The Heavenly Treasure in the Earthen Vessel

In the fourth chapter of second Corinthians and the seventh verse, we have these words, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not ot us.” Before I beg-in to speak on the subject direct, let me make two remarks. The one is, that in my first address, and later on, I more than once tried to impress the thoug-ht, that we may be making a great mistake when we seek for the baptism of the Spirit for power for work and service. Not that we are wrong in seekingthat. But we are often thinking too exclusively of the power, and not realizing that the Holy Spirit waits to come as a life, renewing our whole beinginto the likeness of Christ. You know how I have, more than once, tried to press this side of the truth. Get the Holy Spirit, in all His power, into your life, to make you spiritually-minded, to fill you with love and humility, and you will be fitted for work. But I would be very sorry if any one should think that I count work of little value. All that God wants to do for you has this object: That you may bringforth much fruit. Therefore, beware of misunderstandingme, and thinking that I would have you seek only for the higher life. That might be a selfish thing-, and therefore I want to speak, this morning”, about work, the work every one of us has to do. The other remark is this: A good while before I came away from South Africa, I read, in an old author, a sentence that impressed me deeply, and I wrote it down in one of my note books. It was this, “The first duty of every clergyman is to beg of God, very humbly, that all that he wants to be done in his hearers, may first he fully and truly done in himself.” I cannot say what power there appears to be in this sentence. Brother minister and brother worker, the first duty of one who works for Christ and speaks for Him, is to humbly come to God and ask that everything he wants done in his hearers may first be thoroughly and fully done in himself. That brings us to the root of all true work. When I speak about the love of God, of the power of redemption, of the salvation from sin, or the fillingof the Holy Spirit, or the love of God shed abroad in the heart, you and I need to have God do the thing in ourselves, and the more earnestly we seek that, the more there will be a hidden power of the Holy Spirit to pass through from us, /;/ whom God has done -what He sends us to preach. That thought,

I think you will see, has close connection with the subject we have this morning-. Paul writes about his ministry, in the first five verses, and then he says, when he had spoken the wonderful words, “God hath shined into our hearts, to give us, and throug-h us to give others, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” But then he thinks how the Corinthians may despise him, how the world looked down upon him in all his troubles and humiliation, and he adds, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.” I want to say to all of you, beloved workers, who long to know what the right spirit is in which to work, that this word is one of the keywords of God, about work. It will show you four wondrous things:

1. The greatness of the heavenly treasure.

2. The feebleness of the earthly vessel.

3. The abiding difference between the two.

4. The living union in which they are found. First of all, the heavenly treasure. What is that?

You know what he has stated in the words I have just quoted. God hath shined into our hearts. Think of the sun. That makes us have all the sunshine; the sunshine into our eyes, into our bodies, into our very spirit, and gives warmth and heat and light of life. So, Paul says, ‘God, the Everlasting One, has shined, and is shining all along into our hearts, to give what? Shining gives light, and God shining gives the light of the glory of God. Yes, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.’ Does that not bring- us back to what I have said more than once, Christ wants to bring- us to God, and in the face of Christ, our one great study, our one great object and desire should be, that the g’lory of God may be revealed in us, that we, like the ang-els in heaven, walk before Him with bowed faces, worshiping- and adoringf all the day long. God shines into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and by the Holy Spirit He reveals thelig-ht of theknowledg-e of the g-lory of God. It is not an intellectual knowledg-e, but in the heart. A man may have beautiful thoughts, he may be a splendid preacher, he may be a most edifying- instructor, yet, there may be very much more of intellect in him than of God’s Spirit. It must be a relig-ion of the heart. God is love. The love of God is the love of the heart. God seeks the heart, and God shines into the heart, and in the heart the seed of love dwells, and the love of God reveals His glory. The lig-ht of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Now what is the heavenly treasure I am to have and I am to carry? I may use different words. I can call it the light of God. I can call it the knowledge of God. I can call it the glory of God. I can call it the love of God in Jesus Christ. Dear friends, the treasure you have to carry, as a worker for God, is a heavenly treasure. The more you realize its greatness, the more you will be able to do your work. If I am a poor man, and a beggar asks me for something, I may give him according to what I have. I may give him the last dollar. But if I am rich I could g-ive him thousands, if need be. I can give liberally. Believer, if you g-et the consciousness, I am a rich man, I am a millionaire, I have heavenly treasures, I have the key of the treasures of my God. Oh! what joy andconfidence and power you will have to make others believe there is a heavenly blessing” to get. Oh! we talk about the blessing”, and try to know the different truth. But how different, if our hearts were burning with the heavenly life of God. If the life of God burns in us, in the deepest regions of our being, what a life of blessing. Just think of a life, with the light of the face of the glory of God shining into us all the day. What a heavenly treasure to carry about with us! That light would shine through us, and would be reflected from us. I pray you, get the light of the glory of God into j’ our souls. Oh! workers, the heavenly treasure is not human knowledge, it is not thought, it is not a little experience, but it is the very sunshine of God’s glory in the soul. God would have you take the heavenly treasure, and if you will get your souls full of the consciousness, I am carrying about the heavenly treasure in me, I am an earthen vessel, but I have the heavenly treasure, you would go forth in new confidence and power. Oh! study it not only in books, nor even in the Bible. I do not depreciate books, and ten thousand times, no, I do not depreciate the Bible, but the Bible cannot give it you. The Bible is only a pointer to show you up to God, that you may be able to come into God’s presence. It is found only in God’s presence. Say, Oh! God, shine into my heart. Remember, that the shining- of God must come ever fresh upon you. I have said, and I will repeat it, I do not weary in repeating- it because it is such a lesson. I cannot live on the sunlight of yesterday. I cannot live on the sunlight of an hour ag-o. I must have the sunlig-ht fresh every moment. And just so this shining- of God into our hearts must be the livings unceasing divine shining- of God Himself. Therefore, if the believer wants to be a worker for God, wants to carry the treasure, in ever fresh power, his one desire must be, to abide every moment, in the full light of God’s love and God’s presence. Young man and 3’oung woman, students of this Bible Institute, I pray you remember, a man has as much real power for eternity as he has of God shining into his heart. And while I pray you to be faithful in your study and use your time well, and while I would urge you use every opportunity for getting acquainted with that precious word, 3-et I say, first and last, everj’thing depends upon a man living in the light of God’s presence, in the light of God’s love, and waiting until he has the heavenly treasure in his heart, God shining there the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. May every act of faith in Christ lead you up to God, and stir you to wait upon the Everlasting God, to reveal Himself more fully. Let there be a holy hunger and thirst of the heart after God and after a life like that of Christ’s, living every hour in fellowship with the Father, and in dependence upon Him. Oh! what a blessed work the work of the ministry. What a blessed work,

proclaiming- the salvation of Jesus Christ. The humblest teacher or Bible reader can go to others, carrying not only the Bible, but the very light of God, shining into him and out of him. A lamp is not made to light, but to carry the light, and I carry the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in my heart; carry Jesus Christ Himself; carry the glory of God. Dear brother, the most precious thing- you have in your heart, and the most blessed thing- you can desire is to have God fill that heart, a heavenly treasure in an earthen vessel.

2. Why is it that so many believers, and so many workers, and so many ministers, enjoy so little of this g-lory of the heavenly treasure? The answer is simply, because they are all looking at the earthly treasure in a wrong way. Many ministers and Christians are always saying, I am so weak, I am so feeble, and my thoughts are so poor, and my experience is so wretched, and they do not understand why God puts the treasure in the earthen vessel. They have not accepted their position, as an earthen vessel. The more conscious I am of the utter valuelessness of the earthen vessel, the more I can rejoice in the glory of the treasure. Here on earth people generally seek to have some proportion between the treasure and the vessel in which it is kept. Take the richest people in Chicago, whose wives have received from husbands the most beautiful diamonds and jewelry, we will find them all in beautiful caskets, elegantly polished and made most expensively. Some inlaid with gold, some all of gold. We always expect some proportion between the treasure and the vessel, and people think, according to the beauty of the vessel will be the beauty of the treasure. God does the very opposite, and that is why Paul says in our text, how he was persecuted and had to suffer. It was all well; he knew he was an earthen vessel with a heavenly treasure. The more he felt the insignificance of the earthen vessel, the more he rejoiced in the heavenly treasure. When at Johannesburg, I was shown over a gold mine. Coming out from the door of the furnace room we met a man carrying something in a plain iron vessel. When asked, by the manager, to lift the cover, we saw gold to the value of $1,000 being brought in to the furnace. He had that lump of gold in a common iron vessel that you could get for a half a dollar. There was a very precious treasure in a very common vessel. God wants us to realize that. His plan and His delight is to put the heavenly treasure into an earthen vessel. Let us be content with that.

Every one of us has often experienced that, and it has cast us down. You want to preach, but feel unable to do as you would wish. You have not the warmth and fullness you like to have. You are cast down because you look in the earthen vessel. Your whole thought should be: Let the heavenly treasure be magnified. If you are full of that, God will help you to praise Him, and your whole heart will be ever set on one thing — the hearenly treasure. God will honor it, and all the time and strength that you have will be saved for the one blessed work of praising” God and trusting- Him and waiting- upon Him. We have a heavenly treasure in an earthen vessel. Beloved workers, if I could rouse your hearts by the Holy Spirit to consider your position. Listen, while I tell you. God in heaven has a treasure. Its worth passes all thought, and that treasure is His beloved Son. In Him it hath pleased the Father that all the fullness should dwell. In Him are hidden all the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God. Christ is God’s treasure, and God’s delight, and the storehouse of all God’s riches. God had that treasure in heaven, but sent it down to earth, and in the Babe of Bethlehem. In that Jesus who had not a place to lay His head; in that Jesus as an earthen vessel, there was that heavenly treasure of God. The Jesus that went down into the grave, in that broken earthen vessel, was the treasure of God. He lifted Him up to the glory, and then the Holy Spirit came down to bring that heavenly treasure into the hearts of men. And the treasure in heaven, that God delights in, can be a treasure in your heart, that you can delight in. Do let every worker take time to study this. May God show His people, show me, the heavenly treasure that I carry about. The treasure of God’s heart is the treasure of my heart. The glory of God shines in the face of His beloved Son, and though you are an earthen vessel, your joy, your confidence and your power may be unfailing. In the earthen vessel we have the heavenly treasure.

3. There is another point I mentioned. We want to speak about the abiding difference between the two. Some people would think: Yes, at the beg-inning- of the Christian life, a man will feel that very clearly. It is a very earthen vessel with a heavenly treasure in it. But when a man has been living- a spiritual life, living in fellowship with God for years, should he still feel he is just an earthen vessel? When a man has become humble and Christ-like, will he then still be an earthen vessel? Yes, beloved. Paul had been for years in the rich experience of God’s grace, and yet he speaks of himself as an earthen vessel. And he would remain one until the end, and why? The reason is given in our text, “That the excellency of the power may be of God.” We are, by nature, so full of pride and self in the most spiritual believer there is always dang-er of self-exaltation. Remember, in 2 Cor. 12, Paul writes, “Lest I should be exalted by the revelations I had received, God sent a thorn in the flesh to humble me,” and you know how Christ taug-ht him that when he was weak he would be strongest, because Christ’s power would rest upon his weakness. And even so God comes to us. We are ever in danger of beginning to think that we are something; that God is putting this heavenly treasure, ever more abundantly, in us. Or when we begin to think that God uses us todispense to others again the heavenly treasure, and makes us a blessing to others, there is danger of our forgetting what we are; and so God says it shall be forever a heavenly treasure in a mere earthen vessel. I have pressed you to remember and study what the treasure is, for it is very heavenly. I now press you to study the other side; no matter how many you have broug-ht to Christ, the vessel is still earthen. You are nothing. Oh! if you once beg-in to understand it, you will not only be content to accept the position, but rejoice in it. In reg-ard to this there may be three states of mind. The one is when a man does not want to be an earthen vessel. He longs to be something better, to beautify the vessel by culture and study. He does not want to be an earthen vessel and he is unwearied in the effort to improve the earthen vessel.

It is a step in advance when a man begins to consent to be an earthen vessel. He begins to feel he cannot be otherwise, and tries to submit to it. He bears it as a humiliation but does not rejoice in it.

yd step. He begins to delight in being an earthen vessel. He sees why it should be so, and approves of it. He counts it his highest blessedness.

Paul did not get to the position we referred to, in 12th chapter of 2 Cor. at once. When the Lord sent that messenger of Satan to buffet him he said, three times, “Lord, do take it away.” The Lord came to Paul and said, You do not know that the messenger of Satan is your greatest blessing. Why, Lord? Because he will teach you to be absolutely dependent upon Me every moment. Paul got a sight of it; he says, “I will glory, will rejoice in my infirmities, in the weakness of the earthen vessel.” That is a higher attainment, not only to endure but to rejoice in being an earthen vessel. Remember, no matter how full God may fill your heart with His salvation, the consciousness will always have to grow deeper,

I am an earthen vessel. That is why Paul says, in the same chapter, “In nothing am I behind the chief est of the Apostles, though I am nothing. God made the creature orig-inally to be a vessel, in which to show forth His divine glory. This is your highest honor, to be a vessel to carry the power and light of God. That is what angels were created for, to be vessels in which the glory of God could be shown forth. That is what the child of God should be content to be, a vessel, empty, low and broken, if need be, to be filled with Christ, the treasure of God.

My last thought. The abiding union between the two; the living union. I said there is an abiding difference to the end. But remember, also, there is a living union. There was no living union between that mass of gold away in Johannesburg, I spoke of, and that iron dish. The two were separate. But the treasure of God enters into a man; though I remain an earthen vessel, the heavenly treasure becomes mine in such a way that it enters my life and becomes myself. All the life of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy love of God and Holy Son of God, and the Holy glory of God, they all, all pass down into my very being in such an infinite, divine reality, that they are my very own and they make up myself. God teaches me a double lesson. First of all, to understand the everlasting difference, that I as a creature, ever am nothing but a vessel. If I begin to know the glory of God I don’t want to be anything else; I become jealous of the honor and glory of God and my highest desire is to gfet lower and deeper down that God may be all. But with this abiding diiference there comes what appears a contradiction, and yet is a blessed reality. I know that the treasure is not in me and that all my being” is only emptiness that holds it; yet this living treasure becomes my very self. This living treasure fills me and becomes inseparably one with me; for my life and for my work. The heavenly treasure is in the earthen vessel. What is the object? The object is this, that the excellency of the power may be of God. Yes, that is why God has put the heavenly treasure in the earthen vessel, that His beloved servants may learn to be filled with the thought that the power is of God alone. Let my one aim be to be nothing. No being can tell how God will give the heavenly treasure into the heart that is thoroughly empty.

Dear friends, we sum it all up in two thoughts. The one: Beloved child of God be very humble and get very low down. The other: Beloved child of God, be very trustful and get very high up. 1 have said it more than once, be very humble. Young men and young women who are studying, I pray you, by the mercies of God, whatever you study do not forget to study humility. Some one has said, pray to be delivered from every vestige of pride, as spirits in torment would pray if they had any hope of being delivered. Pray to be delivered from every secret root of anything like pride. Pray to be brought down to the dust before your God. Take time to get low before God. God giveth grace to the humble. If you want to get the heavenly treasure, g-et low. A vessel must be empty, clean and lowly. Let us all be willing- to say, “Lord, deepen in my soul the conviction of my utter nothing-ness, and let me walk in holy fear and trembling,” and let it be one desire of my heart to g-et low enough before God, that God may fill me. The other thought: Be very trustful and rise high in your expectation. I bring you this message. You want to be workers. I might have spoken about the love we need for souls, and the glory of God in our work, and about prayer in work; but here is the chief thing. Christian worker, be very trustful. God has a treasure, His beloved Son. God hath entrusted you who are believers with this treasure. It is in your heart. You can hide it, you can hinder it, or, you can open your being very wide to be filled with it. Oh do believe in the glory of that treasure, in the power of that treasure, in the heavenly joy of that treasure, in its unutterable riches. It is God shining into you, His sunshine. His love, God shining His Spirit, God shining His love into your very heart; begin to open your heart very wide, and so, every moment of the day, let the treasure come in. Every moment of the day let God shine into your heart the glory of His Son, and believe you will be able to say with Paul, We have this treasure. Let us say to-day, I have this treasure, this divine treasure, and I am going to ask my God to reveal it to me. I walk tremblingly at the thought, I carry the heavenly treasure. If you had a diamond of twenty thousand dollars how carefully you would keep it. Believers, don’t be so occupied with your work for Christ, and study, as to forgfet the chief thing”, I have the heavenly treasure. Let me walk carefully and watchfully, believing- God alone will keep shining all the time. May every heart here know what it is; every hour, every moment, God shines into me the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Moment by moment I’m kept in His love,
Moment by moment I’ve life from above.

God shines it and keeps it shining as He does the sunlight.