Despite what you may feel in the air this morning, spring is coming. It really is. Spring IS coming. How do I know that? Have I consulted the wooly-worms? No, I wouldn’t know a wooly-worm if it bit me. Have I studied the groundhog and its shadow? No, since my birthday is the day after Groundhog Day, I am too preoccupied with getting older to pay much attention to Puxatawney Phil and his prodigious prognostications. No, the reason I know that spring is coming is that my gardener – I mean, my wife – well, my gardener-wife has started talking about what needs to be done in our yard. She has begun to lay out plans for where I need to dig and what I need to prune and what is to be planted where. Spring IS coming, brothers and sisters, I can assure you, because the garden talk is buzzing around our house.
Now the truth is that I not much of a gardener. I pluck up only what I am told to pluck up, because I don’t know a weed from a willow, nor do I have much patience with moving things. For the life of me I don’t see why something that is already flourishing here should be dug up and then dug in over there. But the mistress of the estate knows better, and hovers over me while I dig and bury. I really know nothing about it; I just do what I am told. Not without grumbling, I admit, but I just do what I am told.
And so it was quite a shock a few months ago when I was instructed to replant some things that had been stored for the winter in clay pots, and was told that in order not to disturb the root system, I should just break the clay pot and get the dirt and the plant out whole. That was a shock, I say, because all of our married life Margaret and I have tried to be frugal. We don’t just throw things away when they get old – I mean, look at me. She’s kept me! When things break down; we keep them and try to fix them, or at least save the parts that might be useful somewhere else. We don’t just pile things on the trash heap and run out to buy the next and the newest, and we certainly do not intentionally destroy anything.
But, she said, it won’t matter. It’s just a clay pot. It’s cheap, and if you have to break it to get the plant out undisturbed, no great loss. Besides, even the shards of broken clay are useful for drainage somewhere else. So feel free – break the clay pot so that you can keep intact the good stuff inside.
That helps me understand why Paul could be so dismissive of clay pots. Paul says we have a treasure, but it is in earthen vessels, it is in clay pots, so that it might be made clear that power belongs to God and not to us. Paul is not very impressed with clay pots, it would seem. He is much more interested in what they contain. And he wants to make sure that we do not confuse the clay pot with what the clay pot holds. Get it right; our concern is not with the pot, but with the power. Our attention is not on the vessel, but on the volume inside it. Our focus is not on the container but the contents.
But, brothers and sisters, the issue for us is that we get it wrong. We get it backwards. We focus on the clay and forget about the contents. We value the vessel and forget about what’s in it. We get it backwards and miss the power.
Let me turn your attention first to the contents and then to the clay.
I
What is this treasure that Paul speaks about? What is it that is put into these little clay pots? “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God ...” What is this treasure?
The treasure which has been entrusted to us is the Gospel. It is the good news of salvation. It is the story of redemption. And it is a powerful thing. Listen again to just how powerful, as Paul sums it up:
A
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.” The Gospel is able to hold us together even when everything seems to go against us. I’ve known people who lost their health, who were drained financially, who struggled against all sorts of disappointments, but who from their very death-beds radiated victory! The Gospel is powerful. “Afflicted but not crushed.”
B
We are “perplexed, but not driven to despair.” The Gospel helps us make sense of things. Even when we cannot answer the great “why” questions, the good news brings us a perspective that nothing else can bring. This week I walked through a death experience with a family that is connected to mine, and someone asked me, “Why? Why did this happen?” But before I could struggle with any sort of answer, another family member broke in and said, “She fulfilled her purpose and the Lord took her home.” I don’t know that that kind of answer makes any sense to the world out there; it isn’t a scientific answer. It may not be an emotionally satisfying answer. But it is faith’s answer. Even when we are perplexed and puzzled, because of the good news of salvation, we are “not driven to despair.”
Are you with me, now? The Gospel is a treasure, a powerful treasure, a treasure that must be kept and held.
C
But let’s hurry on. What is this treasure we have? It’s the Gospel, it’s the good news, and it’s powerful. It holds us together when everything goes wrong, it makes sense of things even when they are tragic, and more: we are “persecuted but not forsaken”. We are living in a society which is more and more secular. Fewer and fewer people in our nation acknowledge Christ as Lord, and it is fashionable everywhere to deride Bible-thumpers and born-again believers. I acknowledge that we’ve brought a lot of justifiable criticism on ourselves; we’ve been stubborn when we should have been smart, we’ve been judgmental when we should have been compassionate. But the fact remains that this is not the easiest of times to be openly Christian. I’ve been so impressed that the last two times I’ve been here at Montgomery Hills, adult men have come forward making professions of faith. Are you aware of how rare that is, for adult men to step out and confess Christ? I’m grateful that here, in this church, clearly there are some folks who know that they may be persecuted, but they are not forsaken. The Gospel brings us the power to stand even when the world sneers at us.
D
And then, Paul says, we may be “struck down, but [we are] not destroyed.” When it is all over, and we can stay in this life no longer, even then, no, especially then, we are not destroyed. We are not lost. For there is life eternal out there for us. The Gospel is good news, it is power, it is redemptive power, for “we serve a risen Savior, He’s in the world today. I know that He is living, whatever men may say. I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer, and just the time I need Him, He’s always near. He lives!” He lives!
That, brothers and sisters, is our treasure. A good news that sustains us against disappointments, that guides our thinking, that strengthens our spirits, and, finally, that promises us eternal life. That is our treasure; and that treasure all people ought to have.
But what did I say earlier? That the issue is we get more focused on the clay pots than on the treasure. We get more invested in the containers than in the contents. We value the vessel more than its volume. We have this treasure, and it’s in cheap throwaway pots – but we get our values all twisted around.
So, having examined the treasure for a moment, let’s turn and look at the clay pot and what we can do with it.
II
The clay pot, of course, is this life. It is this body and the stuff that we use to support ourselves. The clay pot is my house and my bank account and my investments and my car, my stuff. I don’t know about you, but I sure have worked hard to get it all together and to keep it. But I need to be clear – all that I have, even life itself, is just a clay pot, used to contain something far more precious.
Clay pots: what do we know about clay pots?
A
For one thing, clay is impervious. It does not react with the stuff that is put in it. Some vessels will contaminate the contents. I’ve got metal containers at home that are orange with rust or gray with oxides because they reacted with whatever was put in them. Clay packs hard and keeps things pure and uncontaminated.
If I am going to be a clay pot for the Gospel, then a part of my job is to see to it that the good news is properly preserved. I don’t need to succumb to the latest politically correct opinion out there. I need to be impervious to all the contaminants. In some circles, even in the church, folks will tell you that it doesn’t matter what you think about Jesus or whether you acknowledge Christ as Lord. Years ago I attended a meeting that included Christians, Jews, and Muslims. One of the Christian pastors there tried to set the tone by saying that he didn’t intend to convert anybody, he didn’t have any need to see anyone accept the Christian faith. Before any of the rest of us could offer a different perspective, a rabbi spoke up and said to the others there, “Don’t you believe it! Don’t you take seriously what he says. The very heart of Christianity is that they believe that Jesus Christ is the only way.” Wow, the non-Christian understood better than some of us what the treasure of the Gospel is!
We need to keep this treasure in an impervious vessel. We need to make sure that we are clear about what we value, so that it can be shared with someone else in its purest and most powerful form.
B
Clay is impervious; and something else about clay -- it is a good transporter. It is a good carrier of things, because it is lightweight and fragile when it needs to be, and yet cheap and durable too. Clay jars are designed to get the goodies from one place to another and then to be used again or maybe just be broken up. But they are transporters of the good stuff.
Friends, if I were to ask you the purpose of life, what would you say? How would you answer? We could spend all day on that. I commend to you the current best-seller, The Purpose-Driven Life. It will give you some good answers. And it is a companion to another book, The Purpose-Driven Church. I cannot spend a lot of time on this question, but I can summarize the answer: the purpose of life is to do the will of God, and to share the good news. That’s my purpose, and that’s yours. That’s the purpose of the church, too – to carry the good news.
That means the good news is not to be bottled up forever, but it is to be shared. That means the Gospel is not to be caged within the four walls of the church, but to be offered to a waiting world. The last time I worshiped here, your pastor gave a New Year’s message on “keeping the main thing the main thing.” He said that the main thing was sharing the good news. Exactly right! Right on target! He did not say that the main thing was maintaining the church building. He did not preach that the main thing was paying staff salaries. He proclaimed clearly that every effort was to be spent toward getting out the Word of God.
So you and I are clay jars, and the church itself is too, designed to transport the good news and then to back off and let the power happen.
C
Clay is impervious, clay is a transporter, and one more thing: clay can be shaped in many ways. Clay can be molded and sculpted and shaped. Whoever you are, whatever you have, you can shape it toward being the kind of special clay jar the Lord wants you to be.
I can, for instance, shape my life and my resources to create a church that powerfully proclaims the Gospel. I can invest my time, my energies, and my gifts so that my church presents the good news in all its power. And even when this clay jar, this life of mine, is ready to be scrapped, I can provide for the good news through my church. At Takoma Park, several years back, a former member contacted me and said that she wanted to do something that would honor the memory of her parents, who had given themselves to teaching the Scriptures at our place. We worked out an endowment fund, to which this daughter continues to give – probably approaching $75,000 now – and it supports discipleship study at Takoma. The clay, you see, was shaped so that the church would keep on doing what it is supposed to do.
Another member, who had joined our church because she saw our commitment to young people, left us a sum of money for college student scholarships. We added it to an endowment fund we already had in place, and are able every year to hand out scholarships to every member who is graduating from high school. Her clay was shaped so that the church would keep on doing what it is supposed to do.
You can shape your clay toward whatever the Lord is calling you to be. You can shape your clay jar for your church, and you can shape your clay jar for missions as well. We D. C. Baptists have some ministries that make a difference. Johenning Center – campus ministry – new church starts – many things. You can shape your clay to hold and carry those treasures forward. The worldwide missionary effort – what we are doing to pour this Gospel out in the dismal places of our own nation and in the distant corners of our world.
I stand this morning to say that we can and we must shape our clay, all that we are and all that we have, so that these things are kept intact and are carried wherever they are needed. And if, brothers and sisters, we must break our little clay pots to do it, well then, they were only clay pots in the first place. Remember, we are not to confuse the clay with the treasure, nor the vessel with the value.
I want to lay on your heart today the possibility of planning for how you will shape your clay, your stuff, after your pot is broken. Mind you, I’ve tried to say that we have the treasure of the Gospel NOW and we are to share it NOW, in all its power. But the time will come when we can no longer stay here. When our clay jars are broken, what can we do? There are many things, from writing wills to creating trusts and insurance programs, that would shape your clay toward what the Lord has called you to do. In the weeks to come, I’ll work with your pastor and will hope that some of you will give me the privilege of visiting you in your homes – not to sell anything. I don’t have any products to sell, none at all. But to visit with you just to see where your heart is and to see if we can shape your clay to continue to carry the good news for somebody else once your pot is broken. Just pray about that and contact me; your pastor can help you, and we’ll discover together what opportunities the Lord has for you to offer His treasure to a generation yet unborn.
I mentioned earlier that this week I had gone through a tragic time with a family connected to mine. My daughter-in-law’s sister, age 33, on Tuesday evening began to experience severe headaches. By early Wednesday morning it was obvious that something serious was happening. Her husband drove her to Montgomery General Hospital; they then called for a Medevac to Georgetown University Hospital. All day and all night Wednesday the doctors did what they could, but Thursday evening the word came that her life could not be preserved. Everyone was just so shocked that this could happen to an apparently healthy 33-year-old wife and mother of three children. It was her mother who said, as I quoted earlier, that she just believed that Monica had fulfilled her purpose and that the Lord had taken her home. None of us had any response to that statement; such a short life! How can its purpose possibly be fulfilled in only thirty-three years?
And then it struck me: brothers and sisters, you and I know someone else whose residence in a clay jar was only three and thirty years. You and I know someone else who, it would seem, had barely begun His work when He was cut down, tragically, His vessel shattered. You and I know the wondrous cross, on which the young prince of glory died, crying out, “It is finished!” Completed!
But you and I know also that the blood will never lose its power. You and I know also that He promised that greater works shall we do, because He would go to the Father. You and I know “only one life, ‘twill soon be past; only what you do for Christ will last.”
I am only a little clay pot; I am not the good news. But how I shape this clay will hold and carry the good news, in the risen Christ, forever.
