2 Corinthians 4:7-15

So we're journeying through the book of 2 Corinthians together.

I don't have the slide, but you'll remember just what I've been saying for months now is that you are a what?

Blessable image-bearing covenant partner.

That's right.

You're a blessable image-bearing.

That's how God made you.

He designed you to be blessable.

He designed you in his image.

And he designed you to be a covenant partner.

It's a complex statement about your identity, but it is critical because it comes up almost in every passage that we're studying together.

As we get into this passage in 2 Corinthians, it's important to remember just what we covered a little bit last week because we looked at the first six verses from 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

And one of the things that he ended with is this idea that God causes the light switch to go on in our hearts to reveal the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And so if you're a follower of Jesus, there's this proverbial light that is gone on in your life, a spiritual light that is God at work in you, knowing his son Jesus Christ.

And so Paul lays it, Paul's the writer of this letter.

We call it a book, but it's actually a letter that he wrote to a church he planted in the city of Corinth.

And this letter is addressed, it's called 2 Corinthians, because there was a 1 Corinthians dealing with problems in this church.

So this letter is written about 10 months after the first letter was written.

And in this church, there's all kinds of issues.

So it's a Roman city, and it's a port town, and there's a lot of commerce that goes on in there.

So there's a whole industry around prostitution, uh cult practices going on in Corinth.

And it was uh it was a name, so if somebody was living like a loose wild life at this time, they would be called, oh, you're a Corinthian.

Kind of like how we think of Vegas sometimes, but their Vegas was Corinth.

And God allows a church to form in Corinth that Paul was a part of starting.

And this church, um, Paul loved this church deeply.

Like he saw himself as a spiritual father to these people, but he wasn't there.

Paul's way of doing ministry was he would spend a little bit of time there, he would teach them the essentials, and then he'd pass the church off to local leaders, elders, that would lead these house churches all around the city.

So it was, it's likely that when Paul's writing this letter, he's writing it to a bunch of churches that were no bigger than this gathering here.

And the letter that he writes would be read from church group to church group to church group, but they saw themselves as a as a church as a whole, that even though they were spread out in their gathering, they were one church.

And the issues that they were facing is that they were um they're fighting with each other.

Um there was little sex and cliques that had developed where there was like contention.

Um there was uh mistrust because Paul uh was not there.

There was another group that had come into town who was charging for that for their ministry, and they were they were belittling Paul and saying, well, Paul's a second-rate apostle because he charges uh he doesn't charge for his ministry.

Real apostles should charge money to do ministry.

Um and so Paul's hearing all this stuff secondhand.

Um and he's been addressing the issue.

He's done a visit, a short visit, he's written a letter, and now we have this second letter.

And one of the things that we're seeing all throughout this letter is that Paul is explaining who he is as a self-defense, but without being petty, without being manipulative towards them.

And he's arguing for a role, like a spiritual role in their life, but in a way that is good and godly, without being controlling.

Have you ever been around people that are like super controlling?

It's the worst, and it's the worst if you're in the church.

And man, I've been in those kind of settings.

And people just like they get up on their high horse and they feel like they've got to domineer, they've got to like control.

And so Paul is, he's only, he's only explaining ministry for the sake of helping this church understand how they should operate.

And he's trying to protect them from what is bad.

He's trying to extricate the bad elements from the church so that this church can be healthy, just kind of like a doctor would do with a body that's not healthy.

And so Paul's navigating this relationship in a specific way.

And he's been contrasting the way of Moses according to the old covenant and the way of Jesus according to the new covenant.

So if you um know your Bible, you know that there are covenants, like God makes a covenant with Noah after the flood, and the sign of the covenant is the rainbow in the sky.

And then God makes a covenant with Abraham, and he says, You're gonna be my chosen people, and through you all nations are gonna be blessed, and the sign of that covenant was circumcision.

The males were to be circumcised after birth.

And then God made a covenant through Moses towards the nation of Israel, and that's not just the Ten Commandments, but there's a whole constitution that's laid out for the nation of Israel, and the sign of the law is what?

You know, you Bible nerds, what's the sign of the old covenant?

One of them is the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was to be their um the symbol uh representing that old covenant.

And so when Jesus comes on the scene, uh when John writes about Jesus, he says, uh, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus.

And in Jeremiah 31, a prophet who did writing in the Old Testament, he spoke about that there's going to be a new covenant, that the old covenant of how God works with people through the law, that's gonna be put aside and there'll be a new covenant.

And um, what Jeremiah describes in the new covenant is three things that no longer are you gonna have the law written on tablets of stone, but the law, God's gonna write his law on people's hearts.

The second thing that he says is no longer are you gonna go to your neighbor, like the priest, saying, Know the Lord, but you're each gonna individually know the Lord.

Like there's a personal relationship that you're gonna have, you're you're gonna be able to have with God, this internal knowledge of God.

And then the third part of the new covenant was that your sins are gonna be put away.

And now the sins were dealt with under the old covenant, but under the new covenant, there's this idea of your sins are gonna be permanently dealt with.

And so when Jesus, at the night of his before his death, he takes, he's celebrating the Jewish Passover meal, and which had a bunch of rituals associated with it that all Jewish people had been doing for 2,000 years, Jesus takes the bread that was a part of the meal and he says, Now this bread symbolizes my body that's broken for you, and he takes the cup that would be the symbolic cup.

He says, This cup now it represents my blood shed for you for the remission of sins.

It is the blood of the new covenant.

And we're like, oh, the new covenant is inaugurated through Jesus shedding his blood, because every covenant happens with the shedding of blood.

If you go back through all the covenants in the Old Testament, you see that.

So Paul is now taking and he's saying, this term new covenant, it means everything that Jeremiah talked about, it's this reality of God's grace is now at work inside of people.

And so as he's facing a really conflict that's easy to relate to, where there's a triangulation of relationships, there's conflict, there's tension, he's saying, I'm not working with you according to Moses' old covenant, I'm working with you according to Jesus' new covenant.

And there's this dynamic internal reality that occurs under the new covenant, where not only is your sin removed because Jesus uh died on the cross for our sins.

No, now there's this internal work of God that is ongoing, active, and occurring.

And so you guys, if this was Paul, Paul's looking at him and like, you guys are not doing the right thing in some of these areas.

I'm trusting that the new covenant is actively at work, the grace of God is at work in your life.

What we're gonna look at this morning is material that is um it's it is pivotal in your own experience of doing life.

Now, a lot of you are still wrestling just spiritually with what you believe, and some of you are in the process, some of you have made a decision to follow Jesus, uh, some of you have not, and you're just curious and you're learning more about what the Bible teaches.

And so what you're gonna see if you're if you're not yet a follower of Jesus, what you're gonna see Paul describing here is a benefit, it's a meta-narrative that maps onto every Jesus follower's life and gives so much hope.

It's like this is the key that unlocks so much of life.

Um and so let me let me read to you, let me read to you the text and uh and then we'll walk through it.

It says this now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.

We're afflicted in every way, but not crushed.

We are perplexed, but not in despair.

We are persecuted but not abandoned, we are struck down, but not destroyed.

We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body.

For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that Jesus' life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh.

So then death is at work in us, but life in you.

And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore speak.

For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you.

Indeed, everything is for your benefit, so that as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.

Lord, we pray as we look into this text that you would be our teacher and that you would instruct us.

And God, I ask for each person here, you're well acquainted with our lives, and we ask that you would just break into the midst of our lives and that you'd speak to us.

We want to take up a posture where we are teachable, where we're ready to listen to what you would teach us and say, Um, where you want to make application to our own personal lives.

God, we give you permission to speak to us.

We really want to have this disposition, God, where we're ready to run with obedience towards the things you show us.

And so we give you this time and we pray that you'd speak to us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, let's go back to verse 7.

What we're gonna do, and if you're new in our church, what we what we do is we kind of just walk through the verses one or two at a time, just trying to understand what Paul is saying.

And so Paul starts off here and he says, now we have this treasure in clay jars.

So what is the treasure?

Well, if you go back to verse six, you'll see that the treasure is not your gifting.

It's not that your treasure is not like your talents or how great you are at something.

It's not your platform, it's not your friend, your circle of friends, it's not your social life.

The treasure that is in this clay pot is the shining knowledge of God.

The shining knowledge of God.

In other words, knowing God and his son Jesus Christ is this radiating treasure from within you.

So I went to Home Depot.

Just for the sake of illustration, I got this pot, okay?

And this is the kind of pot that you would have in your garage, oh shoot, this is the kind of this is the kind of pot that you would have in your garage, okay?

And here it's literally okostrina skaeu is the Greek word.

It's cheap household pottery, is what Paul is saying here.

So clay jars, yeah, maybe, maybe your version says it's a clay pot, maybe it's a lamp base, it would be fired mud, it would be easily discardable if it was damaged.

Corinth shopped for impressive jars and vessels.

That was the culture.

Like there was a prized commerce around fancy pottery.

But when Paul talks about humans in Corinth, he says, We have this treasure in earthen vessels or clay pots or clay jars, whatever your version says.

And so, listen, in Corinth they shopped for impressive vessels, but God shops for cracked ones.

We have this treasure in the clay jars so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.

God's strategy is to take clay pots, common clay pots, and to put into it his extraordinary power.

That's intentional.

He didn't put glory in you because you could hold it, he put glory in you so that when it shines, nobody thinks it's you.

There's a contrast, right?

The vessel and the contents.

If you need to look strong, if you if you if you feel like you have a need in life to look like a fancy clay pot, not a common pot, but a fancy clay pot, then you have already misunderstood this treasured dynamic.

If you're looking at yourself and you're like, man, you know, maybe you'd be clinically diagnosed with a low self-esteem.

You just need to understand that's material for God to work with.

He was not looking for the fancy clay pots, he was looking for the common clay pots to put his power in.

The power was never yours.

So, what does that design feel like from the inside?

Okay, so God takes and he picks out a clay pot, not you, and he sticks his excellency of power in it.

What is what does that look like?

Oh shoot.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, well, here's what it looks like.

Here's what it looks like.

It says, We're afflicted in every way.

I think the pot agrees, but we're not crushed.

We're perplexed, but not in despair.

We are persecuted, but not abandoned.

We're struck down, but not destroyed.

There are four things here held side by side.

There is the clay pottedness, and there's the excellency of power.

The first part about your clay pot human experience is that you're afflicted.

The excellency of power in you is that in your affliction you are not crushed.

The second thing, the clay pot nature is that there's a perplexity about life.

You ever had a moment where you're just scratching your head?

I just, I don't get it.

I don't get it.

I don't understand what's going on.

I can't make sense out of this.

There is that's your clay pottedness when you're scratching your head.

The excellency of the power is that even in your perplexed state, you are not in despair.

The third one you are a clay pot, I am a clay pot in that I am able to be persecuted.

That highlights my claypottedness, right?

Persecuted at work, persecuted by your kids, persecuted by your neighbors, right?

There's all different ways to be persecuted, but you have this excellency of God's power in you, and the reality of that is that you're not abandoned.

The fourth is that we're struck down.

Literally, like if I had this in my garage and I knocked it over, right?

That's common.

That's common for clay pots.

They get knocked over, they get struck down.

And Paul is saying to this church, listen, there is an aspect to your humanity that you're fragile, you are finite, and you are fallen.

But in that, you're not destroyed.

You have intentionally, God's design on this whole thing is that you are a clay pot.

Okay?

You're the clay pot, and your life experiences often feel like it.

People can leave you, God's presence does not leave you.

You're on the ground, but you're not in the grave.

You don't know what God is doing, but you still have the next step.

This is written by Paul in the present tense.

That means it's active, ongoing.

And this so and what that means is this is normative.

This is the normal course of life, is that you feel like this clay pot getting knocked all around.

And yet God has placed in you His excellency of power.

Think about just for a second, what are the cracks in your clay pot that you felt this last week?

You don't have to say them out loud, but where were you feeling the cracks?

I was intentionally dropping this.

I'm not clumsy, but there are now cracks in this pot.

Some things happen this week where you are feeling cracked.

Right?

Where you are feeling like burdened.

You're feeling weighed down.

If you have a soft heart.

You will receive that moment, and you'll know that God is at work in that moment.

But there's also the person who experiences their cracks and they have a hard heart.

And they want to take shortcuts where they want to walk in either, you know, it may be this like, well, it kind of like a shortcut, maybe, is what we could call it.

Where it's like, well, I'm gonna just believe kind of like the prosperity gospel.

Maybe I have cracks because I don't have enough faith.

Right?

There's some people that that there's even Christians that think that, of like, my my cracks are showing through because I don't have enough faith.

There's other people that respond to the cracks in their life with stoicism, right?

That I'm gonna hide it and curate the jar.

Others, cynicism, and that's the attitude of like, well, everything breaks, everybody's got cracks, nothing means anything.

But this is what you need to remember is that God is at work in this design.

Clay pot's excellency of power.

Let's look at the next three verses, verses 10, 11, and 12.

We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, and then you have the Greek word hina.

And I just I only say that because we're gonna get so that three times in the text we're looking at this morning.

It's it's why?

Why do we carry the death of Jesus in our body?

Why does God allow us to be a clay pot?

Here's the answer.

It's so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body.

So God intentionally allows us to face those four moments knocked down, perplexed, struggling, burdened, feeling the cracks in the pot.

He allows that to happen so that the life of Jesus is flowing out of you.

Remember, at the core of the gospel message, if you're new to what Christianity teaches, the central idea is that God made humans to be his partners in subduing the earth and being fruitful in the earth, to live eternally as his friend.

But the original humans rebelled against God, Adam and Eve, this is Genesis chapter 3 of your Bible.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And from that rebellion point, God fulfilled what he warned Adam and Eve about is that death is going to come over the world.

And so death has passed with rebellion over all humans.

And so God is not satisfied to leave humans in that place of rebellion.

Instead, what he's saying is, no, I want to redeem you, I want to rescue you from your path of self-destruction and rebellion, and I want your friendship.

I want to bring you back in.

But he's just, so he has to deal with the rebellion piece, and he does that through his son Jesus.

So Jesus takes on the punishment for our sin by going to the cross.

And now, because of what Jesus did on the cross and through his resurrection, the door is wide open to enter back into the Adam and Eve friendship with God that's described in Genesis chapter 1 and 2.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And the process that God has us on when we accept that invitation is that the life of Jesus is emanating from us.

He is in us and we are in him.

That is the teaching of the New Testament in your Bible, is that when you become a follower of Jesus, you're in him and he is in you.

You are designed to be a pot.

Another time it says you're designed to be the temple of God, like you were designed as a container to hold the life of God.

And so Paul is explaining to the Corinthian church, saying, in our body we're carrying around the death of Jesus.

So we can look at the death of Jesus on the cross, and there's going to be evidence of many crosses in your life.

There were moments where we called them a minute ago cracks, now we can call them crosses, where you're feeling the death of Jesus in you.

Now, here's where this is the unlock key, okay?

Because when you're going through junk, whether you're a follower of Jesus or you're far from God, everybody goes through junk.

It's a common human experience, it's a universal experience.

But the question is, is does that junk, does that pain have a purpose?

And Paul here is saying one of the purposes that pain in our life has is that it gives an opportunity for the life of Jesus to shine out of our life.

And so instead of running away from every painful thing in your life of trying to buy your way out of pain or escape from pain, instead, God says, hey, stick it out.

Remember, the beginning of this chapter was, therefore, since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy, we do not give up.

And so Paul's encouraging the lifestyle of embracing the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus can emanate out from it.

So he goes into verse 11 with this substantiation, and he so he's going to explain what was in verse 10 a little bit better, and he says, for we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake.

And you're like, ah, I was wondering why my life was so hard, right?

Well, maybe you're stupid and you do stupid stuff and your life is hard.

But outside of that, right, sometimes even when you do everything right, Paul says that there is this, hey, God likes to take his good people and put them in difficult settings, not because he is cruel, manipulative, or doesn't like you, but he puts you there so that the resurrection power of God can shine out of your life.

So stop running away from the difficult stuff.

Because the design of God is that you're a clay pot with cracks, and there's the excellency of power in it, and God really wants his power to shine out of your life.

And if you're running away from all the junk, then how's the glory gonna shine?

Like, where's the glory of God?

Because you gotta have you ever been to a developing country, we used to call them like a third world country.

And the amazing thing, like I got to spend nine months in Kenya when I was 14 and 15.

The amazing thing is the people who have so little and their lifespan is shorter, and there's so much more tragedy.

There was a famine while I was there, and my neighbors were dying for lack of water.

Right?

Just an upsetting moment for the area, the region where I was living at.

And yet these were people who were absolutely full of joy, full of life, just emanating from it, beautiful smiles, kids rejoicing, playing outside, having fun, amazing worship services over there when you worship.

I was near the Maasai tribe.

The Maasai, when they wait, they don't clap, they do this like jumping up and down with their.

It was awesome.

I mean, talk about a beautiful worship service.

It was so good.

Um anyway, the design.

Do you see the design pattern here that God has?

It's so that Jesus' life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh.

If you're going through it, and we all go through different stuff where we're feeling the cracks and the cross in our life.

You just need to know that God's setting the table for his glory to shine out of your life.

Verse 12.

So then, death is at work in us, but it's life in you.

And so Paul is explaining to this church this dynamic.

Remember, Paul has just been like violently kicked out of the city of Ephesus in southern Turkey, the southwestern Turkey, right?

He's on the run, he's missing his buddy Titus, who he had sent already to Corinth.

He was supposed to meet him somewhere, he didn't meet him in Troaz.

Paul's upset.

In chapter one, he said he despaired even of life.

So Paul's at a low moment in his life, and he's saying that death is at work in me.

Like, this sucks right now, right?

This is really hard, what's going on?

But as God's glory, the treasure, is at work in me, it's bringing life to you.

And it brought life all over the Roman Empire as Paul traveled around.

Paul had like some really difficult things.

He probably caught malaria and had his eyesight was affected for the rest of his life.

The guy had friends that abandoned him.

He got beat up in one town.

They thought he was dead.

They just left him outside the town.

And then all of a sudden, later on, he got up and walked back into the town.

He got stoned, he got shipwrecked, he would, he um didn't have the clothes that he needed sometimes.

He spent time, years he spent in prison.

And at the end of his life, he got his head cut off.

So listen, Paul has this working understanding of the design pattern of God.

That God has my body, which is this blessable, image-bearing covenant partner.

And as God is at work in the midst of my mess and it's pouring life out on you, there's this good plan of God that's being accomplished.

Let's go to the next verse.

Verse 13.

And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore speak.

So Paul's gonna quote from the Old Testament, from his Bible, because right, the the Jewish Bible at Paul's time, you got the Old Testament.

And he's quoting here, and he's saying, We have the same spirit of faith that's demonstrated in this passage, and so we're just we're copying it, right?

We're copying what's spoken here.

That I believe and therefore speak.

I have faith that God's at work, and so I'm speaking, I'm communicating, I'm going on in the face of carrying the dying of Jesus in my body.

Verse 14.

For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you.

Do you know that?

When we talk about the Christian faith, when we talk about having faith, this is our faith, right?

When we talk in the midst of our cracks and our cross and our junk, when we're talking about God's plan, God's redemptive work, this is what our faith is in.

We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you.

That is our hope.

That's what we're holding on to in our life.

Is that there is a resurrection.

We call this the J shape, right?

If you were looking at a whiteboard this direction, the J would go like this, right?

This down part is going into the grave, right?

We all get put in the grave through circumstances in our life.

But then there's the side that comes up, and that's the resurrection power of God at work in our life.

And so what I what I desperately want for us as a church is that as we're encountering those four things, like the per the perplexity of life and being knocked down and being troubled, when we are facing that setting, I want you to think of it of like, oh, well, I'm I'm in the J curve, right?

Right now I'm experiencing the grave, right?

And when you're in the grave, there's a lot you can't do.

Like when dead people go into a grave, they're pretty powerless.

And some of you in your grave, you feel pretty powerless.

And you're just waiting for verse 14 to be raised with the Lord Jesus and to be presented, right?

Presented together.

So there is an ultimate resurrection in Scripture.

Like we're looking forward to the ultimate fulfillment of this verse at our own resurrection with Christ, to live eternally with Christ.

But the pattern, that's just the ultimate fulfillment.

There's the foreshadowing that's happening now.

In your marriage or in your relationship with your kids or in your workplace, you're just waiting for the other side of the J curve.

How's this gonna how am I gonna experience God's resurrection in this setting?

And not only that, but indeed, everything is for your benefit.

So Paul's saying, this is what I'm going through in my life.

I'm going through the grave experience, but it's for your benefit, so that, there's another so that, as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.

Remember, what's in the pot?

It's glory, it's the knowledge of the glory of God.

And now we have the glory increasing, creeping out.

There's more and more people having grace extended to them, and it's just causing this thanksgiving that increases to the glory of God.

God's not making mistakes in your life.

There are things that are hard.

And some of you have struggled with God, especially around the philosophical issue of why does God allow hard things to happen.

This passage doesn't answer all of those questions.

Why hard things happen in life, why God allows kids to die, like why people who don't have medical care get horrible diseases.

This doesn't answer all of those questions.

But it does map on to your life as a follower of Jesus so that you know, hey, you have the hope of the resurrection in your life.

And that as you go through stuff, you may not be totally rescued.

You still may feel your clay pottedness.

You may feel like a clay pot.

But God's dynamic, his power is at work in you, and it's resulting in this glory to God.

So you've got a choice.

You and I have a choice of what do we want to do with this.

Because the dynamic, it's like somebody holding up a map in front of your life.

You may feel your cracks, but you may decide, God, I don't like your design.

Right?

I'm gonna be tough.

I'm going to handle this my own way.

Right?

Or you and I can submit and say, God, I'll recognize that this painful thing is me being a clay pot, and I'm feeling the cracks.

And I give you this thing, and I'm ready, I'm willing to let you work in the midst of it.

It's really a question of surrender or are you gonna fight?

Are you gonna surrender to this design pattern and let God work in you, or are you gonna fight?

I've told this a couple of times, but I'll say it again.

When I grew up in New Jersey, I lived near a Revolutionary War battlefield.

And they used to reenact the battles that would occur from the Revolutionary War.

You'd have the Redcoats, you'd have the rebels, and they would shoot fake cannons at each other, and you could watch these battles occur out there.

It was a reenactment.

And you need to understand that your life is a reenactment of the cross and the resurrection.

Your life is that battlefield, and as you decide that you're gonna surrender to God's design, one of the things that occurs is that the powers, the satanic powers that exist in the world are not having their way.

Satan loves to take advantage of the cracks, right?

He loves to just get in there and beat you down.

But the thing that you need to know is that if you surrender to God's plan in your life, that God, you're allowing God to win in his way, on his time frame, and you can just live in that with that patience, like God, I'm waiting for the resurrection.

Lord, I just pray for my friends here.

It's not anything to be flippant about.

There's a room full of pain.

There's a lot of um things that are upsetting and hard.

And Lord, we just offer ourselves to you.

God, I pray for each person here as they're feeling like this clay pot in life, whether it's finances or health or relationships or job, Lord, I pray that you would work in that setting and that you'd encourage each person that's here.

Lord, to wait upon you for that resurrection, the resurrection that you bring about.

Would you bring about life for each person here and hope and encouragement?

And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.