BURIED TREASURE

 

In the year 2000 a builder friend in Scotland was commissioned to construct a millennium cairn for a small town. The villagers placed a time capsule inside this finely crafted stone memorial marker before it was sealed. I don’t know what’s in the capsule, but if it were opened in, say, a few hundred years from now, would posterity find anything of real and lasting value in it? Perhaps, there’s a small sample of currency in it. However, we tend not to think of time capsules as buried treasure; just ask Long John Silver. Yet one is reminded of the old adage ‘One man’s trash is another’s treasure’.

There was a buried treasure of sorts discovered during the rebuilding of King Solomon’s Temple in 621 BC. It was ‘the Book of the Law’. Some scholars believe that this Book, (also known as ‘the Book of the Covenant’) was the complete Pentateuch, i.e., the first five books of the Bible. Very possibly it was the original written by Moses’ own hand some seven or more hundred years before. How much would something like this fetch today? But let’s not get too carried away. The reality was that those who found the Book became far more interested in its inner contents than its outer casing. The Pentateuch contains not only God’s Moral Law for all mankind, but also, for example, the History of Creation and the Fall of Mankind, not forgetting the Gospel Promise of Salvation.

It excites the Christian when he reflects on the fact that this Book rescued that society at that time from its state of moral corruption. They looked again to God and re-implemented His teaching as laid out in the Pentateuch. This teaching is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments; summed up again in that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind; and our neighbour as ourselves.

Now, as Christians we know that the Old Testament Temple beautifully represented Jesus Christ who was the Promised Messiah to come. He is the true Temple of God. He said of His own body, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days’. His ‘Temple’ was destroyed on a cross but was rebuilt in the miracle of His resurrection. Hence it’s in the destruction and rebuilding of Christ our Temple that we discover the ‘buried treasure’ of everlasting life. And it’s in Him that we rediscover God’s Law and re-implement it in our lives with the knowledge that it all is completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. For Jesus is our ‘Book of the Covenant’, God’s new covenant (e.g., Isaiah 42:6).

Also, we discover that we too are being rebuilt as part of ‘the Temple of God’ on account of His Spirit who indwells us (1 Cor. 3:17). And finally in the temple of our body, we discover that His new covenant law has been written upon our hearts (e.g., Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12; 10:16).

Therefore I believe that every time capsule ought to contain the Holy Bible so that future generations might continue discovering the buried treasure found only in Jesus Christ our Lord.