Shelby Road Baptist Church · Shelby Road Baptist Church

In Other Words, Week Five: Don't Miss the Treasure (Pastor Will Atha)

April 1, 2026·36 min·2 clips

Pastor Will asks: if Jesus were erased from your life tomorrow with no memory remaining, would your coworkers, spouse, or bank account look any different on Monday?

1. Shelby Road Baptist Church's 'In Other Words' series concludes in week five with Pastor Will Atha preaching from Matthew 13:44-46 on the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price. 2. Pastor Will Atha is the sole speaker; he is identified as the pastor who finalized this series, speaking to the Shelby Road congregation in Michigan. 3. The sermon's thesis is that the kingdom of heaven — meaning Jesus's rule in a believer's life — is the greatest treasure available to any person, but its value is widely misidentified and therefore missed. 4. Pastor Will opens with a childhood story from his family's time on Treasure Island, a large island on the biggest man-made lake in Latin America in inland Brazil, where he and his brothers found crystals and hid them in armadillo holes, drew a map on a brother's back, and never recovered the crystals. 5. He defines the kingdom of heaven not as a place but as the rule of the king — 'kingship and skies' in a more literal translation — and connects it to the Lord's Prayer's 'your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,' arguing this is a prayer for God's rule to be restored after humanity's rebellion in the garden. 6. The kingdom of heaven has an 'already not yet' structure: Jesus currently reigns invisibly through the hearts of believers and will one day reign visibly in a physical earthly kingdom. 7. Point one argues the value of following Jesus is infinitely unmatched for life right now: the believer surrenders their life to the God who created them and knows their purpose, follows the Spirit who advocates on their behalf, and experiences the Savior's present love. 8. Point two argues the value continues into eternity, and Pastor Will challenges the idea that heaven's value is primarily in streets of gold, suggesting that gold filling potholes in the new earth signals that material wealth is irrelevant where Jesus reigns completely and eliminates greed, scarcity, pain, and grief. 9. Point three — the value of following Jesus is worth any cost — is illustrated through both the field buyer who sold everything and Luke 14:33, where Jesus states that those who do not give up everything they have cannot be his disciples. 10. The snowmobile rescue illustration presents a man stranded on a shrinking piece of lake ice during a blizzard who receives a free Coast Guard rescue but must give up the snowmobile — making the point that salvation is a free gift that nonetheless requires surrendering what keeps one under sin's rule. 11. Point four argues the value of following Jesus is the same for everyone — illustrated by the contrast between the field worker of lowly status who stumbles on the oil and the pearl merchant of wealth and status who has spent a lifetime refining his eye for quality, both of whom sell everything. 12. Jesus's followers in the Gospels include the poor and brokenhearted, the religious and influential, Romans, Samaritans, Zacchaeus who gave away his wealth, and Luke the doctor — demonstrating the treasure's universal value. 13. Point five argues the value of following Jesus is not obvious to the world, and the best illustration is a poor Philippine fisherman who kept the world's largest pearl — estimated at $100 million given the second-largest is $60 million — under his bed as a good luck charm for ten years because it looked like an ugly rock. 14. The three ways people misidentify Jesus are: looking for a genie (a wish-granter they can summon at will), a life coach (someone who gives advice they can follow or ignore), or a teddy bear (emotional comfort that makes them feel better without requiring change). 15. Pastor Will argues Jesus is better than all three: unlike a genie, he has all power but also full knowledge to give what is truly needed; unlike a life coach, he is a king whose commands can be trusted over one's own judgment; unlike a teddy bear, he aims to make people better not merely more comfortable. 16. The sermon's diagnostic question asks listeners to imagine waking up with Jesus erased from their lives — no memories of church, Bible reading, or any aspect of following him — and to consider whether coworkers, family, bank account, or garage would look any different on Monday. 17. Pastor Will concludes that if the only change would be Sunday morning routine, the listener may be a tourist looking at the oil in the field without purchasing it, or a window shopper who likes Facebook Marketplace posts without buying. 18. The sermon's tone is warm, narrative, and story-heavy, moving between personal childhood memories in Brazil, current-events illustrations from Michigan winters, and historical stories sourced from what Pastor Will describes as a reputable source. 19. Families and individuals in the Shelby area of Michigan who are considering or re-evaluating the depth of their commitment to following Jesus will find this most directly applicable. 20. Listeners who are firmly settled in their theological convictions or who want systematic doctrinal teaching rather than applied narrative preaching may find the content introductory.

As heard by us

A plainspoken call to treat Jesus as worth everything, not just worth admiring.

This sermon closes In Other Words by treating following Jesus as something worth more than the life already known. It starts with a childhood treasure-hunt memory and moves to a clear point: discipleship is not a reward postponed for later, but a present reality shaped by joy,…

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