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Advent Productions

Benjamin Ng

Alone with God

Father in heaven, thank you so much for this time that we have.

Thank you for the beautiful Sabbath day you've given to all of us, for the Sabbath rest that we had last night.

And Lord, as we now come to study your Word, we ask for a blessing.

We ask for your Holy Spirit, that you'd please come and teach us from your word and guide us, O Lord, through this time we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

You know, last week we talked about what true communion was all about.

That was where Jesus found power to live this life on earth.

This is where Jesus, he made sure he needed this time so that he could live a life filled with power and that was a secret, his communion with God, praying to his Father and taking time in nature, meditating upon the works of God and the Word of God.

And friends, before we get into the message, I wanna ask you, were you able to hear God's voice speaking to you individually this past week?

Were you able to run to Jesus and present to Him all your problems and lay them on His broad shoulders for Him to carry you?

And I want to look at this deeper topic of communion again today.

As you notice my sermon title is entitled Alone with God.

And I wanna start here in Matthew 13, and verse 44.

The Bible says, again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field, the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." We're familiar with this parable, with this story.

This man, he's just plowing the ground and he bumps into a treasure chest and in that chest he finds treasures probably in his estimation worth more than anything he ever owned and so he runs back home and he sells everything that he has just so that he could purchase this field.

This man was willing to surrender everything.

He was willing to give up everything in his house, in his possession, just so that he could get this field and the treasure that was in it.

You know friends, I want to echo this important truth.

It was so important that I had to write it down for all of you to read so that it could enter into our minds so clearly.

We will never find in Christ all that he is and wants to be to you until everything else is put aside and this becomes the 1 quest of your life.

Friends notice here that I'm not saying that Christ, what Christ wants to give you and bless you with, we will never find in Christ all that He is and wants to be until everything else is put aside.

You know, this is a really important truth that we must understand as we are studying here this morning.

Continuing on, Matthew Chapter 13, verses 45 and 46.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls, who when he had found 1 pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

This man was hunting pearls, plural, do you see that?

Pearls, not just 1 pearl but what type of pearls was he looking for?

He was looking for goodly pearls, pearls that were beautiful and fair and distinguished and I could I say outstanding and perfect.

He was looking for really perfect pearls and in his search he came across 1 pearl, 1 that was of such great value that he thought that this 1 pearl outweighed his whole collection of pearls that he had ever found.

That he was willing to go and sell every single thing that he had just so that he could obtain this 1 pearl of great price and value.

We don't know how much he already had in his collection, but this 1 thing was worth more to him than anything he had ever owned on this earth and so he sold everything, all his pearls, everything he let it go just for this 1 pearl.

I want to reiterate this passage that we've already read.

We will never find in Christ all that he is, what Christ is and what he wants to be to you until everything else is put aside.

And this becomes the 1 quest of your life.

You know, friends, too often we wait for Christ to bless us and we wait for Christ that we can taste his goodness before we're willing to give up time and to sacrifice for Him.

But this greatest blessing we can only receive today varies in our own thinking.

We think that we'll be blessed if we can finally own our own home.

Do you know, When we talk about blessings, we talk about treasures, we talk about pearls, we think okay the most important thing is I got to own my own home.

Others, we think great success is about a booming business and finally I can retire early and take off and people are working for me and I don't have to be there all the time.

Others, we think great success is buying my first car, my dream car.

Or others think it's just what graduating with honors.

We have in our hearts and minds successes of different varying values.

But this man who saw that treasure and then this other man who found the pearl, they were willing to give up everything just to get this pearl.

We will never find in Christ all that He is and all that He wants to be to us unless we are and until we are willing to lay aside everything.

Let me tell you friends the greatest blessing that can come to us is by our own choice.

We choose to focus with all our souls on this effort, whatever it costs to know Christ, to get acquainted with Jesus and to find in Him the answer to all our problems.

This has to really be the 1 quest of our whole life to understand what it really means to have true communion.

John 17 3 says it this way, and this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

Eternal life is all about knowing the Father and Jesus Christ, that's it.

And then furthermore in 2 Peter 3, 18, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Friends, this is the greatest blessing that we can receive today, to know God, to know Jesus, to know what He is to us, to understand what the sweetness of God is to us, to know Him and to know Him personally and tenderly to have true communion with Him.

You know as a pastor it's not about going to get an education It's not about going overseas to study theology and then come back and flaunt our degrees of master's or maybe PhD or doctorate.

You know, all the training in this world, yes, we need to be equipped in some ways to study about how to preach, to study about how to teach, to how to give counseling, to study about Greek and Hebrew, to study about biblical hermeneutics, how to correctly interpret the Bible.

You know, even the stuff that we study at our salt school, our little training school of 5 months.

But none of this will avail anything unless we see Jesus in the center of it all and what He becomes to us, the solver of all our problems, my problems.

How can I help other people with their problems introducing Jesus if Jesus has never helped me with my problems?

What Jesus has become to me personally and why this communion is so sweet.

Even as a medical missionary, you know, some people go and learn about nursing, they go and learn about being a doctor, they go get their degrees and they learn how to do surgery and stitch people up, they learn how to push needles into people's veins and draw the blood out.

And even those that learn the natural remedies about hydrotherapy and using water to help people feel better, relieve their headaches, and giving them charcoal, and all these sorts of things.

It's important, but it never supersedes knowing Christ.

Because Jesus is the 1 that is a healer of all our diseases and of all our problems.

And unless we find that, we come short of what true education is to provide to all of us.

And it's not about just getting head knowledge, friends.

Coming back to that man, hunting for the pearls, what did he find?

And what did he do when he found that 1 pearl of inestimable value?

He went and sold everything that he had, his whole collection, just so that he could buy that 1 pearl.

Now when he went and sold everything, do you think he was happy to sell everything?

Oh yes, he was having that garage sale and says, come everybody, Come buy my stuff, buy my things.

He was excited when people were buying this pearl and that pearl.

He was happy because he knew what he was getting.

He was excited, of course, because he knew the value of that 1 pearl.

Friends, if you find the pearl of great price, you'll be happy as well.

You won't have this long face, oh I got a sacrifice for God today.

You know sometimes we drag our feet to church, we drag our feet in obeying Jesus, we drag our feet in having to give up things or time or whatever it is just for Jesus and it's because we've not found him the fairest of 10, 000.

Friends, until we find in Jesus the solver of all our problems, who Christ is to us personally, our whole Christian experience will be of no avail.

We're saved in our communion with Christ.

And when we finally understand who Christ is to us, we will have found the great guide of our lives, the dissolver of all our doubts and our problems.

And 1 may ask, how can God help me with my stress at school?

Well, he can give you peace and that passes all understanding.

You don't have to stress out about every little thing that comes upon you at school.

Well, how can God help me with my job situation?

Well, he'll be the voice behind you saying this is the way walk in it.

Well how can God help me with my financial problem that I'm in right now?

Well he'll give you the wisdom to work and power to do it.

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Alone with God

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