. He gives you every one of the 20,000 breaths that you breathe.

Every day. He gives you every one of your 100,000 heartbeats every single day, along with sustaining the function of every single organ in your body. He gives your body 2 million red blood cells every single second. Think about, just look at your skin for a moment.

Just mark out just one square inch. Of your skin. On your forearm or what have you. In every square inch of your skin, God has put 9 ft of blood vessels.

600 pain sensors, 36 heat sensors, 75 pressure sensors, 134 yards of nerves and 9000 nerve endings. God dotes upon you guys. Upon you and me, and he lavishes his kindness on us in a million ways every second over every square inch of our bodies in ways that are impossible for us to even count. What thoughtfulness is required?

To just construct one square inch of your skin. In Psalm 139:17, the ancient songwriter says, how precious are your thoughts to me, oh God, how vast is the sum of them. If I were to number them, they would outnumber the sand. Think about how many grains of sand there are on Earth.

That was alluded to. In an earlier session this morning, I'll just put the number on the screen here. that's an approximation. I have no way of knowing whether that's accurate or not.

That's like 7 quintillion, 500 quadrillion. Grains of sand. And the psalmist. is saying, God, you have thought more thoughts about me than all of the grains of sand on earth.

That's how many thoughts God has thought about you. This is the God we sin against. The Bible says in him you live, and you move and you have your being, whether you recognize it or acknowledge God or not. And at the same, the same God has revealed his will to you through his written word and through your conscience, so that you can know His loving will and walk in relationship with Him.

And do right by other people that you interact with day by day, and you and I sin every time we choose to rebel against this God and rebel against his love and go our own way. In Romans 3:23, Paul gives us this diagnosis of the diagnosis of the human condition. This is the explanation of the mess that we're in and that our world is in, all have sinned. All have sinned, and you will never be able to lead a wise life until you're willing to face yourself squarely.

And agree with God. And say, yes, I agree, God, I have sinned. I have sinned against God. This is a distinguishing mark of a Christian.

The distinguishing mark of a Christian is not that he's better than other people and that he's never sinned. No, the mark of a Christian is that he has stepped forward and says, I have sinned. But our admission should go one step further. We need to recognize that we have sinned, but we also need to recognize if we wanna know the treasure we've lost and how it's regained, we need to Understand The loss of something that we are suffering right now as a result of our sin, and that brings me to the 3rd truth, and that is that we suffer the lack of God's glory because of sin.

We suffer the lack of God's glory because of sin. It's interesting in Romans 3:23, Paul says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Literally, this verse is all have sinned in the past and as a result are continuously suffering the lack. Of the glory of God.

Paul tells us what we've done, we've sinned. He tells us the condition that we're suffering right now. We're suffering from the lack of the glory of God. In fact, in Luke 15:14, Jesus tells the story of a young man who took his father's inheritance and wasted it all on prostitutes and partying.

Jesus then says, now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he suffered lack. And that expression suffered lack is the same Greek word that is found in Romans 3:23. He spent his money and as a result, he suffered lack. The idea is he began to suffer the lack of needful things, needed things.

We have exactly the same construct in Romans 3:23. We have sinned and as a result of our sin, we're now suffering from the lack of something valuable and needful, and that valuable, needful thing is the glory of God. Paul is saying there's a glory that we need, yet there is a glory that we have lost. We have lost this glory, and presently we're suffering greatly from the lack of the glory of God.

And the reason for this lack is that we have sinned. Adam and Eve Were the first humans that God created. When they were first created, they were far more glorious creatures than you and I are today. They were created in a perfect world.

It was their privilege to walk with God and enjoy a relationship with him and the lavish provision of the Garden of Eden. God had provided for them. He had given them remarkable abilities to carry out His will to exercise their dominion over the earth. Think about how intelligent Adam must have been freshly created from the hand of God in a perfect world with a perfect mind.

Saint Augustine speculated and said that the intelligence of Adam prior to the fall exceeds our intelligence today by the same measure that our intelligence today exceeds that of a worm. Adam and Eve were incredible specimens, physically and intellectually. And yet, their greatest glory was the ability to have a relationship with God and to walk with Him day by day. They were suffering no lack of the glory of God.

And God was bountifully loving them and providing for them with lavish provision at every turn. But Adam and Eve, according to the Bible, were not content with the glory of God that was theirs. They were deceived by the devil and wanting to be like God, and so they took and they ate from the fruit of the tree that God had told them not to eat from. They sought thereby to elevate themselves and become like God, apart from God.

And in sinning, they lost the glory that they had. Which was the ability to live forever and to walk in relationship with God. They were expelled from the Garden of Eden and ever since, everyone is born into this world in a condition of suffering. We've all As one painter of the last century said, I think his name is Mike Rothko, we all are inheritors of a grief that started long before we showed up.

The condition that we suffer from is that of separation from God. The ability to walk with God and enjoy a face to face relationship with God was man's greatest glory, and this glory was lost because of sin, and we have sinned and we are suffering the lack of this glory, the world over. When you look at yourself in the mirror, some of you might be impressed by what you see. But the truth is you are not.

What you were intended to be. You are a part of a race of people who have suffered a great loss. Something deep, something profound, something truly wonderful, something ancient has been lost, and the thing that we've lost is the glory of God, that ability to relate to God. This is why we age and die.

This is why you hurt. This is why You are always thirsty for something more, no matter what you get. You're still thirsty. Most people The world over sense this loss, but they don't know what the loss is that they're suffering from.

They're suffering, but they don't know exactly what it is that they are suffering the loss of. The Bible tells us that God has put eternity in our hearts and because of this, we sometimes hear echoes and whispers of what we once had, but we don't know exactly what that thing is that has been lost. We just know that we were destined for something that we don't have. Jim Doman in an earlier session talked about how he tried to fill the void.

He used that language. Through His sexual relationships. Tennis champion Boris Becker. said I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player.

I was rich. I had all the material possessions I needed. But I had no inner peace. The beautiful Sophia Loren of Hollywood fame once said in an interview that yes, she had attained to everything she wanted in life, but she said, in my life, there is an emptiness that is impossible to fulfill.

Tom Brady has been to 6 Super Bowls. He's a shoo-in to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the first year that he is eligible. He has everything, good looks, athletic prowess, money, a beautiful wife, millions of fans, plenty of money, 4 Super Bowl rings, and footballs inflated to his liking. In the days leading up to his appearance in his 4th Super Bowl, he was being interviewed on the 60 Minutes program.

And was talking about this thirst that drives him. And listen to what he said about his thirst for something greater than what he had achieved up to that point of his life. He said this, why do I have 3 Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? maybe a lot of people would say, hey man, this is what it is.

I've reached my dream, my goal, my life is great. But me, I think, God, it's got to be more than this. Tom Brady's confession just hung. In the air between him and the interviewer, he just admitted that something is eluding him that he can't quite capture.

The interviewer asked him the question that many viewers were asking him in that moment, he asked Tom Brady this question, what's the answer? And Tom Brady said, I wish I knew I wish I knew You see, the Bible tells us what Tom Brady is missing. Tom Brady is suffering from the lack of the glory of God. And 100 perfect seasons and 100 Super Bowl victories in a row could not even begin to supply that lack.

He would be just as hungry and thirsty as he was at the start. In Romans 3:23, we're told that all are suffering from the lack of the glory of God, and there is nothing on earth that can fill the void from this lack except the glory of God. We are all suffering the lack of God's glory. We all feel the weight of this lack.

Fortunately, and this is the good news, God has provided a way to remedy this lack, and that is Jesus. There's one person in human history who never sinned and who never deserved to suffer the loss of the glory of God, and that is Jesus. Which brings us to the 4th truth that we need to understand if we want to know the treasure we've lost and how it is found, and that is that Jesus Christ never sinned. He never sinned, yet he suffered the loss.

of God's glory at the cross. The Bible teaches us that God exists as a trinity of persons. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. John Rittenhouse talked about this in an earlier session.

All these three persons coexisting from all eternity in a loving relationship with one another, characterized by self-giving and mutual enjoyment of one another. The Bible teaches that 2000 years ago, God the Father sent Jesus Christ, His Son, the second member of the Trinity into the world. And Christ lived for 30 years on earth and then began his public ministry which lasted about 3 years prior to his crucifixion around AD 30. Think about that.

God lived, God lived on earth for 33 years as a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. Speaking of glory, the Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ is the very glory of God come to earth. All have sinned and suffered the lack of the glory of God. God sends his glory.

To earth to supply that lack. The apostle John speaks of Jesus. And he says, we beheld. His glory Glory is of the only begotten or the one and only of the Father full of grace and truth.

If you look at the wording of that carefully, you, you actually observe that the glory of Jesus was not some separate individualistic glory. It was a relational glory. His greatest glory was his relationship with the Father. He was the only begotten, the special one, the precious one, the prized one, the one and only of his Father.

That was the essence of his glory. If you ask Jesus, what is your greatest glory, he would say, it's my relationship with my Father. And John 17:5, Jesus lets his disciples and lets us hear him praying to his father and in his prayer, he makes this request of the Father and notice the relational language he uses here. He says to his Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world was.

And that same prayer, Jesus prays for his disciples and says to his father, Father, I desire that they also be with me, where I am in order that they may behold my glory, which you have given me, for you have loved me. Before the foundation of the world. The essence of the glory of Jesus was his love relationship. With the father.

And what, when Jesus was on earth, he never broke faith with his father. He never sinned and found himself suffering from the loss of the glory of God. He walked in communion with his father, giving the Father the highest place in his thoughts and affections at all times. He abided in the Father's love.

At all times Jesus, even on one occasion, after going many days without food. was being tempted to turn stones into bread, and he refused to use his powers to even do that because he trusted his father. In the midst of every temptation, Christ always said no to sin and yes to his father. Jesus also gave his life to doing good to, to others.

He had divine powers to do any miracle he wanted and yet he always used those powers at every turn to bless people and to heal them of their brokenness. He never once did a miracle simply as a gimmick or to serve his own selfish ends. He always used his power to serve other people. He also spoke truth at every turn, even when he lost followers in popularity as a result.

When he was mistreated and persecuted, Jesus always responded with grace to those who were persecuting him when he was on the cross being crucified and ridiculed by his enemies. The text of the Bible says that he was saying, Father, forgive them. On more than one occasion hanging on the cross, he responded to his enemies by saying, Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them.

They would lash out at him and then what's he saying? He's saying something. Is he insulting me back? Father, forgive them.

That's what they got in reply. Being perfect, you would think that Jesus had a hard time getting along with sinners. But he actually said he came into the world not for the righteous but for sinners. Many sinful people were drawn to him because they had come to realize that he was the one that their souls had been craving for all these years.

And he lavished his love and his grace. On people who had a history of being crooked and adulterous and immature, and the grace and the truth that he showed them changed them over time. They loved him because he spoke the truth to them like no man had ever spoken truth to them before. Yet he loved them at the same time.

This was part of the glory of Jesus, he was full of grace and truth. Jesus loved and enjoyed the Father with all of his might. And was perfect in every way, and he never sinned, and yet he suffered the loss of God's glory. At the cross.

He suffered the loss of God's glory at the cross. See, the cross of Christ presents us with the greatest irony of all. We have sinned and as a consequence of our sin, we suffer the loss of the glory of God, but Jesus never sinned. Yet when he was on the cross, he suffered the loss of his greatest glory, his relationship with the Father.

The sky turned dark when he was being crucified, and at one point Jesus cried out from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The greatest pain that Jesus experienced on the cross was not the nails in his hands and feet or the thorns that were crushing into his brow. His greatest pain was that of separation from his father, which up to that point had been always his greatest glory. Jesus' cry of pain over that moment of separation from his father awakens us to the fact that we have been suffering all along.

We all have been separated from the Father because of our sin, but it's all we've ever known, so we never thought much about it. But when Christ was on the cross, he entered into our separation. From the father, and he cried out in pain. Teaching us that our state of being separated from God is a painful suffering that's worth crying over.

Suddenly we realized that we've been suffering all this time and we didn't know it. We've been without something precious all this time, and we never knew it. It's at the foot of the cross that we start to be awakened to the glory that we've been living without. Jesus cried during his moment of suffering, the loss of the glory of God on the cross awakens us to the fact that the loss of the glory of God is our greatest lack.

It's our greatest need. But what was Jesus doing on the cross? He was entering into the loss of glory that we've all experienced. He was putting himself in our place and experiencing that separation from the Father that all of us have deserved.

He was serving our sentence in order to make a way for us to be delivered from that fate and ultimately be brought into right relationship with God. And this brings us to the next truth that we need to understand if we want to know the treasure we've lost and how it's found. Yes, Jesus experienced separation from God when he was on the cross, yet God glorified Jesus by raising him from the dead and ascending him to his own right hand. We're told in the Bible that Jesus' body was taken down from the cross and buried in a tomb.

And we're told that on the 3rd day after his death, God raised him from the dead. And in raising Jesus from the dead, God was giving Jesus his stamp of approval, and according to Hebrews 2:9, he was crowning him with glory and with honor. Christ ascended. To heaven.

God ascended him to heaven, where the apostle John tells us that Christ is right now in the bosom of the Father. I just want you to think about that and get a visual of that. John, the apostle describes Jesus present tense as right now being in the bosom of the Father. That's the language of embrace.

Jesus, John says he came to earth, we saw his glory, but this Jesus, who is now at the right hand of the Father is in the bosom, he's in the embrace. Of his father, that glory has been fully restored to him. Where he enjoys the love relationship that he had always enjoyed with the Father from all of eternity past. And what guys, if we can just get a visual of Jesus and the bosom of the Father and the embrace of the Father and see their relationship and see the glory of it, what that does, what that vision does is it shows us the glory that we've been without.

This is the treasure we've lost. This is what our hearts have felt nostalgic for all these years, but we weren't able to quantify it. Our hearts should see Jesus in the embrace of his Father, and we should say, I want what he has. That's home.

That's the home that I've been away from all of my life. And the great news is that Jesus, being at the right hand of God, is in the position of absolute authority, the highest position of authority in all of the universe. He can do whatever he pleases and from that position, what he's doing? He's giving out forgiveness of sins.

And relationship with the father to any. who call upon his name. In Acts 5:31, it is said that he, Jesus is the one whom God exalted to his right hand as a prince and a savior to grant repentance and forgiveness of sins. We heard this passage earlier in John 14:6, Jesus says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me. There's no other way to the Father, stating that positively, he's saying, I am the way to the Father. I am the way to the Father. I want to bring you to my Father, so that you can experience the glory of living in relationship with Him.

And I have died for you. And I have been raised for you, and I've been ascended for you and from this position of lordship, I am here to give this relationship and to bring you to usher you back into a relationship. With my father That mankind lost in Adam and Eve. This brings us to the final truth that we need to see if we want to know.

The treasure we've lost and how it's found, and that is if we believe in Jesus, we're ushered into that glory that we lost. The Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. Whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. And Jesus himself tells us what eternal life is.

Eternal life is relationally knowing God. And Jesus Christ. whom he has sent. Paul in Romans 51 of my favorite passages.

describes himself and all Christians, and he says, we've been justified by faith, we've been made righteous by simple faith, not by works, and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we've obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we are exulting continuously in hope of the glory. Of God. We believed in Jesus, God has forgiven us. He's made us right with God, and he's brought us now into a relationship with the Father that is characterized by peace, by the luxurious presence of all that is needful for a rich and a vital relationship with God.

Literally, we have peace toward God, depicting us in a face to face relationship with God, where we can face God now and we can behold Him, and we can enjoy Him and we can cry out to Him and we can relate to Him as a child would relate. To his father This is the restoration of glory. This is why Paul ends in verse 2 by saying we are continuously rejoicing in the hope that comes from this glory. Of God.

And it's all brought to us by grace. This is the greatest glory that any person can ever know, being able to relate to God in this way. And once we believe in Christ and make our lives all about glorifying God, we find that God lavishes his glory on us and wraps us up in his own glory and raises us to heights that are higher than we could have ever achieved on our own, going our own way. That's why Paul in Romans 8 says those whom God saves, those whom he justifies, he glorifies.

He glorifies. This is why the writer of Hebrews tells us that it was Christ's mission all along to bring many sons to glory. So that we would no longer suffer the lack of the glory of God. Guys, this is the treasure we've lost.

This is how it's found. If you haven't believed in Christ and called upon his name, will you believe in him? Will you repent of your sins? Will you admit that you have sinned and that you are suffering the lack of the glory of God?

Will you cry out to Christ and let him bring you into relationship with the Heavenly Father, a relationship you've been without for all of these years? I'll just share this in closing. When my dad came home from Vietnam 49 years ago, I had, I had two siblings at the time. My sister hadn't been born and My dad said my older brother looked at him and said, Hi Dad.

And ran to my dad and hugged him. My younger brother wasn't able to talk at the time, but he could barely walk and he toddled over to my dad and hugged my dad. But my dad said, and he texted me this week and told me this, you, however, just stood there and looked at me as if you did not know me. I figured you would come around.

And you did. My dad said that for that week, that I would interact with him as long as my two brothers were in the room also interacting with my dad, but I would never approach my dad by myself. And interact with him. And here's the coolest thing of all guys.

You don't have to approach your Heavenly Father alone. Jesus is right now in the bosom of the Father. He is right now in the embrace of his Father at this moment, and he beckons to you today and he says, come and join me. In this embrace and find the treasure you've been living without.

For all these years. Will you accept that invitation? Let's pray together Lord God, I trust that many in this room know you and are living in relationship with you, but I know that in my own life that while I believe many things that are true, that I, I often don't see just the privilege of relating to you as the greatest glory of all. So instruct my heart, all of our hearts by what we've seen in your word today.

But I pray if there's any here today who have never entered into a relationship with you through Christ that they would see today that this is the need of their heart. This is the need of the hour and that even where they're seated right now that they would cry out to you. Call upon your name and accept Christ's invitation. To join him In this embrace between you.

And the father You're a good God. We thank you for your word and for all the speakers that we have heard from today, the things that we've learned, the ways that we've been challenged. As we were challenged, Lord, in the last session, just help us to be doers of the word and to do something with, even if it means great sacrifice with the things that we've been handed today. By those that have served us so well by speaking your truth to us.

We ask all of these things, Lord, in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said.