The Potter and the Clay

Thank you very much.

When again, to all of you. Yes, there have been better mornings listed.

Good to see all of you here. This isn't totally impromptu. I'd actually plan to give this in one of the other congregations several weeks ago, and I went through and reviewed it a bit then, but I wasn't planning to give it today, obviously. So it's been several weeks since I've last looked at this, and other than during the last two hymns here. So if I am a little bit distracted, that's... if I sound a little bit distracted, that's because I obviously am. So, but I'll have some nice pictures for you to look at so you don't have to focus on the speaker that much today. So some of you may be wondering why and how I got interested in archaeology.

By way of introduction to this subject, and that's where I grew up in North Alabama, is a child. This was an area that was inhabited by Indians for many, many centuries before that. And when I was a child, we had a garden outside our house, and I used to pick up arrowheads there in that garden. And my family started getting into rock hounding, hunting for rocks.

Maybe we'll just have a sing-along, the whole service today.

That might work out better, all things considered.

Okay, get back here again.

That's weird. I've never had that slide off here like that. So, as I was saying, you know, as a child, one of our family hobbies, as it developed, was hunting arrowheads and Indian artifacts. There were a great deal of those to be found in northern Alabama, where I grew up.

That got me interested in pottery. We found a number of different types of pottery within 15 or 20 mile radius of where we grew up. I used to find a lot of fragments of it.

That really got me interested in archaeology and how to date different items and that sort of thing.

Thank you, Sam. So, pottery has always been something that is fascinated not only me, but also historians and archaeologists for centuries. Making pottery is one of mankind's oldest crafts.

You can go to virtually any ancient site in the Middle East or in Israel. If you know what you're looking for, the ground will literally be covered with different pottery fragments. You can just walk on these ancient pieces of pottery anywhere from 1,000 years old to 3,000-4,000 years old at a lot of these sites. These fragments are so common. The pottery styles, like we see in this example here, the styles are so distinctive that archaeologists use them to date and to identify ancient civilizations and cultures. Again, you go to museums and this is the type of thing you'll see. All these different types of jugs and bowls and cups and so on with very distinctive styles. This is how archaeologists date a lot of the levels and the sites that they excavate here. It's only natural that because of this that we would find references to pottery and making pottery in the Bible. In fact, there are about a hundred different references in the scriptures to clay and to potters and to pottery, the pottery-making process, and clay vessels, and things like bowls and lamps, and so on. That shouldn't surprise us because it was very common during the biblical period. People were used to seeing and using things like this every day. It was a part of their everyday lives, just as we today use our dishes and cups and bowls in everyday life.

So it shouldn't surprise us then when God uses everyday examples like this to teach us some lessons. And God does use this with pottery and clay and the potter who makes and uses these items.

And several times in the Bible, God uses the analogy of the potter and clay to help us understand how he works with us in our individual lives. Let's take a look at Isaiah 64 and verse 8. And here God inspired the prophet Isaiah to write, But now, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you our potter, and all we are the work of your hand. So what Isaiah is saying here is that God is shaping and molding us in His hands just as a potter takes a lump of clay and shapes and molds it in His hands into something that He can use for a useful vessel for His purpose. And people of Isaiah's day would have certainly understood this. They all knew who the neighborhood potter was down the street because that's where the person they went to, to get their bowls, their dishes, their jars, their jugs, that sort of thing. So they certainly understood what God meant in telling this to Isaiah. The Apostle Paul uses the same analogy over in Romans 9 verses 20 and 21. And he says here, But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed, say to him who formed it, Why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? So Paul is using this exact same analogy of the potter in the clay. And pointing out that just as a potter works with the clay to make a vessel for his use, that God also works in the lives of the individuals whom he calls for his purpose. And he makes a point here that the potter is the one who ultimately decides what the vessel is going to be and the use of it. It's not the lump of clay that decides that, it's the potter, the one who makes and shapes and forms it here. And consider also in this context what God tells us about what we are as human beings back in Genesis 2 and verse 7.

What does he say? What are we, ultimately? Genesis 2.7 tells us that the Lord God formed man out of what? Out of the dust of the ground, out of the dirt, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

So what are we? We're dirt clods that God has shaped out of the dust of the earth, as he did with Adam. And when we die, you know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we return back to the dust, to the dirt, the basic elements from which our bodies are made.

So in a very real sense, we are dirt. We are essentially lumps of clay that God is working with. Over in Job 33 and verse 6, we see this theme mentioned again here. This is from Elihu, one of the friends of Job, speaking to him here. He also understood where we came from and what we are. He said, I also have been formed out of clay. So we are ultimately just living, breathing piles of dirt. There, that's what we're made of and that's what we will return to when we die.

God uses this analogy of the potter and the clay a third time in the Bible. We've seen it from Isaiah, we've seen it from Paul. Let's take a look at another one here. First, I'd like to focus on this particular passage where God talks about the process of making a clay vessel like these to teach us a lesson. If you haven't guessed by now, the subject of this sermon is the potter and the clay. The potter and the clay about how God works with us in our lives as a potter does with his clay. What are we supposed to learn from this analogy that God uses many times in the Bible?

Let's look at the most thorough place where God goes into this in more detail.

That's in Jeremiah 18 verses 1 through 6. Notice here Jeremiah says, this is the word which came to Jeremiah from the eternal saying, arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was making something at the wheel. How many of you have actually seen a potter at work on a potter's wheel?

A few of you. Quite a few. That's good. You'll be able to identify and understand what I'm talking about better here. Why did God tell Jeremiah to go there so he could teach Jeremiah this lesson rather than just telling Jeremiah the lesson? God could have done that, saved Jeremiah the trip of going down to the potter's house. But the obvious answer is, we'll see, is that the lesson becomes a lot more clear when we can see firsthand exactly what God is talking about.

So that's what we'll talk about now. This wheel that God told Jeremiah to look at that the potter is making something on. What's that describing? Here we see an illustration of that. You see the potter shaping this vessel, and he's got this wheel about a foot, foot and a half in diameter, and several inches thick. This was a disk, usually made out of stone, possibly wood, that rotated. The potter would place the lump of clay on this and rotate the disk. As it rotated, he could shape the vessel that he's making there much more easily. It was a much faster method of production. There were several basic designs for potter's wheels. The two most common of which we see here in this particular photograph here. Both of them consisted of a disk that turned on which the lump of clay would be placed. So this is what is called the potter's wheel.

But we see here that one of them, the man who's sitting down there, rotates it by hand. And the other one, the man on the right, it's hard to see because it's behind his leg. But you can see his foot is on a large wooden disk down there. And then there's a post that goes up, and then the wheel that is on top of the table is attached to that post. So as he rotates the big disk with his foot, it causes a small disk up there to rotate as well. So that's what's going on. And those are the two basic types that were used to shape pottery back in the ancient world.

So continuing with the story there in Jeremiah, verse 4 of chapter 18, And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. So it was messed up. He made a mistake or the clay was defective, something like that. So it was marred in the hand of the potter. So he made it again into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to make. So what this is saying is when the vessel was flawed, it wasn't going to be salvageable, he basically reshapes the lumps and starts all over again, shaping this soft clay into a new vessel.

And as Jeremiah is watching the potter go through this process and see him reshape that vessel, then God starts revealing the point of the story to Jeremiah.

And continuing in verse 5, Then the word of the Eternal came to me, saying, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter? says the Eternal. Look, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand. O house of Israel. So God is here using this illustration to talk about about nations. To point out to Jeremiah what he is going to do with Jerusalem and Judah and why he is going to do this. But as we saw earlier back in Isaiah and in the Book of Romans, the analogy is just as applicable, if not even more so, to what God is doing in our personal and individual lives as well as the sons and daughters that he has called us to be.

So each of these men, Paul and Isaiah and now Jeremiah, understood these parallels that we see here illustrated in Scripture between this process of a potter making a vessel out of clay with the process of God working with us as people, the people that he is called.

And each of these men had, again potters are very familiar in that culture, in that society, so each of these men no doubt knew who the neighborhood potter was. Again, it was somebody you would go and visit several times a year to purchase your bowls and jars from there. So they all knew that. They had all seen these men at work and were familiar with the process. Now, in contrast, not many of us have seen how a potter works, so we're kind of in the dark as to what is involved.

And it's much more, it's a much more detailed process and just what we've looked at here in terms of shaping the clay. There's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes that we're not familiar with. So what else is involved in that process and what does that teach us? Again, about how God is working with each of us. What kind of lessons does God want us to learn from this analogy of the potter and the clay that He uses at three different times here in Scripture?

So what should we learn from this process? Well, making pottery sounds very simple, but it's not. It's a little more involved than just going out and finding some clay and working with it to make a vessel out of. We have a lot of clay here along the front range of Colorado. And you'll see some illustrations of that a little bit later here. But it's much more than just going out and getting that dirt or that clay and shaping it into a vessel.

It's much more involved. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience because of what the potter has to go through, the different steps. It was a very specialized craft and that's why potters were valued members of society in that day. We see that implied in Jeremiah there. Everybody knew who the village potter was and where to find him there. As a matter of fact, you may have known people with the last name Potter. Where does that come from? Well, it comes from this. It's somebody who made pottery. A pottery maker.

Same way that Smith, a very common last name, comes from somebody who is a blacksmith or a metalsmith. Something like that. A lot of our last names come from that. Carpenter is another one. They came from the trades that people used. Potter was one of these specialized trades. Generally, a potter went through several steps to make a useful vessel out of clay. These steps were, in order, we'll go through these. First of all, he had to select the clay to use.

He had to select the clay to use. Second, he had to remove the impurities from the clay. He had to remove the impurities from the clay. Third, he had to let the clay age and weather until it was ready to be worked. He had to let the clay age and weather until it was ready to be worked. Again, it's a lot more than just going out and picking up the clay and starting to work with it.

A lot of other steps go into it before that. Fourth step, he has to knead and pummel the clay. Knead, not you knead it, but you knead it, you work it, you massage it, and pummel the clay. You literally beat the clay to make it pliable. Fifth step is to form the clay into a vessel. To form the clay into a vessel. And sixth, then once the vessel is made, then it has to be fired to set and harden the clay. Because if you don't, eventually the vessel will just simply break down.

It will not be hard and sturdy. The firing changes the composition of the vessel. And that's why you can go to sites in the Middle East, like I mentioned, and pick up pottery pieces that are as hard as rock, even though they may be 3-4,000 years old.

That firing process hardens it and sets it in that way. So now let's go back through these steps and take a look at them.

And what they teach us about how God works with us as a potter works with clay.

So let's start with the first step here, again, to select the clay to use.

To select the clay to use. A potter first has to pick out the right material. And this is some of the clay. This is out from my backyard here, what our native soil looks like here in Colorado. It's obviously not that fertile. It's pretty rough stuff. A lot of it is just clay there. But mixed in with it are twigs and gravel and pebbles and things like that. So the potter can't use just any kind of dirt. It needs to have a specific type of composition there. You need a suitable batch of clay there to work with. Something that can make it through all of these different steps.

To produce a finished vessel that is worthwhile. Clay was used as the material for making pottery because of its binding qualities. The way it sticks together. The way it holds together.

If you've ever walked out after a rain in some of our Colorado clay soil, what happens to your shoes? Well, clay sticks to your shoes. And before long you feel like you're walking in snowshoes because you've got so much clay. They're stuck to your boots or your shoes or whatever. Clay is a very sticky material. And that same stickiness that makes it stick to your shoes or your boots also makes it good for binding together during this process of making pottery, of shaping and firing, and so on. So again, here in Colorado we have a lot of that clay soil. But that doesn't mean that it's suitable. Here you still have to pick out and start with the right material. Does God start with the right material? With us? Well, we would hope so.

John 6 and verse 44 are familiar passages to us here. Jesus Christ says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. So it is God who selects those whom he will call and work with. And he has to start with suitable, raw material. So he starts working with us because he considers us suitable, raw material.

We're acceptable to him. He's the one who chose us. So yes, we are the right, raw material. But it's up to us to stay that way, to make sure that we can be material that he can work with.

There. And just as a potter starts by choosing material that he knows that he can work with, and that he knows will make it through the process, God also chose his material that he knows can make it through the entire process. And that's us. And there's a passage that, another familiar passage that tells us that over in Philippians 1, verse 6. Paul says here, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. So God picked us out to work with, but he did that knowing that we can make it, that he can work with us through this process, that we can make it, so long as we are humbly submitted to him and allowing him to work with us through this process here. To sum up, God doesn't deliberately choose bad material to work with. Yes, he chooses raw material to work with, but not bad material. He chooses material that he knows will make it through that process there. And that doesn't mean we're perfect material by any means, but God chooses us now because he knows we are material he can work with, that he can shape and form and use into something for his purpose. And God, as we see here in Philippians 1 and verse 6, isn't going to give up on that process of working with us. We are the only ones who can stop that process.

God isn't going to. We have his Word right here. God chose us now out of the billions of people, seven, seven and a half billion people on the earth, because he knows that we can make it, and that he can work with us and shape us into something for his purpose. So that is encouraging to know. It's very encouraging to know that God personally chose us and knows that we can make it.

So we can and should be greatly encouraged by that fact. So what about the next step? We've talked about selecting the right clay and that God has selecting us. So what's the next step? Well, the next step is to remove the impurities from the clay, to remove the impurities from the clay. And no clay is going to be pure when you first dig it up out of the ground. It will have a lot of dirt mixed in with it. It will have pebbles, rocks, things like that. This is just from right out behind my fence here. And that's what the native soil here in Colorado looks like.

Mixed in with a lot of impurities, a lot of inferior material mixed in.

And just as the potter's clay has these rocks and pebbles and leaves and twigs and grass and things like that mixed into it, we also have a lot of impurities that are mixed into our lives that God has to remove in the process of shaping and forming us into the kind of people that He wants us to be.

Why does it have to be removed? Well, because if it doesn't, it's going to produce weak spots in the vessel, places where the vessel will crack or break. Not might, but will crack or break sometime in the future due to those weaknesses here. So God has to remove basically two kinds of impurities before He can really work with us or in the process of working with us. And the first kind is simply our past sins. Our past sinful lifestyle has to clean us up from that.

Interestingly, one of the best ways to remove impurities from clay is simply to wash it.

Simply to wash it. Wash dirt? Well, yeah, that's what you have to do. You have to wash dirt.

By putting clay in water, what does it do? Well, all the light material, the leaves, the twigs, the grass, things like that will float to the top and they can be removed rather easily that way.

So that floats away all of these weak things that otherwise would form into weak spots in the clay. Does God wash us? Well, obviously He does. And He tells us. So Revelation 1 and verse 5, Jesus Christ is breaking into a thought again. Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth, who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood. So God has chosen us and God does wash us.

We have indeed been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ our Savior.

And this has washed away our sins just as a potter washes the clay that He's going to work with, that He's going to use there. But there's another kind of impurity that also is inherent within us in addition to our past sins. And that is our ingrained character flaws, our ingrained weaknesses.

That exist within us, our human nature, if you will, as we've termed it in the past, our human nature. What is that? It's our innate hostility to God and His ways as well as our human weaknesses, our lack of willpower, our lack of desire to truly follow God and obey Him, our lack of being able to change, our weakness in giving in to sin, our lethargy, all the other weaknesses that we have that prevent us from growing and being used more by God, any number of things there. And these are and can be fatal flaws if we don't remove those out of our lives. Because in the end they're going to prove fatal. As we'll talk about a little bit later in the process of making pottery vessels here. Again, these flaws, if they are not corrected in this process, they will cause the vessel to break eventually and will ruin it, destroy it, kill it, in other words, there. And that's where God's Spirit has to come into our lives. That's the role of God's Spirit. We know that water is used in the Bible as a symbol of God's Spirit.

It's one of the symbols there. And again, as a good potter, we'll use water to help wash away the impurities from the clay. God uses His Spirit to help us wash away our sins and also to clean up those flaws, those impurities that exist within us. Those ingrained impurities that again will prove fatal in the long run if we do not remove them. Our sins and our character flaws are like that dirt and that debris that's mixed in there. You go out and dig in the dirt, yeah, it's just intermixed in there. The gravel, the twigs, the leaves, the grass, all of that sort of thing, that debris there. And they leave flaws that will prevent us from being useful to God if they're not removed. So they keep us from allowing Him to work with us, to make us into finished and useful vessels. So it's very important that these flaws be removed there.

In Matthew 5 and verse 48, another familiar scripture here, Jesus tells us here what God is intending to do with us. And He says here, therefore you shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect. You shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect. And that's a pretty tall order. But to be perfect, what has to happen? Well, we have to be cleaned up. We have to have those impurities removed out of our lives. And without that happening, what are we? We're just a useless pile of dirt.

A useless pile of dirt if we don't get rid of those impurities. So there are a lot of analogies here that we can learn from. So what about the next step here? Okay, we've talked about selecting the right clay to use. We've talked about removing the impurities. What happens next?

Well, the clay has to age and weather until it is ready to be worked. Basically, that means that the clay has to be broken down. It has to be broken down. Clay dug up out of the ground fresh, just isn't usable. As we just talked about, it has to have the dirt, the debris, the rocks, all of that removed. But more than that, there's a problem with the structure of the clay itself. We talked a little bit about the structure of clay. But sometimes clay is lumpy and hard when it dries out, as we see in this photo here. It's granular. It's very hard. It looks and feels almost like rocks just by itself there. It's in these chunks about the size of marbles or something like that. Those hard lumps have to be broken down. Otherwise, what are they like? Well, they're just like a rock or a pebble in the clay. They create weaknesses in the structure of the clay.

So just as a potter cannot work with clay that hasn't been broken down, God really can't use and work with us properly or to the full effect unless we are weathered or broken down. Why is that? Well, because we simply have too many hard spots. We have too many rough spots in our lives like this granular clay here that we're looking at here. And those also, if they're not broken down, will create these flaws that will ultimately destroy the vessel.

The contrast would be something like plowing a field. If you're going to plant a crop, you don't just go out and sow your seed out on top of the ground. No, the birds are going to come along and they're going to take it away. The sun's going to scorch it. We remember some of that from the parables of Jesus Christ. You don't just do it that way. You have to first go through and do what? You have to prepare your field. You have to go through and you have to break up the dirt.

You have to break it up and then you have to go through and plow it, put the furrows in, and that's where you put your seed at that point. Otherwise, what are you doing? You're just wasting your time. You're just wasting your time because it's not going to produce anything.

And clay is the same way. It's simply too hard to work with when it's first dug up out of the ground. It has to be broken up and softened through weathering so that the potter can work with it. And we're the same way when God works with us as the master potter. He can't do a whole lot with us at the beginning because we've got too many rough spots. We need to be broken down so that he can work with us. He has to start with some of the obvious impurities and clean them up. But at that point, we're again usually still too hard to work with to make the kind of deep personal changes that he wants in our lives. So we have to start this process of working with us by weathering us, as it's called, by breaking us down so that it becomes something more malleable.

And yeah, just to illustrate what this looks like, this is what the clay starts. As it's weathered, as it's broken up, the large chunks become smaller and smaller. And eventually, after clay is properly weathered, it looks something more like this. A much more smooth consistency there with the impurities, the hard spots, the rough spots worked out of the clay so that we can truly become something malleable in the hands of our God to begin to work with. And this process takes place as we begin to understand God's Word and His way of life, and we begin to change from living our lives to living His life, the life that He wants within us.

And just like the clay that the potter uses, we have to go through this weathering process, this process of breaking down so that God will be better able to shape us and use us to become a form that He is able to work with. And Isaiah 66 verses 1 and 2 illustrates this point very well. Let's take a look at this. God says here, Thus says the LORD, heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you will build me? And where is the place of my rest? For all those things my hand has made, and all those things exist, says the LORD.

But on this one, or this person, will I look, on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word. It's again a familiar passage, but think about it in the context of what we've been talking about. God says He looks on the one who is poor, poor in spirit, and of a contrite spirit, a contrite heart, and who trembles at my word.

That's the kind of yielded submissive spirit that God looks for. That's the kind of clay God can work with. Clay that isn't the rough gravelly marble-sized stuff, but clay that is weathered, that is broken down, that now has a smooth consistency that God can work with and shape.

This is the kind of clay that will be truly useful to it. Let's consider looking at the picture of the potter in the clay. What is going to happen if the clay isn't weathered properly, and it still has these hard chunks and lumps and impurities and so on in it, that He's trying to smooth into a vessel? Well, it just isn't going to work because the hard lump is going to create a flaw in that clay. Eventually it's going to crack and break at that spot and become ruined. God again has to weather us, has to break us down, break down our stubbornness, break down our self-will, our determination to do things our own way if He's going to use us and make a useful vessel out of us. The process just doesn't work. Otherwise it simply doesn't work. That leads us into the next step here. Step number four after the aging and weathering is that the potter has to literally need to squeeze, massage the clay, and pummel it to literally pound on it, to literally beat it, to make it more pliable. This is a process called wedging. How many of you as kids played with Play-Doh or modeling clay? There are a few of you who are deprived of childhoods, but most of you did. So that's good. Think about that clay. You kept it in the little Play-Doh can there. If you didn't, you know what happened. It became like a rock. Throw it at your siblings, that kind of stuff. No, you kept it in the can so it would stay soft and pliable and malleable. But when you wanted to work with it, what did you have to do? You had to get it out. You had to knead it. You had to massage it. You had to soften it up there in your hands there to make it pliable and shapeable and to work with. You just couldn't take it right out of the package and begin shaping it immediately.

So the first thing you have to do with clay is to begin working the clay. This is my own hands here. My wife took the photos looking over my shoulder. But you take the clay and you start working with it. You start massaging it, squeezing it, and that sort of thing. Massage it and so on. And you might literally have to pound on it to soften it up. Like with the modeling clay we used to play with to make it more pliable there. Now in your life have you ever felt like this was happening to you? That you're being squeezed? That you're being massaged? Not too pleasantly? That there's a lot of pressure on you in your life? Well, you probably have. I know that I have. I imagine all of us have it one time or another. We've all felt like that. And what's going on? What's going on in our lives at that time? Well, often it's simply a matter that God is working with us as He works with the lump of clay. And He's shaping us and He's forming us.

And He's squeezing us and He's massaging us into something that will be useful for Him. It's part of the process. It's part of the process that has to happen for this to work. And this is going to happen and it has to happen for us to change, for us to grow, for us to be malleable and workable in the hands of God. And several scriptures come to mind in this process. One of them is Hebrews 12, how God works with us as His children. Hebrews 12 and verse 6, of 6 through 11, for whom the Lord loves, He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives.

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten or correct when we need to be corrected, punished when we need to be punished? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate.

And not sons. And notice here, of which all have become partakers. God chastens all of His children.

And if we're not, then we're illegitimate. We're not His sons. We're not His children.

Furthermore, verse 9, we have had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they indeed, our human fathers, for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them.

But He, God, for our prophet, that's the purpose for our benefit, that we are chastened, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

And verse 11, now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. And it is painful.

Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So what this is saying here is that God works with us as a loving father.

And if a father loves his children, what does he do? Does he let them run wild and do whatever they want? No. No, he doesn't. We've seen where that ends up. It's not a pretty place. God works with us and chastens us to train us and discipline us so that we will be better off in the long run.

He also works with us as a potter, works with a clay, to shape us into something useful for His purpose. And God's servants have always gone through trials. You see that theme throughout the Bible again and again and again. That's the story repeated throughout the Bible. In fact, nowhere do you find servants of God who did not go through trials, through scourging, of some sort, some trial of one or another. It's just simply the part, simply all part of the process that we have to go through for God to work with us and through us. And this kneading or the wedging of the clay that we've talked about serves another valuable purpose other than just making the clay malleable and workable. It's also necessary to work out another type of flaw that is in this process. We've talked about straw and leaves and grass and rocks and hard lumps of clay and so on, but there's another flaw that's in the clay too. And that is air bubbles.

Air bubbles. I might think about the Feast of Unleavened Bread coming up here. What's the problem with air bubbles? Why would air bubbles be bad in clay? Well, think about it. If a potter encounters an air bubble as he's working with a clay, if it's big enough and he's working on it on the wheel like this, if there's a big bubble in the clay, what's going to happen? Well, that part of the clay wall of the vessel is going to collapse. It's not going to support itself because it's not sturdy. It's not solid there, in other words. The side of the vessel is going to collapse just like the wall of a house will collapse if the studs and the frames aren't solid and aren't close enough together to support the weight. But that's not the only problem with air bubbles in the clay because when a pot is made and it's finished, what's the next step?

The next step is to put it in a kiln. A kiln is where the vessel is fired, is exposed to extreme heat for several days. Several things happen in that process. The heat makes the clay shrink, makes it contract, makes it bind together even more firmly there. But what does heat do to air? It makes it expand. So if you have heat that's making the clay contract and making the air bubbles expand, what's going to happen? The vessel literally explodes in the kiln.

And when it explodes, and typically a vessel is in a kiln with maybe a dozen other pieces in there going through the same process, and it's like shrapnel, the vessel literally explodes, shoots the pieces out and destroys everything else at the same time. So it's very important for the potter to work out the air bubbles out of the clay there. So the air bubbles will be fatal to the vessel if they're not removed. And there's a lesson for us in there as well. Because what does the Bible compare air bubbles to? Well, as we know from the lessons of Unleavened Bread, it compares the leaven and the gas or air bubbles that produces to our human vanity, to sin, to self-righteousness, to false doctrine, to hypocrisy, a number of different things that's compared to in the scripture. So these are some of the other flaws that God has to remove again through this process of wedging, of kneading, of massaging the clay, working on us to get rid of those character flaws as well. In fact, one of the methods that potters use to see if there's air bubbles in their vessel or their clay, rather, is to take a thin wire and to slice through the clay, not through the vessel but through the lump of clay, so they can see what's inside. You might think of a scalpel surgeon or something. You slice it open to see what's inside or a steak on your grill. You slice it open to see whether it's done inside. And God maybe figuratively does that kind of thing to us from time to time. In essence, slicing us open to see what's inside, what we're really made of, what's really there, whether there are still those dangerous air bubbles of sin, of hypocrisy, of self-righteousness, of false doctrine, false teaching, whatever flaws there might be there.

And yet, keep in mind that through all of this, this isn't a negative process. Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's painful. But it's a positive process that God is going through with us. God is simply working with us and making us malleable so we can be shaped to become a useful vessel for Him. I gave a series of sermons several months ago about what it means to be a slave to God. Being a useful servant, being a profitable servant, because in the end, that's the way we attain our inheritance, our freedom, our ultimate freedom in the kingdom of God.

And this is sort of the same thing. God does all of this for the process of making us a useful vessel in His service, something valuable to Him, something worthwhile. And how do we respond to that process? Are we flexible? Are we malleable? Are we soft and yielding to God? Or are we those tough lumps there that we don't want to get rid of? Are we warm and malleable to His touch? Or are we cold and distant and hard and difficult to work with? Because as the clay, we have a part in this as well. It's not just God doing everything. We have a part, we have a responsibility to be clay that He can work with and become useful in His hands and responsive to His touch, to His hands.

Clay is most usable when it's soft, when it's warm, when it's flexible. And that's an important lesson for us to learn from this analogy too. How flexible are we? How responsive are we to the touch of our Creator? Are we yielding to the work of His hands? Let's take a look at the next step here. And the next step after these preparing of the clay, now the potter actually starts to work on the clay to begin to form it into a vessel here. And this is what it looks like here again.

He does this by putting the clay onto the potter's wheel and then turning it as the wheel rotates. He turns it. He shapes it. It's a fascinating process to work. I've seen it a few times in the Middle East there in different films and videos and so on. It's just utterly fascinating to watch. But even this step is a little more... there's more involved than meets the eye because the potter can't just place the clay anywhere on the wheel.

He has to be sure to put the clay in the center of the wheel. Because what happens if he puts it off center or out further off toward one edge or the other, what's going to happen? Well, as this clay is spinning around, what's going to happen to the vessel? Well, it's going to be warped. It's going to be misshapen because it's not symmetrical. It's not centered on the wheel, as it should be. It's simply never going to work right. The clay is going to wobble as it's being shaped there. And it will end up with parts of the vessel being thicker on one side and thinner on the other side. And it's going to create inherent weaknesses in the vessel if it's not properly centered there. It may not be obvious to the untrained eye, but to the potter, yes, it's very obvious there. And the vessel will be weak and flawed and eventually will break. Well, what can we learn from that? Well, an obvious question to ask is, where is our center? Where is our center?

What's the center of our lives? Or what are we centered on?

A number of scriptures tell us where we ought to be centered and how we ought to be centered. One is very familiar, Matthew 6 and verse 33. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

We're to seek the kingdom of God, but two things here. They're not synonymous.

We're supposed to seek the kingdom of God, but we're also to seek His righteousness, to become like Him, in other words, to seek to become righteous, as God is righteous in every way.

And all these things shall be added to you. As Jesus Christ says, it's pretty self-explanatory. There aren't a whole lot of ifs or ands or buts there. Not a lot of room for personal interpretation. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That's basic Christianity. It's about as basic as it gets. Let's take a look at another one. 1 Corinthians 3 verses 10 and 11. Paul says here, According to the grace of God, which was given to me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed hell he builds on it. And he's talking about the different people in Corinth who had their own personal favorites. I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. I am of so-and-so. They were looking to men and not looking to where they really ought to be centered. As Paul says here, verse 11, For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. That's the one we ought to look to. Not to any humans, not to any individuals, not to me or others, anyone else here, but to Jesus Christ. He's the one we ought to be centering our lives on.

He is our foundation. He's our example. He's our elder brother. He's our Lord. He's our master in the master-slave relationship that we've talked about earlier. He's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He's the one who was and is and forever will be. He's our teacher, our master, our rabbi, our Lord. And we're His disciples, His students, His pupils, His slaves.

That's a little bit of what it means to be centered on Jesus Christ.

And the more we are centered on Him and on the kingdom of God, and being His students, His teacher, His disciples, rather, and trying to live that way of life, the more God will be able to use us and to shape us and to form us into something useful for Him and His kingdom.

On the other hand, if we're not centered in the right place, what happens?

Well, we're going to be wobbly. We're going to have parts that are misshapen, that are flawed.

If we're not correctly centered, we'll have weaknesses. And those weaknesses will ruin the vessel. In the long run, it will never be strong and as stable as it would be if it were properly centered on the potter's wheel. Now, as the potter works with and starts shaping the clay, he uses another important ingredient in this process. And that important ingredient is simple. It's water. It's water. The water lubricates the clay. It makes it easier to shape it, to work with it. What can we learn from that? Well, as we mentioned earlier with the washing aspect, water is used in the Scriptures as a symbol of God's Holy Spirit. And the Spirit, God's Spirit, is a vital part of God's shaping and working us into something useful for Him. It makes us malleable.

It makes us shapeable, receptive to the shaping of God's hands. Let's notice Psalm 143 in verse 10.

It tells us here something, and it connects God and His Spirit with teaching us and leading us in the right paths. It says here, Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your Spirit is good.

Lead me in the land of uprightness. This connects God and His Spirit in leading and shaping and working with us. Here to be useful tools in His hands. In addition to just their hands, potters will also use various tools to help them shape their vessels as they spin on the wheel.

We could liken God's Spirit not only to the water that God uses, but also to some of the various tools that a potter will use to shape the vessel as well. God is the one who guides that process the whole way. As Paul tells us in Romans 8 in verse 14, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. So we have to be led by that Spirit, by that tool that God uses for us to shape and work with us here. We have to allow Him to shape us through that Spirit.

Again, God's Spirit is the force. It's the agent. It's the power that God uses to form and shape us according to His will. You might think of a helpful way to think of God's Spirit as God's hands, working with us, shaping us there, to try visualizing God's Spirit at work in your life in that way. I think it's a helpful analogy there. Not that God's hands are literal there, but it's an analogy that God uses there to shape us and work with us there into something that will be useful for us. So are we useful in that way?

God uses a somewhat humorous reference over in Isaiah 45 and verse 9 to illustrate this point.

Isaiah again is using this same analogy of the potter in the clay, God being the potter and us being the clay. He points out how ludicrous it would be to imagine this lump of clay arguing with the potter. Just imagine this. I'd love to see a cartoon of this done sometimes. Notice what Isaiah says here. Woe to him who strives with his maker! Let the pot-shurd strive with the pot-shurds of the earth. That's talking about the broken fragments of pottery laying on the ground. Shall the clay say to him who forms it, What are you making? Or shall your handiwork say, He has no hands? In other words, He's not any good. He's a rotten potter. Can you imagine this lump of clay arguing back with a potter who's actually shaping and using it? Isaiah says that it's absurd to imagine that. To imagine a pot arguing with a potter that he's doing it wrong, telling him that he's clumsy, that his hands aren't suitable for this, or he doesn't know what he's doing. And yet Isaiah says, the whole point of this is, Isaiah says that's exactly what a lot of people do when they start to question God or argue with God about what he's doing.

He might be about how he might be working with us. So the overall point is, God wants us to trust him and what he's doing in us not to argue with him, not to resist what he's doing in our lives, or try to do it differently. Because after all, what's he doing? He's trying to shape us in the kind of vessel that he wants us to be. The kind of vessel he wants us to be. And that's good, because that's always going to be for our good, for our ultimate blessing, for our ultimate benefit.

We are all different. God doesn't want us all to be alike.

I'll tell you a little story back from college days. One of our instructors used to say, God doesn't want us all to be like a bunch of yellow pencils. You know, the yellow number two pencils that used to come in a box. It's always used for tests and so on. I don't know what kids use in school. They're probably doing it on smart pads and so on today. But God doesn't want us all to be a bunch of yellow pencils. He created us with different abilities. He gave us different gifts, different talents, different abilities. And He is shaping us into different vessels. Not all the same vessel. Not all the same kind of vessel. Some of us may be bowls. Some of us may be plates. Some of us may be drinking jugs. Some of us may be coffee cups or beer mugs. There may be a lot of those here. So we won't take account on that. But some of us may be something else. You know, in our house over the last few years, we've had a real bad run with toilets.

And it's a long story, but one particular three-day weekend I ended up spending most of the weekend laboring over and replacing two toilets in our house because the new one that we bought didn't fit right in one bathroom. So I had to go and replace it, take out the toilet in another bathroom. And there were musical toilets in our house for this three-day weekend there.

I was talking with Connie later in the week about how God is shaping us into different kinds of vessels. I joke that I felt like God was shaping me into a very useful clay ceramic vessel, a toilet. And she didn't argue with me about that. But Isaiah's point here is that God is shaping us into the kind of vessel that He wants us to be. He knows what we can do. He knows what our abilities are. He knows what our strengths are, what gifts He's given us, and what kind of vessel or clay we're made of that we'll be most suitable for. And God sometimes uses different types of people for different purposes. And maybe sometimes, as we saw with the example of Jeremiah, the potter is making something and he finds a flaw in it. He finds out the vessel isn't going to work for that use. So what does he do? He starts over, takes that same lump of clay and reshapes it into a different kind of vessel. And God can do that in our lives as well if He chooses. But we can rest assured of one thing. That is that if a hundred years or a thousand years from now we look back on how God is shaping us and what He's shaping us into, we can be sure that that is exactly what we would want in the long run. Because God knows what is best. And that's what He's shaping into, what is best in the long run. He's the perfect master potter and He doesn't make mistakes in what He's doing.

And the next step in the vessel is to fire the vessel. We've touched on this a little bit, but let's go into a little more detail here how that works and what it does. The potter now has to fire the vessel to set it and to harden it. And this is an essential process to creating a vessel that is durable, that will last thousands of years like the pottery they dig up. And this process involved taking the clay vessel or a dozen or so and putting them in a kiln that looked something like this. And you would pack in the potter wood, which set the clay vessels in there on shelves, and it would pack in a lot of flammable material. Generally branches, limbs, twigs, wood, that sort of thing. And would then cover up the the opening of that and would keep this fire burning in there for several days at very high temperatures so that the vessels would fire properly. Now without this process of firing, of heating these vessels to high temperatures for several days, the vessel would remain weak. It would just be clay and eventually it would fall apart and crumble, would disintegrate and return back to dirt. Again pottery is very, very hard. It's almost as hard as rock, even though they're only clay. And that is the difference that this firing process makes.

It makes it hard, makes it solid, almost as hard as stone. And without it, it just becomes dirt, just disintegrates into dirt eventually. So with the firing, the potter is creating something that is virtually indestructible that will last nearly forever. And we have to go through a similar type of process, similar to firing in our lives. Peter talks about that in 1 Peter 4 verses 12 and 13.

He says, Beloved, do not think it strange, concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing had happened to you. But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.

And just as firing in the kiln changes the pottery and makes it almost indestructible, so the firing that we go through in our lives changes us. It changes our character. It hardens our character. It sets our character. It makes it permanent. In other words, it changes us in remarkable ways. Peter also talks about 1 Peter 1 verses 6 through 9. This is from the New International Version. Here he talks about how our character is tested and refined and purified and hardened by going through trials. And that knowing this, we shouldn't be upset about the trials we go through, but we should view those trials very positively. That's the point that he makes here. And he says, In this you greatly rejoice, that now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire. So even gold will perish even if it's refined by fire, but we're building something more permanent than gold. We're building eternal spiritual character. That your faith may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed at His Second Coming, at the resurrection of the saints. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal or the end of your faith, which is the salvation of your souls. So without firing, again, a pottery vessel is essentially useless because it's going to break down and disintegrate and fall apart. It's not going to last. And without the firing and the permanent change that that produces in us, that in the long run we are essentially useless too. We're going to fall apart and disintegrate and return to the dust. So until we're tested, God can't really know what we're made of, what's really inside us, whether we'll really pass the test. And we've seen that in the past. We'll no doubt see it again in the future, some other kind of testing. God is not going to give eternal life and that kind of power that we're promised until He's absolutely sure of who and what we are and what we're really made of down deep inside. He knows what happened to Satan and the demons.

They had tremendous power, spirit beings, and what happened? They had character flaws.

They rebelled against God. God isn't going to repeat that mistake with human beings.

He's not going to give us eternal life in His kingdom unless He's absolutely sure what we're made of. God doesn't make mistakes. He's not going to do that one again. So make no mistake about it. God will put us in the fiery kiln and test us and He'll put the heat on us.

Okay, looks like our light has gone out here. I'm not sure why. I'm just continuing on here. 1 Corinthians 3. You can write this down. 1 Corinthians 3, 11 and through 13. Paul says here, "... for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." So it's very important that our foundation are centering again is on Jesus Christ. And he says, "... now if anyone builds in this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work of what sort it is." And this gets back to the kiln and the firing process there. Sometimes we don't understand why. We go through these different trials and problems and difficulties in our lives as Christians. That's why God gives us these visual aids you might see, like the ones we've been talking about here. Like Jeremiah's visit to the potter. God reveals things like this so we can know the rest of the story. God's rest of the story there. The lump of clay that's being worked on by the potter doesn't know what's going on. Only the potter knows what's really going on.

And God does know what He's doing. And He wants us to have faith in what He's doing in our lives here. So they can make a useful vessel out of us. And He wants us to understand they were part of a larger and larger plan and purpose that He's carrying out regardless of whether we understand it or not. Okay, thanks. See that came back up now. So this firing is a long process. It's a heated process, very hot, but it's necessary to burn out any of the remaining impurities and to harden the vessel there. There may actually, in some cases, be several firing processes depending on decorations and glazing and things like that with the pottery as well, depending on how it is to be used ultimately in the end. So there isn't just one major test in life after which we're home free. No, there may be repeated processes of this firing process.

But the key point is that the master potter is always involved. He's always in control. He knows how much heat to expose the vessels to and for how long to produce the end best result.

Also, God doesn't walk away from us during this process either.

Nor does He allow the fire to get too hot and to harm the vessel in that way.

Paul gives us a very assuring promise. We're in 1 Corinthians 10.

In verse 13, he says, "...no temptation has overtaken you, except such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. But with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it." So in other words, God has invested a lot of time and effort into shaping us into what He wants us to be. And He doesn't want that to go to waste.

There is one final step in the process that I didn't list initially there. Because all of the steps that the potter has gone through in this process up to now are for nothing unless the vessel is actually put to use. So the final step, verse 7, is to evaluate the vessel's readiness and to put it to use. There are several ways we can look at this and the lessons we can learn.

In a sense, what is God doing? Well, He's evaluating us all the time. He's evaluating us all the time. We won't turn there, but as Peter said, the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. As part of the church, we are being evaluated all the time right now.

So we're already being judged and evaluated as to whether we are worthy vessels.

One thing that all of the vessels that a potter creates, one thing that all vessels have in common, is that they are created to hold something. They're created to hold something. That's their primary purpose. What about us? How does that apply to us? As God's vessels, what should we hold?

There's a striking line in one of our hymns that speaks of us as God's people being cups to hold God's grace. Being cups to hold God's grace. That's really a pretty profound picture to think about. Are you a vessel that is holding God's grace? It's easy to sing through that and not really think about it. But what does that mean to say that we are a cup to hold God's grace? Well, it means we are a repository. It means God shaped us, He formed us, He's molded us to hold something. And what do we hold? We hold His grace. His undeserved pardon, as we used to define grace as. But that's really much, much too simplistic there. It's much more than that. Grace is, if you study it in the Bible, is all the good, all the love, all of the hope and the encouragement and the wonderful positive future that God has in store for each of us and for all of mankind. And what is the purpose of a cup or a glass here? Well, it's designed also so that people can drink out of it. It's designed that way. The cup is designed to hold something, to store something, but also to share something, to share something, to share whatever it contains with others. If we are a cup that is holding God's grace, we should be sharing that grace, that goodness, that love, that kindness, that tenderness, that mercy, that very nature of God, His compassion, and all of His other good qualities, and His attributes with others. It should be something that is overflowing from us. Not just something we keep and store within us, but something that we share with others that we encounter. That is obviously a whole other sermon or two in itself, and something we don't have time to go into right now. But I mention it just to get us thinking about that. As about what, as God's vessels, we are holding within us, and what God wants us to be holding in our lives. Are we cups holding God's grace, and His goodness, and His compassion, and mercy, and His knowledge, and all the other wonderful attributes of God? Are we holding other things? Are we holding debris? Are we holding pebbles, and rocks, and grass, and leaves, and trash, and debris, and things like that? Ultimately, of course, the Master Potter will evaluate our readiness as vessels at the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead. That's when, having gone through this process of being shaped, and molded, and wedged, and pummeled, and squeezed, and massaged, and all the other things we've talked about over the course of a lifetime, of having gone through that firing, the fiery trials that we go through, of having been cleansed, of having been purified, of having been washed, and having submitted to the loving and the gentle hands of the Master Potter, hopefully then we will hear the words that are expressed in Matthew 25 and verses 21 and 23. Well done! Good and faithful servant! You are faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.