Committed Under Construction

Committed Under Construction

Jeremiah 18:1-6 

 

Intro: Not finished.

 

Philippians 1:6, I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. (NLT)

 

In Jeremiah chapter 18 where we find ourselves in the middle of the ministry of Jeremiah the prophet. Jeremiah lived in a time and amongst a people who were continually made aware of God’s desires for them, but continually, the direction of God’s desires was not a direction they were willing to go in. Despite it all, the Lord still had desires for His people and would put prophets in place to declare and drive His people toward Him.

Throughout the book of Jeremiah, the Lord through Jeremiah was trying to get the people of Israel to turn from their own way and follow Him. In Jeremiah 6, we see the people implored to walk in the good ways, walk in it and find rest for your souls, but the people said, “we will not walk in it.”

In Jeremiah 7, the Lord said “walk in all the ways I command you, that it may be well with you”; but they did not incline their ear. Despite their unwillingness to hear, the Lord continually desired them to draw near, to heed His voice and understand what He would do in and through them if they would remain in His hands.

For 40 years, Jeremiah saw little change, for 40 years none would respond or turn as a direct result of his words spoken. The people were hardened they were broken, stiff necked and unwilling to change.

But the Lord knew that the people were a work in progress, so, he would find ways to present and press the point to them that He desired to do a good work in His people, but when that work, when His plans were presented to them, they continued in their unwillingness for God’s best. In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah is given a commission from the Lord to tell the people to turn from evil, turn from their own ways and turn to God, And the Lord gives this commission to Jeremiah by giving him a visual. He tells Jeremiah to draw near to the potter’s house, and to see that the Lord was still working, the question was, were they going to be willing?

 

Read: Jeremiah 18:1-6

 

In these verses, the Lord gave Jeremiah a picture and then a proclamation, Jeremiah would know that despite all resistance to God he was seeing, the Lord was still working.

             

1. See That the Potter Has a Purpose

 

• In the potter’s house there are three aspects of the scene that are important for us to recognize specifically: there is the potter, the wheel, and the clay.

 

• The potter represents the Lord, clay represents God’s people, and the wheel is the platform upon which the clay spins.

 

• The picture of God as the potter and His people as the clay is not something specific to Jeremiah 18 but is found in and throughout Scripture.

 

Isaiah 64:8, But now, O Lord, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You our potter; and all of us are the work of Your hand.

 

• The analogy of God as the potter and His people the clay is given by the apostle Paul in Romans 9 as well. There Paul points us to the rights that the potter has over the clay to form the clay in the way he desires.

 

• The picture of the potter and the clay gives insight into the way in which the Lord works in the lives of His people.

 

Jeremiah 18:1-2, The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.”

 

• Jeremiah, go down to the potter’s house! There was something the Lord wanted him to see there, and once he saw it, there was something the Lord wanted to say.

 

Jeremiah 18:3, Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something…

 

• Jeremiah looks upon the potter and the potter is purposed on making something.

 

• It is striking that as Jeremiah looks upon the potter, the potter’s attention is not drawn away or distracted from that which he is working on. He is very intent upon his work, there is a purpose to his work. He is making something out of that clay.

 

• He is not manipulating the clay for play, or amusement. Though Jeremiah did not know what exactly the potter was making or how his actions applied to the clay would allow him to make what he was intent on making, it was evident that the potter had a plan in mind, he was making something.

 

• Like the potter and the clay, the Lord in your life and mine, is doing the same. He has a plan, and a purpose, He is making something.

 

• Certainly, there are times or seasons where one might question what or how that is going to happen. But the picture we are pointed to here, as well as throughout Scripture, is that the Lord is doing a work in you and in me.

 

Ephesians 2:10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

 

• The word Paul uses “workmanship” is poiema (poy-yee-muh’) it is where we get our word, “poem.”

 

• He has a purpose for those who are in Christ, and His purpose is not just to make you a piece of pottery, but a work of poetry.

 

• The potter is mindful and intent on the clay. Just as the Lord is intent on you and me today.

 

Psalm 139:17-18, How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand…

 

Jeremiah 29:11, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (NKJV)

 

Illus. What a picture.

 

• The circumstances of Jeremiah 29 are when the Israelites were going to be held captive in Babylon for 70 years, but the Lord wanted them to know the thoughts He had for them. That the season they were in would mold them, and the Lord makes sure they are reminded of His thoughts, despite difficulty.

 

Psalm 139:13-16, For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

 

• He knows the thoughts He thinks, the plans and purpose He has…and He has and is intent upon that which He is working and writing. Day by day, situation by situation, line by line, turn by turn.

 

Jeremiah 18:3, …there he was, making something on the wheel.

 

• The clay begins formless, common, and without much value, however, as the hands of the master potter take the clay, removes it from the ground and places it upon the wheel whereby a work can begin, you see that that which once was common, walked over, and walked upon, is now placed upon the place where the One who can make something out of it, can begin to work on it.

 

• The wheel is the instrument that the potter uses to do his work. As the potter begins to spin the clay on the wheel, there is a pace at which he applies his adjustments and will upon the clay. As the hands of the potter are applied to the clay, it responds. It moves according to plans of the potter’s hands.

 

• The clay, so common and easily found in the ground, was about to be made into more than it ever would or could be if it had been left alone.

 

Illus. Not certain.

 

Psalm 40:1-2, I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.  He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.

 

• David says the Lord brought him out of the miry clay. A place with mud, filth, surrounded with darkness. David was taken out of the horrible pit, the miry clay, coming out he would have been barely recognizable.

 

• But the Lord brought him up and out, He set his feet upon a rock and began to establish his steps.

 

• The potter’s wheel had a circular piece of stone on the top where the clay would lay. Wherever it was picked up or brought from mattered no more. The clay, after being brought into the potter’s house, would be placed on the very place where the master potter could have his way with the clay.

 

• Like David, we too have been brought up. Ephesians 2:6, reads “raised up in Christ and seated in Him in the heavenly places.”

 

• We, like clay, are brought up and placed upon the rock and established our steps with intention and attention to us.

 

• So too the Potter, according to His kind intention, and perfect plan, will mold the clay, he is making something, it becomes so much more in His hands.

             

1. Settle Into His Hands

 

• In verse 3 we see a something happen to the clay while the potter is working on it…

 

Jeremiah 18:3-4, But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so, he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.

 

• As Jeremiah looks at the potter with the clay, something becomes clear, the clay had become spoiled.

 

• The word here is spoiled, other translations say “marred,” it is a word in Hebrew that means ruined, corrupted, spoiled, or marred.

 

• Something changed, something got in the way of that which the potter was intending to make.

 

• Jeremiah is watching the potter work and the clay is marred, corrupted, it’s spoiled.

 

• Something happened to it. We don’t know what exactly.

 

• It became uncooperative. The clay wasn’t responding to the potter’s will, it wouldn’t take to his touch, it had become corrupted and was not forming according to his intent.

 

• 4, so he remade it into another vessel as it pleased the potter to make.

 

• The vessel stop responding, so it needed to be remade, and with attention, and intention, the potter worked that clay according to his will and into a vessel that pleased the potter to make.

 

• The clay was suddenly marred, twisted; it failed to express the potter’s thought… He saw that the potter did not abandon it.” (G. Campbell Morgan)

 

Illus. Spoiled.

 

Isaiah 45:9, “What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, ‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’ Does the pot exclaim, ‘How clumsy can you be?’ (NLT)

 

 

• While we are likened to clay, but there is one key difference between us and the clay…We are clay with something to say.

 

• As the wheel spins we wonder why so fast, or why so slow. We have people to see, places to go.

 

• Many know that He is the Potter and we are the clay, yet still, as He begins to apply pressure to the parts and placed in our lives where He desires change, they push back.

 

• The reality we must recognize here however, is that the process is only made possible as the clay is pushed on in this way or that way, formed into something it could not be formed into any other way. The pressure is coming from the hands of the potter.

 

• Too often, people just want to be left alone…But God loves you too much to do that!

 

• He did not stop, he did not throw it out in the midst of doubt, he was determined despite the direction the clay was going in, to keep on working.

 

• The words then spoken by the Lord to Jeremiah, were the words he would speak to a people who had become “marred,” but needed to be remade.

 

• And God is saying to Israel, though you have resisted, I am going to make you into something that is good to me and pleasing to me.

 

Illus. It was a picture.

 

Romans 12:2, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

 

Illus. We’ll see.

             

III.       Select the Way of Clay with the Potter

 

• In verse six comes the question. After Jeremiah has seen the scene, the potter working, and reworking into something pleasing…

 

Jeremiah 18:6, “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

 

• Can I not deal with you as the potter does? Can I not form you? Lead you? Guide you? Mold you and make you as the potter with the clay?

 

Illus. Which way?

 

Illus. Picking up the pieces.

 

1 Corinthians 6:20, You were bought with a price.

 

 

Jeremiah 18:1-6