God’s Pottery Class

Have you ever noticed how the Lord can use everyday events to teach us spiritual lessons? For example, just the other day, Carl Ringer, our SS Supt., was telling me that he has taken up a new hobby—tropical fish.

Carl has always wanted to have an aquarium, so this summer, he finally went out and bought one. A nice 55-gallon model to put in his rec room. Now, as you know, Carl is a pretty intelligent guy, and he goes about things in a real organized way. So what he did first was he started reading everything he could get his hands on about tropical fish. He took a lot of books out of the library. And he actually took notes! And then he even sat down with an expert on tropical fish and picked his brain. And he took more notes.

So he knew that you can’t just fill a brand new aquarium with water and dump some fish in. That’s a good way to kill all the fish. You have to start out very gradually.

First you put the water in the aquarium. And then you wait. You wait for a few weeks until the water stabilizes, and the pH is right and the water isn’t too hard or too soft. Then, and only then, do you introduce a couple of fish. Not a whole bunch, just a couple. And they have to be the right kind of fish - they can’t be too aggressive, or too passive - they have to be the kind of fish that will get along together. And they have to have time to get used to their new environment. It’s a big shock to them to be plunked into this new aquarium.

So you give them time. Then, after a few more weeks go by, you introduce a couple more fish. And again, they have to be able to get along with each other, and with the fish that are already in there.

And while all this is going on, you have to be feeding them properly, and maintaining the right temperature and the cleanliness of the water and so on. There are many factors involved in having tropical fish. And Carl has been finding all this out.

Now if you were to go to his house in Schnecksville and observe all this happening, you would realize that Carl Ringer is completely sovereign over the lives of those fish. The life of each and every one of those little guppies is in his hands. He controls their environment, he takes care of their needs, he shapes every detail of their lives.

That’s a spiritual lesson that you would learn if you went to the house of Carl Ringer.

Now they didn’t have tropical fish in Jeremiah’s day, but God wanted to teach Jeremiah a similar lesson. So he sent him to the potter’s house. Turn with me to Jeremiah 18.

In Jeremiah 18, God takes a common, everyday thing—the making of pottery—and uses it to teach Jeremiah some profound spiritual lessons about life. Let’s read it…

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.

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. People used clay pots to store their food, water, and wine, and oil. They used pottery bowls for their eating dishes and for ornaments in their homes. They used pottery to store valuable treasures. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in Israel in 1947, were found stashed away in large clay pots. So there were all sorts of shapes and sizes of pottery.

And various areas of the world produced distinctive kinds of pottery. That’s because of the different types of clay that were available.

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 scraped 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. Wouldn’t it be neat if 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?

Anyway, Jeremiah watched the potter sitting in his shop, molding and shaping the clay on the upper wheel as his feet spun the lower one. And God taught him some important lessons about life.

1. The Potter exercises complete control over the clay.

Jeremiah 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 word “formed” there in Hebrew, is the word “yoser”, and it’s exactly the same word that is used back in Genesis 2:7, where it says “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground…” In fact, the Hebrew word for potter comes from the very same word “yoser”.

God is in complete control over our lives, and his relationship with us is the same as that of an artist with his medium, with his material.

You watch how an artist treats his material. Whether it is a painter with his paint; a sculptor with a block of marble; a musician with an instrument; or a potter with a lump of clay—a true artist treats his material with respect. And the greater the artist, the greater the respect.

Because an artist regards his material as a partner—as a collaborator in the creation process. He doesn’t force his material to do something it cannot do. He works with it, and he works within its capacities. Because he knows that working together—the artist with his skill, and the material with its unique properties—they can bring something beautiful, something functional into being.

This is how God works with us. He is an Artist—the greatest Artist of all. He is not working against us; He is not trying to force us to be something we cannot possibly be. He sees the potential in us—He knows what His skill can make of us—and this is what he sets out to do.

Do you believe God works with you that way? Because if you don’t, then you will never trust him. And you will never be willing to yield to His will.

2. The character of the clay determines what the Potter can make of it.

If a potter has a low grade of clay, with a lot of coarse sand in it, he will use it to make storage pots, or jars, or bowls for common, everyday use. But if he has some fine-textured clay, he will use it to make a beautiful vase or a decanter.

One of the great spiritual lessons of this passage is that we can choose what sort of clay we want to be. Look at verse 5ff…

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.

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.

God is saying here that the quality of the clay will determine what he will do. The doctrine of God’s sovereignty never eliminates the fact that we have responsibility. The choices that we make are significant, because those choices will affect God’s plan for us.

There’s an old legend from England that shows the importance of the choices we make. Back in the Middle Ages, 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 so that nobody would ever forget their crime.

When they had finished serving their time and were released from prison, one of the men left the area and was never heard from again. The second man, being greatly sorry for his crime, decided to dedicate 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 that he had once been a sheep stealer. They only spoke of all that he had done for them out of a heart of grace and love.

One day, when the man was old and feeble, two little boys were playing by the side of the road. Because of their age, they didn’t know anything about the past. Seeing the old man coming toward them in the distance, one of the boys asked the other, “Why do you suppose that old man has that letter S branded on his forehead?”

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

The mystery of all mysteries is that God, our Maker, is not a puppet master. He has given us the dignity of being able to choose how we will respond—and that choice will affect our destiny.

What kind of choices are you making? Are you making the kind of choices that will make you more pliable, more yielding, more moldable in the Master’s hands? Or are you becoming more resistant, more inflexible to His will? Your choices are significant.

3. The Potter’s purpose may call for the clay to be re-thrown.

Let me explain that last term. The process by which a potter puts his clay on the wheel is called “throwing” the clay. First he molds it in his hands, with a certain amount of water mixed in. Then he “throws” it or places it on the wheel.

Now suppose he gets partway into a project and he finds he is not satisfied with how it is shaping up. What does he do? He starts over. He takes the clay off the wheel, collapses whatever shape it had, molds it into a ball and works it in his hands, and then re-throws it. So the potter’s purpose may call for the clay to be rethrown.

Now look at verse 4 again.

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.

In other words, he rethrew it. Now if you were a lump of clay, how would you like to be rethrown? I mean, there you are spinning around, and you are in the process of becoming something, when all of a sudden, those hands that had been gently shaping you and molding you are now crushing you and collapsing you and pressing in on you. How would you feel?

Sometimes when a potter molds a lump of clay, and throws it on the wheel,. he even punches it to make a starting hollowed out area for the pot. How would you like to be punched, if you were the clay?

There are times in our lives—difficult times—when we feel as though God is crushing us. There is pain, there is heartache, there is sorrow. And there is a sense of loss and ending.

If you were to interview a piece of clay that was in the process of being taken off the wheel, the clay would probably cry out in despair “That’s it… it’s over. My time on the wheel is done and I haven’t become anything. The potter has rejected me and now he’s going to cast me aside.”

But of course, the clay would be wrong! The clay doesn’t realize that the potter is simply re-forming it and is going to start over. And that brings us to point #4:

4. The Potter never rejects resistant clay; He reshapes it.

Look at verses 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.’”

God wanted the nation Israel to be His ambassador to the other nations. But the Israelites resisted His purpose for them. They preferred to go their own way. They had their own plans. 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 kind of clay that God can use to mold us into the kind of 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. But does God reject us? No. Like a potter, saddled with uncooperative clay, He simply reshapes us into something much less beautiful or useful or productive than what He had 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.

Back in the 1960’s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, a well-to-do Shanghai businesswoman named Nien Cheng was thrown into prison by the Red Guard. Her crime? Being a Christian.

She was held in solitary confinement in a bare prison cell for 6 1/2 years. During that time, her daughter—a beautiful teenage girl—was murdered by the Red Guard. Nien Cheng didn’t even find out about it until she was released from prison.

Could Nien Cheng have become bitter? Could she have shaken her fist at God and said “It’s not fair. Why did you let this happen? Look how you’ve treated me”? She could have, but she chose not to.

Let me quote to you what she says from her book “Life and Death in Shanghai”.

I was in solitary confinement the whole time, and in a sense, that was good, because I was able to pray. If I had had a cellmate, then I wouldn’t have been able to pray like I did. And I depended on prayer to give me encouragement and sustain me and I just prayed always.

I aked the Lord to give me the intellect, the ability to cope with the situation. I never prayed “O Lord, get me out of this place!” I felt like it was up to me to fight the battle. But the Lord would be with me. Then I could do a better job than if I did it on my own. I could, through prayer, feel the Lord in the cell with me. I felt the love of God. I knew the Lord is merciful and full of love for me. So, I never felt abandoned.

This, from a woman who spent 6 1/2 years in total isolation in solitary confinement! As far as the world was concerned, she was dead. But God has his hand on her life. Nien Cheng’s choice was to yield to the Potter’s hands. And He made something exquisitely beautiful out of her life.

My question for you this morning is: Are you willing to stay on the potter’s wheel? Are you willing to trust God with your future, even when the way seems dark and uncertain? Are you willing to yield to Him that way?