Jars of Clay

Those of you who follow the weekday 10-minute video devotions that God has allowed me to do on Facebook live, know that the Holy Spirit impressed upon me to fix my eyes on Jesus more intently. The books I am reading in my personal devotional time are all about Christ, my prayer journaling time is through the Book of Hebrews, and the aforementioned weekday Facebook live devotions are a verse-by-verse study through the Gospel of John.

So, everything else I am studying for the Sunday sermons, the Wednesday Bible studies, the Men’s Breakfast studies, and the discipleship opportunities that I have, are greatly influenced by this renewed focus on Jesus Christ. Chuck and I have been starting to narrow down what the topics will be at Men’s Retreat in September, and Jesus Christ is on my mind and in my heart in determining these topics as well.

Then last Sunday, the four verses I covered spoke of “our gospel”, “the light of the gospel”, “the glory of Christ”, “Christ Jesus as Lord”, “for Jesus’ sake”, and “the face of Christ”. And the direction I took with last week’s sermon was not on Christ as much as it were on Satan’s power to blind the minds of unbelievers, which is true of the passage and an important aspect of the passage, but the primary point of the passage is Jesus Christ and the gospel message that He has supplied us through His virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, and victorious resurrection.

With that in mind, turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2nd Corinthians. After some review, we will only be focusing on one verse this morning, but I will read a lengthier section to keep the overall context in mind.

2 Corinthians 3:18-4:15

Let’s pray.

More than any other Epistle that the Apostle Paul wrote, 2nd Corinthians reveals his heart more than any other. On Wednesday evening we started our study of chapter 9, which more than any other chapter in that great Book, reveals the heart of Daniel. Paul is more vulnerable, more transparent, more humble, and more willing to expose his underbelly if you will, than in any other Letter that God ordained, and the Holy Spirit inspired him to write.

In the passage I just read, Paul speaks of writes of being with “unveiled face”, of Christ is transforming him into a mirror-image of our Lord “from glory to glory”, he writes of how he has “received mercy” and thus revealing his great need for mercy. Paul writes of shameful “things hidden” that he has “renounced” and how the “word of God” supplied “the manifestation of truth” in his life. He admits that there are times when the “gospel is veiled” as he proclaims it, referring to his inability to penetrate the minds and hearts of the unbelieving no matter how persuasive he presents the gospel.

Paul reveals that he is under personal attack when he feels compelled to write, “we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord”, revealing that one of the attacks has been that he has been promoting himself and trying to gain fame and renown for himself as he travels from place to place. So, he also reiterates that whatever he is able to proclaim about the gospel is only due to the fact that God “has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

And if any of that was not enough in exposing his personal struggles and in his worthiness of being used by God, he then calls himself an “earthen vessel”, a jar of clay, or a clay pot – the most common of all vessels in his day, the most fragile, the most replaceable. In Paul’s mind, it is inconceivable that Almighty God would entrust the greatest treasure that mankind could ever possess, in jars of clay.

2 Corinthians 4:7

John Chrysostom, one of the early church fathers, wrote, “He used the term earthen in allusion to the fragility of our mortal nature and to declare the weakness of our flesh. For it is no better than earthenware, which is soon damaged and destroyed by death, disease and even variations of temperature. The power of God is most conspicuous when it performs mighty works by using vile and lowly things.”

We can all identify with that if we are brutally honest. As much as our current culture is attempting to emasculate men, to destroy femininity in women, and to eliminate that which God has created and ordained, we know and understand even at our best we are weak and fragile. You could be a body builder or fitness trainer in top physical shape and have tiny, microscopic cancer cell invade your body and end your life. We are clay pots.

So, isn’t it amazing that God chooses to use weak, fragile, and even broken people like you and me to carry out the ministry of the gospel?

Paul opens with, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels”. We have all heard the old adages such as, “You can’t judge a book by its cover” or that you cannot judge the value of something by the packaging it comes in. This is the sense of what Paul is teaching us.

By all accounts, including a few veiled references in Scripture, the Apostle Paul was not a stud-muffin. Most accounts in ancient books of history suggest that Paul was a short man that was not pleasant to look at. Some accounts even suggest that he had a hunchback of sorts. The references in the Bible would lead us to believe that his voice was not all that pleasant to listen to and that he had some kind of problem with his eyes that was somewhat repulsive to look at.

Paul was constantly attacked for his physical appearance and his lack of eloquence in his speaking ability. He was criticized and demeaned about these physical characteristics incessantly. In 10:10 he writes that his attackers say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.”

Paul was a clay pot if ever there were any clay pots. Paul was completely aware of his shortcomings to the point of being amazed that God saw fit to use him at all. In 1 Corinthians 15:9 he writes, “For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle”. To Timothy he wrote, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:12-13).

The Apostle Paul, the hero of the faith, never felt worthy of his calling nor did he consider himself to be qualified for that which God called him to. Yet he is to this day still the most effective evangelist the world has ever known.

So, here’s the thing with Paul, rather than defend himself by denying the claims of those who criticized him for being weak and imperfect, for being unimpressive in speech and not much to look at, he agreed with them and embraced his weaknesses. And thus, instead of being reasons to reject Paul and the message he preached, they became the most convincing of his credentials. Paul was the epitome of a fragile clay pot that contained precious treasure.

Paul was just another in a long line of clay pots that God used in glorious fashion. Quite honestly, beloved, God always chooses and uses the foolish things, the weak things, the base things of the world, and the things that are despised to nullify the wise and mighty and noble (1 Corinthians 1:25-28). Regardless of how you view the Apostle Paul, the success of his ministry was despite his human abilities and skills, not because he was anything special or unique from a human standpoint.

So, in contrast to what he wrote in verse 6, that God had “shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”, he says that this priceless gospel treasure is contained in a baked clay vessel, a common, cheap, breakable, easily replaceable and virtually worthless jar of clay.

Not to espouse some kind of false humility, but I often am utterly amazed that God has chosen me to be the pastor of this church. I am not anything special. I am a clay pot. I am fragile, breakable, and replaceable. I can quickly identify with the characteristics that I just mentioned from 1st Corinthians – foolish, weak, base, and despised by the world. While at the same time I have been given the wisdom of God through His Word and the power to overcome all things through His Holy Spirit. I am a clay pot, but I am an invincible clay pot for as long as God chooses to use me.

And this is the balance that we must have – to understand our weakness and our frailty, while at the same time understanding the power of God within us.

In ancient times, while clay pots were used for common things in the manner that we use plastic buckets today, clay pots were also used like a personal vault. People would put valuable items, such as jewels and gold and silver and even precious documents in jars of clay. They would often then bury these jars of clay for safekeeping.

If any of you are familiar with the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls, you may know that they were discovered in jars of clay. A young boy was throwing rocks into a cave that was on a cliff when he heard something break. He then climbed down into that cave to discover these jars of clay that contained what we now call the Dead Sea Scrolls. These scrolls were portions of what we call the Old Testament, and they predate the time of Christ. They are now in a museum and are priceless, yet they were preserved for much more than two centuries in clay pots.

God delights in using common, humble people; people who are overlooked by society, or people who have no great natural talents and no worldly acclaim. There are few notable exceptions, but if you pay attention, you will notice that celebrities and athletes who trust in Christ will usually have a very short and limited influence for the cause of Christ. Again, there are a few notable exceptions, but most of the well-known people who have a large following before Christ are typically like a Roman Candle that burns brightly for a moment and then fizzles out.

The second phrase in our verse says, “so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves”.

Later in 2nd Corinthians, Paul writes, “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about me weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (12:9).

Another bumper-sticker theology asserts that “God plus me equals a majority”. I got news for you, God plus nothing equals a majority, so be careful how you interpret and apply this verse.

R. Kent Hughes writes:

“It is easy to misread what Paul says here so that we interpret it as the means of enhancing our power. Thus, we may imagine that as we embrace our weakness God will pour His power into us so that we become powerful. The natural equation is: My weakness plus God’s power equals my power.”

“But that is not what Paul is saying. Rather, he teaches that as we embrace our weakness, God fills us with His power so that His power is manifested through us. We do not become powerful. We remain weak. We do not grow in power. We grow in weakness. We go from weakness to weakness, which is to remain vessels of His power—ever weak and ever strong.”

George Guthrie writes:

“We don’t need to approach people in the world with a gospel that says we’ve got it all together. We can live as real people in the world who have fragile lives, and God will use us to manifest the amazing treasure of His gospel.”

As I have said before, if you desire to be part of this church, please understand that you will be associating with a bunch of messed-up people. We most definitely do not have it all together. We say foolish things and we do foolish things. We have jaded pasts and truckloads of mistakes and blunders and poor choices on our resumes. We may attempt to portray a calm, cool, collected persona, but we are more often than not a hot mess on the inside. We are all a collection of clay pots. Some clay pots may look better than other clay pots, but in the end, we are all clay pots.

And the grand idea in this is so that all the glory and honor and praise go to God, for anything of note that we accomplish – and in the context of our passage it means anything of note that we accomplish in ministry. Any facet of ministry that we engage in, whether it is working in the nursery, teaching children or teens, cleaning the bathrooms, encouraging your brothers and sisters in Christ, praying for one another, preaching a sermon, or changing the furnace filters, all the glory is to God alone. Any glory or recognition you desire is suggesting that you are more than a clay pot, and clay pots are the only kind of vessels that God uses.

No one looking at the Apostle Paul would suppose that he possessed any measure of power to bring people to salvation, yet the power of the gospel resided within him. Romans 1:16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes”. Did you get that? The gospel is the power of God, not Paul, not you, and definitely not me. We think much too highly of ourselves and much too lowly of God when it comes down to it.

All that we are and all that we do as believers in Jesus Christ, as followers of Jesus Christ, as slaves of Jesus Christ, as men and women who have been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, is through His power alone and for his glory alone. Please do not take on any ministry in this church to receive human recognition or human applause. Whatever you do, do to the glory of Christ our Savior. Whatever you say, say to the glory of Christ our Savior, Whatever you give, give to the glory of Christ our Savior.

We are not here to lift ourselves up. We are not here to be recognized for anything that we have accomplished. We are not here for men and women to sing our praises. We are not here to even be appreciated for the ministries we engage in. And do not misunderstand me, please do not misunderstand me, the things that everyone does around here are important, and I am very grateful that you are doing them. But if you would not be doing any of these things if nobody knew about it, or anybody recognized it, or anybody thanked you for it, then please stop doing whatever you are doing.

We are clay pots. We are replaceable. God can use you in tremendous and even miraculous ways, but He could just as easily use someone else if you begin to think that things would fall apart without you. We are clay pots to be used as He sees fit for His glory alone.

It’s all about God the Father. It’s all about Jesus. It’s all about the Holy Spirit. Everything that we do that is of any spiritual and eternal value, is because of the surpassing greatness of the power of God and not from ourselves.

Let’s pray.