In a book entitled Treasure in Clay Jars, we can find this statement which (among several others) describes a congregation on a mission from God. “The church understands itself as different from the world because of its participation in the life, death, and resurrection of its Lord.” (Barrett, et al, Eerdmans, 2004)
A congregation that is going to change the community in which it finds itself needs to understand this fact. In a class I once took, we studied “the mission of God in the Old Testament.” In that class, we focused on the many facets of God’s mission as we see it in the prophets, in the temple rituals, in the everyday affairs of Israel in the ancient times, and in the role God gave to the leaders of his people. In many ways the people of God were expected to be noticeably different from the culture that surrounded them. They were to be a unique people whose lives and culture raised the question of “Why?” among the nations surrounding ancient Israel.
A couple of “for examples” might be helpful here. The nation of Israel, in its infancy, had no king by God’s won design. They were to live in God’s Promised Land without the need of a King who would be their national leader. They had God as their king. They did not need a cheap knock-off of the real thing. The question would arise among those who saw it, “Why would no one take control of this people and its land?” The answer would be that God’s people already had all they needed in God’s Book of the Torah to shape their lives with justice, with mercy, and with humility. What more could a king do? Or, as another for example, all the rituals in the Temple which had been carefully circumscribed by God as He taught Moses how worship was to be carried on were for the purpose of creating a “Why?” in the minds of those who observed their worship. Why was there no visible image of God? Why was there just one family whose lineage gave the whole nation their priests? Why was there just one central location for worship? From our perspective thousands of years later, it is clear that God was demonstrating that he was not like anything humanity could imagine for themselves. He was the One who was the Truth, and there was no other.
History teaches us that such wonder was simply too great for the humans who made up God’s people in the ancient times. It was a treasure that was carried around in clay jars. Those pots would crack and break and fall to pieces. In the process something of the wonder of God among his people would be lost and the “Why?” of the peoples around Israel would be muted. It looked all too often as if God’s people were just like the culture around them and the beauty of life in the presence of God would go unlived and unknown.
But God was not deterred for He was committed to bring his Good News to the lives and hearts of the people he loved. Finally, in the fullness of time, as the Bible puts it, Jesus was born. God’s own Son came into the world. Finally, here was a jar made of clay that could withstand the threats of breakage. It was because God himself was in Christ so that he could reconcile the world to himself. Of course, there were those who thought they could destroy that clay jar. But, in his death, Jesus paid for the sinful debt of mankind, in his resurrection he demonstrated for all that the clay jar could withstand even death itself. Now he lives at God’s right hand as the Great King that he is. No, cheap knock-off, Jesus is the real thing!
We are Clay Jars, Jesus is the Treasure!
Today the church/congregation that sees itself as participating in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus finds that the mission of Jesus becomes their mission as well. We will readily admit that we are clay jars! But we carry the treasure of God in these clay jars and we know that in Christ, we shall change the very life character of the communities of which we are a part.
At Christian Leaders Institute we are providing training to Christian leaders so that they can participate more effectively in their churches in enabling the churches to be caught up fully in the Mission of God in the world today, For example, Vee writes the following:
“The main goal I feel I am being called to and hope to attain is to be an active working tool of God. I want training so that I can help give light on the foot paths of so many who have accepted that a dark and brooding way of life is all there is for them. To be able to share the love of a wondrous and caring God through His word and creation is a huge blessing to so many. To be able to help someone over what might seem like an insurmountable hurdle, all the while watching God grow inside of them and feeling the peacefulness that blossoms, is such a truly wonderful miracle.”
Another of our students, Uwegba writes of how he sees his calling to participate in the life of Jesus and so bring the light of Jesus to others who do not have that life. He writes,
“I have a project I am currently about to do in Nigeria which is a medical outreach for people in rural areas. I am currently gathering medical and nursing Christians who have volunteered to be part of our mission. My dream is to put a smile in the faces of many by introducing them to Jesus through doing good for them, just as Jesus went about doing good.”
While each of us and our congregations as well may only be jars of clay, the treasure we carry is extremely valuable. You too, even if you see yourself as a cracked jar of clay, maybe thinking you are useless, you can participate in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In so dong, you can carry the treasure God has been entrusting to his people for millennia.
Derek Weller lives in Bermuda, which is a small island with limited resources for anybody who wants to take their knowledge of God beyond the sermons at church. Without any substantial income, traditional methods of Bible training would have been impossible for Derek, but when he discovered that Christian Leaders Institute offers an Online Bible School in Bermuda he was able to find the training that he needed.
Derek Weller Talks About His Need for the Online Bible School in Bermuda
Hello and Blessings in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. My name is Derek Weller and I live on the islands of Bermuda which is located off the east coast of the USA in the Atlantic Ocean. I am the last of seven children. My father was the pastor of our church until he went home to be with the Lord on March 11th, 2011.
Bermuda is only 22sq miles but there is probably a church on every corner. Religious beliefs are protected here although a lot of people either don’t believe the true gospel or don’t live what they once believed.
I was born in the church and was brought up to serve the Lord, however I made my decision to really serve the Lord in my teens.
I currently play the organ at my church as well as sound and media.
I am pursuing this Ministry course for my own spiritual benefit and to strengthen my relation with the Lord.
My prayer is that I will be ready and equipped for whatever the Lord wants for me to do and that I will forever walk close to Him and be in His perfect Will.
In recent years I have been teaching courses online for a secular university. My students want to gain an understanding of what I call the truth about life. But sometimes, it gets to be very difficult for them to discern just what might be the truth. For many, it’s a matter of evidence.
The reason is that there are many competing voices which claim to be the truth or which attempt in various ways to deny that we can ever actually know the truth. Instead, these voices tell us that it is hopeless to figure out where truth is to be found in our world. One day, a student asked me in our online classroom, “So here is a very big question – Is it better to become one with god (therefore becoming god) or to serve God and bask in his glory for eternity?” We were discussing the teachings of various Eastern religions at the time and he wanted to compare what we were learning about Buddhism in particular with what he could recall he had been taught in a Christian church as a youth.
The question he asked was difficult to answer in the context of the secular university. There we, as faculty, tend to try to keep our religious commitments to ourselves. To do otherwise is to proselytize which is frowned upon as not being academically sound. What has taken place over the years is that the many different universities in the world have made a commitment to doubting anything which is not scientifically or rationally provable. In the secular university, there are only two ways to gain knowledge that is solid and worthy of being called truth. The first method is by means of carefully evaluating evidence that shows the matter under consideration is true. The so-called scientific method of investigating the world fits into this mold. The second is by the careful, systematic rational evaluation of an existing object or an historical thought can lead to the truth. This is the way that many in the fields of literature and history develop their theories and conclusions.
The problem is that neither of these ways of addressing the reality we find around us will give a reliable way of knowing God. God cannot be known by means of the scientific method nor of a rational, cognitive approach to our world. We end up with the evidence pointing to two irrefutable conclusions: ‘If God is good, God is not great. If God is great, God is not good.” This is where the evidence points when we approach it from a rational point of view.
God is not Found by Dissecting Scientific Evidence
So we, who are people of faith, need to take a different approach. This is the approach of faith. We who are people of faith begin by saying as the Bible does, “In the beginning, God…” We start from the point which can posit the truth that God is real and God is active in the world. That is a matter of faith. Faith is the source of the evidence. Faith is the basis for the (apparently) irrational statement that God is real.
The issue then becomes which God we find taught by various spiritual leaders in the world is the true God? Hence the question from my student. The course we were studying was called “Religions of the World.” During the course of a mere nine weeks, we were looking at the central teachings of a total of twelve different religious faiths broadly speaking. He wanted to know which one was the truth. Why spend his time wandering around in darkness when he could just ask me and get right to the truth?
His question is similar to the story told by one of the students at Christian Leaders Institute. The student writes,
My faith in Christ really flourished just a couple of years ago. I’ve always known of him, but now I know that I never knew him. And since I was just a toddler, I’ve always felt this strong pull towards the light…but refused to surrender until a couple years ago when the world was no longer a distraction for me. I was in jail. I had never been arrested before until the end of 2009, and for the next year and a half to follow, I continued to get in extreme trouble. I didn’t care about myself. Why? Because at that point in my life, nobody in my life cared about me, so why should I care about me? So I fell apart.
How does one find the truth? What is the truth? Jesus tells us that we can know the truth and the truth will set us free. (The Gospel of John chapter 8) Then later he explains, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” (John ch 14) Jesus is the One who embodies in himself the truth of who God is. He embodies the truth of what God is like. He tells us, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John ch 14) Taken all together, what we discover is that in order for us to know what way to follow, we need to give up our ideas of how we can discover God on our own. Instead, we need to rely on Jesus who is the One who reveals God to us. We cannot experimentally prove God to the scientist who demands proof in a laboratory. We cannot rationally prove God to someone who demands that we be entirely logical and committed to rationality alone. No, we lay hold of Jesus by faith. We know him by seeing his work in our lives and in the lives of other Christians. And by means of his Word, the Holy Bible, we know the True God. (John ch 17)
At Christian Leaders Institute, we are committed to training our students to know God from his Word as they see Him at work in their lives. We do so in order to give the students the training they need to help others who are still in darkness to find the light that is seen in Jesus. He alone is the Light of the World. (John Ch 8)