Staying on the Potter's Wheel

New Yorkers love bumper stickers. Perhaps you’ve seen some recently.

…the little yellow diamond which reads “Baby on Board”

…how about the one that says “Mother-in-law in Trunk”

…or the bumper sticker which says “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” I chuckled at that one, until I looked into the car and saw an AK-47 assault rifle. I guess he was a member of the NRA.

…how about the one that reads “I’d rather be sailing”. That’s a popular one here on Long Island. There’s something exhilirating about skimming over the ocean waves in a sailboat, the wind in your hair, and the warm sun on your face. But I have never seen a bumper sticker which says “I’d rather be shipwrecked”. I guess I never will. There’s nothing fun about being swamped by the waves and capsizing into a raging sea.

Yet life for many of us is more like being shipwrecked than going sailing. There are times when we find ourselves thrashing around in the cold ocean waves, with the wreckage of our lives floating around us. We’re out of sight of land, and we’re doing all we can just to keep our heads above water.

It’s at times like this that we wonder where God is. Is He going to be there for us? Does He really care about us?

The prophet Jeremiah, as you’ll remember, didn’t have an easy life. He was an outcast among his people. He spoke the word of God to them, but they didn’t want to hear it. Their hearts were as cold as a blizzard in Buffalo.

So I’m sure that, for Jeremiah, life was often like a shipwreck. Where he yearned for warmth and security and acceptance, all he got was rejection like an icy douse of seawater in his face.

It’s in that context that we come to Jeremiah chapter 18. In this chapter, God taught Jeremiah a profound spiritual lesson about the way that He deals with us. And God used a compelling word picture to do so.

The making of pottery was one of the most important trades in the ancient world. Nobody knows for sure where or how pottery making was invented. Perhaps one day somebody’s wicker basket, lined with clay, fell into a fire and the clay hardened into the permanent shape of the basket. As best we can discover, pottery making has been around for over 5000 years.

The first potters molded the wet clay by hand into the desired shape. Then they left it to dry, and then they baked, or “fired” it. But two major inventions really enhanced the making of pottery and enabled it to develop into a real art.

The first was the invention of the pottery oven or kiln. This enabled potters to control the heat used in the firing process more precisely.

The second was the invention of the pottery wheel. The first pottery wheels were just hand-powered rotating platforms, something like a lazy susan. But pretty soon, an ingenious potter came up with the idea of the double wheel. The wheel on which the clay was molded was connected to a shaft which extended down to a second wheel. The potter would turn the lower wheel with his feet and it would rotate the upper wheel, leaving both his hands free to work on the clay. As the clay rotated rapidly, centrifugal force would allow the potter to develop shapes that were simply impossible before the invention of the double wheel.

So pottery making became both an art form and an essential technology in the ancient world. Because everybody needed and used pottery. Clay pots of all shapes and sizes were used for storing food, water, and oil. Pottery was used to store other valuable objects. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Israel in 1947, were found stored in large clay pots. Ancient people used pottery for their eating dishes and for ornaments in their homes.

Various areas of the world produced various types of pottery. That’s because of the different types of clay that were available. The type of clay would generally dictate what you could make out of it. Coarse clays were used to make storage pots, jars, and bowls for everyday use. Fine textured clays were used to make beautiful vases and decanters for ornamental use.

Even when a clay pot broke, the ancient people, being very thrifty, found uses for it. They would use the broken shards of pottery as cutting or scraping tools. Remember Job scaped his boils with a potsherd. When archaeologists dig down into the ruins of ancient villages and towns, the thing they find most of is broken pottery.

Sometimes people used the pieces as memo pads on which to write notes. Back in 1935, archaeologists discovered some of these ancient memo pads near the Hebrew town of Lachish. They have become known as the Lachish Letters. They tell the story of a Hebrew army commander named Yoash, who was stationed at Lachish at the time that Nebuchadnezzar was closing in on Jerusalem in 587 BC. That is precisely the time during which Jeremiah lived. The potter that Jeremiah visited in ch.18 could have been the same potter who made the pots that became the Lachish Letters, which are sitting in a museum in Israel today.

So as Jeremiah watched the potter sitting in his shop, molding and shaping the clay on the upper wheel as his feet spun the lower one, God taught him two important lessons.

First, Jeremiah learned about the sovereignty of God. As he watched the potter intently, it became obvious that the potter was in complete control of the clay. His sensitive fingers rounded and pressed and shaped, giving form and usefulness and beauty to that amorphous lump of clay. Occasionally, the potter would reach over and daub some water on the spinning shape to keep the clay moist and pliable as it spun in his hands. Sometimes he would take a tool in his hand - perhaps a broken piece of pottery, or a shell, or a piece of bone - and use it to scrape away some unwanted clay or perhaps to imprint some design upon the pot.

When you look at the way that Jeremiah describes what he saw in ch.18, it’s clear that he was impressed by the extent of the control that the potter had. Look at the verbs he uses: the potter works, the potter shapes, the potter forms. The clay is in his hands. As a craftsman, he is completely sovereign over his work.

And in verse 6, God tells Jeremiah that just as it is with the potter and the clay, so it is with God and us. God is in control. He is sovereign. He shapes and he forms and he molds us according to his will. We are like clay on the potter’s wheel.

The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is one of the most important things we need to learn from the Bible. Because we live in a world which seems to refute the idea that God is in control. Sometimes, in those shipwreck times, the circumstances of our own lives seem to deny that God is in control. At times when death comes to a loved one… when we face pain and suffering and brokenness… when we’re the victims of injustice and evil… We’re tempted to cry out “God is not in control. He doesn’t care. For all I know, He’s not even there!”

A few years ago, in this vein, a Jewish rabbi wrote a book entitled “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. It became a best seller. Unfortunately, the book suggested that, yes, there are some areas of our lives that are out of God’s control. There are things that happen to us about which God can do nothing.

But the Bible does not teach that. The Bible teaches us that God is always in control and completely in control.

1 Chronicles 29:11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.

Now this does not mean that as a child of God, you will not experience pain and suffering. Nor does it mean that at times you won’t feel bewildered about the things that are happening to you. But at such times, you have to reach out with the arms of faith to embrace the biblical truth of God’s sovereignty. You have to sink your teeth into verses like…

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

When I was doing my graduate study in Denver, I worked part-time as a security guard. My post was in the ultra-modern corporate offices of an oil exploration firm. The partners of the company owned a tremendous art collection. Some of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen of the American West, and of life on the American frontier. It was my job to keep an eye on the paintings. And nobody could get into those offices without passing me.

In a similar way, God has committed Himself to the security of His people. And nothing can come into our lives without passing Him first. And God sometimes allows pain and brokenness into our lives, because He wants to use those times in our lives to help us become the people He wants us to be.

Look at Jer.18:4

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.

The pot was marred, so he formed it into another pot. That seems to suggest that there will be times of brokenness in our lives as God works on us. Because brokenness and pain are sometimes the only way that God can form in us the character of Christ. And that indeed is His will for us. The verse that follows that great verse in Romans 8 tells us that it is God’s will that we be conformed to the image of His Son. That is His intent. That is what He is working towards achieving in us.

So lesson #1 at the potter’s house is that God is sovereign. But Jeremiah learned another lesson also. He learned that the biblical doctrine of the sovereignty of God never suggests that we should simply shrug our shoulders and resign ourselves to the inevitable. It does not lead to the Muslim concept of Fate and the unalterable will of Allah. Jeremiah learned that we, as human beings, are responsible for our reactions to the work of the Master Potter in our lives. We have a part to play. We have choices to make.

Look again at v.4.

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.

The Hebrew construction of this verse suggests that sometimes the quality of the clay doesn’t allow the potter to make of it the vessel he had planned. So he has to reform it into something more suited to its quality. The character of the clay plays a part in determining the results of the potter’s work. God tells Jeremiah as much in v.7-10

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And 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.

The quality of the clay determines the results of the potter’s work. The doctrine of God’s sovereignty never eliminates the concept of man’s responsibility. We still have choices to make. Will we co-operate with the potter? Or will we resist what he wants to do in our lives. Our choices will have a bearing on the results.

God wanted the nation Israel to be His ambassadors to the other nations. But they resisted His purpose for them. They preferred to go their own way. They had their own plans. So God had to get their attention:

Jeremiah 18:11-12 “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.’”

They made a choice. And it was the wrong choice. In a sense, what they were doing is what we often do today. We refuse to be the quality clay that God can use to mold us into the vessel that He wants us to be. We harbor grudges. We complain about the circumstances of our lives. We develop a critical spirit. We fail to have a teachable attitude. We refuse to respond to God’s discipline. As clay in the hands of the potter, we choose to be hard, and brittle, and resistant. So, because of our attitude, God cannot make much of us. Like a potter, saddled with uncooperative clay, He sighs, and reluctantly shapes us into something much less beautiful or useful or productive than what He’d originally intended us to be.

But, by the same token, if we determine to keep our attitudes right… If we decide to yield ourselves, our plans, our goals to the master potter, He can begin to make our lives into a vessel of honor - fit for the master’s use. We will become vessels that will bring glory and honor to Him.

God indeed is sovereign, but He puts before us a choice. What will our response be to Him? What sort of clay will we choose to be in His hands? Will we stay on the potter’s wheel? How will we respond to the pain and difficult experiences of our lives… the times when we feel as though we’ve been shipwrecked?

A legend from the sheep country of England illustrates the choices we can make. A few hundred years ago, two men were arrested for stealing sheep. The magistrate sent them to prison for several years. He also ordered that the letter S should be burned into their foreheads with a hot iron. He was determined that nobody should ever forget their crimes.

When the jail terms were ended, one of the men left the area and was never heard from again. The second man, being greatly sorry for his crime, had dedicated his life to God. He decided to stay in the community and offer himself in service to the people. As the years passed, everyone grew to love this man for the way he freely gave himself to help them in their sickness, their family crises, and their problems in their work. Soon, nobody remembered or spoke of his earlier crime of sheep stealing. They spoke only of all that he had done for them out of a heart of grace and love.

One day, two small boys were playing by the side of the road. Because of their age, they knew nothing of the past. Seeing the man, by now old and feeble pass by, one of the boys asked the other, “Why do you think he has the letter S on his forehead?”

“I’m not sure” the other replied, “but from what my father says about him, I think it must mean “Saint”.

What will you do with the letter S which God has placed on your life? It may not stand for “sheep-stealer”, but it may stand for “shipwreck”. Or it may stand for “suffering”. For every one of us it stands for “sinner”. Will you, be open and submissive to God, and allow Him to make that S stand for the word “Saint”? To do so, you have to stay on the potter’s wheel. You have to be quality clay. The choice is yours.