The House of the Potter
Jeremiah 18:3ff
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason - June 20, 2004
Our Daily Bread carried the story of a Christian who providentially escaped death. An unexpected delay in New York kept him from catching Flight 191 in Chicago, which crashed killing all 254 people aboard. How many times has something like this happened to keep God's people from harm.
But as Paul Harvey would tell us there is a "Rest of the Story" related to Flight 191: It seems that Edwards E. Elliott, beloved Pastor of the Garden Grove Orthodox Presbyterian Church in California, ran to make Flight 191, and made it! His plane from Pennsylvania was late, and a friend who had accompanied him to Chicago said he last saw Elliott "dashing forward" in the terminal to make his connection.
The question raised by this for the writer of the article in Our Daily Bread was: "Was divine providence operating only in New York and not in Chicago? The answer came in a letter telling of Pastor Elliot's dash to the plane. "At the time, Reverend Elliott didn't know he was indeed running to Heaven... Mrs. Elliott and her four married children comforted the entire church. Their Christian Faith and testimony in sorrow [were] most extraordinary." Our Daily Bread, June, 1980.
Our text for today is found in Jeremiah 18:3-4:
"So I went down to the potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands so the potter formed another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. "
The figure of the potter here is one that we can imagine because the tools and work of the potter has not changed appreciably since the time of Jeremiah's use of it in his prophecy to Israel.
God tells him to go to the house of the potter and there he will receive a message God has for him.
What does Jeremiah see? He sees the potter, the potter's wheel and the clay.
. In the Potter, he saw an intelligent, capable worker.
. In the wheel, he sees an instrument by which the potter could accomplish a definite purpose in the clay.
. And in the clay, Jeremiah saw something with which the potter could accomplish his
purpose.
The potter speaks first of God's authority.
. It also speaks of God's interest,
. His perpetual attention
. and His absolute power.
When you see the potter at his wheel with his hand on the clay, you are conscious of the right and authority of the potter over the clay. He can do what he wants with the clay. He is very interested in what transpires with the clay as he applies the pressure of his hands to the clay. His eye is never lifted from the clay while the wheel revolves and his hand is molding the clay. Those hands which press ever so gently or strongly, are hands of power.
The Apostle Paul makes this all so clear in Romans 9:20-21: "But who are you, 0 man, to talk back to God. Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?" Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?"
Turning from the potter to the wheel upon which the clay turns, the wheel speaks of all the circumstances in the midst of which we find ourselves. The wheel is incidental - to be set aside once the potter is finished and the clay is found in its final form and shape. The important things here are the potter and the clay.
The clay speaks to us of man's capacity and relationship to God. It is of a plastic nature and can be molded. Clay is the material you will find on the potter's wheel which will take the pressure of the potter's fingers.
These are the simplest lessons of the potter's house.
There we see God
and ourselves
and all the circumstances of life:
The intelligent Master Workman, with the thought in his mind which no one has ever seen; ourselves of such a nature as to be able to express that thought for others to see it; and all the circumstances of our lives, turning wheels, so swiftly turning at times as to make us afraid, presently to be set aside when the vessel is finished.
It is here in the potter's house that we learn the profoundest lessons of what man's relationships to God really are.
There are three deeper things that we need to see about the potter. the wheel and the clav:
1. The Principle taught
2. The Purpose suggested
3. And The Person who chooses to stand revealed in the figure of the potter.
We need to recognize these three things together for if we merely discover the principle we will become afraid and will rebel against the whole thing. We must also find the person of the potter for too often we have preached the principle of submission to God's absolute sovereignty without any reference to the character of God. I will never submit myself to the principle, so weak and frail am I, until I see the Potter. When I can see the Potter and know Him, I will yield myself to His hand, knowing that it is a hand of infinite tenderness, patience and love.
On the other hand, if we know the person and refuse to obey the principle or accept the purpose, we will fail.
The Principle taught: Is the absolute sovereignty of God and the necessity for the submission of man to it.
The potter has a right which is absolute over the clay.
It cannot resist his hand ultimately.
It has no right to suggest to him what form or fashion it shall take.
We hear a lot about rights today. We live in a nation that has a Bill of Rights written into our Constitution. The first truth taught in the Potter's house is that of the rights of God.
No man would have any right to complain, whatever God decided to do with him. We know what God would do, He wills that every man, woman or child should come to him and live. That is the purpose of God for all, but knowing that we must not minimize the truth of God's sovereignty. God has a right to take this whole world and annihilate it and sweep out the race that has condemned his law and turned its back on all his infinite love.
Therefore, man's right in the presence of God is that he should have no wish, no claim, and no desire of his own, save only to discover the wish, the claim, the desire and the right of God.
You would be correct if you said. "Wait a minute." There is a difference between the clay and us: we have a will and the clay does not. How does that fit in to this picture?
We need to understand that "will" is the power to choose within limitation. Will answers a governing principle. It never acts, save with something at the back of it that drives it.
Consequently. the highest form of the exercise of that will is the choice of that which will be master. When God gave man a will, He did so that man might choose his master, that he might either submit himself to the one eternal throne of God, which in turn, is dominated by righteousness and love, or submit himself only to himself, to his own ruin.
Every one of us has a will. We will all choose for ourselves our master, his ruling principle and hence our destiny. God allows man to make his choice, but when he chooses he is still acting under the government of God. Any choice other than to say, "Our wills are ours... make them Yours God." Is a prostitution of the power bestowed and must result in ruin of the one who makes use of it.
Therefore, the principle taught here is the reality of the sovereignty of God and the fact that man's wisdom lies in unconditional and uncompromising surrender to the will of God.
The Purpose Suggested:
In the King James Version of Jeremiah 18:3 our text reads: "Behold, he wrought his work on the wheels." The potter has a thought in his mind for the clay he is going to use. He alone can transfer that thought to the clay. The clay is necessarily ignorant of the thought in the potter's mind, but can find that thought and realize it and manifest it by quiet submission to the hand of the potter. The fact that there is a purpose, a plan gives me comfort of heart. The potter is not dealing with the clay capriciously. His fingers are not working aimlessly. He knows what he means, even when I don't.
Man is created so that God may have a medium through which he can reveal or manifest the things in his own mind. Man is fashioned in his likeness, in his image, so that those who cannot see the essential and eternal Spirit may see the things of the essential and eternal Spirit in man. How man has missed the mark by sin. And yet by the redemption of Jesus Christ this great purpose is fulfilled. The Apostle Paul tells us "We are his workmanship; created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:10)
Peter speaks to this purpose of God when he said, "You are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." God gains glory as men respond to him.
Man alone is as the clav, formless. lacking beauty or true utility.
. But Let man find God's throne and yield to it,
. submit his whole life to the hands of the great Master Potter,
. and he finds the poor clay of his life made into something beautiful and useful to God and man as well.
Without Christ in our lives, our lives are purposeless, without meaning. But when we are yielded to the hand of the potter, there is purpose in our lives.
The Person of the Potter
Once we have been to the Potter's house, recognize his authority and yield and see his purpose and yield, we have to pass on to the person of the Potter himself.
. Who is the potter? God is the potter.
. Who is God? God is love. I can submit to love.
. Because God is love and that love has been expressed to me in the person of Jesus, I am not afraid of the authority, the principle of God's sovereignty nor the purpose to touch the world through me so that God will be glorified.
All we need is to know the heart of the potter. As the potter works with the clay on the wheel, his thought is that of love. As he molds the clay, we must remember that he rules the wheels as well as the clay. The process of molding the clay is a process of love and his intent is to create and never to crush the clay.
We must look to the hands of the potter. For in the hands of the potter, we see the wounds inflicted when he was nailed to the brutal cross. These are the hands that form the clay of our lives...asking that I submit to the principle of God's sovereignty over my life...asking that I consent to the purpose He has for this life of mine.
So many people take the clay out of the Potter's hands and render it purposeless and useless a waste in the economy of the universe. Oh the wrecks in the potter's field! Vessels half formed, marred and thrown away. The potter's field is full of wreckage, lives that might have been fashioned into forms of beauty, but lives that would not yield to the hand of the potter.
But we must not stop here. There is a reference to the Potter's Field in Zechariah 11: 12-13: "I told them, "If you think I best give me my pay; but if not keep it. " So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter" - the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the Potter." They bought the potter's field with the price of Jesus and they called it, without thinking of the deeper significance of their actions, the field of blood.
Wherever there are wrecks in the potter's field, there are men and women who are saying, I have been spoiled and thrown away. . I just read about Eastman Kodak who committed suicide in 1932 leaving a note that said: "To my friends, my work is done. Why wait?" For many people life is pointless, without purpose or meaning. Why should I go on living
But the message in all of this for us is: The potter's field has been purchased with blood. Go back to Jeremiah and you see that the vessel that was marred in the hands of the potter, he made it into another vessel. Praise God! He came to the potter's field, and gathered up the wrecks to make them once again.
God is the God of the second chances. The Potter gives us another chance. . By the mystery of his betrayal,
. the mystery of his denial,
. the mystery of his being sold for the price of a slave,
. the potter's field has been bought
----and though we may have missed our purpose by disobeying the principle of God's sovereignty, the Person, the Potter Himself, has come down into the midst of the wreckage and by the price of his own life has bought the Potter's field and the wreckage can be'" remade into something beautiful and useful.
For this to take place in our lives, we must begin with the Person of the Potter, Jesus, and submit to the principle of His sovereignty and find the purpose He has for our life.
--- Dennis Gleason
