Eternity Wear

A few weeks ago, we looked at Yeshua’s parables of great treasure. In the Song of Songs, there is another opportunity to see the fruits of wisdom operating in the Bride who awaits the resurrection of the dead. It is only then that she will see the real fruits of her labor for the Kingdom.

The verse in the Song lumps all the choice fruits in there together. We’re much more familiar with an orchard of pomegranates, but other good fruits might be planted with purpose. A henna plant would be planted with purpose in order to harvest the dye out of it. A nard plant would be planted with purpose in order to harvest this very valuable aromatic. All three products that are mentioned in this orchard of “shoots” are things that are not random.They are planted with purpose because the produce from them and the benefit derived from them is extremely valuable.

The orchard planting requires a lot of effort, patience, and planning, but perhaps there was one early decision that determined whether the orchard would even be planted. There are some opportunities that are going to be for us like Jacob’s glimpse into the gateway to Heaven. We’re going to realize a unique opportunity Adonai drops into our laps. We’re going to say, “How awesome is this place?”

But there’s really only one chance. It’s one of those things where you have to be quick. So many opportunities out there aren’t time dependent, but every now and then, the Father puts something before you that is so awesome. You know it’s awesome when you encounter it. And you know there’s a danger that if you keep going through life, and you don’t deal with that thing as fast as you should, it will be an opportunity lost. And this is what Yeshua says in Matthew. He says,

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Mt 13:43-46)

What these two parables have in common, other than a great treasure, is that it cost the buyers everything they had to obtain that great treasure. They really only had one opportunity. If either of those men had delayed, if they had not wanted to risk selling everything for that treasure, there would have been no great return. The question of the treasure is, “Do you really want to start back from scratch?”

You have to build from scratch, even though it’s a great treasure. You have to leave first things behind with their security. Paul had to do it. He took three years apart to re-think everything he knew in light of the revelation of Yeshua in the Torah.

In order to realize the potential of the great treasure, that once-in-a-lifetime revelation, there should be no delay. Had the first man delayed, somebody else could have bought the field. He realizes that when he sees this treasure, it will require everything he owns in order to go back and buy it. Maybe he already had a house. Maybe he already had two fine cars. Maybe he already had the furniture his wife liked. Maybe he had a swimming pool. The house and neighborhood and boat or club membership may be everything that he wanted… and developed through great care and sacrifice.

But now he realizes that he must relinquish everything he has accumulated to obtain that treasure. And then he’ll have to figure out how to invest it because he’s just sold the security that he had.

And then in the second parable, the merchant sells pearls, so it’s certain that he already has a pocket full of fine pearls. But then he finds that one pearl. And he will have to sell every pearl he has in order to buy that one. In either case, if they delay, somebody else could buy that field. Somebody else could buy that pearl. They did not have plenty of time. They couldn’t say, “Well, let me just start selling off a few things, cutting back here or there.” No, both of them had to immediately go out and find buyers. Typically, when you try to sell something quickly, you take a price far below its value, but they were willing to do that in order to obtain this one thing of great value.

So the pressure of the parable is if they had delayed at all, they might have missed the opportunity of a lifetime. And that’s the thing. Life is time.

Our life is time.

How we spend our time. What we purchase with our time. Time is precious. We don’t have a lot of it, most of us. Our generation is structured that way.

Time is so valuable because we know that if we lose it, it is irretrievable. It’s not that every single moment we need to be worried that, oh my goodness, I’ve just lost time. I’m going to weep and gnash my teeth in the long run because I didn’t get this and that done. Yeshua’s saying, there’s going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity for a believer. You have to know when that moment is.

I think for a lot of us, we know when that moment was. We realized at some point that studying Torah wasn’t just doing Jewish stuff. It wasn’t dressing up in Jewish things. It wasn’t an interesting little Sunday School study. We realized this His Word, and it is life. Life most abundantly.

But if you do it, it will cost you everything. If you don’t do it, you probably missed that once in a lifetime opportunity.

Now, can you come back later? Just like Jacob who came back later to pay the tithe? Yes. But… to do it with haste was the once in a lifetime opportunity. Time really does backfill like sand. There are lots of things in our lives that we’ll wait for later. There’s some things in life that we can fix with a repentance do-over. But Yeshua’s saying some things won’t be like that. Don’t be surprised if you get a once in a lifetime opportunity to see if you’re willing to give up everything you have in order to develop the more valuable new treasure.

We must not postpone our spiritual commitments, for each moment is a treasure. Repentance can be a great treasure, an opportunity that if missed, might result in a hard heart. Repentance is also a pearl of great price. The ability to repent can be a once in a lifetime treasure because it can affect your eternity. Somebody who delays may find out that the sands of time really can backfill that. They can become very hard, very resistant as time goes on. The opportunity to repent is a pearl of great price. Will that repentance cost everything we’ve accumulated? It might. If all we’ve accumulated is the garbage of the world, then it’s going to cost all of that worthless stuff we convinced ourselves had some value in it. We should happy that such a pile of worthless things can be sold in order to obtain eternal wear.

For us, finding Yeshua in the Torah is a treasure hidden for nearly the last 2000 years.

Each generation is asked to sell everything. Some are asked to make a different path than their families walk. Make a different path than our coworkers walk. Make a different path than our neighbors walk. Make a different path than our old church walks. We have to invest everything in that once in a lifetime window into heaven.

It might be the last window of its kind. We’re in an awesome place. Yeshua is offering this precious jewel that we can wear in eternity. Other things that we thought were precious, they’re not really eternity wear. Maternity wear is important, but eternity wear everyone should be acquire. We may have to give up other clothes in the closet for eternity wear. It’s worth doing it quickly, though.

Do you remember getting on the monkey bars at school? You swung off on the first rung, and you had momentum. As long as you had momentum, you could go all the way across the monkey bars. But if you weren’t willing to let go of the security of the last rung, and you hung there for a second with one hand, it was hard to catch the next one. You might have missed it. Then you just hung there for a while before dropping to the ground.

When we’re looking at these precious jewels of opportunity, see how important momentum is! The pips of the pomegranates symbolize the mitzvot. The Israelites received those at Mount Sinai when they left Egypt. In that sense, at Mount Sinai, Adonai planted an orchard. He planted that orchard in a very orderly way. The Israelites were camped according to their tribes. According to groups of tribes. Clans. Families. Perimeter of the Levites. The priests. There was an orderly service in the Mishkan. They were prescribed very precisely how things were to be set up every single time it was set up or torn down to move. When they set it back up, everything was orderly, just like a well-planned orchard.

The pomegranates in this pomegranate orchard are a nation who hold these mitzvot. The pips, or the little pieces of fruit in the pomegranate, are thought to generally come out to 613, representing the total number of the commandments. And so it was and is a unique opportunity, the opportunity of a lifetime.

He planted us, the pomegranate orchard, in the wilderness of the peoples. From Adonai come mitzvot commandments to the talmidim (students). Camping there, learning, learning, learning from Moses. Learning, learning, learning from Yeshua. And eventually Israel will be this mature orchard of pomegranates because they’re a royal priesthood as well.

Once they were taught, the disciples became shliachim, or “sent ones.” They were able to reconcile the nations to Elohim, their creator. The “shoots” of the pomegranates comes from the Hebrew verb shalach, “sent.” We were not planted just to be one little beautiful camp of pomegranate trees. Instead, this fully-invested camp of pomegranate trees brings forth fruit and even healing leaves that shoot out to the world. Our fragrance of good deeds is to be shared with the nations. Yeshua is the root from which we shoot into the world if we cultivate our planting.

We never want to be consumed with regret when we realize that we lost an opportunity because we didn’t recognize the value of the treasure of time. We don’t want to regret being too fearful to give up what we had in order to grasp the eternal treasure that is hidden inside this world.

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