We continue our studies in the book of Jeremiah, coming to our seventh study this morning. And I would ask you to turn with me to the passage which we read from chapter 18, verses 1 to 12, the potter and the clay. Only the older folk among us here remember the early days of television. There was only one channel. I remember the night UTV started and there were two channels. In those days the announcers, the women, would appear on screen in very elaborate evening dress. The announcers would wear a dinner jacket and a bow tie. It was all very, very formal and stilted. We were all a bit strange with television. One of the news announcers was a man called Robert Dougal. And I remember hearing of an old lady in Belfast who really liked Robert Dougal. But she used to undress for bed downstairs in her front room because that was the only room in the house with a fire. She liked to watch the news when she was getting ready for bed. So she had to get a screen and she would undress behind the screen. and watch the news so that Robert Dugall couldn't see her when she was getting ready for bed. So it was all very new to us. And the programs weren't joined together properly. So there would be gaps of three or four minutes sometimes between one program and another. And they would fill that with what I suppose we would now call a screensaver, a little film of some kind. and you would sit and watch this film until the next program was ready to start. Now one of the best of those was a potter working at clay and some of you folk my age and older will remember that. It was really quite hypnotically fascinating. This potter's wheel going round and round and just a pair of hands moulding the clay, moving and shaping the clay and the pot would rise up tall and narrow and then it would go down and be short and fat and the potter would keep working it. And this would be on two or three times a night when they were getting ready to show you the next program. And the art of the potter is something which really hasn't changed in the last 4,000 years. It's something that in its essentials is exactly the same now. as it was in the time of our Lord, and here, centuries earlier, in the time of Jeremiah. Pottery was one of the most functional and beautiful of household items. And here, in one of the best known passages from the book of Jeremiah, he is told to go down to the potter's house. The potter's house was a fixture in every community. Nowadays, when archaeologists are digging up some ancient site, they will find thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of shards of pottery. It is one of the things that has survived the millennia. Jeremiah probably went down to the potter's house because, from all the information we have, The potters in Jerusalem lived down the slopes of the valley of Ben-Hinnom, which is still outside the city, where there is an adequate and plentiful water supply. So, Jeremiah is sent to go down to the potter's house. He obeys, and he tells us in verses 3 and 4 what happened. I saw him working at the wheel, but the pot He was shaping from the clay, was marred, it was spoiled in his hands. Something went wrong, it went out of shape, blemishes appeared. Jeremiah says, so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. A very, very simple everyday event. Dozens of potters would have been working down there that day. And again and again this would happen. But God had said to the prophet, you go down and there I will give you my message. Now, what message did Jeremiah receive in the potter's house for God's people in Judah and for us today? We see in this passage a threefold call. Firstly, in verses 5 and 6, a call to humility. A call to humility. Let me read them. 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. Here is a lesson in the absolute sovereignty of God. That's the main lesson of the chapter. His total control over his people, over all humanity. That's a great characteristic of pottery. That wet clay, as I've said, is easily moulded. And it's fascinating, if you get an opportunity and haven't done it so far, spend half an hour watching a potter. It's fascinating. The least pressure of his thumbs and suddenly a rim will appear on the bowl he's making. Or he brings his hands in and suddenly the vessel will grow taller. He can shape it, the slightest movement of his thumbs or his fingers or his hands, and the whole vessel alters under his mere touch. That, says God, is a picture of mankind in my hands. You are in my hand like clay in the hand of the potter. And that was a lesson that these arrogant, rebellious people needed to hear. For they were full of themselves. Here they were, making their own plans, going their own way, following their own decisions, ignoring God, neglecting God, disobeying God, thinking of God at best as existing for their convenience. They were talking and acting as if they controlled their own lives, as if they were masters of their own destiny, captains of their own fate. God says, Remember, you are clay in my hand. Here, to use the title of one of Jonathan Edwards' most famous sermons, we have sinners in the hands of an angry God. in my hands." And friends, that is a message that is just as necessary today for people to hear in the 21st century as it was then long ago. For we live in a profoundly man-centered world and culture. In the words of the psalmist, God is not in all their thoughts. God doesn't feature God doesn't count. God isn't to be reckoned with. God isn't to be dealt with. If there is a God at all, He is so remote and far away and uninvolved that He doesn't matter. And one of the things that the church of today has to do is to try to press home upon our fellow men the awesome overwhelming control of God over every human being. We are clay in the hands of the potter. Literally so. Literally so. We are clay. We read in Genesis 2-7 that the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground. And this verb, this Hebrew verb formed, is here used for the word potter. It's the same root. Human beings are shaped and held and controlled and governed in the hands of God. You and I and every human being on earth, we are lumps of clay spinning in the potter's wheel. And His hands are holding us. And His hands are shaping us. And He's molding us. Everything about us. The same Hebrew word is found also in Jeremiah 1.5, where God says to the prophet, Before I formed you in the womb, I formed you as a potter shapes a piece of clay. He shapes us. He decides our genes. He decides our makeup. He decides our sex. He decides our height and the color of our hair and our eyes and our characteristics, our bodily makeup, our temperament, when we'll be born, where we'll be born, to whom we'll be born. He governs everything that happens to us in our lives. Every single detail is under His control. He decides how long we live. He decides the precise moment when we will be removed from this earth. Does not, says Paul, the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? John Calvin, commenting on this passage, writes, No one of us may dare to promise himself another day or even another hour or even another moment. We're constantly being reminded of the uncertainty of life. We literally do not know the day or the hour, and that is in the hands of Almighty God. And that is an enormously solemn and searching thought. We're not in control of our own lives. And people need to be brought to realize this. To realize that the basic reality of life is that you're in God's hands. And the basic issue of your life is what is your relationship with the God in whose hands you are. Calvin again, until men are brought to know that their condition can in a single moment be changed according to God's power and will, they will never be as humble as they ought to be. It's a call to humble ourselves before God, to bow down before Him, to recognize that He is the God in whom, literally, we live and move and have our being, and the next beat of your heart, the next breath that you draw is given to you by Almighty God. And that same God could just as easily stop your heart or mine here and now, this second, if it was His will. We are in His hands. And we can forget this also in the church. Even though we know God and worship God, we can live inconsistently with what we profess. We can marginalize God or neglect Him or disobey Him. Here, then, is a call to be humble, to fear God. to reverence Him and stand in awe before Him and be submissive and be obedient. A call to humility. But then in verses 7 and 8, we have a call to hope. A call to hope. What I have been saying so far could be misunderstood as fatalism. Now what is fatalism? Fatalism is the belief that there is a blind, impersonal machine in charge of the universe, that everything is pre-planned and you and I are nothing but programmed robots. Whatever will be, will be. And there is nothing that you and I can do to change it. It is written. And that is a very paralyzing, debilitating philosophy of life. What's the point? If everything is pre-planned in a mechanical, automatic sort of way, what's the point of anything? But that's not the teaching of the Bible. Follow me here because We're making some fine distinctions. When I say the potter is free, he is free. He is not trapped. He's not limited by his material. He's not limited by what happens. He is free to respond to a new situation. Verse 4, we were told, the clay was marred in his hands. What he was working on was spoiled or else the clay wasn't good enough. So what happens? What's the potter going to do? So the potter formed it into another pot. He isn't beaten. He isn't frustrated. He doesn't say, well I wanted to do something here but now I can't He never says, I can't. He's free to do something in response to this new situation. Now, this, of course, is where the parallel breaks down because the clay is a dead, inert material. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't act. And in that sense, we're not like the clay. Now, we're on the edge of mystery here. But the Bible tells us that there is a real interaction between our choices and our decisions and God's dealings with us. That when we act, God reacts. Now when I say that, and I don't want to get into this area this morning because it would take us too far away from our text. I'm saying that in the context of an absolutely all-knowing sovereign God who knows from the beginning that we are going to act, who has foreordained that, and who has brought that into His plan. I'm not dealing here with the intellectual problem of reconciling divine sovereignty, which is absolute, and human responsibility, which is very real. But the Bible teaches us that God's overriding purpose, and we believe in that, somehow, mysteriously, does not in any way cancel out our freedom. We are not robots. We are not programmed. You and I are responsible moral agents. And you and I will be making decisions today and tomorrow and choices. And we are free to make those choices according to our natures. And we can choose to obey God or to disobey God. And if we choose wrongly, we can't lay the blame on Him and say, O Lord, You have foreordained everything. This is Your fault. We know that's not the case. We say, Lord, I shouldn't have done that. I chose to do it and I was wrong. I made a bad choice. And this is a wonderful truth. Look at how it's explained in verse 7. God says, if at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed. That's an echo of chapter 1, verse 10. I appoint you over nations and kingdoms, the same verbs, to uproot and tear down and destroy. Here's a message of judgment, of destruction. God's going to punish these nations. He's going to tear them down. He's going to destroy them. But that message, that message, here's the wonderful thing, is designed as a warning, as a call to repentance and mercy. Because God goes on to say here in verse 8, And if that nation I warned repents of its evil, Here are amazing words. I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. God is speaking in human terms here. He is not denying His everlasting eternal plan. He is saying, He stated a purpose. I am going to punish this nation. The nation repents. God says, I'm not going to punish you. You've repented. God is free. This is enormously hopeful. The clay was marred in the potter's hands. Do you feel marred? Are your lives pitted with blemishes and impurities? Have you made mistakes? Have you failed? Have you been involved in sin? Have you been less than you should be even this past week? We're all aware of our weaknesses and failures, and sometimes they're very serious. And sometimes we're tempted to think, It's too late for me now. I've missed my opportunity. I'm not as useful to God as I should be. I'm certainly not as beautiful. But the message of this section is it's not yet too late. The pot is still on the wheel. It's not in the oven. Once it's baked in the oven, too late. It's not going to be changed. That's its form. But it's still on the wheel. God is not defeated by your sin. God does not say, you come to Him, and God doesn't say, well, I'm sorry, but you're too late. I could have blessed you, but then you sinned and now I can't bless you. God's not limited. God's sovereign. God's able to remake you. into something beautiful and something useful. The clay was marred. But the potter remade it. The potter remade it. He did that with Peter. Peter denied his Lord. Peter failed. The potter remade him. He did it with Saul of Tarsus. persecutor of the church, and the potter remade him. His grace and wisdom and power and patience are so glorious. And if you and I will come to God in repentance and say, Lord, I'm sorry, you will find God remaking this part of your life, that part of your life, helping you with this besetting sin, strengthening you in this grace, Helping you to carry out a new responsibility. Helping you to forgive someone. Helping you to be patient with someone. Helping you to start again. To start again. The potter made it again. And that's the message of hope for these wicked people against whom judgment has been proclaimed. Jeremiah is saying, God is saying, it's not too late. I said I was going to judge you, but if you turn to Me, I will be merciful." We're never beyond hope. While we're on this earth, as we come to God in repentance, we're never beyond His grace and power. That glorious verse, Psalm 138, verse 8, the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me. O Lord, Do not abandon the works of your hands. A call to hope. The vessel was marred, but the potter made it again. God says to the people, even now, you come to me, I'll forgive you, I'll make you again. A call to humility. A call to hope. But thirdly and lastly, We have in verses 9 and 10 a call to heart searching. A call to heart searching. So far the message has been humbling and encouraging. But we need to remember, says God, that the potter can work in the other direction. The other direction. Look at what he says. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. Here's the other side of the potter's work. When he looks at a piece of clay and he says, I'm not going to make something beautiful out of it. I'm just going to make something very ordinary. And this is relevant in Jeremiah's day because of something that we've looked at before, their false theology, their temple theology, their covenant theology. Their teachers told them that God Himself was bound by His own covenant, that God was limited by His past promises, that God was so constricted that He was compelled to bless His people and to protect His people no matter what they did. And they didn't teach the people that the promises were conditional. God never said, I will bless you no matter what you do. God said right at the beginning in Deuteronomy, if you disobey me, I will punish you. If you repent, I will forgive you. But these teachers were saying, don't worry, don't worry, there won't be any invasion. There won't be any disaster. There won't be any judgment. We are the covenant people of God. We are in the city of God. We have the name of God. We have God's promises. And the theme is here, as I've said, the central theme, one of the central themes of Hebrew prophecy, the freedom of God. The freedom of God. God is free, we've seen. to reach out into the Gentiles and to bring in a people who weren't His people. He's free to do that. And God is also free to cast off those who were His people but are no longer His people. You never control God. You never have God in your pocket. You never can say, God has to. God doesn't have to. just as He is able to bring in the Gentiles, so He is able to cast off Israel according to the flesh. If I decree judgment and people repent, I'll forgive them. If I decree blessing and people disobey, I'll punish them. Here is a terrifying thought. designed to awaken these rebellious people, to bring them to their senses, to lead them to cry for mercy. Yes, he had announced that their nation was to be built up. He had said that David's kingdom was to be planted. But they were doing evil and they were not obeying. And God said, I will reconsider the good that I had intended to do for it. He's not speaking, I repeat, of His eternal sovereign purpose. He's talking about His interaction with them. And how relevant this is for all of us here as professing Christians, for we have inherited promises, assurances that God will be with us and that He will protect us and bless us and keep us. But you see, friends, if we start relying on those promises and at the same time denying God in our lives, then we forfeit the right to the promise. Isn't it common? Haven't we met people in this province who are doing exactly that? Oh, I'm a born-again Christian. I was converted 30 years ago. I made a decision. Do you go to church? No, no. Don't go to church now. Don't read the Bible. Don't pray. But I'm born again. All right. I made a decision. No, no. You can't rely on past commitments if there's no present obedience. You can't claim God's promises if you're neglecting His claims. Repeat that. You cannot claim God's promises if you're neglecting His claims. You can't expect blessing if there's persistent disobedience. The potter is free. The potter is free. So here's a call to us to heart searching. Are you still trusting God? Do you still love Christ? Are you still serving Him in your life? Are you still pursuing holiness? Are you still consistently walking with Him day by day. If you're not, then don't say, well, after all, I'm a Christian, all is well. All may not be well. You may need to go back to the beginning and examine the foundations once again. So there's a call to humility. We're clay in the hands of the potter. There's a call to hope. There may be flaws. There may be weaknesses. But God can remake you. But there's also a call to heart-searching, for the careless, for the disobedient, for the neglectful of God. Am I a Christian? Am I a child of God? Or does my present lifestyle suggest that I've no claim to the promises. Verses 11 and 12 are very sad verses. A tragic post-crypt. Something fulfilled in years to come. The people hear all this, but this is their response. Verse 12, we will continue with our own plan Each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart. I pray that that will not be true of any of us here. Search me, O God, and know my heart. See if there is any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Amen.