Are you in safe hands? That signature question posed by the Allstate Insurance Company is taken to new levels when considering the hands of the potter in Jeremiah 18.
Rewind to Jeremiah 18:1-4. At the time of this parabolic vision, Israel was in spiritual free-fall and God was trying to get through to them through the prophet Jeremiah. So this time, God sends Jeremiah “down to the Potter’s house.” In this case, “down” was literally down in the Valley of Hinnom (or Gehenna), where anciently Israel had participated in child sacrifice to the gods Moloch and Baal. This valley became a vile waste dump and a place of public executions.
But it is from the “valley of death” that the Potter collects the clay to be redeemed. Jesus came to make His home with us on this sinful planet to take us into His house! If you’ve been saved, you’ve been brought from death to life—from the valley of Hinnom (Gehenna or “hell”) to the Potter’s house (the family of God). But there’s more to salvation than being delivered from hell and brought into the safety of God’s house. When we come to Christ we are rescued lumps of clay snatched from the fires of Baal. But God has greater plans for you yet! He’s going to make you into something beautiful.
For the raw clay, there’s the cutting, the weighing, the mashing and rolling. Then there’s the throwing and centering onto the wheel, the wetting, the spinning, shaping and the firing. But at the heart of the operation is the potter’s wheel—a wheel on top and one on the bottom with a spindle in between. The potter is seated before those wheels and the clay is placed on the upper wheel. With the lower wheel, the potter takes his foot and moves those wheels. As he does so, his eyes are looking intently at the clay.
The first lesson we learn here is: At the Potter’s house, we are never out of God’s sight. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer” (1 Peter 3:12). Once the work has begun, the Potter never takes his eye off the clay and God never takes His eye off us. You and I have His undivided attention.
This hands- and eyes-on attention is because the Potter has a plan for the clay. Rewind to Eph. 2:10. God has a plan for you, not just to save you but to use you for His glory.
The potter makes pots. His occupation defines his craft. As the potter makes pots, so the Redeemer redeems and the Savior saves. It’s what He does. He can’t help Himself. That’s good news because if you’re in the hand of the Redeemer, you’re going to be redeemed! That’s His plan for you today—to make you a redeemed vessel of honor. “O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isa. 64:8)
But something went wrong. “The pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands…” (Isa. 18:4). The vessel crumbled and fell in fragments upon the wheel and down to the floor. This was not the fault of the potter it was the fault of the clay, for the clay would not yield! This describes all of us who are made of “clay.” As the Bible says, “There is none righteous, no not one.” (Rom. 3:10)
Is the outcome hopeless? Rewind to verse 4…“So the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.” He made it again. At the Potter’s house, failure is not final. God will make you over again.
As long as we stay in the Potter’s hands, and consent to His remodeling process, we will be made into vessels of honor. God has a vision for you! And He doesn’t give up on you even when pebbles of resistance cause you to be broken and shattered. “He made it again.”
“We are not to try to do the work of the potter. Our part is to yield ourselves to the molding of the Master Worker.” {Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 186, 187} Reformation is guaranteed as long as the clay remains in the hands of the potter.
In His hands, under His control, guided by the vision He has for your life, you have a future and a purpose. Outside of His hands, you are broken, unfulfilled, unsatisfied, empty, and must ultimately be returned to the scrap heap. Not because God rejects you, but because you ultimately fire Him as your maker, and want to retain your own broken shape. (See Isa. 29:16; Ps. 2:9; Jer. 19:11)
The Lesson? Stay in the Potter’s hands! As we yield to God, he begins reshaping us into valuable vessels. (See 2 Cor. 4:7.)
But watch the potter work with the clay. As he works, He gets dirty. God gets His hands dirty in the remodel of our lives. He doesn’t stand aloof. He’s got our earthiness all over Him and He isn’t repulsed. We have His fingerprints all over us and He has our filthiness all over Him. And this is what it means to know God–to be so intimately acquainted with Him that His thoughts become my thoughts, His ways become my ways, my attitudes and choices and actions and words are shaped by His skillful hands.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” (Jer. 18:5, 6) Nothing is too hard for God. But that doesn’t mean our second chance came easy. It took the nail-marred hands of the potter to re-form the sin-marred heart of the sinner. Your Potter’s tattoos prove His commitment to your renewal. (See Isa. 49:16.) And those marks are never going away. He’s got you. Will you let Him have you? Will you let Him work you? Change you? And if necessary, hurt you?
Wherever you are in the process today—the marring, the reforming, the refining, the trimming away of the excess, or the firing—remember that the whole time, through it all, you’re in His hands.
Pastor Randy Maxwell
