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 18:5-10 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/jer.18.5-10.NIVUK
Several years ago we had the immense privilege of visiting one of the modern wonders of the natural world: the Turkish region of Cappadocia. I would encourage everyone to visit it if they have the chance.
Quite simply, it is incredible.
While we were touring round the other-worldly landscapes and rock churches and underground churches, our tour guide took us, as they tend to do, to see some local craftsmen at work in the hope of making a sale.
He led us through their shop. Everything was pretty expensive – way outside our budget.
Then he took us to their workshop, and I understood why.
These craftsmen were potters. They worked the clay with incredible skill, likely handed down through generations, and produced the most exquisite (and exquisitely priced) Ottoman pottery. I was mesmerised by their skill and deeply, deeply impressed by their end product. These men and women were artisans. I had the utmost respect for them and their ancient craft.
Jeremiah the prophet is sent to a potter to watch him work because God has a message for him, and all of Israel and Judah with him.
It’s not an easy message, and even less so now.
But it is a message that has to be heard, understood and obeyed.
It is the message of repentance.
It is the message of conversion.
It is the message of change.
And it comes in three parts. The first of these is sovereignty.
Sovereignty is something of a hot topic in my country. Millions of people voted for Brexit – for the UK to leave the European Union – for it so they could ‘take back control’. But that was a wasted vote. They are still not in control. They never were in control. The whole thing was just a mirage.
God states here quite firmly that He is in control:
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.
Jeremiah 18:6 NIVUK
You see, a potter takes a lump of clay, slaps it onto the wheel, wets their hands and then begins to work the clay. But maybe the clay is too wet, or too dry, or has small pieces of grit or stones in it. Then the potter may abandon their intended product and make something else, potentially even scrunching up the clay as they do so. Or perhaps, if the clay us really no use, they might discard it.
Let me take you back to that Turkish workshop for a moment. I am no expert at all on pottery. Would I have the authority or the expertise to question one of those fine artisans on his use of the clay? Could I call him or her to account on how they used it, or if they even used it at all?
Of course not! How could I?
Then neither do we have the right to argue with the choices of a sovereign God.
You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘You did not make me’? Can the pot say to the potter, ‘You know nothing’?
Isaiah 29:16 NIVUK
‘Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, “What are you making?” Does your work say, “The potter has no hands”?
Isaiah 45:9 NIVUK
Later on, in the New Testament, Paul used this very same picture to make the very same argument: that God has the right to do whatever He wants with His creation because God is sovereign (Romans 9:19-21).
This applies to all things. But in the Jeremiah’s context – and ours – it also applies to what God deems to be right and what God deems to be wrong: where He draws the line. We might argue and disagree, but it matters not one jot.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
Isaiah 5:20-21 NIVUK
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 1:7 NIVUK
So if God says something is wrong then, guess what? It’s wrong. And if God says something is right, then guess what? It’s right.
God decides where the line is drawn. Bot popular culture. Not anthropology. Not the legal or educational system. Not politicians.
God.
And if we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line?
Well, that’s our fault, not God’s.
There is something else we should notice about this. There are multiple Christian songs that feature the words ‘You are the potter, I am the clay’. Almost every one of them is about surrender to the will of God.
But this passage is not about that.
Think about it: does clay surrender? When was the last time you saw a lump of clay waving a white flag?
Does clay have a choice? When was the last time a lump of clay voted in an election?
Does clay have a voice at all? Does clay have agency?
Of course not!
The point of these verses is not that we should somehow surrender to the will of God as if we have a choice. It is that God is working out His will in us and we should surrender to it. It is not that we should somehow ‘choose’ God, as if following Him was a democracy. It is not. God is sovereign. The only choice we have is to submit to that sovereignty or spend the rest of our lives fighting a battle against it which we will definitely lose.
The picture of the potter and the clay told the Jews that God was in charge, no matter what, and nothing they could ever do could change that.
But as well as sovereignty, it also speaks of God’s mercy.
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.
Jeremiah 18:7-8 NIVUK
Our modern world has greatly misunderstood repentance and conversion. We seem to think of it as some form of joy-stealing abuse, as the work of some religious nut who tries to force a square peg into a round hole.
That is completely wrong.
Repentance is a work of mercy. Repentance is a work of grace.
Repentance is like when a potter works with clay, but somehow it is not forming itself into the object they were trying to make. However, instead of setting aside the clay that has failed to do their will, the potter reshapes it and reforms it. The potter does not give up on the clay. The potter gives it another chance to demonstrate its usefulness.
The Jews had found themselves in this position. After repeated generations of ever worsening sin, they were facing the very real, and deeply terrifying, prospect of exile. The charges against them were clear and damning and the verdict was obvious:
Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?’ – skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat. The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: ‘I will never forget anything they have done.
Amos 8:4-7 NIVUK
And that was just the surface of it. The Jews were also involved in idolatry (Isaiah 46:1-7).
Their involvement in pagan rituals was so deep that Ezekiel accused them, in some of the most graphic language of the Old Testament, as being like spiritual prostitutes (Ezekiel 23).
Tell me this: would you allow someone like this to repent?
No, I didn’t think so either.
Repentance is not a right. It is a privilege. It is a grace. It is never deserved. The fact that we need to repent tells us that we don’t deserve the opportunity to repent.
That is why repentance is an act of mercy. It is an opportunity to change extended to unworthy people who don’t deserve it.
That is exactly what is happening here. The potter is giving a second chance to clay that had become marred in his hands – he intended to make something with it, but it didn’t work out. Now he is trying again.
I am writing this on the day when a TV presenter who had absolutely failed morally, and was facing the loss of his wife and his career, was being vilified so much online that he confessed in an interview that he felt suicidal. Our culture has turned from grace. It has rejected it. In its place comes a ruthless, judgemental and, I have to say this, flagrantly hypocritical witch-hunt of anyone who transgresses.
The very idea of repentance seems alien.
But yet it’s something we all need. For all the fury and furore of our mob mentality, we have to admit that we all – every single one of us – have sinned (Romans 3:23). Despite our self-righteous anger, the reality is that each one of us is just as sinful as the next, and the explosion of rage at the sins of other people merely serves as a noisy distraction from our own failings.
Yet in His mercy, God has held out to us sinful hypocrites the possibility to repent.
Will you take it?
We move on from sovereignty and mercy, to the last part of God’s message to and through Jeremiah, and that is righteousness.
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 18:9-10 NIVUK
This is like when a skilled potter is working on a pot and everything seems to be going well. It seems to be taking shape nicely. But all of a sudden, the clay caves inwards or flops backwards. Then, instead if a potentially valuable object that they could sell to make a lot of money, the potter is staring at a useless pile of wet clay, spinning around on their wheel.
This is an aspect of God’s character that many people struggle with today. That is because we have been raised in a largely undisciplined and unruly society. Our culture has backed away from the hard truths that make our cultures function. Instead, it has pandered to and indulged its young people.
That is why we now have people who will argue until their last breath that black is white and white is black; that young is old and old is young; that male is female and female is male.
It’s easy to condemn where our culture is going. Of course it us. But is Billy Joel pointed out in his masterpiece and frighteningly accurate song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, there really is nothing new under sun: each generation is messed up because the one before it was messed up too.
But God cannot allow evil to prosper. He cannot allow wrong to rule. He must take action.
Just take a look at Isaiah 59. The great lists of wrongdoing in this chapter describe our age perfectly. But look how God intervenes:
Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no-one, he was appalled that there was no-one to intervene; so his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak. According to what they have done, so will he repay wrath to his enemies and retribution to his foes; he will repay the islands their due. From the west, people will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory. For he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.
Isaiah 59:15-19 NIVUK
You might question whether love and wrath can possibly coexist. But when so much evil is being done, and so many precious people are being disadvantaged and hurt, how can love stand idly by and let it happen?
That is not love!
Jeremiah states clearly that God has no intentions of standing by and allowing evil to prosper; that one day there will be a reckoning; there will be justice.
And this is a beautiful, yet terrible promise: beautiful for those who right now are on the end of terrible unjustice; terrible for those who mete out the injustice.
‘See, it stands written before me; I will not keep silent but will pay back in full; I will pay it back into their laps – both your sins and the sins of your ancestors,’ says the Lord. ‘Because they burned sacrifices on the mountains and defied me on the hills, I will measure into their laps the full payment for their former deeds.’
Isaiah 65:6-7 NIVUK
‘Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: instruction will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. My righteousness draws near and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last for ever, my righteousness will never fail.
Isaiah 51:4-6 NIVUK
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23 NIVUK
In Jeremiah, this justice will be more dramatic than we could ever imagine. God could not stand idly by and watch as the people called by His Name sinned openly and dragged that Wonderful Name through the mud. A few years later, He sent them away from their land into exile in Babylon. The exile was the darkest period in Jewish history for centuries to come.
All because they had turned away from God.
We have to take the warning seriously.
‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings for forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god – which you made for yourselves. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,’ says the Lord, whose name is God Almighty.
Amos 5:25-27 NIVUK
God will not tolerate those who turn against Him forever. There will be a reckoning. There will be justice.
Maybe you find it difficult to hear this. Maybe it troubles you. However, passing on this warning is a necessary part of evangelism.
Consider one of those big Hollywood or Korean blockbusters, where someone is standing in the way of oncoming traffic, and someone from a safe position yells at them desperately to ‘Get out of the way!’
That is the essence of evangelism. We see the threat. We see the coming judgement.
Because of our love for you, we do not want you to be caught up in it.
Now imagine a hero who throws themselves in front of the oncoming traffic to rescue you.
That is Jesus. The judgement is righteous. It is just. It is fair. But He doesn’t want you to be caught up in it either. That’s why He gave Himself to save you, to take the punishment you deserve.
That is why we call on you to repent and believe the Good News. Who else would do something like that to save you?
In these verses, set in the gentle context of a potter’s workshop, we see three important aspects of the message of repentance. We see God’s sovereignty, in that He is in charge and He rules over all.
We see His mercy, in that we do not deserve to have the opportunity to repent, but He gives it to us anyway.
And we see His righteousness, in that those who refuse to accept His offer will face the just and righteous punishment for their own sins.
Walking through the shop where those pots were made, I had to be very careful. The pottery they made was very high quality and very expensive, but also very fragile. If I’d dropped one or knocked it off a shelf, it would have crashed to the floor and smashed into many pieces. It would have been irreparable: the only new form it could have taken would be hundreds of tiny pottery shards. It would have been lost.
And why was that?
Because the pliable clay had been fired in an oven and baked hard. Its opportunities to reform had long gone.
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7 NIVUK
Today, if you hear the voice of the Lord, do not harden your heart. Don’t argue or seek to justify your lifestyle. Repent. Just repent. And follow Him.
Don’t leave it until it’s too late.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I do not want to wait another minute. I am done with my old life. I don’t want to face the penalty of my sin. I want to give my life to You. Show me what this means and help me to follow You. Amen.
Questions
1. Why do you think God sent Jeremiah to a potter’s workshop? What message was He trying to convey?
2. Why is the sovereignty and righteousness of God relevant to this message?
3. What is stopping you from repenting? Will you do it today?
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