Exciting stories of the “buried treasure” genre often feature ancient and hard-to-understand maps which hold the allure of untold wealth stashed away by pirates, ready to be uncovered by an intrepid adventurer. The vast majority of pirates’ maps and promises of wealth turn out to be false, but how do you know for sure that a map is not true? The religious scholars in the time of Jesus spent a great deal of time searching for treasure in the ancient scriptures.

In John chapter 5, Jesus is recorded as saying to them, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the Scriptures which testify about me. Yet you will not come to me to receive life.” The religious scholars were searching for some sort of magical Bible code which would unlock the great treasure of eternal life, when what they should really have been looking at was the plain text of those scriptures, which predicted the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus clearly warned the religious scholars that it was not enough to study the scriptures; it was necessary to obey the message of those scriptures and come to the Messiah to receive life. This warning could equally apply to Christians today. It is too easy to spend time reading the Bible without trying to understand or obey it, and trusting in some type of magical effect of religious observances, rather than coming to Jesus to receive life.