WWUTT 1666 This Treasure in Earthen Vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7-12)

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2 Corinthians 4 -7 is a popular verse. We have this treasure in earthen vessels.

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Some say jars of clay. The treasure is Christ. The earthen vessel is our mortal body when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Thank you for subscribing, and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. Do you remember where we left off in the podcast?

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I had to take a week off. I hope you don't mind, but we're back to 2 Corinthians 4, and we're going to be picking up in verse 7, but to keep everything in context,

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I'm going to start in verse 1. We'll go through verse 12. This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible, the word of the

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Lord through the apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

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And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the

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God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus.

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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.

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But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

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In every way afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

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For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

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So death works in us, but life in you.

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Alright, so let's pick up where we left off a couple of weeks ago now in verse 7.

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So lastly what we read was verse 6, 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.

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The same God who spoke into the void and said, Let there be light, and there was light, is the

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God who has brought about saving faith in the heart of every single believer.

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How is it that you know of the glory of God? That you behold the glory of God?

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That it makes you tremble? That it has convicted your heart? That you have confessed your sins?

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That you have received his grace? That you know his love? That you walk in his righteousness?

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That you desire his ways? That you worship him as the one and only holy

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God? How is it that you have come to this? Because God has done it.

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Because he spoke into your dark heart, let there be light, and you have come to believe in the glory of God.

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You have knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ because God has shown it into your heart.

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God is the one who has done this. Nobody brought anything into existence but God.

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And as God has brought all things into existence, so he has brought this knowledge of his glory into existence, into our hearts, which were previously opposed to God, which previously we were just like the unbelieving who were described earlier who had blind minds.

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Before we came to Christ, we were unbelievers just like they were. And how was it that we were unbelieving?

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Because the God of this age, Satan, blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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But we have come to know and see because God has shown it into our hearts.

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Verse 7, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

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Now, what is the treasure? What are we talking about there? The treasure is the knowledge of God.

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The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's our treasure.

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Paul says this also in Colossians chapter 2, that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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So everything that we could ever know about God, everything that we could come to know about how to walk in his ways, what it means to live in a way that is pleasing unto the

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Lord, all of this is found in Christ. He is the treasure of wisdom and knowledge.

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Christ is the one who gives us this knowledge of God and how to serve him and please him.

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It is Christ who has given us forgiveness for our sins that we may not walk in sin anymore, but desire to walk in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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It is God who has done this. It is Christ who is our treasure. In the context of this statement here in verse 7, we have this treasure.

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The treasure is the knowledge that was spoken about in the previous verse. It's the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

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Christ is opening up for us all these treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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We have this treasure in earthen vessels. Now what are the earthen vessels?

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The earthen vessels are our bodies, but don't think of it as necessarily or limited to only flesh, okay?

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We're talking about our mortality. So it's not that we have this treasure inside our skin somewhere, you know, it's flowing through our blood or something like that.

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This is a reference to our mortality. Our earthen vessels are our mortal bodies, our mortal existence.

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When we die and we go to be with God, we will have an immortal existence.

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We will never die again. Just as Christ conquered death, and death has no mastery over him.

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He will never die again, so it will be with us who are in Christ Jesus. We'll die once, we'll live with him forever, and we'll never die again.

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That becomes our immortality. For now, though, we live in these mortal bodies. So Paul refers to that, the crudeness of our mortal existence, he refers to that as an earthen vessel.

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And an earthen vessel, you know, some translations, you'll have this as jars of clay, right? We have this treasure in jars of clay.

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That's an earthen vessel. It is a vessel that is made from earth. You take the clay out of the earth.

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You make this vessel. So it is with us. We're made of the ground. You go back to Adam being formed in the garden, where he was taken from the dust of the ground.

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God formed the man in his own likeness. He breathed the breath of life into him, and he became a living person, a little bit of God within himself.

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The mind and the heart that we have, this body that we have, the very breath that we breathe, all of this has been given to us by God.

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But we're mortal. So we're earthen vessels. We've been formed to the ground, and it's to the ground that we will return.

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We're going to read about that in Ecclesiastes as we continue our Ecclesiastes study as well on Thursday.

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When a person dies, the body goes back to the ground from which it came, and the spirit goes back to the one who gave it.

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The soul goes back to the one who gave it, who is God. So everybody, therefore, stands before God in judgment after they have died.

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Where does the body go? The body goes back to the ground from which it was formed. So therefore, having been formed to the ground, we, our bodies, our mortality, are earthen vessels.

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So we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

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The treasure is the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, and we have it in earthen vessels within our mortality.

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What can the mortal possibly fathom about the immortal? As we read when we were in 1

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Corinthians 15, if we're going to live with God, the mortal must put on immortality.

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We cannot live with God in our present state. You would not even be able to stand in God's presence, in his holiness.

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His glory would annihilate you because it's just that incredible. God saying to Moses, nobody can see my face and live.

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So we, in our mortality, cannot stand in the presence of God. We must put on immortality, which is what will happen at the transformation of our bodies.

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When we die, we will be with God because we've been sanctified to be with God, as it says in 1

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John 3 .2, what we are going to be is not what we are now, but we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him.

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So the mortal must put on immortality. At the present, we are mortal bodies.

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We have this treasure in our mortality. And how do we fathom the immortality? Because God has given us the knowledge of this.

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So we have the knowledge in mortal bodies. We have the knowledge of the immortal in these mortal bodies, all of that by God's doing so that Paul goes on here in verse seven.

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So that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

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Because once again, what can the mortal possibly fathom about the immortal?

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What can the finite possibly fathom about the infinite? Unless it has been given to us to consider these things, and it's

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God who does it. We have the knowledge of the glory of God in the treasure of Christ that has been given to us.

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And this treasure is in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

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And this power that Paul is talking about here, well, you go back earlier to what

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Paul was talking about concerning his mission as an apostle. We have this ministry, we've renounced the hidden things of shame.

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We preach the gospel in the sight of God. We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, verse five.

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And the power that is accomplished by the declaration of this gospel, the transformation of hearts that takes place,

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God shining the light of his glory, the knowledge of his glory into the hearts of those who believe.

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The power, the transforming power of all of this is God's doing. It is

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God who does this. It is not by man. You did not will yourself to believe. God changed your heart to believe.

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We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of this power will be of God and not from ourselves.

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Because once again, just applying a logic argument here, how can the mortal fathom the immortal except that the immortal has shown it to the, to the mortal.

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And that is God. God has revealed this to us. The God who said let light shine out of darkness is the one capital

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O N E who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

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How, in what way, in whom in the face of Jesus Christ, we who look upon Christ, we know of him according to the gospel that has proclaimed of us, uh, that, that has been proclaimed to us.

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We know from the gospel who Jesus is, who God is. We know his glory.

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We know his awesomeness and we can worship him accordingly because of what has been proclaimed according to his word.

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And all of this God's doing not ours. And Paul's saying here too, it's, it's not even of me.

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This did not come from me. I am fulfilling. I am doing what Christ has called me to, to his glory, not mine.

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So then in verse eight, Paul says in every way we are afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing.

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Once again, he's demonstrating here how we are earthen vessels. Like these things that happened to us demonstrate that we're mortal, reminds us that we're mortal.

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Go back to what Paul said back in chapter one, the, the struggles, the sufferings that we go through, the trials.

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Why do we go through these things? Second Corinthians one nine. This teaches us to rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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And Paul opened the letter by talking about God being the father of mercies and God of all comforts.

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And yet we read so much about his persecutions and his strugglings in this mission of the gospel that he has been appointed to.

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Yet he thinks of God as being the father of mercies and the God of all comforts. If Paul can call

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God that, then we certainly should understand and know God this way. And how do we know God that way?

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It's been shown to us through Christ in every way we are afflicted, but we are not crushed in all the afflictions that we go through.

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We're not crushed so that we may demonstrate the power belongs to God and not to us.

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We are perplexed, but we're not despairing. Like we don't understand why these things are happening to us.

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And Paul had said that back in chapter one, it's not like, like Paul's conscience is the impervious one.

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He is unwavering in anything and everything. He never questions God on anything. Paul never says that about himself.

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He says in chapter one, we thought that we had received a sentence of death, but this was to teach us to rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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So surely at some point in there, Paul is going, you know, is this right? I mean, am I supposed to be continuing in this?

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Because everything just seems to be going bad. And he's even going to get to that in chapter 12, where he talks about pleading with God to take away his suffering.

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But God responds to him, my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Keep that in mind here, because we're reading about power in this particular section. So that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

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And so Paul says, I'm going to boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses. We are in every way afflicted, but we're not crushed.

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We're perplexed. We don't understand this. We don't see the full picture now, but we don't despair because one day we are going to get to the other side and we're going to look back and see how

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God was working in the midst of all of these things. Right? Amen. We're perplexed.

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We don't get it, but we don't despair. We don't think God has forgotten us.

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We don't think that these moments are going to completely consume us, that we're out of God's love or his grace or his salvation.

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We don't think that. Why is it that tough moments would not cause us to despair, to fall out of hope in God because of Christ, because of this incredible treasure that we have in earthen vessels, the knowledge of the glory of God that we have in the face of Jesus Christ.

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And so we can go through afflictions and not be crushed. We can go through these things perplexed, but we don't despair.

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Verse nine, we're persecuted, but not forsaken. Like the rest of the world hates us, the rest of the world condemns us, but God does not.

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One of the most powerful statements in all of scripture is Romans 8 .1, therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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All kinds of people will condemn us. The world will hate us. Culture will hate us.

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Family members, friends, people we thought were friends, people who were professing

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Christians, we thought they were saved. They're going to turn on us and condemn us. But no man can condemn us because God does not condemn us in Christ Jesus.

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We are justified. Therefore, now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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If God does not condemn us, then what does man have against us? What can man do to me?

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So we're persecuted, but we're not forsaken. We're hated by the world, but we're loved by God. That's essentially what

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Paul is saying there, right? We are struck down, but we are not destroyed.

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Jesus said, do not fear the one who can destroy the body and after that can do nothing, but fear him who, after destroying the body, can also destroy the soul in hell.

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So this fear that we have of God, this reverent fear, we know that in Christ Jesus, our souls are saved.

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Our bodies may go through all kinds of stuff. We might have to go through all kinds of beatings and struggles and illness and aging, breaking down, all these other kinds of things.

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We may have to go through that in our bodies, but we are not destroyed. We know that the soul belongs to God who gave it and we will dwell forever with him.

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We who are in Christ and in this hope that we have in Christ Jesus, we don't despair.

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We are not destroyed. Verse 10, we are always caring about in the body, the dying of Jesus.

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How is it that we are able to overcome these trials that we go through because we know

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Jesus has died for us? He died and rose from the dead for us so that in Christ, we have nothing to fear of death or any of these other things that could ravish our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our emotions.

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Though all of these things will come at us, we don't despair. We don't lose heart because we know

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Jesus died and rose again for us. So we carry about in the body, the testimony of that, the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

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And how is the life of Jesus manifested in us? That despite all of these trials and all these things we go through, we continue to cling to Christ.

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We continue to walk in his righteousness. We don't act like or look like the world.

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We don't fall into hopelessness and despair like the world, but we continue to live lives of holiness, lives of service unto the

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Lord, lives of worship because of what Christ has done for us.

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We continue to live the very life of Jesus manifested in our bodies.

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And this power testifies of God's doing, not our doing once again.

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And Paul is going to say, when we get to the next chapter, 2 Corinthians 5, 21, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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If we are in Christ and we're walking in his righteousness, then we are demonstrating in our very bodies, the life of Christ himself, we carry in our bodies, his death so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal bodies, in these earthen vessels.

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For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus sake, Paul talking again about the persecutions that he goes through for the gospel so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

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So death works in us, Paul refers to himself, to these apostles that are giving their lives for the testimony of the gospel of Christ to the whole world.

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Death works in us, but life in you. And this comes back to where Paul had said back in chapter three, that you are the evidence of our genuineness of this ministry that we do.

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Again, Paul speaking to the Corinthians about this. Have you been transformed to become followers of Jesus Christ?

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Well, you're the evidence of the genuineness of our ministry. We struggle, we put our lives on the line for the testimony of the gospel, so death works in us, but life in you, this genuine transformation of faith that we have in Jesus Christ, may it be demonstrated in the lives that we live, that we show we belong not to this world, but to Christ and his righteousness.

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Amen. Let's stop there. We'll come back again tomorrow. God willing, heavenly father, we thank you for this lesson today, and I pray that it fills us with hope, also conviction where we need to be convicted, that we would turn from any worldly way, any way of the world that looks tempting to us.

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We wish we could go that way. No, we know it's all rubbish. It results in nothing. That's not where our treasure is.

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It's not in this world. It is in Christ. And we carry this treasure in these earthen vessels that it might be manifested even in our mortal bodies, that we are followers of Jesus Christ, doers of his righteousness.

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So teach us the right way that we should go today, and may we do it. In Jesus name, to your glory and your greatness,