"These were the
potters... there they dwelt with the king for his
work" (1 Chronicles 4:23).
"But now, O
Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our
potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" (Isaiah
64:8).
"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. And when
the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of
the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed
good to the potter to make it. Then the word of the Lord
came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with
you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay
in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of
Israel" (Jeremiah 18:1-6).
"And (thou)
shall say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Even
so will I break this people and this city, as one
breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole
again" (Jeremiah 19:11).
"And they took
counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury
strangers in" (Matthew 27:7).
"And they gave
them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed
me" (Matthew 27:10).
"But the Lord
said unto him (Ananias), Go thy way: for he is a chosen
vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and
kings, and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15).
"Or hath not
the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to
make one part a vessel unto honour, and another unto
dishonour?" (Romans 9:21).
"And he that
overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to
him will I give authority over the nations: and he shall
rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the
potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of
my Father" (Revelation 2:26,27).
This is a small
selection of the Scriptures which bear upon this one
matter of the potter and his vessel, and the one thing
which arises from them is that every vessel made by the
potter is an expression of his mind. When you look at any
vessel made by an intelligent potter you look through the
vessel and see the mind of the one who made it. There is
a thought in the form of that vessel, and that, of
course, is especially true of God.
You may know that
pottery has a very long history, and we are now in
possession of pottery that was made six thousand years
ago. Men were making pottery before Abraham was born,
and, as we have seen, it has a very large place in the
Bible. I had a long list of other passages of Scriptures
on this subject, but would not trouble you to look at
them.
Let us first look at
some of the general features of the passages which we
have read.
Firstly, God is
represented as a potter.
Secondly, humanity is
represented as the clay.
Thirdly, Israel is
represented as a vessel chosen by God for a purpose on
the earth.
Fourthly, the Church is
represented as a vessel chosen by God from eternity for a
heavenly purpose.
Fifthly, individuals
are spoken of as vessels. Some individuals, like the
Apostle Paul, are chosen for a special purpose.
Sixthly, the pattern of
God's vessel is His Son, Jesus Christ. The Scripture says
that the Church is "foreordained to be conformed
to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29), so that
His Son is the pattern to which God is working.
Seventhly, the
intelligent worker on the wheels of the potter is the
Holy Spirit. He is the driving power of God's purpose.
Eighthly, the wheels
themselves are the wheels of circumstance and experience.
Well, those are some
general things coming out of these Scriptures, but, as we
are laying the foundation for our consideration, we will
now come close to the Bible.
We read a verse in 1
Chronicles 4 which referred to the potter's field, in
which there was the potter's house. The potters lived
there, in that field and in that house, for one thing
only - to make pottery for the king. The kings - David
and Solomon - evidently kept a large band of potters, and
the many vessels used in the king's house which were of
clay were made in that field. It was to that field and to
that house that the Lord sent Jeremiah. David and Solomon
had gone long ago, but the potter was still busy in his
house in the same field. There were evidently very many
potters in the days of David and Solomon, but when we
come to Jeremiah it seems that there was only one potter
at work.
That potter's field had
a very tragic history. Our passage in the Gospel by
Matthew tells us a very sad story. The potter's field was
still there, but the potter's house and the potters were
all gone. Judas betrayed his Master for thirty pieces of
silver, and when he discovered what he had done, he went
back and threw the silver at the feet of the rulers, who
said: 'This is the price of blood. We cannot give it any
place in the sanctuary.' Then they had a meeting to
consider what they should do with the money... "and
they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's
field". That same potter's field, which
had come right down through history and had had a
glorious day, was now bought with the price of the Blood
of Jesus Christ. That had been prophesied by the prophet
Zechariah. The price of a servant, of a bond-slave, was
thirty pieces of silver, and that was the price that they
put upon the Son of God. What a tragic end to the
potter's field!
When we come to the
prophecies of Isaiah there are quite a number of
references to the potter and the clay, and we read the
final one. Israel is saying: 'Thou art the Potter and we
are the clay.' I expect you know what is the message of
the prophecies of Isaiah - the message of Divine
sovereignty over Israel and the nations. Those prophecies
began with the great vision in chapter six, when Isaiah
said: "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw
the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up."
Uzziah was one of the great kings of Israel after
David and Solomon, and when this greatness was dead the
prophet saw another greatness - "the Lord
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up". When
all earthly government fails, the government remains in
the hands of the Lord. When the sovereignties of this
world die, there is a sovereignty that never dies. The
Lord still remains sovereign over all things.
When you go on to
Jeremiah that sovereignty is concentrated upon this
chosen people, Israel. Here it is a matter of God's
rights in this particular people... "O house of
Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?" The
Lord has absolute right to do as He wills with His own
people. When the Lord says: 'I have chosen you', that is
not only His initiative, but His absolute authority. When
the Lord chooses a vessel, that choice carries with it
His absolute authority. That sovereign authority will
work for the vessel, or will work against it. It depends
upon whether the clay will yield to the sovereignty of
the Potter. If we yield to the mind of God, His
sovereignty will work for us, but if we resist, that
sovereignty will break us. We cannot get away from the
sovereignty of God. That can be a very wonderful and
blessed thing, but it can also be a very terrible thing.
When I have said that I
have just given you the whole of the prophecies of
Jeremiah. You may not like this book and if you had your
choice you would perhaps select Isaiah before Jeremiah,
but if you will read the book of Jeremiah with this one
thought in mind it will be a great inspiration. Over the
book is written: 'Cannot I do as I will? saith the Lord.'
No one can argue with God. No one can challenge God's
right or question the will of God. God says: 'I am the
Lord. I will do as I want to do.' That will be a very
good thing for all those who are on God's side, but it
will be a very bad thing for those who are in opposition
to Him.
Well, that is the book
of Jeremiah in a word.
You pass through the
sovereignty of God in Matthew 27 - the sovereignty of
fulfilled prophecy in the potter's field - and you come
to the ninth chapter of the Book of the Acts. There the
Lord is saying to Ananias about Saul of Tarsus:
"He is a chosen vessel unto me." Here,
then, we have the principle that God does choose certain
people for certain special purposes. Such vessels may
have to go through many sufferings and afflictions, but
if ever the sovereignty of God was seen in the life of a
single man, it was in the life of the Apostle Paul. We
said that God's choosing means God's authority, and
sooner or later our attitude toward chosen vessels will
prove to have been our attitude toward God.
We pass from Paul as a
chosen individual vessel, and we come on to more common
ground which brings us all in. We would not put ourselves
in the same category as the Apostle Paul, and would
hesitate to think that we are chosen vessels to fulfil
some special purpose in history. Of course, that may be
true of some of you - the end will tell whether it is
true - but whether it be true or not, when you come to
the second letter to the Corinthians, you are on right
ground. Remember: it is to Corinthians that the
Apostle is writing. Thank God, then, for the message to
Corinthians! To all the Corinthians, and to all like
them, the Apostle says: "We have this treasure
in earthen vessels" (2 Corinthians 4:7) - and
what earthen vessels we are! We are very poor clay
indeed, but the Word is: 'In this poor clay, these
earthen vessels, we have a treasure, and the excellency
is not our excellency - it is the excellency of God.'
"We have this
treasure" - as one version puts it - "in
vessels of fragile clay." I wonder what was in
Paul's mind when he wrote that! You may get some idea of
what he was thinking about if you look at the context. He
gives a list of all the things that the vessel has to
endure, the many persecutions and the trials that the
vessel has to go through, but although it is a vessel of
fragile clay and has to go through everything that would
be calculated to destroy it, it is not destroyed. It just
goes on burning because of that treasure within it.
You know, Paul only had
the Old Testament as his Bible. Has your memory lighted
upon what may have been in his mind? There are a lot of
references to the Old Testament in this letter to the
Corinthians, but in this case I think perhaps he was
thinking about Moses and the bush which never burned. Any
small match put to it might have consumed it and if you
had passed by the next day you would have seen nothing
but charred ashes. But this fire went on and on and on
and the bush was never consumed. The earthen vessel had a
treasure in it: it was the Lord. Come what may, if the
Lord is in the vessel, it will not be destroyed. The
testimony will go on. So Paul says: "We are...
pursued, yet not forsaken."
We pass from that to
Paul's letter to Timothy, and there he says: "In
a great house there are... vessels... some unto honour,
and some unto dishonour"... 'If a
man will separate himself from those vessels unto
dishonour, he shall be a vessel unto honour' (2 Timothy
2:20,21).
Here, then, the Apostle
introduces the great law of separation from everything
that God cannot accept, and says: 'If you do that, you
shall be a "vessel... meet for the master's use,
prepared unto every good work"'.
Therefore we are called
to be vessels suitable for the use of the Lord, and our
suitability depends upon our separation from all that
which is not honourable to the Lord.
We have only one
remaining reference: that in the Book of the Revelation. "And
he that overcometh... to him will I give authority over
the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron,
as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers."
I do not pretend to understand what that means, but
it does seem to say this: That there will be a people who
will be like a rod of iron, by which the rebellious
nations shall be broken to pieces like a potter's vessel.
I say that we cannot understand that, but there it is in
the Bible, and what it says is just this: That in the end
the nations which have continued to reject God, who have
resisted all the patience and love of God, who have known
of Him and have refused to have Him as their God, will be
broken to pieces like a potter's vessel, and the
instrument that God will use will be those who are here
called 'the overcomers'.
That is a very broad
survey of something of what the Bible says about the
potter, the clay and the vessels. It is only a beginning,
the laying down of a foundation, but do not allow your
anticipation of what is yet to come to rob you of the
value of what has been said. You have a lot of empty
pages in your notebooks yet, but do not be so anxious to
get them filled up that you do not go over what you
already have. We are not giving just Bible teaching, but
are working our way into the mind of God. There is a lot
of instruction in what has been said, a lot of comfort
and encouragement, and a lot of strength to be taken from
it, but there is also much warning. We are not only
occupied with teaching in the Bible. We are in the
presence of the revealed mind of God and to come into
that is a great responsibility.