Living In The Will of God, Part 4: Re-Working the Clay
By Charles Price
Jeremiah 18: 1-6
If you have got a Bible with you I am going to read from the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah Chapter 18 - one of the Old Testament prophets.
Now Jeremiah Chapter 18; I am going to read to you in a moment the first six verses. Before I read them, let me set the context for this because, for a number of weeks, we have been talking about living in the will of God.
And before we look at some of the issues of personal guidance, which are probably important to many of us, we are looking at some of the big picture issues of how God works out His will in our world.
Last week we talked about a dilemma Scripture presents us with. In 1 John Chapter 5, John wrote there that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
Jesus three times called Satan the prince of this world. Paul called him the god of this age. He also called him the ruler of the kingdom of the air.
And these, you will agree, are lofty descriptions. And we see the fingerprints of Satan all over the place. We see the evidence of these statements all over the place. Yet at the same time we looked at Job's confidence when at the end of the book of Job, having been subject to explicit satanic attack, he wrote this - he said to God,
"I know you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted."
And we tried to draw a distinction between processes and purpose. There are many processes of our experience of life that have the fingerprints of Satan on them and his activity. We live in a fallen world. We are ourselves fallen. We are ourselves corrupted. And yet in the midst of those processes, which involve evil, there is a purpose that Job says of God, "No purpose of Yours can be thwarted. You are working out a purpose in all of this." And we talked a bit about that last week.
And the reason why I remind you of that because I want to build on that this morning a little bit. In talking about the sovereignty of God in situations that are wrong or situations that have gone wrong or situations that are self-imposed as wrong things, and I want to do so by reading this story in Jeremiah Chapter 18.
Reading from Verse 1:
"This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 'Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message.'
"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 it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
"Then the word of the LORD came to me: 'O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?' declares the LORD. 'Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.'"
That is as far as I am going to read but don't close your Bible; we are going to pick up later parts from this passage as well.
I knew a man extremely well who believed that when he was a young man as a student at an agricultural college he had disobeyed God in such a way that he believed he had destroyed what had been God's purpose for his life.
I don't know the details of what had actually happened, but I do know he lived with a sense of being second best and living, not the plan that God had for him, but an inferior plan.
He continued to love God. He continued to read his Bible every day. He prayed every day. I don't know anyone who was more diligent in his daily devotions with God, both morning and evening, as he was.
I knew him well because he was my father. And he died about four years ago. But he lived most of his life with this sense, "I stepped out of the will of God and I can't get back in."
I don't know whether there is anybody here this morning who feels that, maybe not in the same measure or the same set of circumstances. But maybe there are things you look back on in your life that you feel have disqualified you from being what God wants you to be.
Of course it is true we can disobey God. We can move out of His will; that is true. But the question I want to ask and address this morning is what happens to the will of God when you have stepped out of what you sensed was His will and purpose for you?
And the answer to that is what we'll talk about this morning from this story in Jeremiah Chapter 18 where God sent Jeremiah down to visit the house of a potter. And he watches the potter at work and in the course of his work the clay becomes marred.
It doesn't tell us why it becomes marred because that is irrelevant to the point. The point is it becomes marred.
And what the potter does is he remoulds the marred clay into something else. And I love the qualification attached to it:
"...as seemed best to him."
This is the best thing I can do. It's not the original purpose and it's not the second best.
Jeremiah 18 follows Jeremiah 17 and in order to interpret any part of Scripture well, we have to look at the context for it. And I am going to just pull out one or two things that will have give some clarity to this I think.
But the focal point I want to look at with you is the work of the potter with his marred clay. But in Chapter 17, the previous chapter, and Verse 12, there is this statement that says,
"A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary."
A sanctuary is a place where you go for refuge, a place you can go to hide, a place you can go to be protected. And he says, "This is what we have, a glorious throne." That is, the sovereignty of God on His throne - that is the place where we go to for refuge, he says. That is the place of our sanctuary. That is where we find our security.
And what is that glorious throne? What is the sovereignty of God? Is it a fixed rigid pattern that if you break out of it, you are out of it forever like a map on the wall which you can't change?
Well in Chapter 18 he explains it to us. That the sovereignty of God, the place of our refuge is that God in His sovereignty, as the potter with the clay, has all through history (and I will show you this in a few moments) and He does in your life and mine, He remoulds according to whatever the clay is that is in His hand.
You see Jeremiah is watching the potter at work here. The focus is on the potter. And because it becomes marred, something goes wrong with it, he forms it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
And he gives an explanation in Verse 6 where He says,
"O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? Like clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in my hand."
And if that clay has become marred and if that clay has become damaged in some way, then the potter remoulds it into something that is good, that seems best.
In Verse 9 and 10, a little bit later there, in Jeremiah 18,
"If at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it."
So here's the situation where He says, regarding the nation of Israel, "If it does evil in my sight, if it does not obey me", what does the potter do? Does he throw it away? Does he discard it? Does he put it on the trash heap?
No. "I reconsider the good I had intended to do for it and remould it into something that seems best." He remoulds the clay into something else.
You see I have no doubt that this building this morning is full of marred clay. I myself am marred clay.
There are things in our lives, things in our history we cannot undo. There are times we have rebelled against God. We are all by nature sinful. We start off on the wrong foot. We start off with a bent towards rebellion and going our own way and doing our own thing. We start off marred.
And the picture here; what is the will of God in that situation? Is it, well, you can descend into some kind of second class living; yes, it will be okay but it's only second class.
No, the picture is here that if the clay is yielded (and we'll talk about the clay needing to be soft and pliable) - when the clay is yielded, he forms it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to Him. Not shaping it second best but as seen best to Him.
I don't know what lies in your past but there are folks here who carry in your life secrets - maybe they are secrets - or you carry a history that has been damaging to you. Maybe you have been through an abortion; maybe you are the father of the fetus, or the mother. You can't go back and undo that.
Maybe you have been through a divorce and it was painful to you and painful to your spouse and painful to your children, if there were children involved. And going back seems out of the question - it may not be, but maybe it seems it is.
I get letters quite often from people in prison because our television program, Living Truth, is shown across the country and other parts of the world. It seems that in Canada and the United States prisoners can watch TV on Sunday morning, and maybe more often. But several have told me in letters that a group of them meet together Sunday morning and they watch the program and I get letters from people.
And I am in correspondence with one or two folks in that situation, and some of them in horrendous situations. One man I am in communication with who is in prison for life. He murdered his own wife and he has come to know Christ in the prison, and writes beautiful letters. He can't go back; he can't undo that.
Maybe it's things that have been done to you. Maybe you were molested as a child and out of that has grown a confused sexuality and all the repercussions of that. Or you were damaged in earlier years and there is a legacy from that damage and it's impacted your ability to trust.
The clay can be damaged in many ways. It says the clay is damaged in the potter's hand - not damaged by the potter, though it was in his hand. Many of the damages are self- inflicted.
But here is the message of this story, and it is a message of hope: that the potter does not take it off the wheel and discard it. He re-works it, forming it into another pot. Yes, different, because this history is now part of this new pot, as seen best to Him.
You see, nobody, and no experience is irredeemable in our lives. I didn't say everything is fixable because it is not.
And sometimes we have to walk through life with a limp like Jacob. Do you remember Jacob who wrestled with God? And Jacob, the very name Jacob, means twister and cheat, and he was all of that; he lived up to his name.
And one day God met him and in that intriguing story when God takes on physical form, as often in the Old Testament Scriptures you have that in what we call a theophany where God is incarnate in human form.
And He meets with Jacob and they wrestle and they throw each other to the ground and they fight on the ground and eventually God knocks his thigh out of joint. And eventually Jacob clings to Him and says, "I will not let You go unless You bless me." He had been the antagonist; now he clings to Him and won't let Him go. And Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his days.
Yes, you may walk with a limp; most of us do in some way or other. But the picture is here that despite the fact you might walk with a limp, and you carry the legacy, that God is making another pot that is good and fulfills His purpose.
Now He is talking about the nation of Israel here in Jeremiah and their history prior to this already demonstrates this. When Israel came into the land of Canaan, God set them up as a nation and they were to be a theocracy, not a democracy - there was no such thing - nor a monarchy; they were to be a theocracy.
What that meant was that God was to be their king. And what that meant was that He would raise up men or women, He would put His Holy Spirit on them, people would recognize God's anointing on them and God's empowering of them. They were known as judges and for over 300 years, Israel lived as a theocracy.
You didn't know where the next judge was coming from; the next leader was coming from. When one died, you looked around, "Who is it that God has put His Spirit on and has called to this task?"
