Clay in the Potter's Hands [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

He takes it and relumps it and re-spends it and makes it new from the very same clay, Remay. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Brint, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Remay, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I sure want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Don't miss it.

Contact us at PastorAlan.org, that's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860. We're going to give you more on all this later in the program. But right now, let's dig in and get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Okay, beloved, are you ready for some good news?

Yes. Well, you know, though life sometimes feels like it's spinning, spinning, spinning, like it's sometimes like it's spinning out of control, you are, as we'll see today, clay in the potter's hands. And as surely as the centrifugal force of the spinning clay on the potter's wheel is part of the process of being formed into that which is glorious, so it is that you are in the potter's hands.

It means, beloved, that in some of the most uncertain times when you might feel like things are swirling, swirling, you're actually right where God wants you, in His hands. We are starting today a series from Jeremiah on the prophecies of restoration and hope that we see in his life. And I want us to dive in, in the middle of his ministry, in the middle of the book, to this scene in the potter's house in Jeremiah chapter 18.

It'll be from this chapter, by the way, that we'll be receiving our new year's blessing that we're gonna be speaking over one another's lives in a series that I'll just call Remade because it's all about how God can remake anything. Jeremiah chapter 18, verse one, the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord arise and go down to the potter's house and there I will let you hear my words. So I went down to the potter's house and there he was working at his wheel and the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand and he reworked it into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the Lord came to me, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done, declares the Lord?

Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. Have you ever had a project that you started out, didn't turn out right and you just wish you could do it over again? When I was a kid, I was all into arts and crafts and I loved to paint. Acrylic paint was my choice. I liked it better than oil. It drives way faster.

But the problem with it is that it drives way faster. So once it's on the canvas, you don't have long to work with it. But I loved painting as a kid and then I kind of gave it up. So some years ago as an adult, I thought I need to get those old acrylic paints out and try to paint something again, just to be fun to do. And so I got out the canvas. I got out my paint set. I went and bought some new brushes and excitedly started into this painting that I had perfectly envisioned in my mind. I wanted to paint a beautiful horse in the middle of a lovely field in a rural setting on a misty morning.

And the field turned out pretty good and the trees in the background, they were good enough. But the horse, the horse had issues. And I thought, I looked at it and I said, the horse's legs don't look right. But then I remembered, this is a horse on a misty morning. It's a horse in the mist. And so since I was an artist, I let the mist grow. It was a little more dense than originally envisioned and that mist rose up over most of the horse's legs.

And so I stepped away from it for a while and I came back to it and I noticed that honestly the horse's body didn't look in proper proportion either. And so I decided to let the mist grow even more intense. And so the mist grew a little higher and started covering the horse's body.

I stepped away for a while and I thought, well, it's going to be good to go now. It was a misty, very misty morning. And the next day I came back and looked at it and I said, honestly, the horse's head doesn't look right at all.

And so instead of being a misty morning, it became a heavy fog. When I finally got done with that and I showed it to my wife, I said, how do you like my horse in the mist? She says, where's the horse? It's kind of famous in our household of all my paintings.

It's the most famous. The horse in the mist. You know, you have times in life, you know, where you just feel like if I could just do that over again and yet you can't. And lots of things in arts and crafts and so forth, you can't, you can't redo it. It's just, you know, it's done, but not so with soft clay on a potter's wheel.

That's a different matter. And what God calls Jeremiah to do is to go down to the potter's house and see a demonstration so that he can show him some layers of prophetic insight that is centered in this beautiful thing that happens where potter's working on a vessel and finds that in some way that it's marred and he takes it and relumps it and re-spins it and makes it new from the very same clay remade. And I think there's something important for us in these times in this image and in the prophet Jeremiah.

It is a relevant prophetic book for us in these times. So Jeremiah lived in a span of time that would see the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon. And his ministry takes place under three different kings in Israel.

The times were tough. So about a century earlier, 722, the Assyrians had invaded the northern part of Israel, the northern kingdom. Sometimes that's called Israel and sometimes the southern is called Judah. But the northern had already been invaded. So they'd already, these were people that had grown up having seen what they knew of their land to have been radically changed by great foreign powers that have come and changed the landscape of history. And now they're in a time that there is increasing uncertainty about what is going to happen with the rise of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire which is taking over much of the known world.

So you've got to envision yourself in a time like that. This is 630 years before Christ roughly and Jeremiah is called to preach in this context in which it is certain that the Babylonian empire is going to come and eventually sack Jerusalem, deport a number of the people in exile in Babylon. And Jeremiah is the prophet who sees all of this coming. And God speaks through Jeremiah to a people who are troubled and there is great uncertainty about the future. The people have been under three different leaders, kinds of leaders. Josiah who brought some noble reforms but didn't last when his son Jehoiakim rebelled against the Lord and people practiced wickedness. And then Zedekiah gets put on the throne by Babylon for a 10-year period thinking he's going to be sort of a puppet, but he's not.

He flees to Egypt. What I'm saying is there were a lot of turmoil in the leadership of the nation. There was tremendous uncertainty about the future. There was great fear. Morale was low and everybody had a different idea about the way forward. In fact, one of the things we're going to see that is really just sort of shocking is that the Lord, when it becomes imminent that Babylon is going to take over, the Lord speaks through Jeremiah and gives him word to give the people that what they're actually supposed to do is to just give in to Babylon, Babylonian rule.

Which I mean, just like as Christians, who would ever say that, right? So it was confusing and people, one person had this idea, another said we should go to Egypt, another said we should fight, another said we should just give in to Babylon. And there was just tremendous uncertainty and great division and polarity of thought, uncertain rule and this impending judgment. And then what happens is Babylon comes and for an 18 month period, they put Jerusalem under siege and then they come in Jerusalem and the temple is destroyed, which represents their whole way of life.

So what I'm saying is that Jeremiah is a prophet whose life and ministry spanned this transitional turbulent time amongst the people of God and it reminds me a whole lot of today is relevant for us. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a favored foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Allen Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastorallen.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Allen Wright. Daniel was born in a little town north of Jerusalem. So Jerusalem becomes his main place of ministry.

He came from a priestly family, sort of the way John the Baptist did, but he was young when he was called into the ministry, probably not old enough to be at the age that was required to be a priest. So he is comfortable in Jerusalem, but he's not a Jerusalemite. He's still a bit of an outsider. As one commentator said, to think of someone who has tried to move to Texas or maybe California or maybe North Carolina, I don't know.

You don't, you're like, you've been close by, but it takes, it's just, you don't mean it won't quite totally ever fit in. Jeremiah was, he was in Jerusalem, but he wasn't born there. He was from a little town and he wasn't a priest and yet he was comfortable in the context of that. And God comes to Jeremiah, as we'll learn next week, and calls him from a powerful sense of God's purposes that have far preceded anything Jeremiah could have conceived. And in the middle of his ministry, where God has given Jeremiah so many words of judgment to give to the disobedient people about the destruction that was coming. And yet then these beautiful interjections of prophetic hope that see beyond his years and see into the centuries and ultimately point us to Jesus. And here in the center of this, Jeremiah 18, the Lord wants Jeremiah to see something that's very important to God's heart. And so he tells him, I want you to go down and observe the potter.

You go down because he's probably speaking of you're in Jerusalem, like at the temple mount and go down into one of the valleys, maybe Hinnom Valley. And as is the case today, most people work from their home. And so just go to the potter's house and you'll see him working there. An object lesson, so to speak. Not unlike what we have attempted and bygone years to do in our, we used to do little children's sermons back when we had things structured a little different and we'd bring all the little kids up front in the middle of the service and try to give them a little object lesson that point them to Jesus. And the kids, of course, they're pretty savvy.

They figure out that it's, you know, where it's always going. So it's like the story of the guy giving a children's sermon. And he said, I'm thinking of kids, I'm thinking of something that is a little and gray and furry, has a bushy tail and hides nuts for the winter. And one little girl raised her hand, she said, it sounds like a squirrel, but I bet the answer is Jesus.

And you know, it's kind of like that. But people have asked me, they said, why'd you quit doing the children's sermon? And I, and I sometimes joke, I said, well, you see one time we would just rotate it around amongst different lay people come do the children's sermon and you never knew what you were going to get. And you know, we didn't screen them ahead of time.

It just, people showed up and some of y'all might've been here one day. I'm not denigrating this brother, this good brother who had well, well, well intended, but he came in, he was a big man and he came in and the kids are all gathered around up here and they're just, you know, and he walked out and he's got a big, I think it was a beaver trap. It's a big thing, big steel thing on spring loaded, you know, with the claw type thing like that. And, and, and that, and he's out there and, and, and he showed them how those jagged edges just go like that on the animal. And, and the kids, and he said, that's the way it is with sin kids. He said, it's it, it looks enticing, but then it just, I came out and I said, you know, I don't know if we're gonna do children's sermons anymore. They're hard to pull off, you know, they're hard to pull off. It's a helpless feeling when you're the preacher and somebody's in the middle of that and you're like, I, you know, I don't, children, God loves you.

Okay. Anyway, well, he, he, he's got, he's got a skill God does of using the right object lessons that actually convey prophetic insight. And remember Jeremiah is a prophet. He lives his life in the stream of revelatory insights. So when he goes down to look at the potter, he sees things layer upon layer, deep spiritual insights. And he watches the potter, you know, interestingly, this is one of those crafts.

It really hasn't changed that much over the years. We could show you this from a modern day. It's clay that's gotten and you got that video to show it's clay that, that you grab, you put it onto a wheel as much as they did centuries and centuries ago. And a potter finds a lump of ordinary clay, chooses a lump, slaps it around a little bit, lumps it together, rolls the clay, just a bit of mud, just a bit of dust and dirt, puts it onto a wheel today.

Of course, a lot of them are electric. The differences that Jeremiah's time is still in most places of the world. There are two wheels, one up top, one below, and it works like a flywheel. So the legs can operate the wheel below and make the top wheels spin. And the clay is kept moist and kept in the potter's hands and where he presses, the clay goes the other direction. And so he molds it and makes it as it spins and spins and spins. And then when he chooses, it's his creation, it's his design, it's his image he has in mind. He then can begin to press down and make whatever kind of vessel that he wants to make it into. And isn't it something how something so mundane can become so beautiful with a little bit of spinning? And then it becomes something that's treasured and cared for.

And what's interesting is that it really hasn't changed that much over the years. So when Jeremiah went down to the potter's house, he saw much like what we would see. So marvelous an image. Why don't you go with him and imagine Jeremiah there. What does he see? What does he notice? I think he notices in the first place that clay is common. There's nothing more basic or unimpressive than clay. A little dust, a little water, a little mud that by itself without any shaping from the potter is not much to look at and not much use. But he notices that the potter can take something that's completely amorphous, something that has no shape and no purpose yet. And the potter gets a vision for the clay. The potter gets in his mind something beautiful for that which is not yet lovely. The potter has in his mind an idea of usefulness for something that in its present form isn't very useful. It begins as the potter's creative instinct. I love that. Leanne Payne in her brilliant chapter called Creative Power, an insightful book, The Healing Presence, spoke of Michelangelo and commented on how Michelangelo had said of his greatest works like the sculpture of Moses or his famous David that Michelangelo said that they were in the stone clamoring to be freed. And he said he just chipped away the stone to uncover it. Alan Wright, today's good news message, Clay in the Potter's Hands.

It's from our series Remade. And Pastor Alan is joining us back here in the studio with a parting good news thought for the day to carry with you in just a moment. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a biblical world view.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a favored foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back now with Pastor Alan, and as we kick off this series, Remade, and if you could see the visual behind this, really was a lot of the themes of the potter, and that's what this teaching was, clay in the potter's hands. Well, it was nourishing to me, Daniel, to study and learn more about how a potter spins the wheel and shapes the clay.

I've never done that before. It made me want to learn how to do it. But one thing's for sure, the potter gives his full attention to the clay, and that clay, as we'll see some more tomorrow, is always in the potter's hands. And sometimes the pressure of just pushing inward on the clay as the potter's wheel spins, that's what makes the vessel start moving vertically and shaping into it. So I just leave listeners with this thought that if you're feeling some pressure, it doesn't mean God has left you.

It means that you're clay in the potter's hands. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.