Daily Devotional – September 3, 2020

Afternoon to you. This week is going by quickly, and I trust you're doing well and getting a lot accomplished in your vocation, whatever that might happen to be.

Some of you may be listening who are homeschooling your children this week and this year.

I trust that's going well for you, that kids, are you listening, that you're cooperating well with the teacher and getting some good learning in.

And then others of you, you may be catching this broadcast after your workday is over and just kind of settling in after a good day's work.

Whatever your vocation, I hope the Lord's using you in it and you're finding some good success, some good accomplishment of something worthwhile as the

Lord is using you in your workplace. Well, I want to share two stories from scripture.

All right, so one of them has to do with Job. You know the story of Job and poor guy, right?

Lost everything, family, property, crops, and just lost so much.

And then eventually his health, and he is in such misery. His body,

Satan has attacked his body and he's got these sores all over his body. And in Job 2, verses 7 and 8, we read this.

It says, So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

I don't even want to imagine what that must have been like. But then this, it says, And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

Like I said, I don't really want to think about that. I'm not really good with that kind of stuff anyway, but taking the broken pieces of pottery for the purpose of scraping himself, okay?

Now, the second story is in the New Testament. We looked at this briefly,

I think it was Monday, with Mary. And this is the occasion where Jesus is at the home of the leper,

Simon the leper. And Mary comes in with an alabaster box of very expensive perfume.

And so here's what it says in Matthew 26, verses 6 and 7. It says, Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him, this would have been

Mary, with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at the table.

So we could contrast the individuals, you know, Mary and Job. We could contrast the settings, the situation, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

But what I wanted to contrast is these vessels, these two vessels.

So on the one hand, you have clay pottery, clay pottery, very commonplace stuff used for everyday tasks in the ancient household.

I don't want to go into all of them. Some of them are, you know, rather, you know, but they could be the garbage can and so forth.

We might think of them as a modern day cottage cheese container, all right?

Very mundane, very commonplace. You probably, you know, empty a cottage cheese container, wash it out.

Maybe you do, maybe you have too many of them to do this anymore, but wash it out and use it for leftovers or whatever.

Maybe, maybe you finish up that cottage cheese container, you rinse it out and you throw it in the recycling bin and you never see it again.

You could care less. It's just a couple of pennies worth of stuff to hold the cottage cheese that you wanted to eat.

All right. So think of that pottery as like an ancient version of the cottage cheese container.

Well, in this particular case with Job, that pottery, that clay pottery was so worthless that he would take a piece of pottery, would take a pot, clay pot, and he'd just break it so that he had something to scrape himself with, his sores with.

I don't think he had a great deal of esteem for a clay pot, do you? It's a very commonplace, ordinary, valueless commodity.

Now, in contrast to that is Mary's alabaster flask of very expensive perfume.

Alabaster is actually a form of marble. It's a hold expensive commodities like this perfume that Mary poured over Jesus' head.

So in itself, that alabaster flask was somewhat costly.

It wasn't as costly or as expensive as what was in it, as what it contained, but that which it contained affected the value of that alabaster flask.

Whatever the case, you certainly wouldn't take an alabaster flask and break it just so you have something to scrape yourself with.

The value of it is seen in the value of the perfume inside. It's kind of like the costly packaging that is used to package some very expensive product that we might use today, a very expensive kind of cologne or whatever.

So these two completely different kinds of vessels, clay pottery, alabaster flask.

All right, now with that in mind, listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, 7. He says, we have this treasure, the treasure of the gospel.

We have this treasure in jars of clay, in clay pots. We have this treasure in clay pots to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

So my question for us today is, how do you see yourself? The world and the emphasis of the world tells you you need to see yourself as an alabaster flask.

You need to see yourself as all -important, as being this very worthwhile and all the rest of that kind of stuff, and just as a way to sort of elevate your pride.

I'm not talking about a healthy self -image or any of that kind of thing. I'm talking about the pride that is fueled by thinking so highly of yourself or as a clay pot, that which has something very valuable to share, but the value is not in the pot.

It's in what it contains. I think it's critical that we see ourselves rightly in this regard because I think in my profession as pastors, we know of way too many

Christian quote -unquote leaders in the last few years who have been very prominent and very popular, and then they crash and burn.

I don't need to name any names. You've heard the stories, and I wonder how many of those stories are rooted in how the individual viewed himself.

I fear that too many had come to view themselves as alabaster flasks, such an important commodity, such an important thing, such a valuable thing, so precious.

Just look at me. Look at me. Look at how wonderful and beautiful I am, how indispensable I am.

I think Paul's got it right. We are clay pots. We have a very valuable treasure that we possess, but the value is in the treasure, not in the vessel.

It's important we see ourselves rightly, and if we do, we'll behave and conduct ourselves humbly, walking humbly with our

God. That way, whatever God chooses to use, however he chooses to use us and accomplish through us, we'll recognize that this is by God's grace and by God's power.

Clay pots. So our Father and our God, I pray that you would encourage us and help us to see ourselves rightly as vessels in your hands that you can use, but not to vaunt ourselves with great pride and arrogance.

Help us in that, we pray, in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right, well,

I trust the rest of your Thursday will go well, and you'll finish out the work week well tomorrow.

I look forward to meeting you tomorrow for our final devotional of the week, if you can make it. So have a good day.