Chapter 1: Heart and Treasure
God has designed this world so that value and desire belong together. Glory and longing, worth and yearning, beauty and appreciation, loveliness and loving are all bundled up together. Whatever we prize most highly we will also love most deeply. Our rational evaluation of the worth of an object is mirrored by our heart, the seat of our passions. Head and heart--both of them are engaged in the assessment of value.
God is the highest treasure. He is the most worthy, glorious, valuable, lovely, precious, and beautiful reality in the entire universe. Indeed, he cannot be rightly compared to anything within the universe. As high as the builder stands above his house, so does God stand above all the valuable, worthy, and glorious things in his creation. What is God worth? If all the universe were placed in the scales, it would be but a speck of dust against the weight and value of God. He is worth itself. He is the God of glory (Ps. 29:3). “The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens!” (Ps. 113:4). Nothing can compare to the glory of this God.
As the highest good (treasure), God is also the fulfillment of all our longings (heart). He is the creator and fulfiller of our deepest capacities for yearning, fiery passion. He is the source of the deepest joy. He is the bridegroom to our bride, worthy of the greatest and most zealous love. He receives the white-hot praise of all creation. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16:11). God has spoken in his word to show us his glory and to satisfy our hearts with his goodness. He wants us to know his worth and to experience the incomparable delights of knowing him.
As to worth (treasure), here are some words that ought to come to mind when we think of God: glory, worth, value, treasure, prize, beauty, greatest good, and many more.
As to love (heart), here are some words that should come to mind: delight, pleasure, joy, happiness, praise, love, satisfaction, fulfillment, longing, yearning, and many more.
God created us to perceive him this way. He created us to see his worth clearly and to treasure him rightly. The Bible is overflowing with one constant theme: God’s exaltation of his own name and worth. God loves to show off his glory. And Christ wanted this divine heartbeat to be in our hearts, too, so he gave us this word to pray: “Hallowed be your name.” Let your name be feared, reverenced, and exalted. It is trampled by humanity the world over. Come, O God, and get the fear, reverence, and worship that you are worthy of. In other words, be seen, O God, for who you are. He wants us to pray, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!” (Ps. 57:11) He wants us to be filled with a knowledge of his worth and to yearn for it more and more.
In our culture today, God is sidelined. His worth is considered negligible. He is a throwaway psychological crutch that helps some folks get through. We are not afraid of him. We do not value him or see him as glorious. We barely see him at all. Our eyes are filled with us. We are like Narcissus, drowning in a pool of self-worship. Our eyes go wide for sex and money and power and all manner of possessions, but our eyelids are drooping in the pew. Our Bible, the theater of God, gathers dust on the shelf while we rush to the entertainments of the world. Our hearts run to a million different fulfillments. We think that pleasure is to be found in the rejection of God. We think that we can create our own joys and delights. God is boring. Weightless. Nothing. Forgettable.
And we say that following Christ is the way of harsh severity. That being a Christian is essentially desire-denial. Learn to stop wanting things, loving things, and enjoying life, and you will make a good Christian. God is the totalitarian schoolmaster with the switch. Sit up and shape up. Stop having joy. Get that smile off your face. In this construction, God is the opponent of our happiness.
Sometimes, we do paint God as a smiling God. But oftentimes, our God of the eternal smile is emptied of his weight and value. He is a smiling God because he’s a good guy. He doesn’t hate sin or value his own name. He just likes people. He is warmth. A safe space. God is a couch, not a rock.
God’s word continues to put him on display to a sleeping and silent world, and his Spirit continues to awaken hearts to his magnificence. He cries out in the market of the world to any who will hear, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). He says, “Come to me, and I will show you a glory and a beauty that you have never thought possible.” He desires to show us that he is the ultimate treasure, and to fill our hearts with his goodness.
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