VESSELS
Romans 9:22-24; 2 Corinthians 4:6-10;
It will be apparent from the scriptures read that I want to speak about vessels. In Scripture, vessels are often a type of persons – persons that God has taken up. We perhaps think of vessels as relating to capacity, or measure. It is a striking thing to me that the God of whom Solomon could say, “behold, the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee” (2 Chron.6:18), the One who is beyond the expanse of the created sphere, who is beyond time, has taken up vessels that He might work out in relation to them His own thoughts of love. I think that should cause us to be very thankful. God takes up vessels, us among them, and He works things out with us. We are marked by measure, but God works with that, He works with our measure.
There is an example of that in God’s dealings with the children of Israel in the wilderness. They were there every day, and every morning there was the manna on the ground. The dew would come up and there was the manna; God faithfully provided it every day (see Exod.16). God gave the people instructions as to it, that they were to gather it every day, each according to his measure. What is conveyed is that there was always enough, the resource never ran out. Whatever their measure was, old or young, there was always more than enough. The manna speaks to us of the blessed humanity of the Lord Jesus. Has that ever been exhausted as a source of food and sustenance for His people? There is always more than is needed. God takes us up, and He works with us and gives us enough for what He finds our measure to be. He does not despise the smaller measure. He does not give more place to the greater measure, but He works with us, each one.
I think the idea of measure in relation to God’s work with us individually is that our measure is filled. That is always in His mind as He takes us up as vessels marked by measure: He takes us up with a view to our being filled. And as we are filled – some perhaps know this by experience – He gives us a little more measure. As you progress in divine things, you acquire a little spiritual substance, and then you acquire a greater capacity. That is how God works. We are not given everything at once – that is not the way God works with vessels. He works so that we become exercised, and as we are, He sees to it that the vessel is filled and given greater capacity. His work is proceeding, as we have sung (see Hymn 78 v.3), and He always considers for us. It is a wonderful thing.
I was thinking about the offerings: take the burnt offering, and all that it speaks to us of. God considered for someone who could bring an offering from the cattle, and someone else from the sheep, and someone else from the fowls (see Lev.1). Nothing was despised. There might be a different apprehension of Christ spoken of in the size of the offering, but God made provision for it. We are to take courage from that. We need to have the desire to receive greater impressions, to open ourselves to what we might receive. Thus the idea of measure is associated with vessels. What is in view is that we might increase, as it says in Ephesians, “until we all arrive … at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ” (chap.4:13). God is going to arrive at completion in each believer as we open ourselves to the things of God. All that He does is with a view to His work in us being complete: it is a glorious result.
Vessels also suggest variety. God is a God of measure; He works with us whatever our measure; and He loves variety too. We see that in creation: God created the vegetable creation, the plants. There was the animal creation also. Each one is described in Genesis as being “after its kind” (see Gen 1:20-25). It suggests that God took great delight in variety. That is true of vessels as well. The vessels in the sanctuary had different characters, different purposes, the different services: God takes each one and uses it; He takes pleasure in that. In one sense, His work in us, as He takes us up, is all the same because He is going to arrive at the expression of Christ in each one; but He brings out something distinctive in each, and He has in mind that we should work together. That suggests how the body works together: we are many members, and God tempers the body together (1 Cor.12:24). God takes up what He finds in one and another, and tempers the body together so that what is of Christ might be expressed. God is able to take us up as such, and He does.
Another thought conveyed in the vessel is that it is the workmanship of God. God takes up believers and He forms them with skill and gentleness. We see that in creation: man was distinguished from everything else. Everything else, it says, was created, but there is a further thought as to man: it says that God formed him (see Gen.2:7). Think of the detail that God goes into as taking up man as a special vessel in which to work out His own thoughts. The psalmist could say, “I am fearfully, wonderfully made”, Ps.139:14. He says, “My bones were not hidden from thee when I was made in secret, curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my unformed substance, and in thy book all my members were written; during many days were they fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (vv.15,16). It conveys that God had something definite in His mind in taking up man as distinct from all the rest of creation as a special vessel in which He is going to work out His thoughts. It says “during many days were they fashioned” – what care God took in forming man. Even as to what is physical: He gave us our faculties and our members, and there is instruction in it as to how we are to use our hands and our feet, our members.
It says, “God made man upright”, Eccles.7:29. God fashioned us in a way that made us able to take account of Him, and He formed us, gave us our faculties, so that we are able to see the things of God. He said to Abraham, “Look now toward the heavens”, Gen.15:5. It conveys something of the greatness of God’s thoughts and what He was going to secure. It also says of God that He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”, Gen 2:7. Think of the intimate way in which He had to do with man, in imparting something of Himself. It would suggest that He has imparted of His own Spirit to us. It reminds us of what the Lord did to His own (see John 20:22). Then it says, “and Man became a living soul”. At that point, man became a moral being; God imparted something of Himself. God took up man; it says as to the creation of man, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”, Gen.1:26. Man was set apart as a distinct vessel in which something of God Himself was going to be seen.
Of course, it all looked on to Christ coming in as man. We remember that the prophet Jeremiah was told to go down to the potter’s house, and he was to take account of the potter, and the vessel that he had in his hand was marred (see Jer.18:1-6). That marring speaks of the effect of what has come in on the fallen race, the result of the fall of Adam. It says there that “he made it again another vessel”: the material was preserved; it says, “he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make”. I think that is like God: it says of Christ that “He takes away the first that he may establish the second”, Heb.10:9. God had Christ before Him in taking up the material and forming a new vessel as it seemed good to Him. It confirms that God, in forming and fashioning man, has something definite in mind: He has Christ in mind.
God’s work is proceeding in believers: God has taken up you and me and myriads of others, and He has Christ in His gaze, and He is forming us as it seems good to Him. Think of all that Christ is for God. We can speak of Christ as a Vessel here, although He was not like us: there is no thought of capacity or measure when it comes to Christ. We can speak of fulness, that is what was brought into expression in Him in fulness. He says prophetically, “thou hast prepared me a body”, Heb.10:5. What fulness was expressed in the One who came into that body: “for in him all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell”, Col.1:19. He was the vessel of testimony. There was a time when “all bore witness to him, and wondered at the words of grace which were coming out of his mouth”, Luke 4:22. He was full of grace and truth. You think of what was expressed in Him; all was seen in fulness. It says, “grace and truth subsists through Jesus Christ”, John 1:17. How great is the One who was here, and all that was expressed in Him; and all came under the eye of God. What perfect delight He had in Christ, and God has taken up every human vessel with Christ in view.
That brings us to vessels of mercy, in Romans 9. We are all here as vessels of mercy. God has taken us up because it has pleased Him to do so. He has worked in sovereign mercy. You and I were no different from the person next to us who is not a believer except that God has acted in His own sovereign way. We cannot explain it, other than to say that it has pleased God to take us up as vessels of mercy. That consideration forms us, because we must never lose the sense of what we were. Paul says of himself, “who before was a blasphemer and persecutor, and an insolent overbearing man: but mercy was shewn me because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief”, 1 Tim.1:13. He also refers to himself as being the first among sinners (v.15). However great the light was that he had, he was maintained in a sense of sovereign mercy. Peter speaks of those who were not enjoying mercy (see 1 Pet.2:10), and the implication is that we enjoy mercy and are sustained in a sense of the wonder of it. It forms us, I believe. We cannot explain it as such. I read some time ago a very touching remark by a brother. He said people may quarrel with the sovereignty of God, but he loved it, because he knew where he would have been without it.1 How touching that is. He embraced and accepted God’s sovereignty, as a vessel of mercy.
There are examples in Scripture of the way that persons are formed in mercy. Think of Mephibosheth, a vessel of mercy, one in whom the kindness of David was shown. What claim did he have? He sat at the king’s table, as part of his intimate circle, and that formed him. You remember when David had to leave Jerusalem because of Absalom’s rebellion, it says of Mephibosheth that “he had neither washed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came again in peace”, 2 Sam.19:24. He was living in the sense of what had been shown him, and he felt the fact that David was an outcast at that point. When David returned – you will remember that Mephibosheth’s servant had misrepresented him to David, and when that became apparent – David says, “Thou and Ziba divide the land”, and Mephibosheth says very touchingly, “Let him even take all, since my Lord the king is come again in peace to his own house” (vv.29,30). Nothing of self was before him; all that mattered was that David had returned to his true place. That was a vessel of mercy, taken up by the king, and one who in type held Christ in his affections. We are to be preserved in it – as “vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory”.
I have been impressed by that, that we need to get on the ground of God’s purpose. There is nothing more settling or stabilising than to see that God has set Himself for definite things; He has taken persons up for glory. We have been speaking about suffering, and that is the way to glory; but God has glory in view for each one. God has His own thoughts, it has all been His own matter, He works out His own purpose in His own way and in His own time. He operates above all human responsibility. We think about our own responsibility and of course there is a place for that; but if that is all we cling to, we will find we can be unsettled. We need to be sustained in a sense of God’s purpose and to stand on that ground. The apostle writes, “whom he has called”, Rom.8:30. God will work it out, He will work His purposes through, whatever may enter in in the meantime. You think of the whole Bible in our hands; it is God’s testimony that He will see His thoughts of love through. God’s thoughts that are set out in Genesis are all seen in glorious display in Revelation.
How much happened along the way! God is able for the working of things out, and in this He is arriving at His glorious thoughts involving that He should take us up for glory. We are to rest on that: there is nothing more stabilising and settling. It says, “whom he has foreknown” (that is vessels of mercy, prepared for glory) “he has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he should be the firstborn among many brethren”, Rom.8:29. God always has Christ in mind. Then, “whom he has predestinated, these also he has called; and whom he has called, these also he has justified; but whom he has justified, these also he has glorified” (v.30). There is no question of what we are, or what we have done; it is God working according to the impulses of His own heart, in His own way, securing His own end, and that is what He has taken us up for. May we be encouraged and rest in it. Circumstances may unsettle us, but we can rest on that solid ground. We see often in the history of God’s people how they failed, but God was patient in His ways with them. God speaks through the prophet about His people as a “people robbed and spoiled” but He goes on to say “Fear not … I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (see Isa.42:22 and 43:1). You might say that He retires to the greatness of His own purpose: whatever His people were in responsibility, He had taken them up, He had called them; they were His. It is vital to be assured about this in our own hearts.
The apostle in Corinthians had been speaking of glory, the great ministry of glory that he describes, in contrast to what had been before, which had all been veiled in mystery (see 2 Cor.3:7-15). But now, “we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit” (v.18). He speaks of “the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ” (chap.4:4) and then “who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. It is all glory. God shines out into our hearts, and Paul says we have a treasure. Paul had a treasure; he had acquired it. And such was the value that he placed on that treasure that he says, “surely I count also all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”, Phil.3:8. He weighed things soberly, and counted them, and said, ‘They are all loss’. He had that treasure, “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”. Then he goes on to say, very affectingly I think, “and that I may be found in him … to know him” – he wanted more; it is as if he said, ‘It is not enough’. Who knew the Lord like Paul did? But he wanted more, and he carried it in his heart. He says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels”. I think the earthen vessel would suggest the weakness and the frailty of the condition in which we are. We feel the weakness, our fragile nature, the exposure to circumstances of the earthen vessel.
You might ask, ‘Why is it that, when God shines in our hearts, He does not immediately translate us to glory so that we are in wonderful conformity to that outshining of glory?’. It is because God has something to work out in these vessels, so that the life of Jesus might be manifested. He wants something brought out in such vessels, and Paul is really speaking about his own experience here – “every way afflicted, but not straitened”; Paul could speak of being “every way afflicted”. He knew the condition and the circumstance, and the knowledge of the glory of God would make us feel the condition in which we are even more, but we are not to despise it, because it is so that the surpassingness of the power might be of God, it is what God is going to carry through in His own power. Paul knew affliction in every way. There was what was external – he was afflicted in his body. He was taken up to the third heaven, and heard things that were not allowed to man to utter (see 2 Cor.12:1-4), and when he came back down he was given a thorn for the flesh (v.7). He besought the Lord that it might be removed, three times; but he had a great lesson to learn, that “my grace suffices thee” (vv.8,9). The Lord touched the vessel, so that it could be said, “my power is perfected in weakness” – so that the surpassingness of divine power might be proved. God did it with Jacob too (see Gen.32:25): He touched the vessel, and made Jacob feel the reality of what he was as an earthen vessel so that he might prove the sufficiency of divine grace and the surpassingness of His power.
Paul goes on to speak about “seeing no apparent issue, but our way not entirely shut up”. You may feel that in the current circumstances, it is hard to see a way out. But he says, “our way not entirely shut up”. It would suggest that we need the steps of faith. The whole way is not gloriously opened up to us at once; that is not God’s way. It requires one step, and faith is given, and then the next step is made known; that is how God works. Paul can say that he was not straitened in it, not narrowed in. David says, “in pressure thou hast enlarged me”, Ps.4:1. What is in mind is that we should be enlarged, even in such vessels and in such circumstances. Paul goes on to say, “cast down, but not destroyed”. It was a reality for Paul. At one point he says that he despaired even of living (see 2 Cor.1:8). He felt the conditions that pressed upon him – “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”: it was a constant exercise for him. Day in, day out, he was weakened physically by all that he experienced and endured, and little by little the earthen vessel was being broken down. But what it meant was that the light would shine out, and the treasure that he held in his heart would be seen, that the life of Jesus might be manifested. God is using such a vessel. We are not transformed to glory immediately; we have our earthly tabernacle, as it says later on, we await “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”, 2 Cor.5:1. We are awaiting the final act of salvation from our bodies of humiliation, and being conformed to His body of glory. That is what is before us, but God is working something out in the current circumstances.
The experience of weakness and frailty is so that we prove that the power is of God. You will remember that Seth called his son Enosh. It means man as weak, mortal. The scripture adds, “Then people began to call on the name of Jehovah”, Gen.4:26. Really our weakness commends God’s power, and we are to prove the reality of that, in order that there might be something of the life of Jesus shining out. I suppose Paul was making a connection with Gideon, whose men had earthen vessels with torches concealed in them when they approached the camp of the Midianites (see Judges 7:15-22). When the vessels were broken, the lights shone out. That is really a picture of what Paul is writing about. The hostile character of what is around, and sufferings, will affect the vessel; but it is in order that the light might shine out: “that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh”. What that is for God, that the life of His beloved Son should be seen in earthen vessels! He is going to bring out the testimony to His Son in glorious display, but before He does so it will be seen in earthen vessels. God works in His own way, in His own skill; He is working out His own purposes. We really need to get on to that ground.
I want to close with a word on vessels of service. I had in mind vessels of mercy, vessels of testimony, and vessels of service. The earthen vessel is that in which we prove all that God is to us. Then a question is raised as to what we are for God. We remember that as the Lord Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, He sent His own to find the colt, and He tells them to say to anyone who asked, “the Lord has need of it”, Luke 19:31. That would come home to each one of us. Whatever measure we may have, whatever we are able for, the Lord has need of us. I leave that word with us, that the Lord has need of us, and He has taken us up in order that we might be serviceable to Him, in whatever way that might be. The apostle speaks about the great house – that is what the whole system of professing Christendom has become. God never intended it to be that: the Lord speaks in the parable of the kingdom of the heavens being like a grain of mustard seed that grew and became a great tree (see Luke 13:19), with the birds of heaven lodged in its branches. That is what Christendom has become. In the very early days of Christianity, what marked believers was simplicity, but since then the mind of man has operated and all that should be held for God is not so held; and of course we form part of that. The thing is for the Lord to be able to identify vessels that are serviceable to Him, and I would seek to promote that desire, to be serviceable to Him. In such a house there are vessels of gold and vessels of silver. The golden vessels would speak of what is divine: those who not only have the Spirit, but are moving in His power. I say that because the Corinthians had the Spirit, but they were not under His influence nor did they act in His power so as to be serviceable. I think as we give place to the Spirit, we receive and give place to the things of God. What is expressed is of golden character, it has divine character.
As to silver vessels, in Scripture silver is often linked with redemption. We all know that the Lord has paid a price for us that we might be serviceable to Him. And silver also brings the thought of refining, that God takes us up in order to refine us, so that we become vessels available to Him. That requires exercise with us. The word in Proverbs is, “Take away the dross” (chap.25:4), then there comes forth a vessel for the refiner. He takes us up and works and refines so that all that is marked by dross, all that is of ourselves, might be removed and what is of silver character comes out. It is really in contrast to all that is of man, man’s thinking. We do not want to take up the things of God in our own power and strength, in our own minds.
That is what has come to mark the whole professing system. Paul writes of “not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthen; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If therefore one shall have purified himself from these, in separating himself from them, he shall be a vessel to honour”. We often have much painful experience in what this means practically, but I have come to see the vital importance of this: that when Israel failed at the time of the golden calf, Moses took the tent and pitched it outside the camp. The word in Hebrews is, “therefore let us go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach”, Heb.13:13. He has become our Object: it is, “let us go forth to him without the camp”. We are made able for what we are called upon to do in our own responsibilities, what God looks for us to do. The thought of “separating himself” here in 2 Timothy, something we are to do, would answer to sanctification, which is what God does. He sets us apart, but there is to be an answer to it in our own responsibility, and that is to separate ourselves from all that would be dishonouring to Christ so that we might be vessels serviceable to Him.
We would all cherish to be a vessel for Him, in whatever measure and in whatever part it may be – that is His matter. Let us make ourselves available and accept that it is for Him to decide how He wants to use us. However small or insignificant we may think we are, let us make ourselves available to Him. That is a challenge, because there is so much that otherwise would occupy us and deflect us from laying ourselves open to Him. We recently looked at the passage about the nail in the sure place (see Isa.22:23,24). All the glory of His father’s house is hung upon Christ as the nail, as are all the vessels – it speaks of small vessels, vessels of cups as well as vessels of flagons. They were drinking vessels, suggesting what would minister to the pleasure of divine Persons. They were different – different sizes, different characters, going back to that thought about variety; but they were all hanging there. The implication is that they were available. As vessels to honour, serviceable to the master (it does not say for what) we are in the spirit of surrender, surrendering to Him, so that whatever the purpose – however little, however small we might think it is, however daunting we may think it is – we are serviceable to Him, and all these vessels of service will be for His own glory.
Well, that was my simple impression: God takes us up in order that He might carry through His own thoughts. He is doing it in vessels, marked in one way by weakness, but the power of God is known. What is being worked out now will come out in wonderful display, and He is working things out with us. He is working in His own time and in His own way, bringing about that which will all be conformed to the image of His Son; and in the meantime, He wants us to be available to Him for service.
May we be encouraged to be so, for His name’s sake.
Address in Grimsby
8 February 2025
Robert Webster