The Potter

Introduction:

A few weeks ago, we went to a art exhibit here in Amarillo that featured many local artists… Now, Stephanie is the one who understands art in our family… When I look at a painting, I never understand what the artists is going for. Whenever I see abstract art, I always think that I can do something better… I don’t know much about art… However, when we were there, there was one piece of art that really stood out to me… And you know it’s a big deal, when art stands out to me…

But it was this picture of Jesus, molding a child… One thing special about this picture is that it was drawn the same month that my daughter was born… And so for me, it is a great reminder that my daughter was knit together in Stephanie’s womb by the Creator of the Universe… It’s a reminder that she was fearfully and wonderfully made… And it’s a reminder that she will always be in the hands of God, who describes Himself as a potter… But what I also love about this picture is that Jesus is not stoic in this picture… But there is a smile on His face, and delight in forming this child…

Over and over again, God uses the analogy of Him as the Potter and us as the clay… And most of the time, its incredibly encouraging Scripture… But in our passage this morning, not only is the imagery of God as the potter comforting, but it is also scary… Because in the metaphor this morning, God is shaping our future depending on our faithfulness… We have choice in the matter! But before we talk about that, will you pray with me?

Prayer:

Father in Heaven may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight. May your word, anointed by your spirit and spoken by your servant breathe life into us today.

Setting Up the Text:

Open up your Bibles with me to the book of Jeremiah 18:1-12 today. We are in the middle of a series where we are looking at the Major Prophets in the Old Testament. If you are new with us today, all of our sermons for the year come from our Bible Reading plan called Abide, where we are reading almost the entire Bible together this year… Last week we talked about Jeremiah the person, but this morning I want us to begin by looking at the roles of prophets in the Old Testament.

They weren't fortune tellers whose primary job was predicting the future. The prophets were covenant messengers. God had entered into a relationship with His people, promising to bless them if they remained faithful, and warning them of the consequences if they turned away. As we said last week, the people of Judah had wandered far from the Lord in Jeremiah. Idolatry had become commonplace. Justice had been abandoned. Their hearts had grown hard, even while they continued to claim they belonged to God. The greatest danger wasn't the Babylonian army waiting on the horizon. The greatest danger was that God's own people no longer recognized how far they had drifted from Him.

That is why God raised up prophets like Jeremiah. Their message was not meant to condemn for condemnation's sake, but to call people back to the God who loved them. The prophets exposed sin because repentance was still possible. Every prophet has a three-fold message: Remember God’s faithfulness in the past, in the present you are not following God, and in the future if you do not repent, this horrible thing will happen to you… And today in our passage, we get a metaphor… We get an example from God Himself, in the image of a potter… Let’s go to our text and start reading:

Scripture 1: Jeremiah 18:1-6

Exposition:

The Lord tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter's house. Jeremiah leaves the temple mount and walks down into the lower part of Jerusalem where a local potter is hard at work. His hands are covered in wet clay. Every movement of the potter is deliberate and purposeful. Before Jeremiah ever hears God's message, he first watches God's illustration unfold before his eyes.

And, something goes wrong. The pot the potter is shaping becomes marred, or ruined in his hands. Whatever the reason, the pot is no longer what the potter intended. But the does not throw the clay away. He doesn't toss it onto the scrap pile and begin with a fresh lump. Instead, he gathers that very same clay into his hands and begins shaping it again into another pot. The clay's imperfection is not the end of its story because it never leaves the hands of the one who is shaping it. The same hands that recognized the defect are the very hands that patiently begin the work of remaking it.

Then God reveals the meaning behind the picture. "Can I not do this with you, Israel?" This shows the heart and intention of The Potter. The Hebrew word for "potter" carries the idea of one who shapes or forms, echoing the opening pages of Genesis when God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. The God who first shaped humanity is still the God who shapes His people. Now other Old Testament passages also describe God as the Potter, but Jeremiah emphasizes the reshaping of the clay. This is imagery of both God's sovereignty and His grace. He has every right, as Creator, to do as He pleases with the clay. Yet His authority is not cold or cruel. His first instinct is not to throw the clay away but to patiently reshape it. This is God's heart toward His covenant people. And it is His heart toward us. But it is God’s preropagtive. It is His work. The first point we see is this:

Point 1: The Potter’s Prerogative: The LORD sovereignly crafts the future of His people.

Application:

There's a famous story about Michelangelo after he completed his statue of David. People asked him how he could create something so breathtaking from a plain block of marble. His answer was: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." Whether those were his exact words or not, they capture the heart of a sculptor. The artist sees what no one else can see. Every strike has purpose. Every cut is intentional. Every piece that falls away makes room for something more beautiful.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works." The word translated workmanship could also be understood as God's masterpiece. What a wonderful image. God isn't simply saving us from sin; He is shaping us into something beautiful for His glory. And like the potter in Jeremiah 18, the Master Artist doesn't abandon His work when He encounters imperfections. He continues His work of shaping, refining, and remaking until we become the people He intends us to be. There are seasons when His work feels uncomfortable… when pieces of pride, selfishness, or misplaced priorities are chipped away. But the Master never wastes a single strike. He sees the finished masterpiece long before we do. But we do see that we have some say in the matter, let’s go back to our passage and read verses 7-10

Scripture 2: Jeremiah 18:7-10

Exposition:

After showing Jeremiah the potter's workshop, God shifts to its application. Notice He doesn’t just talk about Judah, but about any nation or kingdom. We see words of judgment, God plucking out the wicked… But then comes one of the most hopeful words in the passage: "if." "If that nation turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended." God is revealing His character. His announcements of judgment are not meant to trap people, they are meant to awaken people. When God warns, He is making room for mercy. His desire is not simply to pronounce judgment but to lead people away from the path that leads to judgment.

Notice that the opposite is also true. God says that if He promises to build up and plant a nation, but they later turn away in disobedience, then He will withhold the His blessing. In other words, God's dealings with His people are relational, not mechanical. The Lord is not fickle or unpredictable. He does not change His mind on a whim. Instead, He responds to the moral and spiritual condition of His people. When people continue in rebellion, He responds with justice. When people humble themselves, confess their sin, and turn back to Him, He responds with mercy. We see this all throughout Scripture. In Jonah, Nineveh repented, and God relents. God's heart has always been the same. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but delights when sinners repent.

This means the potter's authority does not erase human responsibility; it establishes it. The Potter is in complete control over the clay, yet the clay is not a passive object… It reflects a people capable of responding to God's voice. His warning is itself an act of grace. Every announcement of judgment carries within it an opportunity to repent. This leads to our second point:

Point 2: The Potter’s Partnership: He invites His people to shape their destiny through repentance.

Application:

Now many many years ago, I was a lifeguard at a summer camp… And I’ll tell you, lifeguard training was very physically demanding… But one thing that always struck me as odd, was that in lifeguard training, you learn some self-defense strategies… And at first, you don’t really understand why a lifeguard needs self-defense, until you rescue someone who is drowning and panicking in the water… Because when someone is drowning, they unintentionally fight you trying to save them… As they reach for you, grab onto you, and try to find safety, many times they actually pull the lifeguard under the water, and its very dangerous… And so as a lifeguard, you have every right to punch and fight back if someone is fighting you in the water… And this is for your safety, and for the drowning victim’s safety.

The confusion is that the drowning person believes they are helping themselves when, in reality, they are making rescue impossible. Every frantic swing, and every attempt to stay in control only pushes the rescuer away. The very one who has come to save them becomes the one they resist. Rescue begins the moment the victim stops fighting and entrusts themselves to stronger hands. Rescue is found when the person surrenders and lets the lifeguard do their work.

Isn't that a picture of what God is saying through Jeremiah? God announces judgment, but not because He enjoys destruction. He announces it because He wishes to rescue His people before it is too late. His warning is like the lifeguard swimming toward a drowning sinner. His call to "turn from your evil ways" is an invitation to stop fighting His hands. Repentance is surrendering to the One who alone can save us. As long as Judah insists on their own plans, they remain in danger. But the moment they turn, they discover that the Potter…the Savior… has been reaching toward them all along. God will not forcibly save you… We must first surrender and let Him do His work…

Scripture 3: Jeremiah 18:11-12

Exposition:

Here is one of the saddest moments in the entire chapter. God tells Jeremiah, that a disaster is coming. Notice the urgency of God's words. This is not a possibility that might happen years from now. God says He is actively preparing judgment because Judah has continually rejected Him. But even here, judgment is not God's final word. Immediately after announcing disaster, He says, repent and turn… Once again, the warning itself is an act of mercy. God reveals what is coming so they can repent before it’s too late. The judgment is intended to drive them to repentance.

But then comes Judah's response. They say no… They continue in their rebellion, and they will remain with stubborn hearts… There is no wrestling. No conviction. No brokenness. No prayer for mercy. They simply dismiss God's invitation altogether. Earlier in Jeremiah they say the same thing. They love their foreign gods and would continue chasing after them. They had become so accustomed to rebellion that repentance no longer sounded like hope… it sounded pointless. The tragedy is not that God refused to forgive them. The tragedy is that they refused to be forgiven.

This is the turning point of the chapter. Everything God has said in verses 7 through 10 about relenting from judgment depended on one thing: repentance. But when God's people refuse to turn, the conditional warning becomes a harsh reality. There comes a point when persistent rejection hardens the heart too far. The Potter's hands never cease being gracious, but the clay can become so resistant that it refuses to be reshaped. We see this in chapter 19, where the potter shatters the pot… That is the great danger for Judah, and it is the warning for us today. The greatest danger is not that God stops calling, it’s that we become so stubborn too see our need for Him. This leads to our third point:

Point 3: The People’s Peril: A stubborn heart chooses a path that rejects the Potter’s hands.

Application:

C. S. Lewis imagines this very struggle in his little allegorical book called The Great Divorce. The book is about people who are given the opportunity to leave a bleak existence and enter the joy of heaven. As each person approaches heaven, they are invited to let go of the very thing that has enslaved them. One man must release his pride. Another his greed. Another his bitterness. Another his desire to control others. They are all offered something far greater than what they possess. But many refuse the invitation.

One scene is especially memorable. A man carries a small red lizard on his shoulder that constantly whispers lustful thoughts into his ear. An angel offers to kill the lizard, promising that this will help the man greatly. But he hesitates. He bargains. He delays. Deep down, he cannot imagine life without the thing that is destroying him. Finally, when he surrenders and allows the angel to kill the lizard, something astonishing happens. The lizard is transformed into a stallion, and the man himself becomes stronger, freer, and more alive than ever before. Lewis's point is that God never asks us to surrender sin because He wants less for us. He asks us to surrender it because He intends something infinitely better.

That is where Judah finds itself in Jeremiah 18. God is not asking His people to abandon life; He is asking them to abandon the very things that are leading them to death. Yet they respond with no. They choose the familiar comfort of rebellion over the gracious hands of the Potter. Isn't that still our temptation today? We convince ourselves that following Christ will cost us too much, when in reality our stubbornness costs us far more. God doesn’t stop calling us to salvation. We just become so attached to our rebellion that we don’t want to be saved.

Take Home:

Now, throughout our passage this morning, we've stood in the potter's workshop. We've seen the clay become marred. We've watched the potter patiently reshape it. We've heard God's gracious invitation to repent. But now the question is no longer about Judah…it is about us. What will we do in the Potter's hands? Will we trust the One who formed us, even when His shaping is uncomfortable? Will we surrender the places where sin has hardened our hearts? Or will we insist on our own plans, convincing ourselves that our way is better than His? These questions point us to our Take Home this morning, which is this:

Take Home: The safest and scariest place is in the Potter's hands.

It is the safest place because no one loves you more than the God who created you, and no one is more capable of taking what sin has ruined and making it beautiful again. But it is also the scariest place because surrender means releasing our illusion of control. It means allowing God to remove what doesn't belong, reshape what has become distorted, and lead us where we would not have chosen to go ourselves. But church… there is no better place to be. The hands that formed Adam from the dust, the hands that patiently worked the clay in Jeremiah's vision, the hands that formed us in our mother’s womb, are the same hands that were stretched out on a cross for our salvation. So today, don't harden your heart. Don't cling to your own plans. Remember that your life is in the Potter's hands.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Bow with me.