Jars of Clay (2 Cor. 4:1-12)
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| By Shai Halevi on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority - Enlargement of image at Wikimedia-Commons |
Caves, it seems to me, can be a lot like boots that have been left out in the garage. You don’t really want to put your feet in them because you’re not sure what might be lurking down there. I’ve heard stories about spiders and snakes and scorpions hiding out in boots. So what do you do? You try to shine a light into the boot to see if there are any creepy-crawlies hiding out in there, waiting for a nice foot to chew on. Well, as I say, it seems to me that caves can be like that. Who knows what’s in there?
So if you’re a shepherd boy looking for a lost goat, scrambling amidst the steep desert cliffs that line the Dead Sea, and you see a cave nestled in the side of those hills, you might just want to throw a rock into the darkness, just to make sure there’s nothing in there, except maybe the goat you’re looking for. Which, apparently, is exactly what a shepherd boy did near Qumran in 1947. Throwing a rock into the darkness of a cave, he heard the crashing of breaking clay pots. Curiosity got the better of him at this point, and he wandered into the cave to discover that there were many of these clay pots, some intact with their lids still on them. But to his disappointment, there was nothing in there except some old scrolls, “wrapped in linen and blackened with age.”
He didn’t realize what an incredible find he had actually come across. These were the now-famous Dead Sea Scrolls, probably the most important archeological find of the 20th century. Later, when Hebrew University Professor Eliezer Lipa Sukenik heard of their discovery, he arranged to meet with a man in Bethlehem who had three of the scrolls. In his diary, this is what he wrote about the first time he was able to personally see and handle the scrolls:
“My hands shook as I started to unwrap one of them. I read a few sentences. It was written in beautiful biblical Hebrew. The language was like that of the Psalms, but the text was unknown to me. I looked and looked, and I suddenly had the feeling that I was privileged by destiny to gaze upon a Hebrew Scroll which had not been read for more than 2,000 years.”[1]
All because of the breaking of a clay pot.
These clay pots were not remarkable, nor were they valuable. But what they contained was invaluable. And it took someone throwing a rock at them to break them to reveal both the existence and the preciousness of their contents.
The apostle Paul viewed himself as a jar of clay. This is what he says expressly in verse 7: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” And he saw himself as a broken vessel, troubled, perplexed, persecuted, cast down, “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus” (10). There was every reason to lose heart and to faint (1).
But Paul did not faint and he did not lose heart. In fact, this whole chapter in some ways is an answer to the question why he didn’t, despite all the setbacks and disappointments that he faced. For he begins and ends this chapter with the statement, “we faint not” (1, 16). In between is the secret of a man who faced brokenness without being finally broken.
Young folks, I want to talk to you about how we face as Christians the fact that we are clay pots, that we are broken people. I want to argue from this text that our brokenness is not a hindrance to our fruitfulness in the kingdom of God but rather that it is essential to it. You may not at this time in your life even be contemplating the possibility of brokenness, but trust me, you will at some point in your life come face to face with it. And the question is, how will you face it? Like a Humpty-Dumpty who can’t be put back together again, or like Qumran clay pot whose brokenness reveals a treasure beyond all value?
In this passage, I want you to see two things. First of all, Paul teaches us that there is a kind of brokenness that is to be rejected. In our day, there are a lot of people gloating and glorying in their brokenness. They like to call it being authentic. But sometimes this brokenness is not the kind of brokenness that we should be glorying in but that of which we should be ashamed. Paul wants us to reject that. But then there is a kind of brokenness to be embraced. And we want to look at what this means, why we should embrace it, and how we should do so.
There is a brokenness to be rejected
There are three kinds of brokenness to be rejected that we see in this text.
First of all, there is a kind of brokenness that hides in darkness, and it should be rejected, not coddled. Paul begins in verses 1-2 by saying, “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.” Now Paul is talking about the ministry in particular here, and he is defending his ministry from its detractors. But there are general principles here that are applicable to all of us. Note the things that Paul absolutely renounced and rejected: the hidden things of dishonesty, or shame, not seeking to deceive others in any way, and not tampering with God’s word, bending it to in order to use it in order to gain personal influence or power or money. These are things we should also avoid, “hidden things,” things of the night, a shameful course of life. Paul does not live in the darkness. He does not live with things he’s trying to hide from others. He’s not the kind of person living a double life.
This kind of life will lead to brokenness, but it is not one that is to be celebrated or one that can lead to any real good in the end. It will destroy families, one’s health, careers. It will damage the witness that we have as Christians.
Paul didn’t live that way. Instead, he lived “by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” He was the kind of man who could open the door to any part of his life and set it before the consciences of men and women and know that he would be vindicated. As he put it, “herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men” (Acts 24:16). There was nothing to hide.
So here’s a question: are you hiding something, something that you are ashamed about? Young men, are you hiding an addiction to pornography? Young ladies, are you hiding something from your parents? I beseech you, come out into the light! Listen to the words of the apostle Paul to the Ephesian Christians: “ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Eph. 5:8-14). To follow Christ is to walk in the light: “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:5-7).
Then there is a kind of brokenness that blinds one to the light of the gospel. In verses 2-3, Paul writes, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” This is the fundamental brokenness of the human race in Adam. It is the brokenness of blindness to the gospel. It is spiritual deadness, slavery to the devil, the god of this world, that keeps people from believing the gospel, from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, the image of God.
You see, God is the greatest reality in the universe. Everything else is but a shadow in comparison. To reject God the Creator for the creature is not only idolatry, but also madness. Here is the way the apostle Paul put it to the Romans: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom. 1:22-25). What is idolatry? Among other things, it is to become a fool. Now we may think that we are above this because we don’t have a statue of Buddha in our homes. But we become just like this whenever any created thing holds our affection and allegiance more than or rather than God. It is to cherish that which is finite, mortal, and changeable over the God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Or it is to prefer people who are unwise, weak, unholy, unjust, bad, and liars over the God who is wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Or, to use C. S. Lewis’s analogy, it is like a child who prefers to go on making mud pies in the slums because he does not understand what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
But to reject the gospel is even worse than that. This is because the gospel doesn’t just reveal God as Creator and Administrator of the universe; it reveals him to us as our Redeemer in Christ. Notice how Paul puts it: in the gospel shines the light of glory of Christ, who is the image of God (4). And then in verse 6: in the gospel shines the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God is revealed in Christ, who is the image of God, who shares the very nature of the Father. And through Christ, God is bringing about a new creation. He is reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. The gospel tells us the greatest imaginable news: that God the Father made God the Son, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:17-21). The gospel reveals God to us as the one who is saving us from that which kills us, ruins us, shames us, and separates us from his fellowship. To be blind to this is not enlightenment; it is brokenness. It is the greatest possible gift of God when by his grace he takes away this blindness by shining in our hearts to dispel the darkness of sin and unbelief “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Finally, we see a third way we can be broken in the wrong way. It is to glory in real brokenness by using it to garner people’s sympathy and attention. In other words, there is a kind of brokenness that turns real brokenness into a platform for self-promotion. This should be rejected as well. Paul was not that kind of person, and we shouldn’t be, either. What’s interesting is that even when Paul had to defend himself and talk about his trials (like the thorn in the flesh) he says that he is talking like a fool. He didn’t like it at all! Circumstances in Corinth and the claims of the “super-apostles” pressed him to do it. But Paul did not constantly parade his difficulties in front of others in order to impress them with his faith. Again, neither should we.
Godly men and women aren’t looking for people to notice them; they are living so that people see the glory of God. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the famous 20th century British preacher and pastor, left a very promising and lucrative career in medicine to serve as a missionary pastor in a dirt-poor community in Wales. As far as I know, he never, not once, pointed people to the sacrifice that he made in a single sermon. John Owen, the great Puritan, lost ten of his eleven children in infancy. Their one daughter who survived died as a young adult. I cannot imagine the pain and suffering that he and his wife endured. Yet there is not one word about this from his pen – not one! – in the many volumes and thousands of pages of his written works.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you can’t talk about the painful things you’ve experienced in your life. Sometimes it can be very helpful and encouraging for others who can learn from the lessons you have learned. And very often we need to talk about our suffering with others who can help us navigate it in a God-honoring way. But we have to be careful that we do not turn it into a way to glory in ourselves.
Listen to the way the apostle puts it here: “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). Do we preach ourselves? You don’t have to be in a pulpit to do it. Every one of us is in a way preaching a sermon with our words and works, with our lips and lives. Do we so live, even in the moments that reveal our limitations and weakness, in such a way that we are just pointing people to ourselves? Like the Pharisees who blew a trumpet when they parted with their riches. Or when they made sure everyone saw them when they were praying. And they especially wanted people to know when they were fasting: they wanted people to see the unkept hair, the long face, the dour expression. Are we like that? This is not the kind of brokenness we are to embrace.
So what are we to embrace?
There is a brokenness to be embraced
As we noted before, Paul refers to himself and his fellow apostles as “earthen vessels,” or clay pots. They were incredibly common in Paul’s day, and archeologists find thousands of shards of such pots and jars as they dig down to the remains of ancient civilizations. They clearly were easily breakable. So that’s what Paul says he is: a breakable, common container. There is nothing really remarkable about him. He doesn’t consider himself to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. He’s common. This is why he’s not out to preach himself, but Jesus, “and ourselves [as] your servants for Jesus’ sake.” He’s nothing more than a servant, a slave, to serve others in the name of Christ.
And he’s breakable: “For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you” (11-12). It has been remarked by commentators on 2 Corinthians that this epistle is perhaps one of the few times when we see the raw emotion of the apostle Paul come out. But it is not to celebrate himself; it is to defend himself against false teachers. He talks about how “the sufferings of Christ abound in us” (1:5), how “that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (8-9), and how “out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears” (2:4), how he “had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother” (13), how the outward man is perishing (4:16), not to mention the long catalog of trials that he brings to our attention in chapter 11, followed by a thorn in the flesh (chapter 12). To top it all off, Paul wasn’t even impressive as a preacher! He admits, “But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge” (11:6). Wow, I wonder sometimes if the apostle Paul would even make it on any pastoral search committee in the United States today. I think we would be far more impressed with false apostles who disguised themselves as angels of light (11:13-14).
But Paul doesn’t see this as a net negative. In fact, he sees this as an indispensable part of his witness for Christ: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (4:7).
You see, God does not like to use people who think they can do very well without him. Or people who think that they are going to impress God by their incredible talents. The reality is that God doesn’t need us. How could we think otherwise? God is the one who spoke light out of the darkness! He doesn’t use us because he needs us. He uses us because he loves us and wants to bless us by allowing us to join him in the spread of his kingdom.
God loves to use Gideons. Gideon starts out with 30,000 men and God whittles it down to 300. Why? “And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me” (Judg. 7:2). God loves to feed five thousand with the loaves and fishes of a little boy. He loves to take despised and unnoticed shepherd boys and set him on a throne. Or, perhaps Mary the mother of Jesus put it best when she said, “He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away” (Lk. 1:51-53).
In other words, God does it this way so that we can be light in the way we are supposed to be light: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Mt. 5:16). Do your good work proclaim the glory of God or the glory of yourself? If they come out of a broken earthen vessel, people won’t notice the pot; they’ll notice the treasure inside the pot.
In this way, God gets the glory. And that is the best thing. It’s the best thing for us and it’s the best thing for everyone else. For no one needs me or you, really. They need God. We need to be pointing people to God in everything we do. Believe me, it’s a lot easier to do this when you realize your just a clay pot. For Paul says that it is as we die “that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in. our mortal flesh” (11; also 12).
But another repercussion of this reality is that we don’t lose heart. If you are all about yourself and your ideas and you’re your strength and your ingenuity and your intelligence and your creativity and so on, what do you do when you fail? What do you do when things don’t go your way? What do you do when dreams disappear into the dust? When disappointment stares you in the face?
What do you think Paul did? Read verses 8-12 again: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” How do you become the kind of person who when troubled on every side is yet not distressed? When perplexed is not in despair? When persecuted does not feel forsaken? When cast down does not allow the discouragement and the disappointment to cause him or her to go down in flames? How do you become a person who is willing to be “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus”?
Paul was able to be like this because at the end of the day, his trust wasn’t in himself but in God. He wasn’t depending upon his capacity to move the kingdom of God forward. And he knew that whatever happened to him, no matter how dreadful it was, God could use it. He didn’t have to lose heart because God is bigger than we are. Our limitations do not impose any limitations on God. Our weakness does not make God weak. Our foolishness does not make God unwise. They don’t pose problems for God; they provide opportunities for God’s power and might and wisdom and love and grace to shine forth through us.
Of course, this is meaningful insofar as our lives, either directly or indirectly point others to the glory of Christ in the gospel. It is as we live to proclaim the treasure of the gospel that we do not lose heart. Living for self is an ultimately depressing aim for life. We are so small. We are nothing more than vessels of clay and earth. Live for something glorious. Live for God. Carry the gospel, don’t proclaim yourself but Christ Jesus the Lord. Be a servant to others. Don’t live for yourself! Don’t follow your heart; tether your heart to the yoke of Christ and let him show you what it means to have true joy and life.
Young person, what are you holding? Is it treasure? It is the treasure of the gospel or is it the odorous rags of self-expression and self-actualization and self-worship and self-promotion? Are you trying to show off yourself or make manifest the glory of Christ? Christ is the only treasure who can make you eternally rich, and the only one worth pointing others to. We can’t save anyone. We can’t make anyone really happy. We can’t give people the blessing that they need. But Jesus can, because he is the God’s Son who died so that the sin that ruins us and destroys us can be taken away and replaced with a righteousness, the righteousness of God no less, that brings us into God’s family and into the possession of every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.
Be willing to be broken for Christ so that you can show his value and worth more fully in your life. It is worthy it. For you know what? There is coming a day when everything broken will be made new and whole again for those who belong to Jesus, who have had the light of God shine in them and then through them. Follow Jesus, die with him, for all who do so he will raise from the dead, and bring them faultless before the throne of his presence with unceasing joy.
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