The Living Dead

Did you know that you are the living dead?

This is not a sermon on being a zombie, although it might sound like it. The disclaimer here is that there is no such thing as zombies.

It seems the world is obsessed with zombies. According to financial experts zombies are pumping more than 5 Billion dollars into the nation’s economy each year.

Why are so many people obsessed with zombies?

Zombies demonstrate the best and worst in humanity. There are two traits that almost entirely define the undead: They are found in large groups and they have an undeterred motivation.

Zombies demonstrate something we all wish we had: undeterred motivation. They have a single goal and a single passion to pursue that goal and nothing will stop them to see it through. In a weird way, this drive, this passion, this single-minded focus on a goal is something we wish we had.

The concept of the living dead is nothing new. It has been around for at least 2000 years. Today we are going to examine how being the living dead can be a powerful thing for us.

Pray

Father, Open my eyes so I can see Your truth.

Open my ears so I can hear Your voice.

Open my mind so I can understand Your Word.

And open my heart so I may receive all that You want me to receive. AMEN

Let’s look at our main Scripture today found in 2 Corinthians 4.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 2 Corinthians 4:7-11 NIV

When I read this Scripture I thought about the clay jars that Paul mentions. What are these clay jars?

We are the clay jars.

Maybe you remember the song by the group Dead or Alive in the 1980s entitled “You spin me right round”. The chorus is what most people remember. It goes, “You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby, right round, round, round.”

Four times the prophet Isaiah makes reference to us being clay. The last one is Yet you, LORD, are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8 NIV.

We are a lump of clay on God’s potter’s wheel. Early clay pottery was made by taking strands of clay and coiling it together and then pinching the strands together. However, the earliest pottery made with pottery wheels date to around 1400 B. C.

Has anyone of you ever used a potter’s wheel?

My experience to a potter’s wheel is limited to the movie Ghost. I have never tried it.

I understand the principle of the wheel, the circular motion of the wheel helps one to form the pottery in an even fashion. Those of you who have tried it realize that you can make many mistakes in the learning process.

Many times you have to take your oddly shaped vase, stop the wheel, push the top back down into another lump and start from the beginning.

God has taken us as lumps of clay and has put us on His potter’s wheel and has made each of us into what we are today.

Then as jars of clay God has placed in us a treasure. Paul says that having this treasure in jars of clay demonstrates that the power is from God and not from us.

If you had a great treasure, would you put it in a safe or keep it in clay jars? Only God would keep an immeasurable treasure in jars of clay.

When Archaeologists unearth ancient ruins, they don’t find much pottery still intact. Why? Because those old jars of clay could not stand up to all the forces of nature over long periods of time.

But Paul says that we are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, thrown down but not destroyed.

What other clay containers can stand up to being hard pressed and being thrown down and are not crushed or destroyed? Only God’s jars of clay, which is what we are.

Then God places this treasure in us. What is the treasure?

Scripture tells us what this treasure is, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17 NIV