Jars of Clay

Text: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 NIV

Modern medicine and technology seems to be extending life. We like that thought. We all would like a guarantee that we could last forever. Wouldn’t that be great? It amazes me when I meet people who have lived a long life. Recently I had an opportunity to become reacquainted, after 25 years, with Nellie - still alive at 101 years of age. Meeting such people causes me to think that just maybe they are going to live forever. Yet that is not the image that Paul gives us in this passage. If anything, Paul paints a somewhat bleak image of human life. We are like a clay pot or earthen vessel. Pottery, that can crack, get chipped and broken if dropped. Paul is telling us that life takes its toll on our physical strength and stamina. We wear out. The body is made of material that will not last forever.

Paul encourages us to "fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." When the temporary things pass away--and our earthly body is temporary--the eternal treasures of the heart remains. Our faith in Christ is eternal.

This past June, I was able to visit the Holy Land. One of the sites that I visited were the caves of Qumran. In 1947, a shepherd discovered some old clay jars. These old earthen vessels contained the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a very valuable source of study for the Church today. The jars themselves were not so valuable, but the treasure of God’s word inside was priceless.

In a similar way, we are like clay jars - earthen vessels. The treasure is the eternal glory of God and the unseen things of the spiritual world. The vessel is the outer person which slowly wastes away. Paul says that death and life are both at work in the Christian’s heart. Death is within each of us, because we have sinned. It works its end of destruction and takes each of us down to the grave. But because of our faith in Christ, death does not defeat us. In fact, we have victory over the grave because of Jesus’ resurrection.

We have a choice today of what part of life that we will hold on to. Where is your focus? On the physical or the spiritual? God wants you and I to focus our lives on God and allow Him to mold us and make us into men and women, youth and children who realize that it is faith in Jesus Christ that is of prime importance. We can have a great treasure in this clay jar of ours. And Paul has a word for each of us in the midst of this life, "We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed; perplexed, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." We need to grasp onto Jesus Christ so that we might deal with the adversities of life and as a result gain that which is eternal . . . faith in Jesus Christ.