I.Its material. All the vessels in your house--the strong bowls, the fine vases, and the china tea cups--are made of earth, though some soils suit the potter better than others. And so the whole world is the Great Potter’s field, and Christ’s “chosen vessels” were all at first of the earth, earthy. The apostle tells us that he was the chief of sinners, and that he owes all to the grace of God. What hope for all! Splendid vessels are now made from mere rubbish, broken glass, and old bones, and so the Divine Potter’s art can triumph over the rudeness of the most unpromising materials.
II. Its maker.
1. That beautiful cup is not self-made. The potter took the clay, tempered, moulded, baked, painted, and fired it, and then put his mark upon it. And Christians “are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” I have known a boy saying to his minister, “Please will you convert me too.” “I am one of your converts,” a man smelling of whisky once said to Rowland Hill. “I can believe it,” replied Mr. Hill, “you look very like my bungling work.”
2. In making chosen vessels, the potter attends to the chief parts of the work himself; for all depends on the skill of the workman. With his own hand he mixes the materials, and trims the fire.
3. The potter must also have complete power over the clay, and travellers in the East notice how thoroughly it is in his hands. Many vessels are made partly of flint or granite, but these rocks have first been ground into the softest powder. And Christ’s chosen vessels are all fashioned in contrite hearts. Contrite means rubbed together and made soft, exactly as stones are ground into the softest clay in our potteries. And youth is the yielding and moulding time in life. The world has a strange power of hardening the soul into an unbending frame.
III. Its use.
1. None of Christ’s vessels are for ornament only, they are all “meet for the Master’s use.” A great house has some choice vessels, preferred for their size, strength, or beauty. Such a vessel was the apostle. Christ’s name was the water for the thirsty and balm for the wounded, and Paul was the vessel in which that heavenly treasure was carried round and offered to all. But the humblest vessel has its use. A poor broken cup may hold the water that saves the life of a dying man, and the humblest Christian may carry Christ’s name to a perishing sinner.
2. The vessel of the heart is already full, and must be emptied ere it can be filled with this heavenly treasure. The Rev. Narayan Sheshadri tells us that as a young Brahmin he was full of pride and self-righteousness. But as he began to think for himself he was emptied of one thing after another, till he was left with nothing in which he could trust. Then the name of Christ filled his soul, and he longed to bear it to the heathen around him (comp. Php_3:4-9).
3. Again, an emptied vessel cannot be filled unless it be rightly set and open a-top. It is a Chinese saying that “the light of heaven cannot shine into an inverted bowl.” Let your soul be opened heavenwards widely and hopefully, and then the abundance of grace will fill and warm your whole being.
IV. Its beauty.
1. Our makers of vessels strive to unite the useful and the beautiful. Our text may mean that Christ’s name was to be carried on as well as in the vessel, just as the costly vases in palaces bear the name and fame of the maker before kings. Bernard Palissy once saw a white enamelled cup, and resolved to discover the secret of so beautifying vessels. He spent all his money and sixteen years of his life in making the discovery. He was often at death’s door, had burnt all his furniture for fuel, and his body was lean and dried up from hard work. At last he made some of the chosen vessels, and these have borne his name among nations and kings even to this day. Thus Paul bore his Creator’s name far and wide, and multitudes “glorified God in him.”
2. Christ’s vessels are not all made in one mould. Every Christian should have a beauty of his own, and the charm of that beauty lies in its individuality. Some of the most beautiful of Christ’s vessels are found among day labourers and cottagers. Many a face deformed by lifelong hardship and disease has been brightened outwardly from inward joy and goodness. The coarsest features have often been adorned by the beauty of the soul within. Such was the case of Joan of Arc, who, the historian says, grew beautiful when the great idea entered her.
3. You can hardly believe what efforts great potters have made to add beauty to their vessels. A Duke of Florence spent ten years in discovering the way to make porcelain. Louis XIV was so interested in this work that, greatest monarch in Europe as he was, he seriously proposed becoming a potter himself. Many have reached perfection in this field, and have ennobled clay as if by miracle. Their masterpieces have an incorruptible beauty; no liquid can stain them, no fire can blacken them, no knife can scratch them. Yet they are as smooth to the touch as an infant’s flesh. Place a candle behind them and they resemble a fine face lighted up with the best emotions. If potters have done so much for clay, shall they not condemn us if we do not earnestly seek to have the beauty of the Lord our God upon us? If a heathen philosopher reproached a rich man with having silver plate and earthenware principles, should we not reproach ourselves that we are so eager to possess every sort of beauty, except the beauty of the soul? When shall the “beauty of holiness” find as passionate admirers as the beauty of art has in all our cities? Piety is the finest art under heaven. Many there be who say, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” yes, this chosen vessel is a joy forever to its possessor and to all beholders who know its worth.
4. The secret of making some choice vessels has been lost because it died with the man who had it; but the secret of spiritual beauty is open to all. God is the Great Beautifier, and He will perfect what He begins. He will give the finishing touch to His chosen vessel--perhaps in the sacred fires of affliction--and, having thus perfected its comeliness, He will place it in His mansions above. (J. Wells, M. A.)
Vessels chosen, charged, and used
I. A vessel.
1. The world is full of the instruments which God employs. Every flower, leaf, tendril is designed and fitted for carrying on some process in the vegetable economy.
2. In animals every member of the body is a tool with which Creator and creature alike work. The eye, ear, tongue, foot hang at hand in the workshop ready for the worker’s use.
3. Each separate part of creation, again, is an instrument of God. The internal fires of the globe are His instruments for heaving up the mountains and making the valleys. The clouds are vessels carrying water from the ocean to every portion of the thirsty land. The rivers are waste pipes for carrying back the soiled water that it may be purified for subsequent use. The sun is an instrument for lighting and warming a troop of revolving worlds, and the earth’s huge bulk a curtain for screening off the sunlight at stated intervals, and so affording to weary workers a grateful night of rest.
4. Chief of all implements is man--made last, made best for his Author’s service; broken, disfigured, and defiled by sin, but, capable of working wondrously yet, when redeemed. God has not cast away the best of all His instruments because it was marred and polluted. A soul won is the best instrument for winning souls.
II. A chosen vessel. God can employ the evil as His unconscious instruments, or make them willing in the day of His power. When He had chastised Israel by the King of Babylon, he broke the rod and threw it away. In other cases He turns the king’s heart as a river of water, and then accepts the willing homage of a converted man. It was a polished and capacious vessel that the Great King wrenched from the grasp of the arch-enemy near the gate of Damascus. He was Christ’s chief enemy in the world. God looks down from heaven on this man, not as an adversary whose assaults are formidable, but as an instrument which may be turned to another use. Arrested at the crisis of its course by a hand unseen, it is turned upside down, emptied, and then filled from heaven’s pure treasures, and used to water the world with the Word of life. Saul of Tarsus, called to be an apostle, is a conspicuous example of Divine sovereignty. He did not first choose Christ, but Christ chose him.
III. A vessel unto me. Two things lie in every conversion; the man gets an Almighty Saviour, and God gets a willing servant. The true instinct of the new creature burst forth from Paul’s breast--“Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” The answer, sent through Ananias, indicated what he should be, rather than what he should do: “He is a chosen vessel unto Me.” We get a glimpse here of the two tendencies, the human and the Divine. I shall do, says the disciple in the ardour of a first love; thou shalt be, answers that wise and kind Master, who knows that the spirit is willing, but the flesh weak. I shall bear the vessels of the Lord, volunteers the ransomed sinner; the reply is, Thou shalt be the vessel of the Lord. It is a great thing that I should take up instruments and do a work for Christ in the world, but it is a greater that Christ should work out His purposes with me. This is our security alike for safety and usefulness. The star that is in His right hand is held up so that it cannot fall, and held out so that it shines afar.
IV. A vessel to bear My name. Paul was a vessel firmly put together, and filled to overflowing, before Jesus met him. At that meeting he was emptied of his miscellaneous vanities, and filled with the name of Christ. See an account of the whole process by his own pen (Php_3:4-8). Nature abhors a vacuum; and in nature, whether its material or spiritual department, a vacuum is never found. Each man is full either of his own things, or of Christ’s. The name of Christ is the precious thing wherewith the vessel is charged. So full was Paul of this treasure that he determined to know none other.
V. To bear My name before Gentiles, and kings, and the people of Israel. This bread of life, like the manna which fell in the wilderness, is given to be used, not to be hoarded. To be ever getting, ever giving, is the only way of keeping both the vessel and its treasure sweet.
1. The form of the expression indicates that in this ministry self-denying courage is required. Perhaps the series, in this respect, constitutes a climax. It is easier to speak of Christ to the Gentiles than to kings, and to kings than to His own chosen people. In our day, too, there are various classes who need the testimony of Jesus. Those who possess it should be prepared to bear it about in every place, and hold it forth in any company. If we quail where the majority profess to be on our side, what would have become of us if our lot had been cast when its disciples were obliged to comfort an adverse world? But perhaps we should not speak of more courage being required to maintain a good confession in one place, and less in another: for with God it is as easy to keep the ocean within its bed, as to balance a dewdrop on a blade of grass; and the same principle rules in the distribution of grace to disciples of Christ. Without it the strongest is not sufficient for anything, with it the feeblest is sufficient for all. Our martyr forefathers who were enabled to make good confession at the stake would, if left to themselves, have denied their Lord under the blandishments of a godless drawing room. Not before Gentiles and kings, etc., are we summoned to bear witness for Christ; but in a place and presence where the temptation to deny Him is equally strong. A Christian young man in a great workshop, a Christian young lady in a gay and fashionable family, is either carried away like chaff before the wind, or stands fast by a modern miracle of grace.
2. We are so many vessels labelled on the outside with the name of Christ, what we are really charged with may not be seen at a distance, or discovered in a day. Those, however, who stand near these vessels will by degrees find out what they contain. By its occasional overflowings, especially when violently shaken, the secret will be revealed. Some are looking on who do not believe that the Spirit which fills us is the Spirit of Christ; and they lie in wait for evidence to prove their opinion true. For their own sakes let them find it false.
3. But an indolent, earthly selfishness, under pretence of humility, cunningly suggests the distinction between a common ungifted man and the great apostle of the Gentiles. He was a worthy witness, but what could we do, although we did our best? If you are a sinner forgiven through the blood of Christ, in the greatest things Paul and you are equal, unequal only in the least. In the economy of grace a shallower vessel serves nearly every purpose as well as a deeper, if both are full of Christ. In nature the shallowest lake, provided it be full, sends up as many clouds as the deepest, for the same sunlight beams equally on both their bosoms. Nay, more; as a lake within the tropics, though shallow, gives more incense to the sky than a polar ocean of unfathomable depth, so a Christian of few gifts, whose heart lies open fair and long to the Sun of Righteousness, is a more effectual witness than a man of greater capacity who lies not so near, and looks not so constantly to Jesus. Conclusion: In the coarser work of breaking up His own way at first, God freely uses the powers of nature and the passions of wicked men; but for the nicer touches near the finishing, He employs more sensitive instruments. A work of righteousness is about to be done upon a jailer at Philippi. Mark the method of the omniscient Worker. The earthquake rent the outer searing of the jailer’s conscience, and made an open path into his soul. But what an earthquake could not do, God did by a renewed human heart and loving human lips. From the same chosen vessel that Ananias had visited at Damascus, the ointment was poured forth which healed the jailer’s wound. Thus God works today both in individual conversions and in widespread revivals. Bankruptcies, storms, diseases, wars, are charged to batter down the defences, and then living disciples go in by the breach to convert a kingdom or win a soul. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
Saul and Luther chosen vessels
I.How he prepared them.
1. He selected the right materials--a Pharisee for the destruction of Pharisaism, a monk for the overthrow of Popery, yet in both cases the right man.
2. He laid hold of them at the right time--
(1) When the enemies of the faith were at their strongest.
(2) When the need of the Church was deepest.
3. He forged them in the right fire. The fire was the flame of repentance kindled by the Holy Ghost, the hammer was God’s Word. By these means was Paul, as the noblest Damascus blade, forged at Damascus, and Luther in the cloister cell at Erfurt.
II. How he used them.
1. To the confusion of His enemies; Paul and Luther both warriors of the Lord, cutting swords, different from a John and Melancthon.
2. To the protection of His friends: the faithful pastorate of Paul, the loving zeal of Luther.
3. To the use of all: not by attaching ourselves to human means and swearing to human words, but by being directed to Him, whose servants and instruments Paul and Luther were. (K. Gerok.)
The character of St. Paul
I.He is a vessel. The word means either an “instrument” in the hands of the Divine Agent to carry out His purposes, or a “vessel” into which the Lord Jesus poured abundantly of His mind and His love. We are not fountains which give forth. “All our springs are in Thee.” God is an infinite Spring giving inexhaustibly forth; men are empty vessels receiving everlastingly of His fulness. The difference between men is not in their power to originate, but in their power to take in.
II. A vessel unto me, i.e., Paul was now the actual possession of Christ. Heretofore he was in the service of the great enemy, and was the ablest and the most dangerous opponent the young Church had yet encountered. But the vessel was wrested from the enemy, and henceforth is a vessel separated unto and honoured in the service of Christ.
III. A chosen vessel.
1. A choice vessel; “earthen,” it is true; but there is a great difference in the quality of even earthen vessels. Chemical analysis, it is said, discovers considerable difference in the quality of human brains. The brain of the rustic is coarse and gritty, whereas that of the man of genius is fine, smooth, silky, and sensitive. Be that as it may, Paul was a vessel manufactured with the greatest care out of the finest materials. He was “separated unto God from his mother’s womb.” God even then thought of the purpose to Which he was to be devoted, and proceeded to fashion him accordingly. The same law runs through grace as through nature--the perfect adaptation of means to ends. If God has any special design to accomplish, He always seeks to bring it about by the most suitable means. Saul would have been a public man if he had never been an apostle. He would have been an orator if he had never been a preacher. The raw material of an apostle was wrought into his original make.
2. He was chosen or ordained of God unto the work of the apostleship. “He is a vessel of election unto Me.” The doctrine of election has been wrongly taught and falsely apprehended. The Scriptural doctrine is that God chooses man before man chooses God, and the latter is only the faint echo of the former. The Divine election should be viewed in much the same light as the Divine love. “We love Him because He first loved us.” “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” The fundamental principle of all false religions is that man chooses his God.
IV. To bear my name. Paul bore the name of Jesus--
1. In his intellect. His capacious mind had no room for anything else. “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge,” etc. The glorified Form appearing unto him on the way to Damascus photographed itself so deeply upon his mind that it could never afterwards be effaced. “To me to live is Christ.” Sir David Brewster says that Sir Isaac Newton once gazed so steadfastly on the sun that for days after, turn which way he would, he constantly beheld the image of the sun. And Jesus impressed Himself so deeply in the “great light” on the mind of Paul that ever afterwards, whichever way the apostle looked, he always perceived the reflection of Christ.
2. In his heart. Paul may be compared to an “alabaster box of precious ointment”--the box is valuable, but the ointment is more precious. “The name of Christ is like ointment poured forth.” Paul was possessed of much genius. But only when he received the unction from the Holy One did he fill the world with his perfume. You can quote other ancient authors of surpassing beauty, but I defy you to quote any where the fragrance is so sweet and so abundant. Carry the rose about you and you will scatter scent wherever you go. And Paul’s writings are sweetly scented with leaves from the Rose of Sharon. Christ is an “offering of sweet smelling savour” to men as well as to God. A lump of clay has been made fragrant by being thrown into the midst of a bed of flowers. And although Christians in their original state are not a whir better than other men, yet by holding fellowship with Him whose “garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia,” they catch the fragrance.
3. In his ministry. He “shall bear My name before Gentiles,” etc. And in verse 28 we see him beginning to fulfil the prediction. What then prompted him so powerfully to bear the name of Christ to perishing millions? To return an adequate answer, two factors must be taken into consideration. The first was a vivid, heartfelt conviction of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Where the sense of sin is weak the sense of ministerial responsibility is shallow. But the second and more powerful element was his intense love to the Saviour (2Co_5:11; 2Co_5:14). The terror moved, the love constrained. The mill wheel may be turned either by a current of water flowing underneath or else by a stream falling upon it from above. But of the two the latter is the more efficient. In Paul the two currents worked together--the terror from beneath and the love from above; and as a consequence imparted unusual impetuosity and rapidity to his revolutions.
V. Before Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. The wide scope of his ministry required--
1. Certain social qualifications which the other apostles did not possess. Paul enjoyed all the privileges and exemptions of a Roman citizen. Born at Tarsus, he became master of the Greek tongue and sensible to all that was refined in classic life. A pupil of Gamaliel, he was deeply versed in Scriptural and rabbinical lore. Thus in him all that was best in the three dominant types of civilisation met--the freedom of the Roman, the language of the Greek, and the theology of the Jew.
2. Great intellectual culture. The sphere of his labour embraced all classes and ranks of men. Moses, the founder of Judaism, was “learned in all the learning of Egypt.” Paul, too, the foremost apostle of Gentile Christianity, was learned in all the learning of his own and other nations. We are here introduced to a grand evangelistic principle--the Saviour ordained the most accomplished of the apostles to be His missionary among the heathen. The greatest knowledge is always the best instructor of ignorance.
3. Much moral courage. Before, literally in the face of, Gentiles and kings. Paul would have to encounter innumerable obstacles which only the greatest courage could surmount. And perhaps true courage never towered more sublimely than in his life. Conscience was keen and strong in him, and scrupulous fidelity to its voice marks his whole career. Indomitable strength of his will is nowhere seen to better advantage than in the presence of difficulties. The eagle never soars so high as he does on the day of tempest--the wilder the gale the loftier his flight. Lord Chatham, it is said, made his crutches add to the grandeur of his oratory; and Paul, dangling his chains in the face of his judge, made the most impressive peroration in the literature of eloquence. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)
