Title: Why Go To Church: It’s the Potter’s House!
Text: Jeremiah 18:1-6
Thesis: The Potter’s House is the place earthen pot people are being formed. (Anticipating that there might be a few snickers in the audience… “pot” is in reference to an earthen vessel. The Potter is not forming earthen “cannabis” people.)
Introduction
Charlie Steinmetz had one of the greatest minds in the field of electricity… in his day; no one knew more that he knew. Steinmetz built the generators that moved the assembly line in Henry Ford’s first plant in Dearborn, MI. The assembly line worked like clockwork and after the Model A came the Model T with its 177 cubic-inch, 4 cylinder, 20 horsepower engine. Ford boasted you could get a Model T in any color you like as long as it was black.
The assembly line hummed and profits began to pour into Henry Ford’s pockets. And then one day the assembly line came to a sudden halt and the plant went dark. Mechanics tried unsuccessfully to find the source of the electrical problem that had crippled the assembly line. Ford was losing money and finally in frustration he called the brain behind the system. Steinmetz arrived at the Ford plant, pushed a few buttons, fiddled with a few switches and threw the master switch. The lights came on and engines began to whir and the assembly line began to move.
A few days later Ford received a bill from Steinmetz for $10,000. Although Ford was a rich man he thought ten grand was a bit steep and protested asking Steinmetz how he could charge so much for having spent so little time tinkering with a few wires and switches.
Steinmetz then resubmitted the bill to Ford. It read: “For tinkering around with the motors: $10. For knowing where to tinker: $9,990.”
Henry paid the bill.
In the Christian life we may think of God as something of a tinkerer… God made us. God knows how we are made. God knows where to tinker when we need a bit of tinkering.
However, our text today does not liken God to a tinkerer, but rather to a potter.
Jeremiah was a prophet to the nation of Judah following the reign of the worst administration ever in the history of the Israelite peoples. In II Kings 21:6 it says, “He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord provoking him to anger.”
Following his death his son Amon became king and for two years the insanity continued until his own officials conspired and assassinated him. After Amon, 8 year old Josiah came to power. Josiah turned out to be a godly young man who began the process of turning the peoples’ hearts back to God. But they were far from God and there was a lot of reshaping that needed doing before the nation would be a people who lived for and pleased God.
Jeremiah was the guy God sent to challenge them to enter into the process of repentance and the reshaping of them as people and as a nation. So Jeremiah came onto the scene challenging the people to clean up their acts.
In order to help Jeremiah understand what God had in mind, God asked Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house and watch the potter at work… and as he watched God promised to give him the message he was to share with the people.
“Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house and watched the potter working at the wheel. Jeremiah 18:1-2
As Jeremiah watched the potter throwing the pot on his wheel, he undoubtedly noticed that the potter was doing what potters do. The blob of clay was shaped and pulled externally until it had a basic form. And then the potter, while shaping the pot’s outside also began to shape the pot’s inside.
Though he has not said so directly, we know that in this story the potter is likened to God and the clay is likened to people.
The making of a piece of pottery requires the balanced application of pressure externally and internally. So we surmise that God uses both external and internal forces to shape us.
The first and most obvious observation Jeremiah made was that the pot the potter was working with became marred.
I. Even when we are messed up, God does not give up on us.
“But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.” Jeremiah 18:4
To mar something is to detract it from perfection. It can refer to something as insignificant as a chip or a scratch or a ding. When something becomes marred it may also mean that it is ruined or spoiled. We don’t know what happened to this particular clay pot but it was marred to the extent that it was useless as it was. Perhaps it collapsed or went all wobbly and was distorted or misshapen.
Craftsmen and artisans often have a scrap pile. When I worked as a machinist during my college years we had a scrap bin where all the product that would not pass inspection was placed to be recycled. Flawed parts and pieces are often tossed onto the scrap heap. But not so in our story of the Potter in Jeremiah 18...
If we understand that in this story the potter is a metaphor for God and the pot is a metaphor for people we can begin to make some observations.
The first assumption is this:
A. God is actively involved in the process of shaping us into the persons he wants us to be.
This is not just some random idea I pulled out of my hat to stir up our imaginations. This is as biblical as biblical as biblical gets. God is actively involved in the process of shaping us into the persons he wants us to be.
• In Genesis 2:7 we are told that God formed the first man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
• In Psalm 139 speaks of how God knows us and sees us and numbers our days before even one of them came to be. It says that God created and shaped us and knit us together in our mother’s womb.
• Ephesians 1:4-11 speaks of how God chose us in him before the creation of the world predetermining that we would be his children through Christ.
• Ephesians 2:10 refers to us as God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
• II Corinthians 3:18 reminds us that we are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
• Romans 8:29 states that God “foreknew us,” that means God knew us before we were, and predestined or predetermined that we are to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ.
• I think Philippians 1:6 nails it best with the words, “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
The second observation is:
B. God does not give up on us when we are messed up.
The metaphor is not a perfect one in that we might surmise that the potter simply messed up… that the marring and subsequent collapse of the pot was God’s doing. God, the potter messed up, so when we get messed up it is God who has done the messing up.
Human reliability is related to figuring the human factor in fields like manufacturing, transportation, medicine, the military, etc. Human performance can be affected by age, state of mind, mood, attitude, emotions and the propensity to make mistakes. Human error is often cited as a cause or a contributing factor in accidents and disasters.
Whenever something goes wrong we like to find out what caused it to go wrong. In the case of the Four Mile Fire above Boulder they have now determined that it likely started from a fire pit that had been doused with water but managed to smolder away for days until a gust of wind blew an ember to life and into the surrounding brush igniting the ensuing forest fire. It was unintentional and accidental but human error non-the-less. Plane crashes, train wrecks, Three-Mile Island, misdiagnoses, forgetting to signal… all human error.
Sometimes I wonder about what God is thinking and doing but I’m not of a mind to suggest that when things go wrong in my life or in the world that it is the result of God error.
When things go awry in our lives we can generally assume that somewhere along the line, human reliability resulted in human error.
In his book When Life is Hard, James McDonald defines a trial as a painful circumstance allowed by God to change one’s conduct and character. (James McDonald, When Life is Hard, Moody Publishers, 2010, P. 30)
In other words when we are messed up, like the marred pot on the potter’s wheel, we can look at that as a circumstance that God allowed and will use to remold, remake or reshape who we are and what we do.
Because we are people, human reliability pretty much assures us that we have a propensity to make mistakes and are capable of human error.
You’ve bounced a check. You’ve ruined your credit score. You’ve born a child out of wedlock. You’ve had an affair. You’ve cheated on your taxes. You’ve lied. You’ve wrecked your marriage or someone else’s marriage. You’ve stolen from your employer. You are enslaved to an addiction. You’ve harbored a grudge and have a bitter spirit. You’ve gossiped. You hate someone who wronged you. You’ve abused your power and influence. You’ve harbored racist feelings. You backed into someone’s car in a parking lot and left without leaving a note. You’ve shop lifted. You hate gays and lesbians. You name it… you’ve thought it or done it.
God does not give up on you. God does not toss you out on the scrap heap. God does not dismiss you as a lost cause and discard you as hopeless. God starts all over again time and time again… God starts over again shaping you into another pot as it seems best to him.
Conclusion
In the mountains of Northern Luzon in the Philippines there is a school for silversmiths. It is called the St. Louis Silver School. Dale Golding, a missionary in the Philippines bought a money clip in the gift shop at the school. It was an exquisite piece of craftsmanship made of pure silver and embellished with a distinctive design. He carried the clip for twenty-four years until one day when he went to slip a few bills behind the clip, it broke. When the opportunity presented itself, he returned to the St. Louis School of Silver, opened his hand and showed the broken money clip to a craftsman and asked if it could be repaired. After examining the pieces for a minute the craftsman looked up and said, “I designed this clip. I was the only one to make this design. I made it and of course I can fix it.” (http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2001/september/13246.html)
One of the most important reasons we go to church is that this is the Potter’s House… this is the place where we place ourselves on the potter’s wheel and where we agree to let the potter do the work of shaping us into persons as it seems best to him.
Church is one of the places where God does his shaping.
Messed up in the hands of our Maker? He can fix us!
