2 Corinthians 4:5-7 Jesus Christ First to Last
Indeed, we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” is the same one who made light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We hold this treasure in clay jars to show that its extraordinary power is from God and not from us.
If our text today sounded vaguely familiar, that’s probably because it’s the same text I used for my very first sermon here in Rapid River twenty-three years ago. So if you all remember what I said in that sermon, I suppose we can just say, “Amen,” and go eat, because nothing has changed. I’m not going to say anything substantially different. “We do not preach ourselves,” Paul says. That means I’m not here to talk about me and you and everything we’ve done together in the last twenty-three years. So I suppose I could have just pulled that old sermon out of the sermon file and preached it to you again, to see if anybody notices. Nothing’s changed in what is preached from this pulpit since then. Nothing’s going to change.
There is a place for reminiscing in a farewell sermon, not to relive fond memories, but only to remind ourselves how God has been with us, to encourage us all the more to go forward, wherever God takes us, trusting him to guide and bless us in the future as he has in the past, and dedicating ourselves anew to serve and follow him. Our first Scripture reading today was from the book of Deuteronomy, which was Moses’ farewell sermon to the Children of Israel before they were to enter the Promised Land without him. And that whole thirty-four chapter farewell sermon was all reminiscing from beginning to end, retelling the story of how God had been with them for the past forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
They weren’t really wandering, you know; they were growing up. They were learning how to be the people of God, and it was these lessons Moses was reviewing for them in his farewell, lessons in trust, in dedication, obedience, and service, lessons in God’s presence, power, wisdom, and blessing. And a few lessons in God’s law and judgment. So what lessons have we learned during my stint here in Rapid River? Pretty much the same lessons, just without the pillar of fire and the daily serving of manna and quail.
We’ve learned over time that things change, and they stay the same. We’ve gone from a dual parish with St. Paul’s in Gladstone, to being on our own for fifteen years, back to a dual parish with St. Paul’s, a different St. Paul’s now. Things change and they stay the same. We’ve lost some dear friends and familiar faces who have gone on to the Promised Land ahead of us. And we’ve found some new faces, not to take their place but to add to the growing cloud of the body of the elect who will all one day be one great big congregation in the worship spaces of heaven.
But what has stayed the same? That’s what Paul talks about today. “For the God who said, ‘Light will shine out of darkness,’ is the same one who made light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.” Paul is going back a lot farther than his own ministry or this Corinthian congregation’s brief history, all the way to the beginning, to God’s first sermon, the first time he spoke or preached, proclaiming his own Word. For a sermon, it was rather short and sweet: “Let there be light.” I bet you didn’t know that was a sermon. How could you? It doesn’t end with “Amen.”
But this is the same sermon he’s been pulling out of his sermon file and preaching again and again. Every time there’s been a baptism here, that was God preaching the same sermon, “Let there be light,” explaining to us what the light is, the wisdom and truth of his gospel, and how that light works, creating faith and trust in human hearts, even the tiniest and youngest of human hearts, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, one heart at a time.
He preaches his well-rehearsed sermon again at every funeral. Let there be the light that gives us peace and comfort. God preaches the most beautiful sermons, but when God preaches, it’s not just words. When he says, “Let there be light,” he makes it happen. He makes his light shine. He opens blind eyes and awakens dead hearts. He gives us clear vision to understand the world around us and the insight to know how to live in that world the best life of love and humble service. It’s the power of his holy Word, that’s been preached from this pulpit for the past twenty-three years by one particular jar of clay, the past one hundred twenty-five years of this one particular congregation’s brief history, the past two thousand years of the Holy Christian Church’s existence, and in fact the very same Word, the very same gospel, the very same light, that he’s been making shine since God preached his sermon the first time, on day one of creation.
A lot has changed. But Paul says that that’s what hasn’t changed. It’s the same God. It’s the same purpose, letting light shine out of darkness. It’s the same goal, to give us all knowledge of the glory of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
God’s first sermon he preached to a congregation of zero, if you only counted mortal bodies in the pews here on earth. So he preached it solely to an assembly of angels, as we’re told in the book of Job, “Where were you” (any of you, or anyone at all, he could have said) “when I laid the foundation of the earth... when the morning stars sang loud songs together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Angels of heaven gave the Amen after God’s short sermon and sang hymns of praise in creation’s first worship service.
Now his church here on earth is filled, but not with angels. With mortals, with sinners, with weak and foolish worshipers whose voices can’t compare to the angels. Paul calls us all jars of clay. He was talking mainly about himself and every human vessel God has used to deliver his message, preachers and teachers, but the description also fits everyone in the pew who receives his message. Jars of clay, fragile, easily replaced, as cheap as the dirt they’re made of. As God formed the first man out of the dust of the ground, we’re reminded that that’s all we are: dust, dirt, and clay—except that’s not all we are, because God then breathed into that first jar of clay the breath of life and an immortal soul, a redeemed soul, bound for glory, and he has deposited in each of us cheap jars of clay a precious treasure, the word of life, the light, the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Christ Jesus.
If each of us, individually, is a fragile clay jar, then what of the church built out of millions of fragile clay jars. We are the church’s walls, and its ceiling, its pillars, its rafters and beams and floor joists, a very fragile building material for something meant to stand for generations and as long as the earth shall last. Should we be worried, whether this church will continue to stand, or could it crumble to the ground like the Surfside apartments in Miami?
What was God thinking, putting such a precious treasure in such cheap, fragile jars of clay? Why would he build his Church, his own dwelling place on earth, out of such flimsy building material? Paul explains the wisdom of his reasoning: “to show that (the gospel’s) extraordinary power is from God and not from us.” Built on the Rock the Church will stand. On Christ the solid Rock we stand; all other ground is sinking sand.
When he put such an imperfect clay vessel as me in your pulpit, it was to teach you, and me as well, that this church’s past growth and its future hopes don’t depend on who’s standing in the pulpit. And when he entrusted his gospel message to you, the listeners and the building blocks of his Church, it was to make the weak and unworthy worthy to be his dwelling place on earth and strong enough to stand up to all the storms of life.
He chose to entrust the treasure of his Gospel to the weak so that our strength might be the Lord’s strength. He entrusted his precious truth to worthless clay jars to let us know how precious we are to him, by grace, not because we deserve it, but precious nonetheless. And he deposited the most priceless of treasures in the most fragile of clay jars, not so that these jars might protect his treasure, but so that his treasure might protect us on our journey through life.
It has always been about the treasure, not the jars of clay. “We do not preach ourselves,” Paul said. And yet sometimes we do. We've all preached ourselves every time by our words or actions we’ve made ourselves the focus. Every time we've allowed pride or selfishness, or that self-centeredness that makes me the most important person in the room, to be the theme of our lives. We have all too often focused on ourselves, thought first of our own needs and desires, cared most about our own comfort and happiness. Even our thoughts about this congregation at a time of transition and change, can be more about how do we preserve our own little house of God, than the good of God’s kingdom as a whole. Your whole life is a sermon, and we’re all tempted to preach ourselves.
It’s okay to talk about yourself once in a while, and even draw attention to yourself, but Paul’s point is that we do not preach ourselves “as lords,” but as servants. We preach Christ as Lord, as the one for whom we live, and ourselves as servants, the ones for whom he died, to forgive all our sins, redeem us from our lives of selfishness and self-centeredness, and to make us all worthy of holding the precious treasure of his gospel.
To hold it and to share it. That’s how we advance the kingdom, not keeping it to ourselves, but letting the light shine out. I think we’re supposed to be like Gideon’s army. Remember how God whittled Gideon’s army down to just three hundred men to fight the whole army of Midean? God had these few men take lamps inside clay jars and surround the sleeping camp of the enemy. Then they smashed the clay jars, let the light shine out, and shouted, and they won the victory. That’s all we have to do, let the light shine out of these broken clay jars. Don’t shut it in. Light will shine in the darkness again, and victory will be ours.
As I looked through the Bible for farewells, to give me inspiration for my final message here, I found quite a variety. There were long ones, like the entire book of Deuteronomy for Moses’ goodbye. Or Paul’s farewell to his congregation in Troas, where he preached on into the night so long that one young man sitting in a window fell asleep, and fell out the window. But as you know, I am a man of few words, so I favor the shorter examples, like Elijah who promised his successor, Elisha, a portion of God’s Spirit to carry on his work, and then stepped into his fiery chariot without another word, and rode off into the skies. Or like aged Simeon, who held a precious treasure in his arms, the newborn Savior, and said, “Lord, you now dismiss your servant in peace, according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” That is my farewell to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Indeed, we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” is the same one who made light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We hold this treasure in clay jars to show that its extraordinary power is from God and not from us.
If our text today sounded vaguely familiar, that’s probably because it’s the same text I used for my very first sermon here in Rapid River twenty-three years ago. So if you all remember what I said in that sermon, I suppose we can just say, “Amen,” and go eat, because nothing has changed. I’m not going to say anything substantially different. “We do not preach ourselves,” Paul says. That means I’m not here to talk about me and you and everything we’ve done together in the last twenty-three years. So I suppose I could have just pulled that old sermon out of the sermon file and preached it to you again, to see if anybody notices. Nothing’s changed in what is preached from this pulpit since then. Nothing’s going to change.
There is a place for reminiscing in a farewell sermon, not to relive fond memories, but only to remind ourselves how God has been with us, to encourage us all the more to go forward, wherever God takes us, trusting him to guide and bless us in the future as he has in the past, and dedicating ourselves anew to serve and follow him. Our first Scripture reading today was from the book of Deuteronomy, which was Moses’ farewell sermon to the Children of Israel before they were to enter the Promised Land without him. And that whole thirty-four chapter farewell sermon was all reminiscing from beginning to end, retelling the story of how God had been with them for the past forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
They weren’t really wandering, you know; they were growing up. They were learning how to be the people of God, and it was these lessons Moses was reviewing for them in his farewell, lessons in trust, in dedication, obedience, and service, lessons in God’s presence, power, wisdom, and blessing. And a few lessons in God’s law and judgment. So what lessons have we learned during my stint here in Rapid River? Pretty much the same lessons, just without the pillar of fire and the daily serving of manna and quail.
We’ve learned over time that things change, and they stay the same. We’ve gone from a dual parish with St. Paul’s in Gladstone, to being on our own for fifteen years, back to a dual parish with St. Paul’s, a different St. Paul’s now. Things change and they stay the same. We’ve lost some dear friends and familiar faces who have gone on to the Promised Land ahead of us. And we’ve found some new faces, not to take their place but to add to the growing cloud of the body of the elect who will all one day be one great big congregation in the worship spaces of heaven.
But what has stayed the same? That’s what Paul talks about today. “For the God who said, ‘Light will shine out of darkness,’ is the same one who made light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.” Paul is going back a lot farther than his own ministry or this Corinthian congregation’s brief history, all the way to the beginning, to God’s first sermon, the first time he spoke or preached, proclaiming his own Word. For a sermon, it was rather short and sweet: “Let there be light.” I bet you didn’t know that was a sermon. How could you? It doesn’t end with “Amen.”
But this is the same sermon he’s been pulling out of his sermon file and preaching again and again. Every time there’s been a baptism here, that was God preaching the same sermon, “Let there be light,” explaining to us what the light is, the wisdom and truth of his gospel, and how that light works, creating faith and trust in human hearts, even the tiniest and youngest of human hearts, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, one heart at a time.
He preaches his well-rehearsed sermon again at every funeral. Let there be the light that gives us peace and comfort. God preaches the most beautiful sermons, but when God preaches, it’s not just words. When he says, “Let there be light,” he makes it happen. He makes his light shine. He opens blind eyes and awakens dead hearts. He gives us clear vision to understand the world around us and the insight to know how to live in that world the best life of love and humble service. It’s the power of his holy Word, that’s been preached from this pulpit for the past twenty-three years by one particular jar of clay, the past one hundred twenty-five years of this one particular congregation’s brief history, the past two thousand years of the Holy Christian Church’s existence, and in fact the very same Word, the very same gospel, the very same light, that he’s been making shine since God preached his sermon the first time, on day one of creation.
A lot has changed. But Paul says that that’s what hasn’t changed. It’s the same God. It’s the same purpose, letting light shine out of darkness. It’s the same goal, to give us all knowledge of the glory of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
God’s first sermon he preached to a congregation of zero, if you only counted mortal bodies in the pews here on earth. So he preached it solely to an assembly of angels, as we’re told in the book of Job, “Where were you” (any of you, or anyone at all, he could have said) “when I laid the foundation of the earth... when the morning stars sang loud songs together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Angels of heaven gave the Amen after God’s short sermon and sang hymns of praise in creation’s first worship service.
Now his church here on earth is filled, but not with angels. With mortals, with sinners, with weak and foolish worshipers whose voices can’t compare to the angels. Paul calls us all jars of clay. He was talking mainly about himself and every human vessel God has used to deliver his message, preachers and teachers, but the description also fits everyone in the pew who receives his message. Jars of clay, fragile, easily replaced, as cheap as the dirt they’re made of. As God formed the first man out of the dust of the ground, we’re reminded that that’s all we are: dust, dirt, and clay—except that’s not all we are, because God then breathed into that first jar of clay the breath of life and an immortal soul, a redeemed soul, bound for glory, and he has deposited in each of us cheap jars of clay a precious treasure, the word of life, the light, the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Christ Jesus.
If each of us, individually, is a fragile clay jar, then what of the church built out of millions of fragile clay jars. We are the church’s walls, and its ceiling, its pillars, its rafters and beams and floor joists, a very fragile building material for something meant to stand for generations and as long as the earth shall last. Should we be worried, whether this church will continue to stand, or could it crumble to the ground like the Surfside apartments in Miami?
What was God thinking, putting such a precious treasure in such cheap, fragile jars of clay? Why would he build his Church, his own dwelling place on earth, out of such flimsy building material? Paul explains the wisdom of his reasoning: “to show that (the gospel’s) extraordinary power is from God and not from us.” Built on the Rock the Church will stand. On Christ the solid Rock we stand; all other ground is sinking sand.
When he put such an imperfect clay vessel as me in your pulpit, it was to teach you, and me as well, that this church’s past growth and its future hopes don’t depend on who’s standing in the pulpit. And when he entrusted his gospel message to you, the listeners and the building blocks of his Church, it was to make the weak and unworthy worthy to be his dwelling place on earth and strong enough to stand up to all the storms of life.
He chose to entrust the treasure of his Gospel to the weak so that our strength might be the Lord’s strength. He entrusted his precious truth to worthless clay jars to let us know how precious we are to him, by grace, not because we deserve it, but precious nonetheless. And he deposited the most priceless of treasures in the most fragile of clay jars, not so that these jars might protect his treasure, but so that his treasure might protect us on our journey through life.
It has always been about the treasure, not the jars of clay. “We do not preach ourselves,” Paul said. And yet sometimes we do. We've all preached ourselves every time by our words or actions we’ve made ourselves the focus. Every time we've allowed pride or selfishness, or that self-centeredness that makes me the most important person in the room, to be the theme of our lives. We have all too often focused on ourselves, thought first of our own needs and desires, cared most about our own comfort and happiness. Even our thoughts about this congregation at a time of transition and change, can be more about how do we preserve our own little house of God, than the good of God’s kingdom as a whole. Your whole life is a sermon, and we’re all tempted to preach ourselves.
It’s okay to talk about yourself once in a while, and even draw attention to yourself, but Paul’s point is that we do not preach ourselves “as lords,” but as servants. We preach Christ as Lord, as the one for whom we live, and ourselves as servants, the ones for whom he died, to forgive all our sins, redeem us from our lives of selfishness and self-centeredness, and to make us all worthy of holding the precious treasure of his gospel.
To hold it and to share it. That’s how we advance the kingdom, not keeping it to ourselves, but letting the light shine out. I think we’re supposed to be like Gideon’s army. Remember how God whittled Gideon’s army down to just three hundred men to fight the whole army of Midean? God had these few men take lamps inside clay jars and surround the sleeping camp of the enemy. Then they smashed the clay jars, let the light shine out, and shouted, and they won the victory. That’s all we have to do, let the light shine out of these broken clay jars. Don’t shut it in. Light will shine in the darkness again, and victory will be ours.
As I looked through the Bible for farewells, to give me inspiration for my final message here, I found quite a variety. There were long ones, like the entire book of Deuteronomy for Moses’ goodbye. Or Paul’s farewell to his congregation in Troas, where he preached on into the night so long that one young man sitting in a window fell asleep, and fell out the window. But as you know, I am a man of few words, so I favor the shorter examples, like Elijah who promised his successor, Elisha, a portion of God’s Spirit to carry on his work, and then stepped into his fiery chariot without another word, and rode off into the skies. Or like aged Simeon, who held a precious treasure in his arms, the newborn Savior, and said, “Lord, you now dismiss your servant in peace, according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” That is my farewell to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
