Matthew 13:52 - Amplified Bible
52He said to them, Therefore every [a]teacher and interpreter of the Sacred Writings who has been instructed about and trained for the kingdom of heaven and has [b]become a disciple is like a householder who brings forth out of his storehouse treasure that is new and [treasure that is] old [the fresh as well as the familiar].
Jesus, as we know, was very adept at teaching through parables, basic stories comparing the deeply spiritual truths of the Kingdom of God with everyday situations already familiar. This is one of my favorites. This one is for preachers.
The KJV reads "every scribe." The word scribe often has a negative connotation because usually Jesus was rebuking them right along with the Pharisees of his day. In this case, the Amplified translation brings a lot to the surface. Scribe: "every teacher and interpreter of the Sacred Writings (Scripture)..." Here Jesus is speaking not only to the twelve preachers that stood before him that day, but to us. Apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, and teachers; Christ looked down through the portal of time and saw this generation standing behind the pulpit on the platform of the world's stage, carrying with it the same sacred writings...Now that we are here, Christ asks us this question: do we have the treasure necessary to reach our generation?
Preachers, there is a process we must go through as it concerns the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, if you will. Its lifelong. First, we must be taught, secondly, we must be trained, finally, we must become disciples...All this in the area of the Kingdom of God...
We must LEARN the Word of God. We must know what it says. We must become familiar, nay, intimate with its doctrines. We must LEARN the Oneness of God, we must LEARN baptism in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins...on down the line to holiness, healing, and wonderful gift and works of the Holy Spirit - In short, we must "study to show ourselves approved..." I may be a bit old fashioned, but I don't think there's a better place we can go, when we have been called on to preach, than this most sacred of books we call the Bible...
Furthermore, we must never stop learning, we must continue to be taught and to teach ourselves throughout our days here. God's Word is so immense, and there is so much material, even in just a single verse, a single pearl if you will, that is so multi functional and so multi-dimensional that no matter how old we get, we will still need to be taught. We must learn of this place called the Kingdom...Every time I learn something, or every time something I already "know" is affirmed in a new way, its a treasure to put in my storehouse...
Secondly we must be TRAINED. We cannot be mavericks. We cannot go it alone, we must be trained by the generation that has proceeded us. We must lock arms with and sit at the feet of the men who have gone before us to plant and pastor churches, evangelize communities and nations. We must gain from the prophets that still walk among us like Lee Stoneking and Jeff Arnold - we must look at the greatest churches among us that have had continual revival and not be so ignorant to think we can just do it on our own... I don't think we need to discount those old preaching tapes we have in our garages either...I think we need to take the time, when we have opportunity, to listen to what CM Becton, and GA Mangun had to say - it mattered then, it still matters now.
We need to submit to the men of God in our lives - we need to build God's Kingdom, not our own little kingdoms. We need to serve in our local churches. Every time we are trained, and we are trained how to do, if you will, ministry in this kingdom, we gain great, priceless treasure to place in our storehouse.
Thirdly, we must become disciples...We must, ourselves, live out in our daily lives the things pertaining to the kingdom that we have been taught and trained for. If we have been taught to pray, and we have been trained to pray, now we simply must pray. If we have learned to preach, and we have been trained to preach, NOW we must preach...If we have learned how to reach out to the lost, and we have been trained how to reach out to the lost, now we must, actively, actually reach out to them. The gifts of the Spirit are a great example of this principle: we must learn of them, we must be trained by those that have mastered them, and then we must operate in these gifts...our churches and our world needs them. Oh yes we do, we need healing, miracles, prophecy, tongues and interpretation of tongues, and the words of knowledge and wisdom in our churches...For there is a generation coming up behind us that will need these as well, and if we don't have it in the storehouse to give to them, they will go without - GET IT IN YOUR STOREHOUSE!
So, what do you have in your storehouse? What do we have in our arsenal when we go to spiritual war? We have treasure. We have so much treasure. We have both old and new.
I've got some OLD treasures in my storehouse, and let this generation hear this one preacher's voice: I WILL NOT GET RID OF THEM JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE OLD! The preaching of the Cross is old. The preaching of the gospel to old. The baptism of the Holy Ghost dates much further back than 1901 Topeka, Kansas. No my friend, its old, but its a TREASURE, and it still works just as well as it always did - the Cross still cries out to the sinner, the blood still washes away my sins, there is STILL POWER IN THAT NAME OF JESUS, the Holy Ghost still fills, and empowers, and sanctifies, and leads and guides into all truth...
I've still got preaching tapes and mp3's dating back to the seventies...yeah they're old, but they still uplift my soul...They are treasure.
But we have some NEW things in the storehouse...We have some new methods. We don't always do things the exact same way, or say things the same way we've always said them. We still say them, but we find NEW ways to relate it to this generation. If revival is a new thing to you, preach the new thing! If reaching out into your community is a new thing to you, let it be new! If you've sat on the pew for twenty five years and INVOLVEMENT is a new thing to you, live the new thing - its a treasure. A revelation is just the light switch coming on revealing what's been in the room the whole time, but if I've never seen it before, it NEW to me, and its a treasure...
New is a good thing.
II Corinthians 5:174But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
5Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
6Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
Romans 6:4
We were buried therefore with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] of the Father, so we too might [habitually] live and behave in newness of life.Bring forth your treasure, preach them, old and new preacher; the OLD rugged cross that causes a NEW and abundant life! What do you have in your storehouse?
