THE POTTER AND THE CLAY
Excerpts from a study by Ray C. Stedman
View the entire copyrigthted article at:
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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}
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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 Jeremiah Chapter 17, we see that Jeremiah was taught two great truths:
(Jer 17:9a KJV)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:
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
(Jer 17:12 KJV)
A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.
He tells us, this 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:
(2 Chr 7:14 KJV)
If my people, which are called by my name,
shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways;
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin,
and will heal their land.
In Jeremiah 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 have studied before. The chapter opens with these words...
(Jer 18:1-4 KJV)
The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
{2} Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.
{3} Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.
{4} And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter:
so he made it again another vessel,
as seemed good to the potter to make it.
God uses many things to teach his people. Here we have 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:
(Rom 9:19-21 KJV)
Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth God yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
{20} Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?
Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
{21} Hath not the potter power over the clay,
of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
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:
(Jer 18:5-10 KJV)
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
{6} O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD.
Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.
{7} At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom,
to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it;
{8} If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil,
I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.
{9} And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it;
{10} If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice,
then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.
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...
(Lam 3:31-33 KJV)
For the Lord will not cast off for ever:
{32} But though he cause grief,
yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.
{33} For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.
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:
(Jer 18:11 KJV)
Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying,
Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame[Heb=to squeeze as a potter] evil against you,
and devise[Heb=weave] a device[H=plot] against you:
return ye now every one from his evil way,
and make your ways and your doings good.
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:
(Jer 18:12 KJV)
And they said, There is no hope:
but we will walk after our own devices,
and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.
And so God sighed with sorrow. He expressed it in the verses which follow:
(Jer 18:13-14 KJV)
Therefore thus saith the LORD;
Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things:
the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing.
{14} Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock of the field?
or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken?
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."
(Jer 18:15-17 KJV)
Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity,
and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths,
to walk in paths, in a way not cast[H=raised up;
{16} To make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing;
every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head.
{17} I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy;
I will show them the back, and not the face, in the day of their calamity.
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,
(2 Tim 2:19-21 KJV)
Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal,
The Lord knoweth them that are his.
And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
{20} But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver,
but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour.
{21} If a man therefore purge himself from these,
he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use,
and prepared unto every good work.
...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
(2 Timothy 2:21 KJV).
...meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
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.
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