Sermon for 5/2/04 7 p.m.
SBC Philippi, Philippi, WV
In the Hands of the Potter
Jeremiah 18:1-6
Primary Purpose: God uses various means to shape us and mold us for His purposes.
Introduction:
When I was in 10th grade, I took an art class. We had drawing, painting and scratch board and even some photography. I love drawing and painting. I hated trying to work with the pottery. You sit down next to a wheel and push down on a pedal to control the speed of the wheel the clay is on. Then with water on your hands you mold the clay in the shape you desire. It can be frustrating, but the good thing is that as long as it hasn’t been in the kinnel, then it can still be molded and changed. God is showing Jeremiah how Judah is like a piece of clay in His hands. (Read Scripture)
The first thing I want you to notice is this: God doesn’t give up on marred clay. Jeremiah is living during a time when idolatry is running wild in Judah. There is a lot of immorality and evil taking place in God’s house and with God’s people. God describes them as marred- which means blemished or disfigured. Some of you may feel like that. The good news is that the church is a place where God takes what is marred and makes something useful out of it.
In 1502, in Florence Italy there was a large block of marble given to a church in Santa Maria, the church immediately hired who they thought was a professional to sculpt this enormously huge piece of rock. The man was not a professional and soon after commencing this great task the man drilled a whole right at the bottom destroying this magnificent piece of marble, so that the church decided just to drape a huge sheet over it not knowing what else to do, since it had been damaged beyond recognition and repair. A certain man, Michaelangelo caught word of this large stone and how it had been destroyed, so out of curiousity he went to check it out and thought “Hey, I think I can do something here.” After a time he began work and sculpted; and what was once thought to be a lost cause became one of the greatest statutes of David ever built. There are people today who feel like that gigantic slab of marble, things have been done to them and something is broken inside. But in the capable hands of the Lord, they can be molded into all that Jesus has called them to be. (by Jeffrey Poms)
Remember it was Jesus who the Pharisees asked about when they said, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners.” Matthew 9:11 Jesus reply to them was that “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Jesus was there to heal and forgive and to make something new out of the marred clay in Judah.
One thing about molding with clay, there comes a point when the pottery is fired. Then, it becomes hard and isn’t moldable anymore. Some people are like that because of sin and for other reasons. I think the Pharisees were like that. When it’s glazed like that it would have to be broken before it could become moldable again. Sometimes God also has to break us, bring us to the end of ourselves in order for us to be willing to acknowledge that God is right and we are wrong. If you know someone today that is like that glazed piece of pottery, you need to pray that God would break them, so they will be moldable and useful for Him one day. Lately, I’ve been going through some of the neighborhoods in our community, talking to people and prayerwalking. One of the first things I pray is that God would break some of them. Bring them to a point where their cold hearts are open to the gospel. I talked to this one man who was about 50 years old. He had on a t-shirt that had a skull on it with fire coming out of it. I asked him if he had a church home. I invited him to our church. I pray for him, that God would make him aware of his need. As long as a person is self-sufficient,they will never repent.
I was like that as a teenager. I had plans that didn’t include God. I was going to leave the church and go make a bunch of money. God allowed me to go through a period of depression. It caused me to look up a seek Him. I would attribute a lot of what happened in my life to my mother’s prayers. She prayed for me with persistence. When are we going to have a burden for our community, our friends, our neighbors our family like that?
The second thing about this that I want you to notice is that God uses adversity and experiences to mold us into Christlikeness. (James 1:2; Jer 1:5) Dr. Billy Graham talks about waking up at 3 a.m. to milk cows at his parents house growing up. He talks about learning about hard work with milking cows before and after school and cleaning stables. He talks about going door to door selling brushes. God didn’t waste any of those experiences with Billy. He uses all of those experiences to build into Him something He could use.
In my own life, I can see God using experiences like when I worked in collections and in retail and in fraud to help me. I am by nature a quiet person. I would be content to read from the beginning to the end of the day on a day off without saying a word. I’m just a quiet person. I would be perfectly happy on a vacation with a soft comfortable chair, a stack of good books and a cold diet pepsi. I don’t need to go anywhere or see anybody. Just stick me on the front porch and leave me alone. But the task God has called me to has me in a place where I need to be able to talk to anybody and not to be afraid. After over 2 years of talking to criminals who commit fraud on credit cards and deliquent customers about their credit card accounts it has helped to do that. I’m not afraid to go anywhere now. It doesn’t matter if I know the person or not. God used those experiences to mold me. God is trying to do the same with you. The thing is also, that if you allow him to use you, the molding process goes on to equip you for even more. If your faithful with a little He will give you more.
If you look at your own life, you might be able to see what lessons God has been teaching you. Has he been building up your faith, teaching you persistence, longsuffering, developing your prayer life, helping you to love other people, teaching you how to share your faith, talking to you about your finances? There are many lessons that we can learn and should if we are being used by God. The molding process never ends.
“God does not waste an ounce of our pain or a drop of our tears; suffering doesn’t come our way for no reason, and He seems especially efficient at using what we endure to mold our character. If we are malleable, He takes our bumps and bruises and shapes them into something beautiful.”
Frank Peretti, “The Wounded Spirit”.
The third thing that you need to remember is that God creates you for His own purposes. Our usefulness comes from being in His hands. If you could have seen the pottery I made, you wouldn’t be very impressed. It might make a good door stop or paper weight, not much more. I only had a day or two at the wheel and not very long at that. So, the usefulness comes from being in the master potters hands, who knows how to create what He desires. He knows what you need to turn into a creation He can use. Before it is in the hands of the Master it is simply a lump of clay, not good for much of anything.
