Matthew 13:44
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field"
This parable, and the interpretation of it has always been one of those verses I put on a shelf. I read it and then I pass over it, but I never really understood what it was expressing. The Lord recently shared with me the beauty contained in the parable and I would like to share that with you.
To understand it correctly, we must understand what {or who} the symbols represent. We do this by allowing the Bible to interpret the Bible. That means that if there is something in the Word that you don’t understand, you can look at other verses that speak on the same subject and gain definitions and meanings. Since this verse speaks about a field, we know then that the field in this parable holds the same metaphoric representation as presented by Jesus in Mark 4 and Luke 8. The field is the world- the hearts of men in the world to be exact. The man who found and then hid the treasure is Jesus. The treasure itself is the glory of God inside of men because 2 Corinthians tells us that “…we have this treasure in earthen vessels.”
You see, many times I have heard this parable preached and it has always been explained that the man is us- mankind. And that we have to sell all that we have in order to buy the field where the treasure is buried that we found and buried it there. That doesn’t make any sense because we didn’t “find the glory of God” - no Romans 3:23 says everyone has sinned and come short of the glory of God so therefore we {mankind} could not have found the glory of God and then hidden it from everyone else in a field that we go and buy. Instead, the Lord God {which includes Jesus as the “man” incarnate of the Godhead} took His own glory and hid it in earthen vessels which the “man” or more literally the Son of Man found when He manifested here on earth and for the joy set before Him endured the cross and “sold all that He had” to buy back the field - or the world of the hearts of men. Jesus bought the world with His blood because the glory of God that was the light in men was so precious and He wanted it to be under His own influence again. notice the parable does not say that the man just grabbed the treasure and ran back to His house. No He buried it so that, even in its veiled state it was still vulnerable to thieves. this is indicative of the fact that God still allows the hearts of men to have free will over the Glory God that is inside them. They can manifest it or not- it is their choice!
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