I Am Clay
Scripture: Jeremiah 18:1-6; 19:11; Ephesians 2:10
The title of my message this morning is “I Am Clay.”
Two Christmases ago Jackie, a family friend, gave me this coffee mug that a friend of hers made. This mug was crafted by the potter Melissa Streeter and has become my favorite mug. It holds almost four cups of coffee and it has a little lip on it so that I can sip my coffee versus pouring it directly in my mouth and burning my lips off. When I first saw it I knew it was handmade versus being massed produced on an assembly line and man I have grown to love this mug. Actually I love it so much that I asked my friend to have another one made just like it. Well the second one is not exactly like the first one but what was interesting to me is that when Jackie picked it out the potter told her that some of the cups had imperfections so Jackie chose the one with the lesser imperfections. I wanted to open with this story because both mugs serve their purpose. While they have some imperfections, I know that no one else has those exact two mugs. That is what you get when something is individually made versus massed produced on an assembly line. To hand make those mugs took a knowledge and understanding of the mug making process, and it took time, effort, focus, patience, a sense of caring, determination, and pride in a job done right. (Oh, if you would like to have one of Melissa Streeter’s personally crafted mugs I can get you her information.) I want you to keep this in mind today because I am clay and my Potter is still molding me.
Two weeks ago I shared with you the story of Rahab and how the two spies came to Jericho to spy out the land. This event happened 40 years after God originally brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt. Forty years earlier Moses had done something similar. Do you remember the record about Moses sending out 12 of Israel’s tribal leaders to spy out the Promised Land? Ten of them came back with a bad report of the land because they were filled with fear and anxiety. In fact, Numbers 13:33 records how they saw themselves when they looked at some of the people of the land. They said, “And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, who come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” Man did they quickly take on a “grasshopper’s mentality”!
Have you ever felt like a grasshopper: Unimportant, inferior, low-down, less than someone else? Have you ever felt worthless, defeated, or good for nothing? These are the feelings that these ten tribal leaders had when they saw the giants in the Promised Land that God had already given to them. When they saw the giants they forgot who they were. While they were impressed with the land, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land full of promise, they were more afraid of what they saw – the inhabitants of the land. And get this; they totally forgot that they were, now listen to me, God’s promise. And this is where the problem began. You see, New Light, we are talking about men who were the heads of their tribes. Today we would say they were the leaders in the Church. People listened to them. They were so afraid of the inhabitants that they were overwhelmed with their own inferiority. Now understand this, when they felt inadequate and inferior, they shared what they felt with the people who were under their leadership. And, because of this, they saw with eyes of unbelief versus seeing with eyes of faith like Joshua and Caleb. Unbelief will always see “not enough.” You see, when a person feels a certain way about themselves for so long they begin to think everybody else feels the same way about them. So if a person feels inferior, they begin to believe that others see them the same way, which further supports their own feeling. Can you see how damaging this can be?
But look at what Joshua and Caleb said in chapter fourteen verses seven through nine. “And they spoke unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, ‘The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceedingly good land. If the LORD delights in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it to us; a land which flows with milk and honey. Only rebel not against the LORD, neither fear you the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.” (Numbers 14:7-9) What a difference in a person who has God-confidence! That person is not moved by what he sees because he counts on the resources of God not on his own resources. That person looks to and expects victory because truly they “can do all things through Christ who strengthens them.” (Phil. 4:13) This is what the ten leaders lacked causing the children of Israel to wonder in the wilderness for 40 years. This morning we are not going to talk about them but about the spirit that rested in Joshua and Caleb.
But before we do that, I want to point something out. What was the real reason the ten leaders saw themselves as grasshoppers? Yes, fear played a role. But fear was not the primary reason. Now, hear me out. The ten leaders, by speaking against the Promised Land, told the people that what God said was true, but we can’t go in and take the land because the people are too great. New Light, what we are seeing here is pride. The ten, in essence, were saying “This is what God says but we know better. Listen to us.” And because of their lack of humility, everyone over the age of 20 did not inherit the promise. As I thought about this a verse in Proverbs 22 came to mind. It’s verse 4. “The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord Are riches, honor and life.” The riches, honor and life that the people missed was the Promised Land. As I stated at the beginning, this morning I am talking about being clay – clay that is still able to be molded into what the potter desires it to be and that kind of clay is full of humility, not pride.
So if I were to ask you “What are you?” how would you respond? Are you an accident, evolved mix of male and female genes? Some people think so. Are you just an animal with blood and organs and breath? Again, some people think so. Are you just a lonely, isolated universal happening; a blob waiting to dry out; a ripple that is soon to cease; or a speck of dust waiting to be blown away? Some people think so. But what are you? What would be your answer? If you ask your doctor they will tell you one thing. If you asked a science professor, they will tell you something entirely different. If you ask a chemist, they will give you still a different answer based on their education. But if you ask God; oh if we will just ask God, He will tell us that we are the creation of His hands. He will tell us that we are the fruit of His labor. He will tell us that we are the apple of His eye; the pride of His heart; and the choice of His eternal love. This is what God tells us when we ask Him “when” we believe that we are His clay. If you ask me what I am I will tell you, “I am clay.” So this morning I am asking you, what are you?
I want to remind you of the creation of man from the book of Genesis so you understand the rest of this message. Genesis 2:7 says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Also Genesis 3:19 God tells man, “In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return.” We are nothing but dust, another term for dirt. From dirt we were formed and when our spirits leave our bodies, our physical bodies will return to dirt. What I want you to see is this: if we were formed from dirt, then there is nothing spontaneous about us! Man was planned. Man was designed. Man had a Creator. The dirt could not evolve on it’s on to create us.
Do you recall the story in Jeremiah chapter eighteen where God told Jeremiah to go to the potter’s house? Let’s look at a few verses from that chapter. Jeremiah 18:1-6 says, “The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, 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, behold, he worked a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?’ says the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.” (Jeremiah 18:1-6) Remember what I told you at the beginning of this message about the mug that Jackie’s friend made? Remember me saying how it requires a knowledge and understand of mug making as well as more care and determination from the potter to make an individual mug than one made on an assembly line? This is the image that I believe God wanted Jeremiah to see – that we are clay and He is the potter shaping us into what He wants us to be – if we allow ourselves to be molded.
A lot of songs and sermons have been written about this Scripture because the imagery is so strong. I want you to see what Jeremiah saw when he went to the potter’s house. Pottery is a science rather than manufacturing and the most important part of the process is the potter themselves because they are the creative force behind whatever that lump of clay will become. God told Jeremiah “I am the potter, you are the clay.” So as Jeremiah approached the potter’s house, visualize him seeing the potter sitting on the ground with a mass of clay beside him, a vessel of water by his side and the potter’s wheel in front of him. After moistening and softening the clay, he puts it on the horizontal wheel, and then with the wheel turning, he touches the revolving lump of clay and begins to shape the vessel. At some point as the vessel comes close to being completed, the potter discovers a serious flaw. But because the clay is still pliable, the potter is able to form the vessel again and place the clay once more on the wheel where he forms a new vessel. Now understand this, if the clay has hardened then the vessel cannot be reformed to remove the flaws so that vessel is cast aside to be destroyed. It cannot be reused or reformed.
Do you recall what the Bible says about a hardened heart? A hardened heart is one that God can no longer influence. And just like the potter must discard a flawed vessel once the clay hardens, God must do the same. Ten leaders of Israel saw themselves as grasshoppers and made a majority of the people feel the same way. The people’s hearts were turned away from what God had said as they chose to believe them. When they did that their hearts were hardened and God could no longer influence them. Therefore they had to wander in the wilderness for forty years until all those with hardened hearts had died. New Light, this is a message for the church today. We cannot disagree with God and expect to receive what He has promised to us. Hebrews 3:7-11 says, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness: when your fathers tested Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.’ So I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter into my rest.’” When their hearts were hardened and God could no longer influence them, they died without entering His rest. It means something to remain as pliable clay versus a hardened unfinished product when God is working with us.
We are special and when God is working with us it is very similar to a potter who is making a vessel. Just as clay is a mixture of common dirt/earth and silica, man is much more than just dirt/earth and the process that God uses to fully shape us into what He wants us to be is very specific to us. Just like the potter who makes one individual vessel at a time with no two being alike, the same is true with God. Even identical twins have some unique differences. When you examine the steps the potter goes through in creating the final product you can appreciate how God works with us. I want to quickly walk you through this process.
Step 1: Before the potter starts to work with the clay, he/she visualizes in their mind what the end result will look like. They know the vessel they want to make and what that vessel will be used for. God knows each of us and what He has planned for us. He created us with a purpose. Sometimes life’s choices divert us from the path that God intends for us, but from the beginning God had a plan for each of us. He knows what we are supposed to be and what He will use us for.
Step 2: The second step is the actual handling of the clay. The clay must be crushed and made pliable before it can be used. This process removed the lumps and foreign objects that would cause flaws in the final process. When God is preparing us the crushing process can be painful – life is painful. But until our lumps and foreign elements have been removed, until we have been sifted, we are not yet ready to be the material that God can use. For some this is the point where they bail out – where they give up. But if we withstand the test, God is preparing us for greatness – which is different from greatness in the eyes of man. As the potter adds water to the clay, it has to be the right amount. So the potter squeezes out the excess water. God does the same with us – He squeezes us to remove the excesses that are in our lives – even those good qualities that tend to lead to our pride must be squeezed out until just the right amount remains. Finally in this process the potter isolates the clay – hiding it away for a time so that it might acquire its true texture. This isolation process is important. Being in isolation with God will cause us to grow. When you read the Bible you will find examples of men who walked with God experiencing time of isolation from whence they grew. Remember the Apostle Paul spent 14 years in Tarsus before he began his public ministry? That was his time of isolation and what did it produce? The majority of the New Testament!
Step 3: The third step is the actual creation process – taking the image that only exists in the mind of the potter and creating it on the wheel. This step only happens after the clay is ready. I don’t want you miss what I just said. The creative process can only begin when the clay is ready. And I need to make a very important point here: what God wants to create in us can only be done with clay that, for lack of a better term, is born again. I’m talking about clay that, because of its nature – because it has been touched by the Potter – can be molded by the Potter. The clay is now ready. It can be fascinating to watch a pile of raw clay take shape in the potter’s hand. First you observe the spinning wheel and then the master’s hands smoothing, lifting, shaping and forming the clay. As the wheel turns faster and faster, a shape begins to form into a specified vessel. We too are a unique creation. Never forget that you were not massed produced on an assembly line. You were thought of; imagined by; and created for God’s purposes – not men, God’s! You are the only vessel on the line. None like you will ever be produced again! Praise God!
Step 4: Once the clay is shaped into the vessel its creator chooses, next comes the fire. The vessel is placed in the furnace to perfect it. Our faith is tried by fire to perfect it. It is the trials and tribulations that burn the imperfections out of us to bring us to the point of being the vessel that God can use for His purposes. When John Wesley came to America, he visualized himself as a missionary to the Native Americans of Georgia. He returned to England a miserable failure, disheartened, discouraged, and ready to give us. Then out of that fiery trial, even out of that failure, John Wesley received a vision that sparked revival throughout the entire church world. Zechariah 13:9 says, “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them as gold is tested: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, ‘They are my people’: and they shall say, ‘The LORD is my God.’” If you feel like you are in the fire – Praise God! Stay in there and allow God to do what He needs to do through your situation.
Step 5: The finishing touches. After the clay has been prepared, formed and come through the fire, the potter picks up the brush and begins to add color – color as beautiful as the rainbow. God, the Master Potter, can add beauty to our lives. Success does not make life beautiful. Riches do not make life beautiful. But walking through a garden and seeing beautiful flowers. Looking in a child’s eyes and seeing the curiosity and wonder in everything they see. Being loved and made to feel special. Those are the beautiful colors that God adds to our lives when we are clay. There is one last thing I want you to see about clay as I close this morning.
Remember what I told you earlier about clay once it had been hardened and no longer pliable that it cannot be used again? When God sent Jeremiah to the potter’s house and had him watch the potter at work, He wanted Jeremiah to understand that He was the potter and man was the clay. He wanted Jeremiah to understand that He was the one shaping man into what He wanted man to be but man could not harden his hearts towards God. In chapter nineteen and verse one, God told Jeremiah to take one of the earthen flasks the potter had made and in verse ten he told him to break it. Flasks were earthenware of various sizes and shapes and were used in daily life. The symbolic action of breaking the flask pictured the utter destruction of Judah as a nation and Jerusalem as a city. In those days it was the custom to break a jar if one wanted to show the utmost contempt for another. One person would come up behind or near the one despised and smashed the vessel to pieces, thus cursing them with a similar ruin. God was telling Jeremiah here that He would break those people as Jeremiah had broken the flask. God had spoken judgment on the people because they had hardened their necks (heart) and refused to hear Him. And this is what God said in verse eleven. “And shall say unto them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts; even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Topheth, till there be no place to bury.” (Jeremiah 19:11)
Do you know that unlike the potter’s clay that must be thrown out when it becomes too hard to work with, God is able to work with us whenever we turn back to Him? Do you know that even when we are broken beyond the repairs that man can do God can fix it? God is the Master Potter and can pick up the pieces and remake our broken vessel anew. Regardless of our past sins, neglects and failures, the precious vessel of our lives can be transformed and remolded and refashioned through our repentance and faith. In a single moment of time, all of our sins of a lifetime can be transformed by the creator of all things. Why? Because of His Son Jesus Christ!
I am clay. I will remain clay until the day I die. Why? Because I want God to continue to work with me until I get it right. And once I get it right, I want Him to continue working with me so I stay right. And as I stay right, I want Him to continue working with me so I can help others get right and stay right. In other words, as long as I am here on this earth I want my Father in heaven working with me. Period!
I want to leave you with one last image. Please turn with me to Ephesians 2:10. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” In the Amplified Bible, the first part of the verse reads this way: “For we are His workmanship (His own master work, a work of art).” The Bible says we are God’s work of art. The Bible says we are God’s master work. New Light, when we willingly submit ourselves to the hands of the Master Potter, when we allow Him to gently and lovingly mold us into what He knows we can be, we become His work of art! But this can only happen if we are willing to say “I am clay.” So, I’ll ask you again, Are you?
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
(If you are ever in the Kansas City, KS area, please come and worship with us at New Light Christian Fellowship, 15 N. 14th Street, Kansas City, KS 66102. Our service Sunday worship starts at 9 a.m. and Thursday night Bible study at 7 p.m. Also, for use of our social media, you can find us at newlightchristianfellowship on FB. To get our live stream services, please make sure you “like” and turn on notifications for our page so you can be notified when we are live streaming. We also have a church website and New Light Christian Fellowship YouTube channel for more of our content. We are developing more social media streams so please stand by and we will notify you once those channels are up and running. We look forward to you worshipping with us. May God bless and keep you.)
