John MacArthur asks if anyone sees the pattern. Do you?
Here is a start, but go see even more examples at the link above:
If God could not use poor instruments and feeble voices, He couldn’t make music. Abraham was guilty of duplicity, yet he became the man of faith and the friend of God. Moses was a man of stuttering speech and a quick temper, yet he was the one chosen to lead a nation, to represent them before God, and to receive His law and deliver it to them. David was guilty of adultery, conspiracy, murder, and unfaithfulness as a husband and father, but he repented and was regarded as a man after God’s own heart. He was also the greatest songwriter of all history. We still sing the songs of this “sweet singer of Israel.” Elijah ran from Jezebel, pleading for euthanasia, but this same Elijah defied Ahab and all the prophets of Baal, and heard the still small voice of God at Horeb
I love the way Paul put it in II Corinthians 4:5-7:
5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
Do you get that? God gave Paul (and, I would say, every believer) “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God gave us knowledge of his glory present in Christ. What an unimaginable treasure!! Love so amazing, so divine demands my life, my soul, my all.
But at the same time, we have this unimaginable treasure of the knowledge of God’s glory in jars of clay. Easily broken earthen vessels.
No one could long operate under the impression that there is anything special about us recipients of this knowledge. As listed by John MacArthur, scripture is replete with examples of God using temptable, fallible, easily discouraged people just like us to get His work on Earth accomplished.
Aren’t you grateful that God puts his treasure in jars of clay? Aren’t you grateful that God uses the weak things of the world to stymie the strong, the simple things to confound the wise? Aren’t you grateful that God uses us?