- Have you ever bought a super-valuable diamond ring and then thrown it in a brown paper grocery sack? Why would you do that? Normally, you would put that ring in a special box and make sure that it was kept in the most secure of locations.
Years ago, a couple of us raised a lot of money to help purchase a piece of property that would be transformed into Christian campground in a nation that desperately needed it. The problem was, we had $30,000 in cold, hard cash on us. We had to guard it with our lives! I was constantly afraid something would go wrong. We knew there were people out there who would gladly kill us for the financial treasure we had in our travel sack.
- Have you ever been asked to perform a task with extreme consequences attached —a task for which you found yourself totally unprepared and way over your head?
How did you feel when the assignment was given to you? Overwhelmed? Undertrained? Inadequate? Burdened by the task?
Look at this verse…
2 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV) But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
- The saving message of Jesus is the most valuable message in the world! Greater than any insider stock tip you could get. More valuable than any amount of cash you could carry. And yet, you and I are the carriers of this message. Feeble, inadequate you and I are walking around with gold in our pockets!
Paul wrote the words in 2 Corinthians 4 to describe you and me as “jars of clay.” If you read the context, he is saying that we—the Body of Christ (that’s you and I)—possess the most valuable treasure (the saving message of Jesus), and yet the carrying case for that treasure is us—our bodies—our lives. God seemed to hand over the greatest treasure of all and put it in the hands and hearts of us, his people. And what does he call us? Jars of clay!
1 Corinthians 12:27
We are the Body of Christ, and each one of us is a member of it.
2 Corinthians 4:7
We have this treasure in jars of clay…
We are the Body of Christ—and at the same time we are feeble and vulnerable jars of clay! How can these go together? That’s what we are studying in this passage: we will see that these feeble people are actually the “commissioned people for God”!
As you prepare for this coming Sunday morning, your assignment is to read slowly and carefully 2 Corinthians 4 (the whole chapter). As you read it, take some time to highlight a few verses. Park on them…meditate on them…use a study Bible to read comments about them. On Sunday morning we will open this chapter and see why God allows the most valuable message in the world to be delivered in “paper sacks” like us. We will also see how all of this fits into God’s eternal plan.
See you Sunday morning at 10 a.m.!
