Treasure in Earthen Vessels

Sunday Worship Speaker: Dr. Lim Kar Yong
Date: 21 October 2007
Text: 2 Corinthians 4:7-12

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." v 7

Corinth was a new city, full of migrants, a thriving and wealthy seaport. Vibrant and competitive, like any big city of today, it valued excellence, honour, glory, survival of the fittest, where people and everything else is judged by their appearance and packaging.

When Paul used the imagery of jars of clay holding treasure, it served to promote a true counterculture.

What are jars of clay but objects which are fragile and easily broken, plain, cheap, and common, representing weakness and insignificance.

Paul considered himself a jar of clay, full of imperfections and not daring to use eloquence or impressive rhetoric in his preaching. His appearance was weak and unimpressive, and he bore on his body marks and scars. In the ancient world, people distinguished scars into those of honour (from battles and heroic deeds) and those of shame (from punishment for crimes and sins: flogging and stoning). Paul's scars were those of the latter, suffered for preaching the Gospel against the law of the rulers at that time.

But God's concept of ministry is different from that of the world's.

What is the content of the jar? It is the Gospel of Christ: "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God" v 4

But how can treasure be kept in jars of clay? Does not treasure deserve better containers? And yet God chooses us, humans frail and sinful veritable jars of clay to hold the truth of the Gospel and His very own Spirit, God's divine spark.

Why? God wants all attention to be drawn to the treasure not to the container and its packaging, and all praises to go to God and not to man.

Our ordinariness is an asset, not a liability to the kingdom of God. It is no liability to be a broken, cracked clay pot. People should respond to the treasure not to its packaging.

Do we hide the light of the Gospel or do we let it shine through us?

God is able to make the Gospel shine through us.

(Perhaps the more cracks, the more light shines through?)

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