2 Corinthians 4:7-18--Treasure in Jars of Clay

2 Corinthians 4:7-18
English Standard Version

Treasure in Jars of Clay​
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.

13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

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This is the passage from which the band "Jars of Clay" gets its name.  Have you ever hidden something really valuable in a place that you wouldn't normally think of as being a place for holding valuables, and maybe part of your reasoning was "no one would ever think to look for it there."?  We have a story like that in my family where my mom hid some small bars of silver wrapped up in foil in the bottom of the cookie jar.  Her mom came over and decided it was her job to clean the kitchen (probably rearranging everything the way she wanted it) and throwing away things she though should be thrown away.  My grandma assumed that the only thing in a cookie jar would be cookies and she threw away what was wrapped up in the foil without looking at it.  Gone forever!

Paul is making a similar kind of argument here--you'd normally want to but valuables somewhere with lots of security and in something solid and sturdy--certainly something fragile and brittle like a clay pot isn't the first place you would think of.  That's just how it is with the gospel.  We have been giving something SUPER valuable as the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, lives inside of everyone who is a Christian--we become temples of the Holy Spirit--but does this body look anything like that kind of "temple" that the God of the universe deserves to live in?  Remember what David just said about the kind of "house" that God deserved and God's response back to King David when we talked about the building of the temple a couple weeks ago in our Gospel Foundations lesson.


2 Samuel 7:1-17
English Standard Version

The Lord's Covenant with David​
7 Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, 2 the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.” 3 And Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you.”

4 But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, 5 “Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord: Would you build me a house to dwell in? 6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. 7 In all places where I have moved with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’ 8 Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. 9 And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, 15 but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16 And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’” 17 In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.


Notice verses 5 and 6.  First of all, there is no house big enough to contain God.  Isaiah 66:1 tells us,
Thus says the Lord:
“Heaven is my throne,
    and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
    and what is the place of my rest?

Yet verse 6 tells us that God has always chosen to dwell among His people in a visible way so that the it would be clear to the people of God and their enemies that the God of Israel was not like other gods.  He was not constrained to a land or to temples, but He was present everywhere that His people were.  The pagan peoples of the world imagined the LORD was like their gods and they looked for an idol that the people worshiped and thought that it was the Ark of the Covenant--yet that Ark only represented the things which the people remembered that told them who God is, and that Ark is symbolic of our heart today that we have hidden inside of it the Law of God, the provision of God, and miracles of God--the most miraculous of which is that of regeneration.  God took that which was dead and made it alive (see Ezekiel 37).

Just like we wouldn't expect the LORD to live in a tent or even a temple, we definitely wouldn't expect Him to live inside us!  We know what we are like.  We are not fit for such a treasure, but God promises to make all things new for us.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19
English Standard Version
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So it seems that God making us into something new, and not making us fit for Him to dwell with us, but making us fit to dwell with Him in the New Heaven and the New Earth that will be a new kind of temple where we will live in the presence of the LORD with no veil separating us from the holiness of God for this royal priesthood that He has saved unto Himself will have complete and total access to Him all the time.  No longer will we need to approach God by the blood of bulls and goals like the Old Covenant.

But let's return to today's text.  God put a valuable treasure inside of us, the fragile and common, ordinary vessels that we are, and that has nothing to do with our worth or value--the only value we have is from the treasure that is kept inside of us (the Holy Spirit).

The the passage talks about something supernatural.  Remember how we talked about how easy it should be to break a clay pot?  The passage says that we as Christians will go through all kinds of persecution.  "8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed."  How does that make any sense for something as fragile as ourselves?  Again, the answer is that the strength is not from within ourselves, but something--ore more correctly Someone--greater who lives inside of us. 

"10 Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. "  How is the death of Jesus being carried around in us gong to help us show the life of Jesus in our bodies?  Does that make any sense to you?  Let me explain.  The same power that raised Jesus from the dead (the Holy Spirit) lives inside of us and took us from death to life as well.  As we show people that our old self is dead and that God has given us new life as the Spirit of God lives in and through us so that we are no longer the same as we once we, we preach the message of the gospel.  One of the ways that we do this is by not God giving us the strength to endure persecution that we would not normally endure in our flesh nor would we respond to it the way Paul has been talking about so far in 2 Corinthians.  Remember that the flesh lives under the control of sin and the wages of sin is death, but the Spirit of God is life.  "11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you."

So we have the assurance that the One who was able to raise Jesus from the dead will also one day raise our physical bodies from the dead and give us new bodies fit for the kingdom of heaven.  We are to receive the same inheritance of eternal life the Christ does, though we will not receive the kingdom as He does, for there is only one King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  While God is changing us to transform us into the likeness of His Son, Jesus, there is only one Son of God, but He is making us into a family of sons by adoption so that we will be co-heirs with Jesus.  In this way more and more people will receive the grace of God and give thanks to God and worship Him (the ultimate purpose of man is to give glory to God through worship) and God will receive much glory (think of a spotlight shining on someone who is famous so that people's attention is drawn to that person and so that they can see the person more clearly) as we make His Name great, both by our words and our actions.

So then, even though these corruptible bodies are wasting away and getting old and decrepit, we do not despair or lose hope or faith.  We remain sure that God will fulfill His promises, not the least of which is that He is going to prepare a place for us so that where He is, there we might be also.  (See John 14:1-6ff).  All of the grief and persecution and affliction that we endure in the here and now is light in comparison to the glory that is to come.  That is if you were to put it on a balance, that the good things that God has in story for us in heaven FAR outweigh any of the seemingly "bad" things that we go through here on earth now--and even those things that feel "bad" now we know are working for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose (maybe not our own individual good, but the good of the Church) and are for the glory of God.  God has a much bigger and better plan with a greater good and greater goals than your personal happiness and comfort.  This world does not revolve around you--though God did care so much about you (and everyone else) that the Father, Son, and Spirit decided before the beginning of time to have Jesus die a death of substitutionary atonement so that He could redeem a chosen people unto Himself--a people that God would give to Him as an eternal inheritance and that the Spirit would seal and protect and deliver to Him--so that God might be glorified.  We've asked this question before, but it seems like a good time to ask it again.  If we had never sinned, and Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden forever in peace with God (don't assume they would eventually sin because they had no sin nature to make them do that--they were fully capable of resisting temptation at that point), what would we know about God?  We would know little more about God other than the fact that He is Creator, and that He is powerful--He seems to have told them that He spoke everything into existence, and we'd know whatever He told us as He walked with us and talked with us.  I'm sure He would have told us all about Himself.  But how would we know God as Savior or Redeemer?  How would we know Jesus as The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?  We would never experience God as Healer, Deliverer, or our Refuge and Strength in times of trouble.  So much of what we know about God comes from us seeing what He has done, and He has always been about saving a people for Himself, even before He created those people or the world that we live in.  Isn't that crazy?  (See John 17:24, Ephesians 1:4, and Revelation 13:8).  Not because there is anything special about us (we are just ordinary "jars of clay"), but because there is something VERY special about Him that He wanted to show and tell to the entire universe and He chose to do that through what we call the gospel of Jesus Christ.