Raise you up from the evil sleep, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to Well, what's up, everybody? Chester A.R.P. Church devotional podcast. Clint Davis, your host. Hey, thanks for joining us. We get started with Second Corinthians, Chapter four, Second Corinthians, Chapter four, beginning in verse seven. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair. persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work within us, but life in you. According to what has been written I believed and so I speak we also believe and so we also speak Knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence For it is all it is for it is all for your sake So that as grace extends to more and more people, it may also increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Now this passage of scripture is probably the most familiar passage of scripture in all of 2 Corinthians. Maybe the end of chapter 5 is more familiar to us where Paul says that he who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God and then the call of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 to be reconciled unto the Lord is more familiar, but I'm not sure. This statement that Paul makes about having the treasure in jars of clay is a reference to the treasure of the good news of Jesus Christ, the treasure of Christ. Now this is a key for Paul throughout all of his letters, but particularly in, let's say, 2 Corinthians, Colossians, and elsewhere. He talks about the mystery of the gospel, the mystery of godliness. The idea that we have a mystery of the gospel within us and that mystery is that Christ is in us and we are in Christ. That we are hidden in the Lord Jesus Christ. What does that mean? Well, that means that God has chosen to take away our sin and put it on Jesus. He's chosen to take Jesus' righteousness, what Jesus did in perfection, and give it to us and he's choosing over time to work within our lives to bring us to a point of acknowledging his purposes and his glory in our lives and in doing so he is making us more and more like Jesus, reflecting the character of God, reflecting the love of Christ in the world around us, and so the mystery of the gospel, that Jesus loved us enough to give his life for us, that we are brought into relationship with him by grace through faith, and we have received his perfection, his righteousness, and he has taken our sin and hidden it and put it on a cross, and so therefore our lives are, when the Father looks at us, when he talks about hidden in Christ, when the Father looks at us, he sees Jesus. That's a remarkable thing. And Paul says that's the treasure. We hold that treasure. We hold that gospel message in jars of clay, a clay pot. A clay pot's fragile, it breaks, but it's what they used in those days to carry water and to cook with and those kind of things, pottery. And so they would have understood that image where Paul was saying, we have a beautiful treasure. The treasure is not the pot itself, but what the pot has, water. Let's say for instance you had to go get water and you had a clay pot to carry the water in and you went down to where you got water to the well or whatever and you brought the water back. The pot itself is not the treasure. The pot's great and wonderful and you need the pot, it's essential. But the treasure is the water itself, what's in the pot, what the pot contains, what the pot carries. And so Paul says here that we, our bodies, our vessels, they are clay pots. And certainly that fits within the context of the teaching of the Bible. God fashioned us out of dust, out of the dust of the ground, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. To dust we will return. But these bags of dirt, these clay pots, carry a remarkable treasure. And that remarkable treasure is the Lord Jesus Christ, is the gospel of Christ. And he says, so these clay pots are beaten and broken and perplexed and driven and persecuted, et cetera, but we're not crushed and we're not driven to despair. We're not forsaken, we're not destroyed. Why, because God is protecting the vessels. God cares about the vessel as much as he does about what the vessel carries. And so God is protecting the vessel. As I said earlier in that illustration, the clay pot's an essential tool, an essential part of family life because you need to go get water. And that pot is essentially important to you and protecting that pot and keeping that pot and patching that pot and keeping that pot ready to go is what you need because you got to go get water. And if you don't have it, you can't get water. God has chosen by his grace to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ through you and through me. Through us clay pots. And so the world comes after the pot, right? The world comes after the pot because it wants to destroy the pot. Can't destroy what's in the pot, we don't want to destroy the pot. Because if they think if they destroy the pot, then what's in the pot will go to waste. And God has chosen, right, in the midst of all of that, to protect, to care for, to patch, to mend, to build up. the clay pot. There can be times when you got cracks, there can be times when you pushed it to the side, there can be times when you ignored it, etc. Right, but God has chosen to use the pot for his purposes of proclaiming the treasure, of carrying that treasure, the treasure that is in a jar of clay. And so we'll stop there today. Hope you guys have a great day. Realize you're a pot that carries a beautiful treasure, but God will indeed protect his pots to use for his purposes. The treasure will be carried from person to person, place to place, and the gospel will be proclaimed. You guys take care, God bless you. See you next time.