Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who pours out his Holy Spirit on us through the Word of God recorded by Jeremiah in the 18th chapter:
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Get up and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will make you hear my word.”
I went down to the potter’s house, and behold he was doing his work on his wheel. The pot that he was making with clay was deformed in the potter’s hand, so he remade it as another pot as it seemed right in the potter’s eyes to do.
The word of the LORD came to me: “Am I not able to do to you, O house of Israel, like this potter?” declares the LORD. “Behold as clay in the potter’s hand so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one time I may speak about a nation and kingdom to uproot, to tear down, and to destroy it. That nation may turn from its evil about which I spoke, and I will relent from the evil that I had planned to do to it.
“At another time I may speak about a nation and kingdom to build up and to plant it. It may do evil in my eyes so as not to listen to my voice, and I will relent from the good which I said to do to it.”
“Now say to the man of Judah and the inhabitant of Jerusalem, ’Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am forming evil against you and planning a plot against you. Oh everyone turn from his evil path and make your paths and works good.” ’ ”
This is the Word of the Lord
Dear friends in Christ, fellow saints of God:
In Jeremiah’s time, pottery was the Tupperware® of that day. If you needed a storage container, it was made out of clay and came from the potter’s wheel. Visualize what Jeremiah saw as he watched the potter. A lump of clay lies on the potter’s wheel. As he spins that wheel, his hands work the clay. That clay almost seems to come to life as the pressure from his fingers rounds the clay and hollows it out, forms the sides and the lip, and a pot appears.
But something was wrong with that pot Jeremiah saw. No problem. The potter’s hands simply reformed the pot as seemed best to him. He was the potter; he could do as he pleased.
The Lord God is our Potter. He has formed us with his almighty hands and reformed us with his gracious hands. He intends good for you, for he is the Compassionate One. He plans blessings for you, for he is the Faithful One. Don’t frustrate his plan by walking in evil ways, ways that may seem good to our natural selves but are not right in God’s sight.
Rather, listen to the Potter’s call. He calls to you and me: “Turn from evil.” That’s the theme today: The Potter calls to us: “Turn from evil.” Hear his call, for his hands formed us. Hear his call, for his hands are reforming us, as well. Hear the Potter’s call, for he calls to you.
1. Hear his call for his hands formed us
a) How do we fail to live out the truth that God is our Maker?
His hands formed us. Think back to the creation account. How did the LORD God make the first human being? He formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. In fact, the Hebrew word translated “formed” at the creation of Adam is the same root as the Hebrew word Jeremiah uses for potter and the work that a potter does as he forms the clay.
The LORD God is our Potter, our Maker. Think of Psalm 119, “Thy hands have made me and fashioned me” (Psalm 119:73 KJV), or Psalm 139, “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13 NIV). We confess this every time we say the Creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” If he made heaven and earth, he certainly is our Maker, or as Luther put it, “I believe that God has made me and every creature, and has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my mind and all my abilities.” His hand has formed us, like a potter at work.
We know and confess this truth, but do we practice it and live it? We live in a world that is attacking the truth that the Lord God is our Maker. I’m not just talking about evolution that openly assaults our Maker, giving his glory to random chance and a big bang. But so many issues debated in our society are talked about in ways that ignore our Maker. For example, many in both political parties want to use embryonic stem cells to find cures for diseases, even though other kinds of stems cells are available. Yet using those embryonic stem cells destroys the new life God had created, even if they call it a therapeutic use. So also in so many life issues whether at the beginning of life or at its end, the debate ignores who the Maker is and instead carries us along with sentimental reasoning that sounds so caring. The Maker, who alone has the right to choose, is not a politician or a judge or a doctor or a scientist working in a lab. It’s not even the mother. The Maker is the Lord God. He is the Potter who forms us and every living thing, no matter how small. Think of that as you carry out your civic responsibility to vote this Tuesday.
Yet our failure to practice the truth that God alone is our Maker is deeper than these hot-button issues. Can you imagine a pot complaining to the potter that he’s not doing things right? What does a pot know compared to the human being making it? What right does it have to talk back?
But how often don’t we challenge God about his way of doing things? Maybe we don’t like the way we look, or we think that we’re lacking certain abilities that we want to have. Maybe we don’t think that life is treating us fairly or that God is ruling the world well. Maybe we blame God for some of the problems we face or a tragedy we’ve suffered. Maybe rather than humbly listening to his Word and gladly hearing it in church and studying it in Bible class as often as possible, we think we have better things to do. Aren’t all these just different ways of thinking that at least at sometimes we can give God advise? But that is as foolish as a pot talking back to the potter.
b) What awaits us if we don’t hear his call?
And all this is an evil path that the Potter calls us away from. To think that we can sometimes challenge God’s Word or that we don’t always need to listen to him, to imagine that we may know a better way, all this walks on an evil path away from our Maker. Hear his call: “Turn from evil.” Hear it, for his caring hands formed you; he is your compassionate Maker. Hear is call: “Turn from evil.”
Hear it before he sends his punishment against you to uproot, tear down, and destroy. No one can replant what God uproots. No one can rebuild what he tears down. Rather like a shattered pot, we, when walking evil paths, are fit only for the rubbish heap of hell. There the trash fire does not go out and the pain goes far beyond holding your hand to a hot burner, for your whole body is continually tortured in pain worse than burning alive. The stench of rotting flesh, your rotting flesh, gags you. This is never-ending destruction. Hear the Potter’s call: “Turn from evil.”
2. Hear his call for his hands are reforming you
a) Why does the Lord call out his warning to us?
Hear the Potter’s call, for he does not want to uproot, tear down, and destroy you. Rather he says, “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn . . . , turn . . . from your evil ways” (Ezekiel 33:11 KJV). His compassion and grace sent the prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel to speak strong words of warning because he wanted the people to turn away from evil and follow him so that they would live. That’s why in the text he talks about how if an evil nation turns from its evil ways, he won’t bring the destruction on it that he had threatened. For the Lord is merciful.
His warning calls out to us today. Although his warning may sound harsh to our ears, it flows from his mercy, for he desires that we turn from our evil ways and live. If God kept silent, that would be true damnation for us. But today it is still not too late for you. Tomorrow he may no longer call us, if we refuse his call today. But today, right now, he calls to you. And he works reformation in you.
b) Why do we need to be reformed?
That’s what Jeremiah saw the potter do when the pot he was working on was marred. The potter reformed it as seemed best to him.
Sin has marred us. Even though the holy God wonderfully formed us, we still began life fully corrupted by sin. For when Adam and Eve sinned against God, they polluted all humanity. The clay of humanity, so to speak, was corrupted. So although God wonderfully formed us, we still began life totally sinful. We’ve talked about how our sin tries to challenge our Maker as if we knew better.
c) What are God’s “hands” that reform us? What do these hands give us?
But just as that potter reformed that marred pot, so our gracious God reforms us. He reforms us through his Word and Sacraments, namely Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They are God’s hands that reform us from the inside out to be like the Son, Jesus Christ. This reformation of our very being is God’s work in you. He is the Potter.
That’s what the Lutheran Reformation is all about. In the Roman Catholic church Martin Luther had learned that he needed to change himself. That’s why he had become a monk. But the harder he tried to change himself to meet God’s requirements, the more he realized he could not, just as a pot can’t change itself. And he hated God all the more for demanding the impossible.
Luther at that time had it half right. God does demand the impossible from you and me. He demands complete perfection. But only the Holy Spirit could open Luther’s eyes to see that what God demanded from us, he also freely gives to us. Through his Word and Sacraments God gives us the perfection he demands. This perfection does not come from us, but from outside of us, from Jesus. Just as that marred pot was made right by the potter’s hands, so also by Word and Sacraments God makes you right in his sight. For the Word and Sacraments bring you Jesus’ perfection, which is often called his righteousness. His Word and Sacraments reform you from the inside out.
Now we could ignore his Word and Sacraments. We could only go through the motion of hearing and using them and say good things about them. But if only our ears and not our hearts listen to his Word, if, as our mouth receives his body and blood, our soul does not gaze in faith upon the Lamb of God, who was slain but no lives and reigns forever, then we have again become like that pot that tries to challenge the potter.
Rather hear his call. Let his hand’s working through the Word and Sacraments continue to reform your inner being. He is your Lord and God who not only made you, but also saved you by giving his Son into
