CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE MASTER POTTER

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

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. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand, 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.”

Jeremiah 18:1-10

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If we learn anything about the Lord as we study His word and the relationship He had with His people, we know that He can build His people up and support them or He could bring His judgment and break them down, bringing harsh consequences upon them.

Either could happen depending on the people’s level of faithfulness and obedience to God’s will and way.

As we look at the opening ten verses of Jeremiah 18, we see the Lord illustrate these very truths to us through using the example of the potter. Look again at this passage:

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. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand, 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.” Jeremiah 18:1-10

Note the focus in this scripture was on how the clay pots could be made. They could be useful for a purpose the potter envisioned when he made it, carefully formed and shaped masterfully by the potter’s skilled hands. They could also be easily destroyed and marred before they could become useful by the same potter’s hands who could bring the clay back into the useless lump it was and start the process over.

In the illustration used by the Lord in Jeremiah 18, the Israelites were likened to the clay and of course, the Lord was the potter or, in this case, the Master Potter who held the future of His clay in His hands. If His people were warned that the Master Potter was about to destroy their clay vessel (representative of God’s people and their broken relationship with God) and they repented of their wrongs, the Master Potter could relent and not carry out His plan to demolish them. Conversely, if the Master Potter had decided to make His clay (His people) into something useful for His purposes and His people did evil, sinning in His sight, then He would reconsider the good He had intended for His people and their destruction would loom.

Either way, the Master Potter was in complete control as to the destiny of the clay He was forming.

Friends, the same relationship exists between each of us and the Lord today. We are all lumps of clay, useless on our own but in the hands of the Lord, formed into something beautifully employable, vessels that are designed for amazing, glorious purposes by the skilled hands of our Master Potter. We are also subject to the will of the Lord and He can choose to destroy our wickedness by crushing our pots, ready to start over and build us up again when we choose to repent and recommit ourselves to His righteousness.

So this devotion presents us with a simple question:

Where do we stand as clay in the hands of the Master Potter?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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