August 2 2020
Corinthians 4:7-18, 5:1-5
This past while, the news has been about the death of John Lewis. Now, sadly I had no idea just who John Lewis was or what he did except that he was a congressman from Georgia. So, instead of remaining ignorant I decided to read up on him and what I found was really fascinating. He was an early civil rights activist participating in peaceful nonviolent demonstrations against the racist practices in the south during the nineteen sixties. When he was twenty one he joined with the Freedom Riders, seven white students and six black students who were going to ride from Washington D. C. To New Orleans. Now, to us this sounds like no big deal but back then, in the south, interstate bus travel was segregated even though the Supreme Court had struck down this practice as being unconstitutional. So, the Freedom Riders were going to do what was lawful yet unacceptable to the people through the states that they were riding through. Lewis was attacked and beaten during his first ride. In Mississippi he was imprisoned, and in Birmingham the Riders were beaten with pipes, chains, baseball bats and stones. In Montgomery, Lewis was hit over the head with a crate and left bleeding and unconscious on the floor of the bus station. Two years later when he was elected Chairman of the student Non-Violent Committee, he had been arrested twenty four times for participating in peaceful non-violent demonstrations.
Now, what gets to me when I read the story of John Lewis and countless others who marched in the sixties for civil rights is how they were willing to allow themselves to be beaten and bloodied, to be ill-treated and imprisoned not just once but over and over again and not once do you read that they ever retaliate. I mean, I honestly don’t know if I could do that. I often wonder if I could participate in a non-violent protest because even after years of knowing Jesus I still am afraid that after a couple of hits I would want to start hitting back. I bring up John Lewis because it is easy for us to read accounts of Paul’s trials and think that was Paul he was some super Christian who was able to suffer for the cause of Christ but thank goodness that God doesn’t expect that of me. But then throughout history there comes along people like John Lewis and Martin Luther King and those martyrs of the faith who are willing to suffer for the cause of justice and they cause us to wonder if Paul was on to something, that being willing to suffer was maybe a willingness for all of us should work towards. This is what our scripture today is I believe trying to tell us.
When we read today’s scripture it is a little hard, at first, to figure out where Paul is headed and why he is writing what he does. I mean we finish up a section on the glory of God in our life which comes through knowing God. The reason Paul is writing about knowing God is that he is reminding the church at Corinth about the new covenant of which he is a minister of that covenant. He writes about how this covenant is written not on stone tablets as was the first covenant but is instead written on tablets of human hearts. This is exactly how Jeremiah prophesied that the new covenant God would make with his people was going to be. Yet this was just the beginning of what Jeremiah foresaw because he also said that because of this new covenant no longer would people have to teach others to know God because with the coming of the new covenant everyone would know God. When we know God then we, like Moses, know that God’s glory is his name, his unchangeable character, which is that he is a God who is slow to anger, a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, willing to forgive transgressions, iniquities and sin. How do we know this about God? We know that God is slow to anger, that he is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, a God willing to forgive because Jesus went to the cross and there at the cross we personally came to know God because it was there we met the God who was slow to get angry with us, a God whose steadfast love was given to us, a God who was faithful to us when we had no faith at all in him and a God who forgives because it was my sins and your sins that were forgiven through the blood shed by Jesus at the cross. It is this knowledge that we have been forgiven much at a great cost to God that causes our hearts to respond in love to God.As God had first loved us we love him; as God was first faithful to us we become faithful to him. As we saw God’s glory at the cross when Jesus became a ransom for many, we also realize that God has raised us up to that same glory so we might reign in life through serving even the least of these.
This brings us to todays scripture which begins with Paul speaking of “this treasure in jars of clay”. What is not clear is just what is Paul referring to when he speaks of “this” but what we do know is that this treasure is in jars of clay. Now, in the Old Testament this metaphor of clay jars is fairly common. In Isaiah sixty four, verse eight we read “But know O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the works of your hand.” Jeremiah also uses the image of God being the potter and we the clay in his hands. In the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, we read “ O, house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? Declares the Lord. Behold, like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” God explains further the point of he being the potter and Israel by saying, “If at any time I declare concerning a nation or kingdom that I will pluck up and destroy it, and if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil , I will relent of the disaster I intend to do to it” So, God as the potter has the right to pluck up any of his clay pots that did not turn out as he had planned and break that pot. Now what we must also know is just what is the evil that would cause God to do this? God tells Jeremiah that the evil that Israel must turn from is the evil of not listening to the voice of God. So, the clay jar was meant to be a vessel where God’s voice, his word could be found. This is exactly what the Psalmist writes in Psalm one nineteen, verse eleven tells us: “I have treasured your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” So considering all of this I believe that what Paul is speaking of when he says we have this treasure in jars of clay is that God’s word is to be treasured within our hearts. It is only by the word of God kept safe within our hearts that we have the knowledge of the glory of God. God gives us his word which tells us who he is and God’s actions verify that God is a God of integrity.
As great as it is for us to understand this about what Paul is telling us, I believe that there is also one more piece of the puzzle that we must also understand. When Paul began his letter, he began writing about the new covenant. The importance of the new covenant was that, now with its coming, the law of God would be on the hearts of the people of God and they would be able to fulfill the law. Jesus taught that the law can be summed up with two commands the first being that we are to love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul or life and with all of our strength or resources. The second is that we should love our neighbor as our self. So when we begin to understand that Paul in speaking about a treasure in jars of clay is pointing to God’s word being treasured in our hearts it isn’t a big leap to see that Paul is now not only speaking about the new covenant but also what effects the new covenant has on his life. Paul wouldn’t be much of a minister of the new covenant if that covenant had no affect on him. So here Paul is writing about how, now, with the new covenant, Paul is able to love God with all of his heart, with all of his soul and with all that God has given him. Paul tells us in todays scripture that he treasures God’s word because it shows that the surpassing power belongs to God. Pauls wording echoes what is written in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy where Moses tells the people of Israel that God fed them in the desert for forty years to teach them that people do not live by bread alone but by every word that God speaks. Then, further, Moses tells them to not forget the words of God and to not forget what has God has done because when they live in the Promised Land they would be tempted to say in their hearts, that it was their power has gotten them all that I have. Paul in saying is that he is just a simple clay pot does so to point out how powerless he really is. I mean just how much power does a clay pot have? Paul wants people to know that the power he relies upon comes from God. And Paul is also saying that it most certainly God’s word that is his life. The reason that when Paul was afflicted he was not not crushed and the reason that he was perplexed, but he was not driven to despair was that he had faith in the word of God. And it was faith in God’s word that meant that yes, when Paul was persecuted, hunted down by his enemies he could know beyond a doubt that he was never alone because God’s word told him that his God would be with him through it all. And, it was faith in God’s word that was the reason that even though Paul would often find himself knocked down he knew that he would never be destroyed because he had faith in the God who can raise the dead.
So, it is evident that Paul loved God with all of his heart, treasuring God’s word in his heart knowing he was alive because of every word of God. What we have to ask is then is Paul going to address loving God with all of his soul, his very life? Well, this just naturally follows what he has to say about loving God with all of his heart. What we have to understand is just what does it mean to love God with our life? To love God with our whole life means that we must not demand that God save us from death. It means that we must love God even if loving God means laying down our life if God asks us to do so. So, when Paul says he carries in his body the death of Jesus what he is saying is that he is willing to lay down his life to do the will of his Heavenly Father just as Jesus was willing to do so. Paul wrote in the second chapter of Philippians that even if he was to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of their faith. And in the third chapter he further adds that he wanted to share in the sufferings of Jesus so that he might also be like Jesus in his death. This is what it means to love God with your life. Paul tells us in todays scripture that he was always given over to death for the sake of Jesus, willing to give his life to do the will of God so that Jesus might be glorified. Paul loved God with such intensity that he was willing to not only to love him with his heart but he was also willing to give God back the life God first gave to him. Paul could do so because of the faith that Paul had in the word of God that Paul treasured in his heart. This was the same faith that Jesus had in his Heavenly Father that moved him to yield to his heavenly Father’s will, praying not my will but your’s be done. This is a faith in a God who gives life to the dead, a God who brings into existence those things which do not exist. Paul believed that the God who raised the Lord Jesus would also raise him and any one else who had this same faith so that one day all those who lived by that faith would be found alive in the presence of God. It was this faith of Paul that overwhelmed him so much that he had to speak about it to whoever who would listen. Paul quotes the One hundredth and sixteenth Psalm which says “Return O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you O God, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed therefore I spoke.” This was why Paul spoke the gospel message because he believed his soul, his life was at rest for God had delivered his life from death. Wherever Paul walked he knew that he was always walking in the land of the living.
This is why Paul never lost heart, never lost hope because he had an unwavering faith in God which sprung out of his love for God. Paul knew that this affliction he endured was preparing him for an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. It was because of this that Paul did not get hung up on the things that are seen but instead Paul focused in on the unseen things, the spiritual things, the heavenly things. Do you see how this orientation of Paul kept him from loving his stuff and instead loving God with the stuff he had been given? Paul was a man who stored up his treasures in heaven. Paul knew that his earthly home might someday be destroyed but Paul also knew that God had prepared for him and all those who had placed their faith in God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. God has always been preparing us us for this very thing, this great future that is in store for us. If God has been preparing our future why in the world don’t we believe that he is going to take care of our present? But how can we be certain that God really does have a future for us? Paul tells us that our hope is grounded by the presence of the Holy Spirit. God tells us that he is going to give us a foretaste of the future he has waiting for us by giving us himself as the God near to us, the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul writes about the Holy Spirit from the beginning of the fifth chapter of the book of Romans, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put our hearts to shame because God’s love has has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” You see it can be hard to love God with all of our heart as he demands, to treasure God’s word in our hearts and to place our faith in that word and to know that it is God’s word which is our very source of life. And it can be hard to love God with all of our life, to be willing to give our life to God just as Jesus gave his life for us. And it can be hard to love God with all that he has given to us. But what keeps us keeping on loving God, is that God has given us the Holy Spirit who continually overwhelms us with God’s great love for us. When we experience every moment the flood of God’s great love washing over us how can we not respond with love in return, to love God with all of our heart, to love God with all of our life and to love God with all that he has given to us. It is this never ending flood of God’s love which reminds us very day that here we live in a tent, in a world that is not permanent, in a world that one day will be gone in a twinkling of an eye. This is why we do not focus on what can be seen, these momentary afflictions, but rather we find our hope focusing on the unseen, on that home in glory that God is preparing for us where one day we will enjoy life together for all eternity. Amen!
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