November 2, 2002 Jeremiah 18:1-11
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “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 I saw him working at the wheel. 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. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’
Imagine, if you could, the sixth day of Creation. Think of God somehow taking dust from the ground, carefully and meticulously forming Adam’s eyes, ears, mouth, tongue, brain - breathing life into his mouth, and then standing back and admiring His creation. By examining our own bodies, the animals, and all of creation we can see how our God is a master at forming things. God pictures Himself as a master former in the Word of God that we look at for today. This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "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 I saw him working at the wheel." By leading Jeremiah to a local Potter, he wanted the Israelites to envision Himself as a potter and the Israelites as the clay to describe what he could do with the nation of Israel. Just as a potter can form clay by turning it on a wheel with water at the flick of a finger, so God - the Master Potter - could do that with the Israelites, and with US. That’s what makes this a neat text to use on REFORMation Sunday, as we look at how God not only REFORMED the Israelites, but also - like forming clay - REFORMED the church through Martin Luther. The theme for today is
I’m Clay But Hey That Is Ok
As Jeremiah went down to watch the potter working on his clay, Jeremiah say that the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands. "Marred" means that it was ruined or corrupted. God’s message to the Israelites was clear. Like this marred clay, YOU have been corrupted. To give you some idea as to what the Israelites were doing at Jeremiah’s time, God told Jeremiah and the Israelites -
If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city. (5:1)
They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire - something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. (7:31)
You have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah; and the altars you have set up to burn incense to that shameful god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem.’ (11:13)
These weren’t just some kids who had forgotten to pay some parking tickets or jaywalked. What was the worst part? Jeremiah said to God, “you struck them, but they felt no pain; you crushed them, but they refused correction. They made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent. (5:3) Every time a prophet tried to tell them that their religious system and actions were flawed, they were persecuted. Like clay gone bad, the Israelites had become hard and impossible to work with.
This is also a good description of the Catholic Church during Luther’s day. The church was teaching it’s people that when you died your soul went to purgatory, where the remaining stain of sins could be “purged” from them through suffering. However, the church also taught that those still alive could help shorten the time in purgatory for their dead loved ones. This could be done by going on a pilgrimage, saying some Ave Marias, or purchasing an indulgence. One of the best sellers of indulgences was John Tetzel. Several horsemen and drummers would come to town ahead of him, announcing his arrival. He would come riding into town with an armed guard and the symbols of the papacy, a money chest and a supply of blank indulgences. Tetzel’s big catch phrase was, “once the coin into the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory heavenward springs.” In a whisp, the transaction was made and Tetzel would be on to the next town. It sounds incredulous, but this was in keeping with the whole system of religion in the medieval times - and is even taught to some extent today. The whole system of theology taught that the eternity of the soul was based on the declaration of the priest and the pope, through works of satisfaction and sacrifices made by humans on earth. It was so bad that in 1518 Luther wrote, “I am convinced that it will be impossible to reform the church unless the canon law, the decretals, scholastic theology, philosophy, and logic, as they now exist, are absolutely eradicated and other studies instituted.” The clay had become terribly MARRED.
What about us? Is the clay marred in our church? In our synod? If we only judge the success of our church by looking at the back of the bulletin and saying, “we have 70 in worship and over a thousand in offerings, we’re doing ok,” then we need to be careful. If our preaching and teaching is afraid of offending anyone so we keep a good attendance number, our system is marred. If we allow people to remain members and have good status in the church who are living brazenly sinful lifestyles, something is wrong with our lifestyles.
And what about your own personal system? Does yours consist of a mindset that says, “I put my offering in, I came to church, and therefore I did my Lutheran duty for the week?” Just because you never grew up with devotions, do you refuse to try and read a Bible story to yourself or your family? Just because you’re not used to praying a prayer besides “come Lord Jesus” with your wife or family, does your system say, “I can’t change.” Is your system one that reasons that as long as your doctrine is correct that you don’t need to improve on how you show love and forgiveness to others? If you refuse to see your own weaknesses and sins and room for change, these are caution signs that your clay is becoming moldy and marred.
The whole concept that God introduces is that he needs moldable clay. Clay is not a very strong element - it is in fact very fragile and can break very easily. If God were to remove his protection and grace from us for one minute, we would immediately crack under pressure. Like Job, we would break out in boils and sickness and sorrow. The most basic part of Christianity is confessing that we are weak and frail sinners that need to be shaped and changed and reformed every day. We can’t be too proud to say, “I’m Clay But Hey That Is Ok.” So the Apostle Paul called himself the “chief of sinners”. Luther also said, “I am nothing.” If you don’t have this attitude every day, then you are in danger of becoming or have become like marred clay instead of moldable clay.
This brings us to a main point of today’s text. When we deal with something that is moldy or crusty, we just throw it out and have no concern for it. But God does something different with marred clay. Jeremiah wrote, 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. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. Later on, Paul uses this very concept to describe what God did to Pharaoah. As an unbelieving heathen, instead of throwing him out, God decided to raise him up to power in order to display his power through the ten plagues. After Pharaoh made himself like unshapable clay, God shaped Pharaoh into an unreasonable king so he could perform wonderful miracles to free the Israelites. The history of the Bible shows multiple examples of this in positive and negative ways. He made Nebuchadnezzar a crazy fool so he would acknowledge God. He reformed Saul from a heathen into a great missionary.
In the Israelites case at Jeremiah’s time, what was God saying to them? He could do anything he wanted with them, no matter WHO they were. The Potter has unbelievable control. He could make them into a cigarette tray, to receive the butt of his anger. He could make them into wonderful artifacts of beauty that people would come to look at. Or he could make them into important jars to carry precious cargo in. Their actions would have consequences, just as Pharaoh’s did. God can do the same to YOU.
So God went on to say, If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ If the Israelites would just realize they were marred and reform their ways, their futures - which were still under God’s jurisdiction - would change. Even though he planned destruction for them, He was willing to CHANGE what He planned. But they needed to repent and reform their ways.
However, the Israelites and even their priests didn’t want to reform. Later chapters of Jeremiah report what happened as a result of this -
Jeremiah 20:1-2 1 When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the chief officer in the temple of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, 2 he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the LORD’s temple.
Jeremiah 26:11 Then the priests and the prophets said to the officials and all the people, "This man should be sentenced to death because he has prophesied against this city. You have heard it with your own ears!"
Instead of reforming their lives, they became harder and harder. So in 586 B.C. God changed the Israelites’ form. His hands crushed them from a powerful and influential country in the middle of commerce central into a weak and defeated country dispersed throughout Babylonia.
On October 31st, 1517, when Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the Castle Door of the Wittenberg church, he was not expecting the tumult that followed. He originally composed them in Latin - so that a debate would come about between the clergy and professors. But soon it was translated into German, illustrated into cartoons, and published throughout the land. Tetzel started getting heckled by the crowds, and the Catholic coffers were not getting as much money for St. Peter’s as they wanted. Soon Rome came calling, and Pope Leo X gave specific instructions for Luther to be silenced. Ultimately, the Catholic Church wanted and ordered that Luther put to death. They didn’t want to reform.
But what happened? Luther just continued to complete a series of lectures on Galatians and then Hebrews. As he did this, he came to an ever firmer conviction that Christ is the only source of righteousness - the only way to salvation. God REFORMED Luther’s theology. His sermons and theses were being translated and read all over Europe by the end of the year. Through this preaching of the gospel of salvation through Christ - the Holy Spirit changed hearts which led to the Reformation. Even though the Catholic Church tried to squash the Reformation, they couldn’t. God brought about the reform they were so dreading - exposing the faulty system of the Catholic Church. God REFORMED the church into different factions - so the Gospel would shine once more.
It is easy for us to get depressed at the systems of religion that we see in America today. It seems we live in a society that is ever impressed with big numbers and syrupy theology, which says that God loves everyone and no one goes to hell. It’s sad to see people in so called Christian religions worshiping with Muslims, Jews, and every religion under the sun, claiming that we all end up in heaven some how. It’s sickening to see liberals trash God’s Word and call it Paul’s opinion or a bunch of myths. The system is marred. But if the simple Word could cause a huge reformation through a simple monk, then the Word of God can do the same thing today. If God could change the heart of Luther and Paul and you and me, he can change the heart of anyone. Reformation is possible, as long as it is still day. In a sermon in 1522, Martin Luther similarly remarked, faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philips and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. Luther’s Works (Vol. 51, Page 77). That’s why we still profess today that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, through the Scriptures alone. It’s the Word alone that changes hearts and reforms lives.
Do you want the greatest proof of this? Some two thousand years ago a little boy was born to a teenager. The angels sang in the sky, proclaiming a Savior had been born! By looking at him laying in the cattle stall,cold, shivering, and at his mother’s mercy, many would have thought this little baby wasn’t going to change anything. But when this baby grew up, His words started changing people’s hearts. His hands started changing peoples lives. His body ended up changing people’s status - as He reformed the world from being a world of damned sinners into a world of holy saints - by dying on the cross and raising from the dead. His promise of salvation through HIM gave the world life in the midst of death.
If you came to church this morning living a life that you know is immoral, don’t harden your heart. If you’ve come convicted of the fact that you are destined to hell, don’t despair. If you’ve come with guilt over your failures as a Christian parent or worker, don’t tell yourself, “it’s too late.” The life and death of Christ says something different. Yes, you are like marred clay. But God has already reformed your status from a damned sinner to a forgiven sinner. It’s not to late to repent. Believe in what Jesus did for you. Then sit back and watch God reform you into a beautiful vessel instead of a dirty ashtray.
“Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” is a movie about an eccentric father who accidentally shrinks his children. Imagine how difficult life would be if today you were shrunk down to about one inch tall. You could get stepped on, pushed around, and be very fragile indeed. You would need help from someone to get from one place to another. But you would also see life from a whole different perspective. You wouldn’t need as much food or room to live. The little things that we seemingly walk by every day without notice, you would take much more notice of.
When God compares us to clay, he reduces us to smaller than a one inch tall person. He makes us into nothing but a hunk of powerless gunk called clay. Life is different from down here. It’s humbling. We realize we aren’t so powerful. We realize we aren’t so beautiful. But then, the blood stained hands of Christ scoop us off the ground and carries us to the skies. He gives us a perspective of life that shows us how wonderfully powerful and gracious our God is - to send His own Son to die for us. The same God who made this wonderful world has already made us into holy saints. This same God can reform the world as we know it and change more sinners into saints through his Word and sacrament. His Word will change your thoughts - His Word alone. His grace will give you faith - His grace alone. That faith will cling to Christ and give you life eternal - through faith alone. God’s grace, God’s Word, and faith in Christ make it easy for us to say, “I’m Clay, But Hey, That is Ok,” as long as God can shape me. Amen.
