The Most Hopeful "If" in the Bible

Church, open your Bible with me to Jeremiah 18. This is one of the richest passages in all of Scripture. God tells Jeremiah, “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” God doesn’t send Jeremiah to the temple or the palace. He sends him down to the workshop, to the shed, to watch an artist at the wheel. Sometimes the clearest sermons come not from a pulpit, but from a picture God paints right in front of our eyes.

Jeremiah sees the potter working clay. The vessel wobbles, it collapses, it is marred in the potter’s hand. But the potter doesn’t toss it in the trash. He presses it down, wets it again, and starts to remake it into another vessel, one that pleases him. That is judgment as mercy. That is what our God is like: not a trashman, but a craftsman.

Now understand—this was unfired clay. Once clay goes into the fire, it hardens. It becomes rigid. It cannot be reshaped. It can only be broken. But unfired clay is still pliable. It can be molded again and again. And that’s how God sees us, as people and as communities. We are not finished. We are not fired yet. We are still on the wheel.

Hear me, church, we are at a crossroads. Will we yield, or will we harden? There are signs of hardening clay all across the American church today. Nationalism is replacing the gospel. Consumerism is shaping worship more than discipleship. Division over race, gender, and politics is becoming more important than unity in Christ. Protecting institutions has become more important than protecting the vulnerable. And here in our county and our state, where churches still carry cultural weight, the temptation is to say, “It’s no use, we’re declining, so let’s cling to what we have.” Or, “It’s no use, culture is changing, so let’s fight or retreat.” But Jeremiah says: the Potter is still at the wheel. If you soften, if you repent, if you let Him reshape, there is hope.

And here comes the hinge of hope, the most hopeful “if” in the Bible. God says, “I may declare judgment, but if you turn, I will relent. I may declare blessing, but if you rebel, I will withhold.” This is good news for some of us who have been told all our lives, “It is what it is.” No, it isn’t. If we turn, God turns. If we soften, God reshapes. We are not chained to yesterday’s mistakes. God has written an “if” over your story. Somebody ought to shout “If!” There is always hope as long as the clay is soft.

But verse 12 is one of the saddest lines in Scripture: “It is no use! We will follow our own plans.” That’s Stubborn Clay Syndrome. And I think you know the symptoms. “Lord, here’s my plan, if You’d be so kind, just bless it.” “Jesus, I’ll drive. You can ride shotgun. I might even let You pick the radio station.” Or, “Pastor, I’m spiritual, I just don’t want God putting His hands on anything I don’t want touched.”

We laugh because it sounds like us, but it’s serious. Stubborn clay dries out. Stubborn clay cracks. Stubborn clay slides off the wheel. And if you fire stubborn clay in the kiln, it doesn’t get better; it gets brittle. When God applies pressure in your life—through a trial, through a Word you didn’t want to hear, through a brother or sister correcting you—how do you respond? Do you yield, or do you stiffen?

Stubborn clay can even be a whole church or a whole nation refusing to bend together under God’s hand. When a church says, “We will follow our own plan, our own way,” without listening to the Word, that’s stubborn clay. When a nation chooses its own stubborn heart over justice and mercy, that’s stubborn clay too.

Stubborn clay says, “It’s no use.” Soft clay says, “Here I am, Lord. Shape me.” Stubborn clay ends up shattered. Soft clay gets reshaped into something useful and beautiful.

That’s why Jeremiah 18 leads to Jeremiah 19. When the clay refuses long enough, the wheel stops, and Jeremiah takes a hardened jar into the city and shatters it in front of the people. Because once clay is hardened, it can’t be reshaped anymore. It can only be shattered. That’s not God’s first choice, that’s the last stop after a thousand mercies.

Now, Jeremiah preached this in a time of chaos. Kings like Jehoiakim and Zedekiah were selling out Judah. Nebuchadnezzar was coming down from Babylon. People were chasing idols. Orphans, widows, and the poor were neglected. They said, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace. And yes, child sacrifice, passing little ones through the fire, had crept into the land. We say, “Thank God we don’t do that.” But pause. In 2017, when I was serving in Burlington, North Carolina, down the road from the church, there was a bust. Child trafficking out of a hotel and a restaurant. That’s modern Molech.

Different altars, same evil. We may not throw babies into flames, but we sacrifice children when we turn a blind eye to trafficking, when we ignore addiction tearing families apart, when we let poverty and violence be normal, when we hand our kids to phones and screens that eat their attention and call it “just the way it is.” Jeremiah’s word is not ancient news. It is a mirror. The Potter is asking, “Will you stay soft? Will you turn? Will you let Me rework this community?”

Faithfulness in a wasteland is not flashy. It is clay-like, pliable, humble, willing to be reshaped. So how do we yield? It looks like confession, admitting where we’ve stiffened our necks. It looks like repentance, turning from despair and cynicism to trust. It looks like renewal, letting God reshape our mission for our neighborhoods, feeding, welcoming, reconciling.

Jeremiah shows us what happens when stubbornness wins. But the fuller story of Scripture shows us something even greater. It shows us a Potter who, even when His vessel was broken—took on clay Himself in Jesus Christ. He put Himself on the wheel of our history. He felt the pressure of our sin. He was shattered on the cross. And through that shattering, God made a vessel of resurrection. The church in America, in 2025, is not doomed to stubbornness. We can be molded into faithfulness.

So I put the question plain. Will we be stubborn clay, hard and brittle, saying, “It’s no use, we will follow our own plans”? Or will we be pliable clay, confessing, repenting, renewing, letting the Potter shape us again? The wheel is turning. The hands of God are on us. Faithfulness in a wasteland means refusing the lie of “It’s no use” and yielding to the Potter’s hands.

The invitation is simple: “Lord, I am the clay. You are the Potter. Center me. Shape me. Fire me with Your love. Use me for Your glory.”