God’s Goodies in Cracked Pots
Introduction:
• Our oldest daughter, Maria, told us a wonderful story recently about a friend of hers in Lander, Wyoming who had gone out with her husband to the city dump to dispose of some larger yard trash.
• As they were ditching their junk their eye caught a rather ornate but worn old wooden bed headboard and the wife suggested they take it home and try to restore it.
• As they were loading this rather heavy and bulky item onto their truck, a cap on one of the posts came off and out began to pour dozens of old gold coins from the late 1800’s. Both legs of this old headboard had been hollowed out and filled with a fortune in gold coins.
• Amazing the valuable stuff one can find on a garbage dump! The finest of treasures in the least likely of places! Stories like that are always a great thrill and provide excellent sermon illustrations!
• Things aren’t always what they seem at first glance or just on the surface. Often one has to dig deeper or see with other eyes and from another perspective to know the truth about a person or a situation or a set of circumstances.
• That is one of the very important lessons to come out of this 2nd letter of Paul to the Corinthians. He says it a number of in different ways throughout the letter.
• In chapter 5 he writes: “From now on therefore” – ie. Now as newborn citizens of God’s Kingdom – “we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!”
• Well how did we once regard Christ solely from a human or worldly point of view? When we see Him simply as the carpenter from Nazareth – as a good man, as a great teacher, as the finest man who ever lived, as one who got tired, and thirsty and hungry and suffered and died. All true of course – but not the complete picture. Now we know that this one who came in the flesh is the Almighty Son of God – sent as the visible, tangible, human expression of the father’s love - the one through whom all that is, was made. Who is seated at God’s right hand and preparing to come again to receive to Himself for all eternity all who love Him and eagerly seek to do His will.
• What a treasure God gave us in an earthly vessel!!
• And Paul says that in the same way that we have come to have a different view of Jesus Christ, we now also view nobody else from a purely human point of view.
• To do so – to view one another from a purely human point of view would be to look at purely the outward details of our lives – the color of our skin, the language we may speak, how much or how little education we have, the size of our bank account, how high or how low we are on society’s totem pole.
• But all that really matters is whether or not a person has been reconciled with God and come to have new life through His Son. And that is now what we look for.
• Do we, do you, do I now have God’s treasure in this earthen vessel?
• And we’re all earthen vessels – made from the dust of the earth – and some of us, myself in particular, are just cracked pots!
• But it’s what’s inside the pot that matters – hallelujah! As I reflected on this passage there were at least 3 lessons God underscored for me and I share them with you:
A. REASONS TO REJOICE
B. OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME
C. REALITIES TO REINFORCE
A. REASONS TO REJOICE
1) Paul writes that God, who in the very beginning of creation, said “Let light shine out of darkness”, has now shone His light into our dark hearts so that we may behold and know His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
2) Apart from Jesus we are in the dark about God and so are all who do not know him.
3) You see, all religions are not equal. The Christian Faith is not simply one of many different and equally valid ways in which people might come to God. Jesus said quite clearly and plainly, “I am THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life and no one comes to the Father but by me”
4) Now isn’t that a very exclusive statement to make in this age that has made tolerance of every viewpoint a supreme virtue? Yes, it is – but it is either True or False and the one who made it is either who He claimed to be – the Blessed Son of Almighty God or the greatest deceiver and liar of all time.
5) I choose to believe Him and I hope you do too. And I rejoice in that truth not in arrogance and pride as though it was a truth I discovered with my superior intellect - but in humble reverence and holy awe that God had mercy on me and allowed my blind eyes to be opened and shone with His light into my dark heart.
6) And he does the same for every human being who acknowledges her/his need and cries out to know Him. I remember reading a story once of a Hindu man who received a life-transforming vision of Jesus Christ in a Hindu temple without ever having read either the Old or New Testament Scriptures – but had a hunger and thirst to know God.
7) God did this way back with our Ancestor in the Faith, Abraham, as he called him out of the witchcraft and astrology of the city of Ur in Chaldea and began to reveal Himself to him. And he did it on the road to Damascus with the Jewish Zealot and enemy of the Christian Faith, Saul of Tarsus.
8) So rejoice in the treasure God has given you - the light and revelation of Himself He has already provided and eagerly ask Him to show you more of Himself and His ways.
9) Rejoice over those who helped bring that light and truth into your life – a mom, a dad, a relative, a friend, a Sunday School Teacher, a pastor
B. OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME
1) Paul goes on to say, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.”
2) He wrote much the same thing in his first letter to the Corinthians 1: 26-29 (Read)
3) And those who truly appreciate the treasure they have received in Christ are more fully aware of their frailty and weakness. It’s like the more of God’s light that shines on you, the more you become aware of the blemishes and bruises and brokenness still needing God’s mercy and grace.
4) So there’s “stuff” in us that still needs to be dealt with and overcome and as we desire people to be patient with us because God is not finished with us yet, so we need to be patient with them too because they are, like us, still a work in progress.
5) But there is also “stuff” out there in our world we have to contend with. Pressures and afflictions and harassments that come our way – curve balls that get thrown at us when we least expect them and when we’re least prepared for them – ailments and aches and pains to contend with as our own and our loved one’s bodies waste away and eventually call it quits.
6) This world is not an easy place to live in and there are all kinds of things that come our way to try us and test us and determine just what we are made of.
7) You remember the Gospel According to the 3 Little Pigs, don’t you? The one built his house out of straw, the other out of sticks, and the third out of bricks with a solid foundation.
• In this story there was a Big Bad Wolf whose favorite dish was fresh young pork and he set about blowing down with a Huff and a Puff, the house of the first two pigs.
• But he could not blow down the home of the third pig because it had been carefully built of wolfbreath resistant materials.
• Jesus told a similar story about the Wise and the Foolish builders – the wise man who built his house on the rock (obedience to the word of God) and the foolish man who built his house on the sand (he heard the word but did not apply it to his life). And the storms came against both houses – the wise and the foolish – but only the wise man’s house stood firm.
• And many of the storms that come unexpectedly and sometimes with such fury against our lives are the gracious opportunities God gives us this side of eternity to check the materials with which we are building our lives, make the needed changes, alterations, and renovations, and be better equipped and prepared for the next and perhaps final storm.
C. REALITIES TO REINFORCE
1) We live in a world and age and culture that are very focused on the visible as the ultimate measure of reality.
• The importance of image and fashion and being “cool” over truth and integrity and moral purity is the result of a generation that has modeled itself after Hollywood and allowed its values to be shaped by MTV.
• And so more attention is paid to what Britney Spears thinks and does or Kobe Bryant’s actions on the court and in the bedroom than to the words of Jesus or the writings of St. Paul.
• Our society places enormous value on such things as the size and location of our homes and properties, the sticker price on our cars and how many we own, our overall financial worth.
• Even many clergy get caught up in this rat race as they compete for larger and larger churches and bigger and more diversified budgets.
2) If those tangibles are not the ones that hold your attention, maybe your primary focus is on other seen or felt concerns that weigh you down or threaten to overwhelm you:
• Perhaps a debilitating illness that saps you of energy and strength
• Perhaps financial needs that give you sleepless nights
• Maybe a rocky or broken relationship that eats away at your joy
• How about a burden of guilt over past failures and sins that keep rising up to accuse you and hold you captive to your past.
3) In our Scripture for today we read that our focus needs to be “not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient or temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal”
• On Thursday when I went to pick up my granddaughter from the Learning Center she is attending for the summer there was one of the kids balancing with arms outstretched on a skateboard without wheels and with one of those virtual reality visors on his head. He appeared to be having a blast – completely oblivious to my presence or that of others in the room. The teacher told me it was a virtual reality snowboarding game.
• This game simulates the real experience and lets you see and feel what you would experience if you were actually boarding down a snowy mountain side.
• Some of those games are so realistic now it is hard to distinguish the simulated from the true reality.
4) What this Scripture underscores for us is that much of what passes for reality in this world today is in fact virtual – yes it all seems real and we even feel the pain or the pleasure it gives us.
5) But there is a day coming – maybe sooner than we think – when the game will be over and the power cord unplugged.
• And the things we imagined to be so real and substantive in this life will disappear in a flash and what we had been oblivious to or deliberately ignored will be the only inescapable and eternal reality.
• How we respond to that reality then will be determined by how we have begun to relate to Him here and now.
AMEN
