Hidden Treasure
Caleb Hyers | Colossians 2:1-4
In this hidden treasure sermon, Caleb Hyers opens Colossians 2:1-4 to show that every treasure of wisdom and knowledge is found in Christ alone, and launches TRP’s 90 Day Word Challenge to pursue him for ninety straight days.
THE 90 DAY WORD CHALLENGE
We are launching something today on top of the sermon. The sermon is going to help us do it. We are stepping into something called the 90 Day Word Challenge. We’re throwing a challenge out there. Go ahead and get your phones out and scan this QR code if you can. This is an amazing opportunity for us. We’re going to spend 90 days, every day, in the Word of God. What we’re going to do is actually read the same words of Jesus, because we built this out so that we can read the red letters, the words of Jesus, from Matthew to Revelation. This is for everyone. If you’re watching on the live stream and you’re not part of the church, you’re totally welcome. And for those of you getting this, share it with others. How powerful would it be if all our friends and family were beholding the Word of God for 90 days straight? What would happen? I mean, really.
Here’s the reason we’re doing it. We’re doing this because beholding the person of the Word will transform us. That’s how it happens. Beholding the person of the Lord transforms us. This comes out of 2 Corinthians 3:18. It says,
We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
How powerful is that? We are actually going to be transformed into the same image as Jesus as we look at Jesus. In order to look like Jesus, you have to continue to look at Jesus. Does that make sense? He’s giving us his Scripture, his Word, to do that.
He is the person, the Word made flesh. When he became incarnate, he spoke. I want you to get this. God put on flesh and taught. It wasn’t just thunders and rumblings from heaven. It was a human voice. Hearing the eternal Word. Powerful, powerful.
So we’re going to spend 90 days just reading those words. We built this out for you. You fill out your email, you’ll get an email tomorrow morning, and it will give you your reading, and then it will have a reflection question for you, where we get to meditate on what we read. And then there’s a third thing. It’s going to be a box where you get to share what you’re hearing from the Lord. You get to share your insights. All those submissions are anonymous, so you can say anything you want. It’ll go to the leaders, and we’re going to be processing those things. Who knows, it might make its way to the pulpit. We want to hear the word of the Lord together. Does this make sense?
So please share, please engage, and let’s see who can make it all 90 days without stopping. Anybody in? Let’s go. I love it. 90 Day Word Challenge. We’ll be posting about this on our social media later today, so feel free to share as well.
HIDDEN TREASURE
Why are we doing this? Well, it’s because Jesus is the great prize. He is. So the title of my message today is Hidden Treasure. Hidden treasure. You’ve heard of National Treasure? Well, this is like intergalactic, eternal treasure. It’s not the Declaration of Independence, it’s the declaration of independence in him, in a place of dependence upon God. My wife said that graphic looked like National Treasure, so I couldn’t help but say something.
How many of you ever went on a treasure hunt as a kid? Maybe your parents were really crafty and made a map. Do you remember how exciting it was to use the map and find the clues and try to figure out what’s next? Do you remember the thrill of actually finding the treasure? X marks the spot, we did it. And unless you were extremely affluent, it probably ended with some type of really cheap candy, and you were stoked. It was some cheap trinket or a trophy, something from the dollar store. Little things like that. Maybe just a note that says, you win. And you still were like, yes.
What if I told you there’s a treasure with something much greater at the end available to you today? We are treasure hunters, and the kingdom is what we’re supposed to be hunting out.
WE ARE TREASURE HUNTERS
I want to take you to Colossians 2:1-4. This is Paul speaking to the church at Colossae, and he’s fighting off the beginnings of something called Gnosticism. We’ll talk about that for a minute. But it’s vital that we understand today, there still are fine-sounding arguments. There’s real deception out there. There are the TikTok theologians and the YouTube pastors. I’m not mad about being on YouTube or TikTok, it’s cool. But not everybody is saying what the church has been saying for hundreds of years. I saw one yesterday, and this person was trying to convince me that the Bible doesn’t say there’s one God, it says there’s four, and then they went on to mention four different names for God. I’m like, sister, friend, you missed a lot of names, there’s a lot more than that. And yet in the comments section, people were being convinced. That video had millions of views. It’s out there, friends.
So we need ports of truth. We need treasure trolls of truth to give away, and we need to know what the faith is, once delivered to the saints. That’s why we do things like reciting the creeds. It becomes a plumb line. It would be pretty awkward if I stood up here and said Jesus wasn’t really God, you’d be like, why did you read the creed, bro? This is how the creeds have held the church. This is how God has done it. Paul, writing to the church when there weren’t any creeds, was saying, hey, we’ve got to settle some things.
So this is what he said in Colossians 2:1-4. He said, I want you to know how hard I am contending for you. Listen to the language, this is not some passive thing. He’s saying, I am travailing, I am burning, I am contending for you, and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. This is written to us, just like it was for them.
The Bible is still relevant. We still need the Ten Commandments. There are big pastors saying we don’t. Truth is under attack, friends. Maybe I’m just more heightened to it because I pay attention to it every single day, it’s my profession, but I’m trying to tell you, if you don’t guard yourself with the words of Scripture, you can be deceived very easily. And more than that, there’s a treasure trove to discover. It’s an exciting journey. It’s not some bland, oh, I need to know what the Bible says. No, there’s a journey, an exciting path to take.
So he says, I want you to know how hard I am contending for you, and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally, my goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love. But that’s not the end. Encouraged in heart, united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding. I want the full riches of understanding completely.
And then he says, that’s not the end either. It’s under something. In order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ. People get upset about excess, Christmas excess. You know the X is for Christ? X marks the spot. In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.
If it was possible then, it’s possible now. You might be sitting here currently deceived by fine-sounding arguments, from people with my job, because it still happens, because we don’t always have integrity in the pulpit. We don’t always have people seeking God for what the word says, and we don’t always have overseers who can correct the teaching. I have overseers, some of them are in this room. They can say to me, Caleb, you get fired if you keep talking like that, you cannot keep your job and teach something that’s not true. I’m a man under authority, I can’t just say whatever I want up here. That’s a good thing, you should be happy about that.
What does Paul want for the church? He wants them to have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God. He also wants them to be kept from deception by fine-sounding arguments. How does he say we should go about this? By knowing Christ. They don’t study counterfeits to catch a counterfeit of money, they study the real thing, so that the counterfeit looks obvious when it comes. He doesn’t say go figure out all the fine, plausible arguments and refute them. He doesn’t say go see where people are being deceived and try to help them. He says, know Christ. Just look at the real thing. Search him out. Seek the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, because all of them are in him. We must discover the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ Jesus, because we’re supposed to be treasure hunters.
GOD’S FAVORITE GAME IS HIDE AND GO SEEK
This is a popular verse, we say it all the time. Proverbs 25:2 says,
It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search them out.
God’s favorite game is hide and go seek. He hides things so that we can seek them. Even when Jesus is speaking, and we’re going to read all about this in the coming days and weeks, he says, I speak in mysterious sayings and parables, so that those who think they know, know nothing, and those who say I don’t know anything, find the truth. If I spoke in plain language, they would turn and I would heal them, but it wouldn’t be based on the truth, it would be based on their knowledge, based on their achievement. He wanted people to humble themselves.
You notice how confused the disciples are all the time? You’ll notice as you read them, what did he say, what are we doing, where are we going? He goes to raise Lazarus, and he says, let’s go so we can die with him, it doesn’t make any sense. What do they know? Lazarus died. He says, well, this won’t end in death. They say, but he’s dead. He says, ah, he’s sleeping. And they say, okay, he’s sleeping, he’ll be fine. He says, no, I need to raise him from the dead. They’re so confused. Jesus had no problem confusing the people. Why? Because he wanted them to seek it out.
And it’s not some distant thing you never get to. It’s there. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It’s available for those who are humbly seeking it. We should be like kings who search it out, just like a parent setting up a treasure hunt for their kids. God is not hiding things from us, he’s hiding them for us to discover. And hear me, all the treasure is in the triumphant Son of God. We don’t need to look anywhere else. We should not look anywhere else. If all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge is in him, then we have no energy to spare looking anywhere else. We can’t divide our time here. We should focus all our excitement and energy toward discovering the depths of the riches of Christ.
HE WILL GUIDE YOU INTO ALL THE TRUTH
You might say, okay, how do I do that? Great question. You do it through the journey of the Holy Spirit. You learn to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Everyone should hear the voice of the Spirit. If you’re here and you don’t know how to do that, stick around, we will disciple you into that. Get on the team, it will be required.
What did the Lord say? I don’t know, I didn’t even ask. Go back and ask, come back with an answer. You know what I say to my team all the time? Hear the Lord, and don’t be wrong. That’s the number one rule around here. Why? Because we have to hear the Holy Spirit, or else we’re just leading ourselves. And what is that other than the blind leading the blind? You can have all the strategy and earthly wisdom you want, but if God isn’t in it, it’s not his kingdom being built.
This is what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit, in John 16:13-14. He said,
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Did you know you have a Spirit guide? He leads me into all truth. Jesus is referring to many things there, because he’s the king of the universe, but he’s surely referring to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in him, when he says he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
So the Holy Spirit, a relationship with the Holy Spirit, hearing the voice of God, stepping out in faith, that’s the process of learning and finding, digging out the treasure. Let me say it this way. All truth is from the Holy Spirit, but only the Holy Spirit leads you into all the truth. There may be people out there speaking truth who have no idea who Holy Spirit is. They might not be saved, they might be apostates, I don’t know. Any of them can say true things, but none of them will lead you into all the truth. All truth is from the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has spoken through a lot of people throughout time. There are so many examples in Scripture where people were doing things that weren’t holy, and God spoke. He didn’t wait for them to do holy things before he would speak. And their whole life changed, generations were tilted, eternity flipped. God is speaking. He’s always been reaching, but the only way to get into all the truth is to seek him.
THESAUROS, SOPHIA, AND GNOSIS
Can we study some words? This is my nerd-out moment, I like this part of the sermon, I like to get into the Greek. It says all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in him. Let’s talk about treasures, wisdom, and knowledge.
That Greek word for treasures is thesauros. It means to put in a set place, to store up, treasure or riches, a storehouse of treasure, including treasured thoughts stored up in the heart or mind. Thesauros is the root of the English term thesaurus, which refers to a storehouse of synonyms.
I read that this week and I had to take a walk. In the Word, in Christ, are all the synonyms of the treasure, full of wisdom and knowledge. What does that mean? It means wisdom and knowledge are new ways to understand Jesus. There are synonyms for who he is.
The commentary talks about this with thesauros, and it says this word here is neither moral quality nor material assets, but the incarnate Christ. The verse answers the intellectual and spiritual cravings of humanity. Every true insight, every revelation of God’s character and plan, resides in the Son, because in the Word is a storehouse of synonyms.
Jesus is the Word, and in him is a thesaurus full of synonyms about him. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are other ways to describe and understand the Word. Even the wisdom and knowledge in him is him. It’s a synonym for the one with no sin in him. Even the wisdom, even the knowledge, that’s in him, is him. He is him.
Let us not make the mistake, friends, of thinking the wisdom and knowledge we find in Christ is about anything or anyone but Christ. The wisdom and knowledge are just another glorious side of who he is. It’s not about anything other than Jesus himself. And you might ask, well, then what are we going to learn about? All things. The treasure of wisdom and knowledge will never lead you into a focus other than Christ himself.
So I’ll say it for my new age friends on social media. Jesus is not some avatar of truth. That’s recycled paganism. He didn’t even make it up. Jesus is truth. There’s a person named Truth. He’s not beside other teachers. He is truth. There’s no category other than him. He’s not some mystical spirit that teaches us things. He is the Spirit of truth.
Now let’s look at the word wisdom in the Greek. It’s sophia. It means clarity, like you can actually see, no filter. Sophia is also the root of the English terms sophistication and philosophy. Jesus is not opposed to philosophy, he is philosophy. Philosophy is scratching at the person of the Truth. All those guys, Socrates, Aristotle, they were treasure hunting, they just stopped early, they didn’t dig deep enough. If they had kept going before they declared anything, they would have found that X marks the spot, it’s Christ alone.
It also means the art of using wisdom, the affection for wisdom. This word traces a biblical storyline in which wisdom moves from an attribute celebrated in Israel, to a messianic expectation, to full embodiment in Jesus Christ, and finally to a Spirit-given resource for the church’s witness and holiness. True wisdom brings glory to God, equips believers for every good work, and will be perfectly vindicated when the Lamb receives eternal praise for his wisdom.
Knowledge, in the Greek, is the word gnosis. It comes from ginosko, which means to experientially know. But gnosis means functional working knowledge, gleaned from firsthand personal experience, connecting theory to application. It’s applied knowledge gained by direct relationship. You’re not just going to read a book, you’re going to be read by the Word. It’s a direct relationship with knowledge.
Everything, all the treasures, are just synonyms, different ways to say who he is. Gnosis means applied knowledge, and it’s only as accurate or reliable as the relationship it derives from. For example, the Gnostics based their applied knowledge on personal spiritual experiences, and it was disastrous. Gnosticism is literally the cult based on having special personal knowledge. They used to worship angels and go through different levels so they could get knowledge, and once they were enlightened, sound familiar? The enlightened ones would throw a conference and charge you five thousand dollars, and you would go and hear that they talked to some angel named Bobo, but you paid too much money to call them out on it. Paul was fighting off the beginnings of this. Gnosticism wasn’t fully birthed when Colossians was written, but it was beginning, and he saw it. He saw that it was going to take people away from the deity of Jesus and make him just another way to find the truth. He saw it early. This is still alive and well today.
CHRIST IS THE SOURCE AND THE RESOURCE OF TRUTH
I’ll say this, if in your experience of my teaching, you need more of my teaching, I’ve failed. But if in experiencing my teaching, you learn how to discover the truth, then we get to start learning from one another.
You know what a false prophet does? A false prophet may give a wrong prophecy, but you know what they always do? They lead you to the wrong place. There are many Gnostic-like teachers out there leading people to themselves as a source of knowledge. It’s a problem, and churches like that need to go away. If you need me to discover truth, that’s a cult. But if I teach you how to discover truth, and you don’t need me anymore, we can learn from one another, which is how the church has done it for hundreds of years, and we can grow together into the good, into the treasure of who Christ is.
Christ is the source and the only resource of truth. I’m not a resource of truth, Christ himself is the source and the resource of truth. All truth is from the Holy Spirit, but only the Holy Spirit leads you into all the truth.
I did my own translation of Colossians 2:3. Here’s what I came up with.
In Christ are all the various ways of understanding the clear but sophisticated truth of who God is, and how to practically apply that reality to all things in this life and the one to come.
In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In Christ are all the various ways of understanding the clear but sophisticated truth. Just because it’s clear, and you can easily see it, doesn’t mean it’s not sophisticated. The clear and sophisticated truth, that’s the truth of who God is, it’s all about him. And how to practically apply that reality, because it’s applied knowledge from that relationship, to all things in this life and the one to come.
If that’s true, if in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, why would we waste a moment searching anywhere else but him? Jesus is the treasure, and he carries all the treasures of truth. Jesus is wisdom, and he clarifies all things for us who seek to understand. Jesus is knowledge, and he gives us the ability to function at an eternal level of brilliance. Jesus is the mystery of God. Jesus embodies the full riches of understanding, and Jesus is the way to be kept from all deception.
LET THE TREASURE HUNT BEGIN
So let’s start a treasure hunt. For the next 90 days, let’s study every word Jesus said. Let’s dig deep into the thesaurus, detailing how thrilling and wonderful he is. Let’s take the adventure our Father has set up for us, and follow his map to the hidden treasure, let’s clearly see the wisdom of God and how to apply it to our everyday lives. Let’s abandon useless pursuits of fool’s gold and false treasures, no matter how entertaining they are. Let’s refuse to waste our time doom scrolling and entertaining our brains into a pile of mush, when we can be pursuing the greatest prize ever. Let’s seek the Word and find him, and all the treasures of wisdom and understanding. Let’s unlock the mystery of God and embrace the full riches of who he is, so that we may glorify Christ in the earth.
Let the treasure hunt begin.
Transcript of a message delivered at The Resting Place Apostolic Family — Tampa Bay, FL — trpfamily.org