THE CREATED OBJECT HAS NO RIGHT TO DEMAND ANTHING FROM ITS CREATOR—ITS VERY EXISTENCE DEPENDS ON HIM.
“But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this’?” (Romans 9:20).
Nobody is born a Christian! They can’t be! It isn’t natural birth that fits us for the kingdom of God; it is divine birth alone. We all deserve hell, but God in His lovingkindness sent Jesus to us. Jesus chose to go to the cross in obedience, shed His blood, rise from the dead and now lives again. He did all this to take on the sin of the world. Our responsibility is to find Him and accept Him as Lord and Savior—see John 14:6. Our only way to reach heaven is to come through Christ. He offers that new birth to everyone. The choice is yours. We are not puppets we have free will so the choice is always ours.
We should not question the Creator—“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” A God who is not sovereign is no God at all! When we talk about God, we are talking about a sovereign being, and sovereignty means, “the right to do what you will without giving an answer or reason to anybody.” And God must be that kind of a being or he is no God at all!
Paul goes on to show that, within the limits of man’s finiteness, he exercises the same kind of sovereignty that he tries to deny to God. This is illustrated in the matter of the Potter and the clay. Doesn’t the Potter have the right to take a lump of clay, divide it in half, take half of the lump and make a beautiful vessel that is designed for display in a living room, and take the other half, and make a slop jar or something for the kitchen? Doesn’t he have this right? Yes, he does. The Potter has the right to do with the clay as he wishes—this is Paul’s argument.
We are living in a day when people have made salvation so much of man they have forgotten the fact that salvation is all of God. Israel did the same thing. We have done the same thing. We have been privileged. We think we have done something. We think we deserve something. But we are clay and the clay never, ever has a right to say anything back to the Potter. The Potter is the one who has all the rights over the clay, the humanity He has made. He may not exercise them, but He certainly has the right and He certainly has the might.
Do you realize that God could kill you in the next minute and be absolutely righteous in doing it? Do you believe that? The next time you sin and you quickly say, "Well, I will ask God to forgive me when I enjoy this a little bit longer," just remember something. God has a right to take you out of here. But we don’t believe that. We think, "God is a loving God and just wouldn’t do that!" Most of the time you are right. Thank God He is long-suffering. But when you understand that one sin condemned the whole human race, one sin, one sin brought sin into the human race, then you understand how serious that is with God. He has the right. He may not exercise it, but He has the right at any time to take you out of here.
How far do you think you can push Him? God has the right over what He has made. Don’t ever think for a second that He has to answer for what He does. We are the creation, the clay. He is the potter. That is the first thing Paul is trying to get across. What does God have a right to do? Paul goes on to say, "To make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use." The word translated "honorable" in the New American Standard is the word time. It means respect and honor. We are those vessels which can be used to bring respect and honor. The second word "for common use" is really written in. It is the word atimia. It takes the same word for honor and respect and puts the "a" in front of it, which causes it to mean without any respect, without any honor whatsoever. So out of the same lump, in humanity, you look around the world today and you are going to see vessels that bring dishonor to God but you are going to see vessels that will bring honor to God.
The word "makes" means makes them obvious and makes them evident to everyone who is around—Vessels for honorable use and vessels for common use or dishonorable use. I would imagine in churches it is the same way. You can join the church and miss Jesus. You can be a vessel that never brings honor, never brings respect to Him, but you can be on a church roll. There are others who live their lives a different way. In the same lump, there are two kinds of individuals, those who are honorable and those who bring disgrace and dishonor. God has absolute rights over humanity to do whatever He does to make from the lump of humanity vessels of honor and vessels for dishonor.
Look at Jeremiah 18:1: "The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, ‘Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I shall announce My words to you.’ Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled." The Hebrew has the idea that something inherent in the vessel caused it to become spoiled, which means ruined or rotten. The potter didn’t make it that way. Something was amiss in the clay, and the clay, because of that, became spoiled.
It goes on to say, "So he remade it into another vessel [That is the power of God], as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?’ declares the Lord. ‘Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.’ [In other words, you have become spoiled and ruined in My hand.’ At one moment I might speak concerning a nation, or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it."
To me, there is your balance. God is looking for that repentant spirit. God shows mercy on whom He will show mercy. He shows pity on whom He will show pity. Man hardens himself. How many times do you have to hear the message about a long-suffering God before God finally decides he does not care and then drops pity instead of mercy on your life? God acts out of His attributes at all times. So we see then that He only destroys those who had fitted themselves for destruction, like Pharaoh who hardened his own heart before God actually completed the sequence. He said, "I hardened Pharaoh’s heart."
What did Jeremiah see in this lesson? First there was the clay. And Jeremiah knew, as he watched the potter shaping and molding the clay, which he was looking at a picture of himself, and of every man, and of every nation. We are the clay. Both Isaiah and Zechariah, in the Old Testament, join with Jeremiah in presenting this picture of the potter and the clay. And in the New Testament we have the voice of Paul in that great passage in Romans 9, reminding us that God is the Potter and we are the clay. So Jeremiah saw the clay being shaped and molded into a vessel. Then some imperfection in the clay spoiled it in the potter's hand, and the potter crumbled it up, and began anew the process of shaping it into a vessel that pleased him.
Jeremiah saw the wheel turning constantly, bringing the clay against the potter's hand. That wheel stands for the turning circumstances of our life, under the control of the Potter, for it is the potter's foot that guides the wheel. The lesson is clear. As our life is being shaped and molded by the Great Potter, it is the circumstances of our life, the wheels of circumstance, what Browning called "this dance of plastic circumstance", which bring us again and again under the potter's hand, under the pressure of the molding fingers of the Potter, so that he shapes the vessel according to his will. Then, Jeremiah saw the potter. God, he knew, was the Great Potter, with absolute right over the clay to make it what he wanted it to be. Paul argues this with keen and clear logic in Romans 9: "Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me thus?' Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use?" Of course he has. The vessel is shaped according to the image in the potter's mind.
So Jeremiah, watching, learned that an individual or a nation is clay in the Great Potter's hands. He has a sovereign right to make it what he wants it to be. He has the skill and design to work with the clay and to bring it to pass. And if there be some imperfection in the clay, something which mars the design, spoils the work, the potter simply crushes the clay down to a lump and begins again to make it yet a vessel according to his own mind.
In other, more direct terms, this is the same lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house, applied to the nation. When the pressure the potter applies is successful in turning the clay in the right direction, the potter seems to repent, the pressure is relieved, and the clay is allowed then to remain in the form it has taken. But when something in the clay resists, the potter then seems to repent of making a vessel at all, and he crushes it into a lump, and begins again to make it yet into the vessel he desires.
And this is true of our individual lives. If some hard circumstance comes into your life -- and it may be there right now, or it may be just around the corner, or you may just have passed through it -- that circumstance is the wheel of God, to bring you against the pressure of the Potter's hand. If you do not resist, if your will does not spoil the work by murmuring, grumbling, or complaining, or feeling resentful and bitter, but you accept the working of the Potter, then the pressure is relieved, and the vessel takes shape. But if there is resistance, if the human will, like some imperfection in the clay, chooses something other than the Potter has in mind, then the Potter can do nothing else but crush it down to a lump once again and, beginning with the same lump, make it over into a vessel which suits his heart and mind. The great lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house was that of the sovereign control of God. He is the potter, and we are the clay.
There is a beautiful lesson here in the word "repent" as it is used in reference to God. When you and I talk about repenting, we speak in terms of changing our mind. We started out to do something. Circumstances occurred which caused us to change our mind. So we then did something else. But that is not the way the word is used concerning God. Many Scriptures tell us that God never changes his mind. And though we employ the term "repent" because it looks as if he has changed his mind, it does not express the thought adequately. The Hebrew used here is very interesting. It is really the word "sigh," "heave a sigh." It can be used either as a sigh of sorrow, or a sigh or relief. The word is used both ways here in this passage. God says, "If I say to a nation, 'I'm going to destroy you,' or to an individual, 'I'm going to uproot you, crush you,' and I bring pressure upon you to that end, if you yield to it, if you conform to what the pressure is driving you to, then I will heave a sigh of relief."
When we are in the Potter's hands, feeling his pressures, feeling the molding of his fingers, we can relax and trust him, for we know that this Potter has suffered with us and knows how we feel, but is determined to make us into a vessel "fit for the master's use" (2 Timothy 2:21 KJV). What a tremendous lesson, what a beautiful lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house -- one which I hope will guide us and guard us under the pressures which are coming into our lives these days. Remember that the Potter has a purpose in mind, and the skill and ability to fulfill it, no matter how many times he may have to make the vessel over again.
