Click Here For Sermon Audio
Yes, I’m a preacher
and we all know how preachers are – always looking for a gimmicky sermon
illustration. For preachers, life's just
one big, gimmicky sermon illustration. Being
that way as I am, I've always got my eyes open to see what gimmicks are working
out there in the marketing world. I take
note of the gimmicks that really make stuff sell. The gimmicks that’ll make a right-handed
wombat buy a left-handed smoke shifter.
I want the gimmicks that everybody can relate too and say, "You
know, that's the way it really is. Ford
is tough and Dodge does have Ram Power."
Well, I've had my
eyes on something here lately that is "it" - The Primo Gimmick -
crème filling. I've noticed that if you
want to sell something, something that's really ordinary, something that people
wouldn't be crazy about otherwise, you need to stick some sort of crème filling
in it. I think Hostess has really been
the Pioneer in this area. You know,
who's going to buy a packaged cupcake that's full of preservatives and a little
on the soggy side - hardly anybody, right?
But I tell you what, you put crème filling into that same cupcake and
you have one of the best selling snacks of all time, the Hostess Cupcake. They didn't stop with cupcakes. They took two slabs of chocolate cake and
smeared a little crème filling between them and wound up with America's
favorite snack, a Ding Dong and a Diet Coke.
Up here it’s a Joe Louis and a Diet Coke. Hostess is really good at this crème filling
stuff. Oh and then, they had the
ultimate idea – a sponge cake that was cooked by blowing it with steam rather
than baking it in an oven. Steam cooked
sponge cake has got to be one of the grossest things imaginable (next to the
Cheezie), but hey, stick some crème filling in it - the Twinkie. I ate so many Twinkies growing up, it’s a
wonder I ain’t one.
Now this crème
filling stuff is a good idea. It
works. It's like the perfect sermon
illustration when you want to describe a follower of Jesus. It answers the question: How does God take a
bunch ordinary of dry, crusty or soggy, mushy people that you don’t know what
they’re made of, people like us, and make us Christ's witnesses? Well, it's in the crème filling. You see, we humans are like soggy cup cakes sweating
on a shelf in a gas station in the middle of the Mojave Desert. There's nothing in us that's appealing
especially if you have no milk. But if
God pours his Spirit into us, all of a sudden we're changed and people say,
"I want what you got." People
want the crème filling. So, God's Spirit
is to us Jesus People what Crème filling is to a Hostess Cupcake or Twinkie. The Spirit just seals the deal. Without the crème filling we're just a plain
old cupcake in a world of extravagant desserts like the Little Debbie Oatmeal
Pie.
Now, you may be
saying to yourself, "How tacky of an illustration could that
be?" Well, it may be tacky, but
I'll tell you what, it's not tasteless.
Well anyway, I mention crème filling in a Hostess cupcake because I
think it is a good example of what Paul is trying to get at here in 2
Corinthians. He says, "we have this
treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary
power belongs to God and does not come from us." The treasure that Paul writes about is the
Holy Spirit, the living presence of Christ, whom God pours into us and fills us
with himself. The treasure is important.
Without it, we are just clay jars.
Can you imagine a Twinkie without the crème filling?
Now, I bring this
treasure thing up, this crème filling, because without the treasure we, the clay
jars, cannot call ourselves followers of Jesus.
The same is true for us as a congregation. Without the crème filling we cannot call
ourselves Christ's body. If the Holy
Spirit does not live in us, if God has not poured his Spirit into us, then we
have a faith that has no power to change us, to transform us, to heal us, to
renew us.
As I understand it,
what God is up to with respect to us humans is that he is transforming us into
the image of the living Christ. We are
selfish, hurtful, hurt, and mis-driven by urgings, cravings, and false beliefs
that we so helplessly give in to because we think they can fill that emptiness
in us that we at times are very aware of.
Yet, God wants to take us and transform us into people who love as
Christ Jesus loves each of us and who are driven to do God's will as he is. That change, that transformation cannot
happen unless the Holy Spirit lives in us.
Without the treasure we are just clay jars.
I remember when this
first became clear to me. For most of my university days I went to a
Nazarene church. It was a small
fellowship of about 50 or so that met in a school cafeteria. They worshipped Sunday morning and Sunday
evening and Wednesday evening. At the
Sunday evening worship things were a bit less formal. The pastor allowed time for us to stand up
and share with each other what we were struggling with and people actually did
that. Imagine that. They stood up right there in church and said
"I'm hurting. I need help."
Those days formed my
belief about what church is. Church is
where hurting people can go to find God's presence and love and be healed by it;
not this lecture hall where good people go because good people are supposed to. Church is for hurting people.
Well, I would sometimes
share what I was going through so they could pray for me and it really helped. If we cannot be weak in front of even God's
people then Christ is not strong within us.
One time after the service a woman named Gabe came up to me and said,
"You don't know that God loves you, do you?" “Of course, I do.” I said. “God loves everybody. Jesus died for me." Gabe said again, "You don't know that
God loves you, do you." This time I
just looked at her for a moment. A third
time she asked, "You don't know that God loves you, do you?" And I said, “No, I don't.” She took me under her wing for several
months. Helped me to forgive my parents
for the abandonment that I felt because they divorced. I had this mistaken idea that parents are
superhuman and are supposed to be able to love their children as God loves us. I can’t express to you the joy I felt the day
that Jesus let me know he had forgiven my parents and so I could too…and so I
did. I learned that I needed to stop
looking for God's love in my parents.
She helped me to understand that the reason my dating relationships
always failed and I got hurt was because I was looking for God's love in
another human being. She helped me to
understand that all I need in life is the security of knowing that God loves
me. It was during this time, about a three-month
period, one afternoon I was in my dorm room having one of my lowest moments and
it just felt like a door opened up inside of me and Jesus Christ stepped into
my life. And he has been with me ever
since.
To find the treasure
I had to humble myself and share my pain. I had to realize that what I was
searching for was God's love and that because I had unforgiveness in my heart
that I had to own up to and bring to Jesus I was searching for it in all the wrong
places. I had to pray and wait. God was simply waiting for me to come to the point
of where I could accept that his strength, his love is sufficient for me.
My friends, do you
know that God loves you?
Do you know that God
loves you?
Do you know that God
loves you? Amen.
