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THE POTTER AND THE
CLAY
Excerpts from a study by Ray C.
Stedman
View the entire copyrigthted article
at:
Have Thine own way, Lord,
Have Thine own way,
Thou art the Potter,
I am the clay,
Mold me and make me,
after Thy will,
As I am waiting,
Yielded and still. {Hymn}
In Psalm 9 the psalmist says,
"The wicked shall be turned into
hell,
and all the nations that forget
God,"
(Psalms 9:17 KJV).
Judah, in the days of Jeremiah, was a nation which had
forgotten God. All through the scope of this prophecy, across the forty years or
more that Jeremiah ministered to this nation, we are watching a nation being
turned into hell -- chaos spreading throughout the land, corruption widespread
in government, morality constantly declining, evil infecting the people, the
life of the nation gradually becoming more and more hellish -- exactly in
accordance with the prediction of the psalmist.
In our own day, as you know, America is a nation which is rapidly forgetting God. And so, in our own time, we too are watching the phenomenon of a nation which has forgotten God being turned into hell -- with corruption spreading in the land, the moral fiber of our people losing its consistency, the government increasingly unable to govern properly, the institutions of American life being shaken by frequent panics and torn with dissension -- all this exactly in line with the prediction of the Scriptures. The message of Jeremiah, as we have seen in this book, is that of a growing revelation of the heart of the God who turns a nation into hell. We hear the judgments of God in this book, but what the prophet is being taught as he goes along is to know the heart of the God of judgment. And what a different picture that is! I think the great message of this book to us is to see what lies behind that which appears to be the ruthlessness of God in dealing with a people, and learning, from chapter to chapter, what kind of God is behind the judgment. In our last study, in Jeremiah Chapter 17, we saw that Jeremiah was taught two great truths: "The heart is deceitful above all
things,
and desperately
corrupt,"
(Job 17:9a RSV).
That is, "There is no hope in man." No nation, ever, has reversed the trend of deterioration simply by trying to gather up its own resources and gird up its moral strength and, through human wisdom, work out a remedy for the degenerative faculty in that nation. It has never happened. There is no hope in man. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt. But Jeremiah was also shown "a glorious throne set on high
from the beginning"
(Job 17:12a RSV),
which, he tells us, is the place of our sanctuary. That is, "There
is hope in God -- the present availability of God to an individual or a nation."
And when that person, or that people, turns to that God, healing begins to come
back into that life. This is in line with the well-known promise of Second
Chronicles 7:14: "...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves,
and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear
from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
In Chapter 18 we have an additional lesson taught to the prophet. This section, Chapters 18 and 19, falls into the same period of time in Jeremiah's ministry as the previous two chapters, which we studied last time. The chapter opens, The word that came to
Jeremiah from the Lord:
"Arise, and go down to the
potter's house,
and there I will let
you hear my words."
So I went down to
the potter's house,
and there he was working
at his wheel.
And the vessel he
was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand,
and he reworked it into
another vessel,
as it seemed good to the
potter to do.
(Jeremiah 18:1-4
RSV)
We have commented in previous messages about the many things God uses to teach his people, these remarkable visual aids which appear from time to time in this book whereby God imparts lessons to this prophet. Here is another. Jeremiah was sent down to the potter's house, and there he saw three simple things. But they conveyed to him a fantastic lesson. Through the courtesy of Mike Johnson of Discovery Art Guild, we too have been at the potter's house this morning, watching the potter making a vessel of clay. We have observed the same things that Jeremiah did, for the art of making a pot has not changed through the centuries. The wheel is now turned by an electric motor, but that is about the only difference. Even this is still controlled by the foot of the potter. The clay is the same as it has always been. The potter is the same, with his capable hands, guided by his intelligence, working to mold and shape the clay into the vessel he has in mind. When I was in Israel a few years ago, visiting the tomb of Abraham in the village of Hebron, I noticed right across the street a potter's house, and I went "down to the potter's house". There was the potter making his vessel in the ancient way, unchanged from the days of Jeremiah. There were the same ingredients -- the potter, the clay, and the wheel. The potter had a little treadle at his foot which he used to make the wheel turn and to control its speed. Today those same ingredients are still part of the making of a pot. What did Jeremiah see in this lesson? First there was the clay. And Jeremiah knew, as he watched the potter shaping and molding the clay, that he was looking at a picture of himself, and of every man, and of every nation. We are the clay. Both Isaiah and Zechariah, in the Old Testament, join with Jeremiah in presenting this picture of the potter and the clay. And in the New Testament we have the voice of Paul in that great passage in Romans 9, reminding us that God is the Potter and we are the clay. So Jeremiah saw the clay being shaped and molded into a vessel. Then some imperfection in the clay spoiled it in the potter's hand, and the potter crumbled it up, and began anew the process of shaping it into a vessel that pleased him. Jeremiah saw the wheel turning constantly, bringing the clay against the potter's hand. That wheel stands for the turning circumstances of our life, under the control of the Potter, for it is the potter's foot that guides the wheel. The lesson is clear. As our life is being shaped and molded by the Great Potter, it is the circumstances of our life, the wheels of circumstance, what Browning called "this dance of plastic circumstance", which bring us again and again under the potter's hand, under the pressure of the molding fingers of the Potter, so that he shapes the vessel according to his will. Then, Jeremiah saw the potter. God, he knew, was the Great Potter, with absolute right over the clay to make it what he wanted it to be. Paul argues this with keen and clear logic in Romans 9: "Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me thus?' Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use?" Of course he has. The vessel is shaped according to the image in the potter's mind. So Jeremiah, watching, learned that an individual or a nation is clay in the Great Potter's hands. He has a sovereign right to make it what he wants it to be. He has the skill and design to work with the clay and to bring it to pass. And if there be some imperfection in the clay, something which mars the design, spoils the work, the potter simply crushes the clay down to a lump and begins again to make it yet a vessel according to his own mind. In the verses which follow, this lesson is applied to the nation: Then the word of the Lord
came to me:
"O house of Israel,
can I not do with you as
this potter has done? says the Lord.
Behold, like the
clay in the potter's hand,
so are you in my
hand, O house of Israel.
If at any time I
declare concerning a nation or a kingdom,
that I will pluck up and
break down and destroy it,
and if that nation,
concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil,
I will repent of the evil
that I intended to do to it.
And if at any time I
declare concerning a nation or a kingdom
that I will build and
plant it,
and if it does evil in my
sight, not listening to my voice,
then I will repent
of the good which I had intended to do to it."
(Jeremiah 18:10 RSV)
In other, more direct terms, this is the same lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house, applied to the nation. When the pressure the potter applies is successful in turning the clay in the right direction, the potter seems to repent, the pressure is relieved, and the clay is allowed then to remain in the form it has taken. But when something in the clay resists, the potter then seems to repent of making a vessel at all, and he crushes it into a lump, and begins again to make it yet into the vessel he desires. And this is true of our individual lives. If some hard circumstance comes into your life -- and it may be there right now, or it may be just around the corner, or you may just have passed through it -- that circumstance is the wheel of God, to bring you against the pressure of the Potter's hand. If you do not resist, if your will does not spoil the work by murmuring, grumbling, or complaining, or feeling resentful and bitter, but you accept the working of the Potter, then the pressure is relieved, and the vessel takes shape. But if there is resistance, if the human will, like some imperfection in the clay, chooses something other than the Potter has in mind, then the Potter can do nothing else but crush it down to a lump once again and, beginning with the same lump, make it over into a vessel which suits his heart and mind. The great lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house was that of the sovereign control of God. He is the potter, and we are the clay. There is a beautiful lesson here in the word "repent" as it is used in reference to God. When you and I talk about repenting, we speak in terms of "changing our mind". We started out to do something. Circumstances occurred which caused us to change our mind. So we then did something else. But that is not the way the word is used concerning God. Many Scriptures tell us that God never changes his mind. And though we employ the term "repent" because it looks as if he has changed his mind, it does not express the thought adequately. The Hebrew used here is very interesting. It is really the word "sigh," "to heave a sigh." It can be used either as a sigh of sorrow, or a sigh or relief. The word is used both ways here in this passage. God says, "If I say to a nation, 'I'm going to destroy you,' or to an individual, 'I'm going to uproot you, crush you,' and I bring pressure upon you to that end, if you yield to it, if you conform to what the pressure is driving you to, then I will heave a sigh of relief.".... This is the kind of sigh God sighs. That is the way he repents. He has one thing in mind -- to make a vessel according to his design -- and nothing will stop him. But he does not like to judge. He does not like harshness and severity and chastisement. In fact, in the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah says that God does not willingly afflict the sons of men. He takes no delight in it at all. Isaiah calls it God's "strange" work. Judgment is not according to the desire of his heart. What he is doing is bringing pressure, molding and shaping the clay, forcing it up and out and into the shape of the vessel he wants it to be, hoping the clay will conform. And when it yields to his touch, he breathes a sigh of relief: "This is enough pressure, I don't have to bring any more." But there is also the sigh of sorrow, the sigh which says, "Oh, it has to be done, there's no other way out." That is what you see occurring here in Judah. Verse 11: "Now, therefore, say
to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 'Thus says the Lord,
Behold,
I am shaping
evil against you and devising a plan against you.
[There are the
molding fingers of the potter at work.]
Return, every one
from his evil way,
and amend your ways
and your doings.'"
(Jeremiah 18:11 RSV)
There is the heart of the potter, hoping that the pressure he is exerting will be enough so that he can sigh with relief as the clay yields to his hands. But as verse 12 makes clear, in Judah's case it did not happen: "But they say, 'That
is in vain! [i.e. "Forget it,
God!]
We will follow
our own plans,
and will every one
act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart."
(Jeremiah 18:12 RSV)
And so God sighed with sorrow. He expressed it in the verses which follow: "Therefore thus says
the Lord:
Ask among the nations, who has heard the like of this? The virgin Israel has done a very horrible thing. Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams?" (Jeremiah 18:13-14 RSV)
That is, "Does this ever happen in nature? Does snow melt away from the tops of the high mountains? Do the waters of these streams ever run dry when the snow is continually melting? No, it is absolutely contrary to nature." "But my
people have forgotten me,
they burn incense to false gods; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway, making their land a horror, a thing to be hissed at for ever. [Literally, a thing to be "whistled" at, in amazed dismay.] Every one who passes by it is horrified and shakes his head. Like the east wind I will scatter them before the enemy. I will show them my back, not my face, in the day of their calamity." (Jeremiah 18:15-17 RSV)
That is the Potter, smashing the clay down into a lump again, that he might begin anew and make it yet a vessel according to his own design. ..Jeremiah had been to the potter's house. He had seen the potter making a vessel, and he knew that it was love behind the Potter's pressures, and that when the vessel was marred, the Potter was capable of crushing it down again, bringing it to nothing but a lump, and then molding it, shaping it once again, perhaps doing this again and again, until at last it fulfilled what God wanted. That is the great lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house, and that we can learn at the potter's house, as well. In Paul's second letter to Timothy he says, "In a great house there
are not only vessels of gold and silver
but also of wood and
earthenware,
and some for noble use,
some for ignoble.
If any one purifies
himself from what is ignoble
[ie, those practices which appear just before
this in the context --
wrongful
attitudes, contentiousness, ungodliness, doctrinal aberrations, iniquity]
then he will be a vessel
for noble use,
consecrated and useful to
the master of the house,
ready for any good
work."
(2 Timothy
2:20-21 RSV)
...This once again is God's wonderful reminder of the heart
of the Potter. For if you watch this Potter very carefully, at work in your
life, you will find that his hands and his feet bear nail prints, and that it is
through blood, the blood of the Potter himself, that the vessel is being shaped
into what he wants it to be.
When we are in the Potter's hands, feeling his pressures, feeling
the molding of his fingers, we can relax and trust him, for we know that this
Potter has suffered with us and knows how we feel, but is determined to make us
into a vessel
"meet for the master's
use"
(2 Timothy 2:21 KJV).
What a tremendous lesson, what a beautiful lesson Jeremiah
learned at the potter's house -- one which I hope will guide us and guard us
under the
pressures which are coming into our lives these days. Remember that
the Potter has a purpose in mind, and the skill and ability to fulfill it, no
matter how many times he may have to make the vessel over again.
Isa 64:8 (KJV)
But now, O LORD, thou art our
father;
we are the clay, and thou our
potter;
and we all are the work of thy
hand.
IXTHEUS CHRISTIAN GROWTH DEVOTIONALS
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bob.......<><
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