I’m always amazed at the passages that God leads me to for the first Sunday in the new year. It’s almost never what I expect. It’s usually not passages about newness in Christ. And it’s usually not something that you might expect to hear to usher in a new year, but He always brings me to something He needs us to hear. This New Year’s message is no different. I’d love for you to join me in 2 Corinthians 4:6-7 this morning.
“For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;” (NASB)
A little background here. Paul was writing to the church in Corinth which had numerous problems and issues that he had to address in two letters which are not coincidently his longest letters because there were that many problems! This section of Scripture though was to give encouragement to those who were faithful in that church, to those who were serving God and His people well and loving as Christ loved them. This was an encouragement to them, a reminder not to give in to DISCOURAGEMENT.
Why did they need this? Why did the faithful need to be reminded to not become discouraged? Paul told them that there would be a few things that would happen that they might feel tempted to be discouraged about. He told them that more and more, the world would reject the Word of God. People would turn a blind ear to the gospel. People would choose to continue to walk in the darkness rather than face all the ugly things about themselves that the light of Christ brought into view. Paul told them that more and more, God’s people would seek to have their ears tickled. They would want self-pleasing messages, they would want their sins justified, they would want to be placated and their ears would long for pleasant platitudes.
The world hasn’t changed has it? No. As time moves on, more and more people reject the Word of God. And God’s people haven’t changed much either. In this self-centered world, even the church falls prey to selfishness, wanting to hear the feel-good messages of the Bible only because we don’t want to face our own…weaknesses.
We want to appear STRONG, don’t we? This week, thousands upon thousands of people will join a gym. They’ll buy a fitness streaming subscription. They’ll pull out the spandex pants and shorts and the old t-shirts and put on their running shoes, some for the first time since last January. Why do we do this? We want to appear strong. We’re trying to be healthier, we’re trying to fight off and keep at bay the aging process, the process of decay which is part of the way this world works now. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. God gave us these bodies and it would be foolish to disregard them and not treat them as a blessing and gift from Him. But it often goes deeper than just wanting to take care of our bodies to glorify God. And for many who try to be physically strong in this way, it has nothing to do with glorifying God, and everything to do with vanity, to put on a good face, to appear strong and not prone to weakness.
If it’s not physical strength we try to imitate, we try to put on strength of character, or emotional strength. We don’t want anyone to see how vulnerable we really are, how weak we really are. I don’t want people to see me cry! We don’t want anyone to know that we’re actually really hurt by that careless thing they said not intending to harm. We don’t want anyone to know that we’re actually really mad about something. When my brother died, I just couldn’t talk about it with some people because I didn’t want to dive into the depths of my grief and despair in front of them. We don’t like admitting that we are weak and prone to deep and sometimes confusing and difficult emotions.
Or we refuse to admit when we’re wrong, because that would be admitting that we made the wrong decision or said something we shouldn’t have, and for many, that’s the same as admitting that you’re weak. People let their pride become hubris, all because they don’t want to look weak. They want to look strong, like they are always in the right and never in the wrong.
There’s a huge problem with this approach though, this clinging to our own strength, or masks and facades of strength, and it’s a spiritual problem. This putting on a mask of strength is spiritual poison to Christians. Why? There’s two things that happen when we transfer this to the Christian faith. First, we start to believe that our comfort is a right that Christ would never remove. Comfort to us is a sign of strength. If everything is going right, nothing is wrong, we’re comfortable. But if there is weakness, pain, suffering, we’re not comfortable. So we equate strength with comfort, and when we cling to our own strength at all costs, we will start to believe that Jesus wants us to be comfortable, that it is something we have a right to, something we’re entitled to. After all, our loving Lord would never ask us to go through difficult things or suffer, would He?
Here’s the second thing that happens: we start to believe that success in our lives, which we also see as a sign of strength, we start to believe it indicates that we are living a godly life. If we have personal success, in whatever way we define that, then that becomes a source of strength for us. We can develop a sense of entitlement for this too, believe that we are being blessed by God for a godly life by the success we are experiencing. We have the promise from Scripture that He is good to those who are faithful, and that He does bless us spiritually, but we too often think that success in life is the same as spiritual blessing, and they’re just not.
Christians, we have developed an entitlement problem in the church. Us viewing comfort as a right, and success as a sign of a godly life, us wanting to appear strong and never weak, has deeply impacted the way we interpret and respond to suffering and weakness. When we experience weakness, suffering, trials, and pain, what do we do? We try to avoid it. We complain about it. We think we don’t deserve it. We’re embarrassed by it. We commiserate with others about it. We believe that God is mad at us, or just plain angry, or that He has forgotten us entirely.
We hate WEAKNESS, and will do almost anything to escape it. But weakness is real. We can’t escape it, and refusing to acknowledge it doesn’t make us stronger. Behind our masks, every single one of us, even you, is weak. There’s no sense in trying to run from it, you can’t! Thankfully, you don’t need to. Instead, what you need, what we all need is a biblical understanding of the value of weakness.
Let’s look again at 2 Corinthians 4:6-7, “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;” This is a challenge from Paul to not give into discouragement when you feel weak or you see weakness in your life, but rather, to be challenged to see that weakness and suffering in the light of the gospel.
I know this is not an easy thing to do in the midst of weakness, suffering, pain, and trials. I don’t do it well, but I want to. I want to be the kind of person that can look at my own weakness and see it in the light of the gospel. How do we do this? How do we rise to the challenge this new year of seeing our weakness and suffering, whatever it might be, in the light of the gospel?
Paul says we have this treasure in earthen containers. Some translations say jars of clay, or vessels of clay. The Greek there would actually imply a vessel, like a jar or a container, but it’s one that is marked for a specific purpose. Like you might have a jar just for water, that’s all it ever gets used for is storing water. That is its purpose given by its creator, to store water. This is what Paul calls us. We are the jars of clay. We are the vessels that have been designated by their creator for a specific purpose, and we’re meant to serve that purpose only. We’re not supposed to be used for anything else.
So, when we do as James says, when we face trials of many kinds, weaknesses, sufferings, pain, we don’t run from it, we can’t; we don’t hide from it because it will still be there; we don’t give in to discouragement; we don’t put on a mask of strength. When we see our weakness, we don’t look at the vessel, we look at the treasure inside the vessel. What is the treasure?
Paul reminds us that the same God who caused the sun and moon and stars to shine in the darkness of the formlessness of creation just by His word, is the same God that has given you, Christian, Christ follower, the knowledge of His glory through Christ. He has given you the knowledge of salvation through Jesus. He has given you the knowledge of the hope that He brings even in the darkest of times. He has given you the Light in your soul. He has redeemed you.
Look at the treasure. King David was really good at this. Many of his songs, his psalms, start with him pouring out the anguish of his soul. In many of these songs, you can hear the deep pain in his tone. Take Psalm 6 for example. Here’s some of the lines of that song: “Be gracious to me, Lord, for I am frail; heal me Lord, for my bones are horrified. And my soul is greatly horrified;…I am weary with my sighing; every night I make my bed swim, I flood my couch with my tears. My eye has wasted away with grief; it has brown old because of all my enemies.” (6:2-3a, 6, NASB)
Or Psalm 13 where you can sense how David is feeling in his relationship with God, “How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long am I to feel anxious in my soul, with grief in my heart all the day?” (13:1-2a, NASB) These are real, raw words of weakness. And David never tried to hide from it or make it go away or be stronger than he was.
But then, he looks at the treasure, and the treasure is what he clings to and praises and takes comfort in. “Leave me, all you who practice injustice, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my pleading, the Lord receives my prayer.” (6:8-9, NASB). “But I have trusted in Your faithfulness; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has looked after me.” (13:5-6, NASB)
David embraced his weakness, because he knew that the weakness was a place where God would come enter the weakness and be strong. David knew that God’s power and strength would cover his own weakness. David knew that in his weakness, God would reveal Himself to David in ways that David hadn’t known before. David knew that God would do new things in the weakness.
And this is exactly what Paul says, “But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;”
What is clay? If we’re vessels made of clay, of earth, what does that imply? Clay is a brittle, easily broken substance. That’s what I am. That’s what you are. We are unfit, breakable, disposable vessels, and because He loves us, God decides to use our weaknesses to display His power and love. A jar of clay might have a few cracks, and the world sees that as a fault, but God sees these deficiencies as a way to pour out of you and reveal Himself to you and to others in strength and power! So we don’t get discouraged, we don’t put a mask on to show strength instead of weakness, we don’t run from it, we embrace our weaknesses. We embrace our weaknesses because those are areas where God gets to show up and do things that only God can do.
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NIV) Not because I am strong, but because He is strong in me.
Questions to form your quiet times this week:
1. Growing Up with God Think of your deficiencies, your weaknesses, your sufferings. Embrace them. They won’t likely go away, but how can you be more open to God pouring Himself into those weaknesses and revealing more of Himself to you?
2. Growing Deeper with the Body How can God use your weaknesses this week to reveal more of Himself to your brothers and sisters?
3. Going Out Instead of putting on a good face, or a mask to hide your weaknesses, how might God want you to be vulnerable about those weaknesses to a pre-Christian you know so they are more receptive to the power of the gospel message?