"The word which
came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go
down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee
to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house,
and, behold, he wrought his work on the wheels" (Jeremiah
18:1-3).
We are seeing that God
Himself has taken the place of a potter and is at work
forming a vessel for Himself. His work has a very special
and definite purpose in view, for the vessel which He is
making is a chosen vessel, that is, it is governed
absolutely by His sovereign will and purpose. He will
have this vessel, and nothing, and no one, can deny Him.
The supreme idea connected with this vessel is that it is
designed to serve a special purpose throughout eternity.
There is an eternal thought in the Mind of God which He
is going to realize and express in this vessel, and all
believers are called according to this purpose. So what
we are concerned with at this time is to be led into that
divine thought.
There are two vessels
presented to us in the Bible, and yet these two are one
in divine purpose. There is Israel, which was called to
be an earthly expression of the divine Mind, and was
chosen from among the nations for this particular
purpose: to set forth the Mind of God on this earth in
history. On the other hand, there is the Church, spoken
of in the New Testament as "the elect" (1 Peter
1:1). But the Church was chosen from eternity for a heavenly
purpose, not only an earthly one. Israel was for an
earthly and 'time' purpose, while the Church is for a
heavenly and timeless, or eternal, purpose.
Now we, of course, are
called in relation to this eternal purpose. In this
present dispensation God is mainly concerned with this
Church. It is being gathered out of all the nations for a
great purpose in the ages to come. At present it is in
the process of being formed, but at the end of this
dispensation it will be completed and will begin its
eternal purpose.
The Lord is continually
rebuking us in relation to one thing: that is, that we
make everything of this life and of time. We think that
this life is everything, and therefore we have quarrels
with the Lord because we cannot understand Him. For
instance, the Lord does a deep, deep work in some life
and brings that one into a very real knowledge of
Himself. We draw our conclusions from that and say: 'The
Lord is going to do something very wonderful in this
world through that life.' All our hopes and expectations
are bound up with that one - and just at that point, when
we think they are ready to do some wonderful thing for
the Lord, He takes them away; and we get into trouble
with the Lord over that. We cannot understand why He does
that kind of thing, but He has done it very many times.
The Lord is working, not for time, but for eternity; not
for earth, but for heaven. All that the Lord does with us
here in time is related to the purpose of the ages to
come.
We had better settle
this matter very quickly. Nothing in any one of our lives
will be completed in time. We shall never reach the end
in this life, and only eternity and heaven will make our
life perfect. Just when we think that we might be useful
to the Lord, He takes us away.
This is the supreme
idea of the Church, and we must recognize that it is in
course of formation. Nothing is going to reach an end in
our lifetime. I think we had better settle that, because
it touches the heart of many of our problems.
In our summary of all
the references to the potter in the Bible, we said that
the driving force of the Potter's wheels is the Holy
Spirit, and it is very important that we should all be
perfectly clear and certain as to why the Holy Spirit has
come into this world. There are many aspects to His work,
but what we must guard against is regarding any one
aspect as the whole. It is possible to draw a circle
round the Holy Spirit and over that particular circle
write the word 'MUST'. 'It must be like this. If
it is not this, then it is not the Holy Spirit.'
So we put the Holy Spirit into a box of doctrine. The New
Testament makes it very clear that we must leave the Holy
Spirit out of boxes and in the open.
But when we have said
that, we have to realize that there is an all-inclusive
work of the Holy Spirit. However many aspects there are,
there is only one purpose, and that has two things in it.
In all His different works the Holy Spirit just moves
along two lines, and these two lines ought never to be
separated. The one line is revealing Jesus Christ. The
Holy Spirit came for this precise purpose. Jesus said so.
He is here for the specific and inclusive purpose of
revealing the Lord Jesus. Now there is a peril associated
with that word 'revealing'. Many people think that they
just have to sit down and let something come to them.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit does show us something while we
are praying or are meditating quietly, but most of you
have not the time to become monks or nuns. We have not
the time nor the opportunity to be recluses. This does
not mean that we must not have our times of prayer,
because while we talk to the Lord in prayer, it ought to
be a time when the Lord talks to us, but in these days of
so much busyness and activity, it is very difficult to be
quiet and meditate. Many of the Lord's people do not hear
Him speaking because they do not give Him an opportunity.
They are too busy to listen to Him. so we cannot put too
much emphasis upon the necessity for being quiet
sometimes.
When we have said that,
and said it very emphatically, for there is no real
substitute for prayer and there is nothing that should be
allowed to take the place of the Word of God in our
lives, we must recognize that the revealing of Jesus
Christ by the Holy Spirit is a very practical thing.
Many of you will agree
with me when I say that we have learned more about the
Lord Jesus by experience than in any other way. If we
have committed our lives entirely to the Holy Spirit, we
must realize that everything that happens to us has a
lesson in it. Each of our experiences is intended to
teach us something. You see, we come back to our
favourite text: "All things work together for
good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). There
is no experience which can come to us as children of God
that is not capable of teaching us some lesson. The very
sovereignty of the Holy Spirit demands that it should be
so. Our going out and our coming in under the Holy Spirit
will teach us something. There is a sovereignty over all
the ways in the life of a child of God. That does not
mean that all our ways are right, but if they are wrong
the Holy Spirit can teach us something. However, the
point is that the revelation of Jesus Christ comes very
largely through experience. We come to understand the
mind of the Lord by experience, and that is one of the
Holy Spirit's main methods of revealing Christ. We ought
never to take a holiday from the Holy Spirit.
The other line of the
Holy Spirit is conforming us to the image of Christ. You
can see these two sides in the potter's house. The clay
on the wheel is going through experiences, and they may
be very difficult for it to understand. The potter may
give it a hard blow, or he may use the strength of his
hands to bring pressure upon it, or he may gently work it
with his fingers. The clay goes through many experiences.
Well, the experiences are not everything. You may not
understand them, or know what the potter means by these
various activities. Many of them seem to be difficult,
but the potter is not just doing this because he wants
to. He is not doing something hard just because he wants
to be hard. Be patient and watch, and you will see that
something is taking shape: a vessel is being formed. In
the end there will be something which has a design in it.
"He wrought his work on the wheels." He did
not just put some clay on the wheels and knock it about -
he wrought his work.
To use a New Testament
phrase, the Lord is "working in us that which is
well-pleasing in his sight" (Hebrews 13:21),
and you all know so well what is the design: "For
whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to
the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29) - the
revealing of His Son by the Holy Spirit, the working of
the Holy Spirit by experience and the perfecting of the
vessel which is the image of God's Son.
I want to stay just for
a little while with one other aspect of this formation.
When the potter puts the clay on the wheel it is composed
of a great multitude of particles which could just fall
apart at any moment and the clay come to pieces. They are
individual particles. But do you notice what is happening
on the wheel? By pressure and manipulation these
particles are being pushed together so that they
are losing their independence and becoming parts of one
whole. If the particles could speak, they might say:
'Well, I don't think I like this idea. I am being robbed
of my independence and am having to accept a life in
relation to other particles. I don't think I like that
other particle. I would sooner have some other kind of
particle next to me, and here is this potter making me
live with other things that I don't like! "Oh, for
the wings of a dove! Then I would fly away and be at
rest!"'
The Potter is forming a
body, a vessel, and every part of this vessel has to come
into vital relationship with all the other parts. He
never consults our likes over this matter, never says:
'Now, would you like to be here and have So-and-so put
next to you?' You see, this is one of the great factors
in divine sovereignty. The Lord never consults our wishes
in this matter, because one of the great manifestations
of His grace is going to be in our ability to live with
people we do not like.
I wonder what you would
do if you had the choice of your relationships! But the
Lord does not give us that choice, for this vessel is
called, says the Apostle Paul, "to the praise of
the glory of his grace" (Ephesians 1:6).
It does not want much grace to live with people whom we
like, but it does take a lot of grace to live with some
people. This is the formation of the Holy Spirit - the
relatedness of the particular particles of the clay in
the vessel is through His discipline.
And yet there is
another aspect of this. The Lord very rarely puts
together two parts which are exactly alike, but He does
put parts together so that they can be the complement of
each other. This is divine wisdom.
Have you ever asked any
questions about your physical body? Have you ever asked
why you have two eyes instead of one? Why you have two
ears and not only one? Why you have two hands and not
only one, or two legs and two feet? Why is there
duplication in our bodies? Well, see how you would get on
if you only had one leg! You would very soon lose your
balance, for you need the other leg to keep you balanced.
You put one foot forward and, unless you are just going
to hop along with much difficulty, you must have another
leg to come up and help. Of course, there are some people
who, not having a second arm or leg, have learned to use
the one very well, but that is not natural, and they must
often feel the loss of that other limb. There is always
some weakness and some lack. Well, if you like to try,
you can put this to the test. You can go out from this
place (I don't want to see you do it!) and try to get
along with one leg. Do you see the point? God has
constituted our bodies on this principle of mutual
helpfulness, the one member making good what is lacking
in the other.
When I was a little boy
I used to be taken to church and, not being very
interested in the sermon, I had to find some little ways
of getting through that awful long time. One of the
things I did was to see how much I could see through one
eye, and then how much I could see when I closed that one
and looked through the other. I found that I had only
half a life when I used one eye! You see, my nose was
like a line, and when I closed an eye I could not see
very much on the other side of my nose. It was the same
the other way, but when I used both eyes I could see
everything. Well, of course, that is just a boy's silly
little game. If I closed one eye I did not see some of
the things I did not want to see!
We need the two sides
to make a perfect life, so God has given us two eyes, two
hands, two legs and two feet, and each side contributes
something to the other side.
Here we are back with
this vessel that the Lord is forming. All the particles,
while retaining their personality, are to become one
vessel.
There is one thing that
I feel I must say before we conclude. The real formation
of this vessel is taking place in heaven. We are always
trying to get a perfect expression of the Church on the
earth, but we shall never do it. Make no mistake about
this! You will have to learn this lesson sooner or later.
At the end of the Bible
this vessel is represented as the new Jerusalem and is
seen coming down out of heaven. All the
ages have been occupied in forming this heavenly vessel.
Nevertheless, what is heavenly has to become more and
more real in us while we are here. We shall never know
what the Lord has been doing with us until we get to
heaven, but when we do see all the meaning of His work
with us here we shall be very surprised. There is a
larger meaning than we can see in those words of the Lord
Jesus: "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou
shall understand hereafter" (John 13:7). Why it
is that the Lord puts us together as He does: why has He
called us to live in certain relationships which are not
what we would choose? The full explanation of that awaits
us in heaven, but that does not mean that we have to wait
until we get there to express the relationship. It is a
mark of something being wrong spiritually when members of
the Body of Christ separate themselves from other
members. Our great peril is to live an independent
spiritual life. There is something of a Thomas in most of
us. You will remember that when the others were together
enjoying the presence of the Risen Lord, Thomas was not
there. Fellowship is a spirit before it is
anything else. It does not necessitate our always being
together in one place. It is a very precious thing to be
able to be together as the Lord's people, for many of
them live a very lonely spiritual life. Nevertheless,
fellowship is a spirit more than it is geographical. When
the Apostle said: "Giving diligence to keep the
unity of the Spirit " (Ephesians 4:3),
he was not only localizing that. It is an exhortation to
the whole Church, scattered over all the earth -
"giving diligence to keep the unity of the
Spirit". It is the "unity of the Spirit"
- fellowship is a spiritual thing.
Now the Potter, by the
energy of the Holy Spirit, is seeking to form a heavenly
vessel, and the formation is a progressive day-by-day
expression of the Lord Jesus.