Our God is an interactive God. Dealing with his chosen people, he warns, cautions, rebukes, punishes and ultimately redeems his people on a continual basis. It seems to be a full time job just to keep up with his chosen people going astray time and time again.
God wants his chosen people to walk the path he has set for them, but he permits them free will and deals with their mistakes and rebellious nature again and again.
In this scripture, Jeremiah prophesies the conquest and captivity yet to come at the hands of the Babylonian Empire. It is a message that we know from this scripture and from history that God’s people reject.
God proclaims in this prophecy that if his people will just turn away from their sinful path, he will stop the destruction that was marching towards Jerusalem. They did not.
It is good to study the history of God’s chosen people. It is actually our history as well, but there is a message very early in this passage that should talk to us directly in any age, time, or setting.
We are the clay!
God is the potter. We are the clay.
We often think that we would prefer to be the potter. Our whole human make up drives us to be the potter. We know that if we could just set our own course, we could fix the world. Think about it.
Is anyone every truly satisfied with their government? It doesn’t matter what party, whose administration, what the mix in the house or senate is; our attitude is generally, “can’t those guys do anything right? Enough is enough!”
What about where we work. Are we critical of every decision that our supervisor, team leader, vice president, or even the owner or CEO makes. We could have done much better than that. What were they thinking?
What about when we send our kids to school. Surely somebody could come up with a better system than what we have now. Whose class is my kid in? They don’t get to go to lunch until when? Why do they need a drug test? Why don’t they serve biscuits and gravy every day?
Some of these are a little tongue in cheek, except the biscuits and gravy part, but we seem to have an inalienable quality to question authority, structure, organization or anything else that might shape our lives.
We seem to embrace our rebellious nature.
In the last verses of the selected text when God warns his people to turn away from their evil; the people seem to say whatever. We’re going to do what we are going to do.
If it feels good do it.
Do your own thing.
It seems like we all want to be Frank Sinatra singing I did it my way. We want to stick to the way we do things come hell or high water. We don’t want anyone else shaping our lives.
We want to be the potter, or so we think.
The next time you are driving around our beautiful country, take note of the number of salvage yards you see. Everything in there was once a beautiful new car or truck. It came off an assembly line and had a shiny new paint job, new motor, new transmission, new suspension, and even a new car smell.
But at some point it just stopped working, fell apart, became good only for salvage.
The potter looked at the clay, saw it was marred, and he began to reshape it.
The potter saw the condition of the clay, and he reshaped it as it seemed best to him.
We are reshaped all through our lives. Sometimes this comes from our failures, where we must try again and again. Sometimes it comes when we discover we are good at something and pursue it passionately. Sometimes it comes in pursuit of a goal or a dream.
If I want to be Miss Oklahoma, then I might have to reshape my body.
If I want to be a politician, then I may have to reshape my thinking.
If I want to have a lot of money, then I will need to think in terms of return on my earthly investment. I may have to reshape the way I see income, investment, and expense.
Is there anyone who has not made life changes so they could be something different? Is there anyone who has not tried to shape who they are?
Is there anyone who in the course of a lifetime who has never felt marred?
Have we all not been torn apart, hurt, damaged, or broken at some point?
Who reshapes us?
Have we continued to try to put ourselves back together only to go down the same broken road again and again?
Or do we accept that we are the clay. Only God can sit at our potter’s wheel and take us from where we are—marred and broken—to becoming the new creation that lives the abundant life God desires for us.
This is a tough thing to do. We are creatures made in God’s image, full of gifts and talents, commanded to subdue the world. How can we not try to control everything around us? How can we not try to control everything about us? How can we not try to control every aspect of our lives?
Perhaps by realizing that we are the clay and not the potter. We are the ones being shaped, molded, and sanctified to be holy as God is holy.
Now we can only take the imagery of the potter’s wheel so far. We are not a lump of clay. We are full of gifts and talents and passions. We have been given free will by our creator. We too live an interactive life, but we must accept—truly accept—that God is shaping us the way he wants us. That even with all of our faults, mistakes, and life catastrophes; he can still shape us into the new creation that he made us to be.
God is the potter. We are the clay. While the metaphor may not extend much farther, the relationship does. God never gives up on us. He uses the events in our lives to shape us. We cannot be marred so badly that he cannot rescue us from our lives.
I’m not much for including bumper stickers in the message, but every rule needs an occasional exception. In this case, it is the one that reads:
If God is your copilot, change seats.
Instead of trying to make our day, our week, our lives fit into our well scripted, plan that keeps us in our comfort zone; surrender completely to God and give him sovereignty in your life that he can mold you and make you the person he wants you to be.
God has good plans for you. Make Jesus Lord in your life so he can shape you to enjoy those good plans.
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