The Potter and the Clay # 1

The Potter and the Clay # 1

Read: Jeremiah 18:1-6

"He was making a work on the wheels."

This little parable issuing in its message, has bound up with it some of the foundation truths which run throughout the Word of God and which are the laws which govern all God's activities in relation to man. Although they are very simple and elementary, we might do will to look at them again briefly and concisely.

God's Desire to Express Himself

The first thing that is clearly set forth here is the fact that God desires to express Himself, and when you think about it, that is found everywhere in the Word of God and outside of the Word of God. God's desire to express Himself; for we must conclude that in the case of God as a potter, He does not just shape things willy-nilly without any thought, concern,or care. He does not just throw a mass of clay upon the wheel and begin to manipulate it and see what will come out. We must conclude that before ever the clay comes to hand, the finished vessel is in the mind of the Potter, and that vessel as a finished thing answers to something very deeply in His heart. It is really a part of Himself and is the expression of Himself: His mind, His heart, His will, and God has ever been actuated in His undertakings by the desire to have something which will be the expression of Himself.

The whole created universe came from the hand of God with that object in view. When God undertook creation, it was for no less a purpose than to put Himself into expression, that by His own works He should be known. The apostle Paul makes that statement quite positively in his letter to the Romans - "The invisible things of Him...are seen...through the things that are made...His everlasting power and divinity" (Romans 1:20). It is God in what He is, symbolized, represented and expressed in visible form. And if man has one explanation, it is that; and that is proved by the fact that the Man, God's great representative Man who is according to His own heart and satisfies Him, is, as the apostle says elsewhere, "the very image of His substance, the effulgence of His glory" (Hebrews 1:3). The Lord Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.

So you may see everywhere this great fact set forth in the Word of God. God has, from eternity, desired to put Himself into expression in a manifest, visible form and that lies at the heart of this parable - the potter and his vessel; the Potter in the very substance and form of His vessel, that when you see what God is like morally.

That surely carries us on beyond the created universe around us, beyond Israel as an elect nation to the church and to the individual believer's life - God making a work upon the wheels. And you ask, "What is God making? What is He determined to make?" and the answer is He is making that which will answer His own desire for self-expression, and in the end when God's work is done, His universe will have nothing in it but the expression of God. We have to come back to that and stress that all the way through our meditation, but let us see where things begin. Of course, there is a very great deal more than I have said in that first principle, and it could hold us for quite a long time - God's desire to express Himself. Behind everything that God has set His heart upon and is doing, is the desire of His heart to bring Himself into expression, to have a vessel which is the revelation of Himself.

God's Sovereign Rights In His Own

Now we must get inside that grand circle and see the next thing which arises here - that is, God's sovereign rights in His own. That carries with it this, that God can never make a start upon His purpose, He can never take the first step in that great desire of His to express Himself until He gets the material into His hands. He must be able to say of those concerned, "This is Mine", and of course that can only be now on the grounds of His rights in redemption. God is not acting merely upon His rights in creation now. He has His rights in creation, but they will work out very largely in judgment because the creation as such does not acknowledge God's rights, and does not give Him His rights. Nevertheless, He claims those rights and will assert them in judgment eventually, but in this work of satisfying His own heart in His creation, it can only be on the ground of His rights in redemption as ceded to Him; that is, we have to come to the place where we acknowledge what the Word says - "Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). You belong to the Lord. Now there can be nothing whatever of God's Divine purpose realized until that position is secured, that on the ground of the great redemption which is in Christ Jesus, we become the Lord's. His property, and accord Him His rights in our being, His sovereign rights in redemption.

"O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?" (Jer. 18:6). That is only saying, in other words, "Have not I the right to do as I like with My own?" And that is a challenge. "Do you, O house of Israel, acknowledge Me as your Lord, your God, your Jehovah?" and that challenge, of course, comes to us. If we acknowledge the Lord as our Lord, then that carries with it His absolute right to do what He wants with us - God's sovereign rights with His own. Very often there is a controversy with the Lord on that very thing. We do not get over all our difficulties easily on that matter. When the Lord takes up His work and we are not able to see His end and we are called upon to repose implicit faith in Him when it would appear that, rather than make something which is the expression of His own Divine nature, every other kind of nature but the Divine is coming out, we revolt. When we feel the pressure of His hand, the discipline, the chastening, the breaking, the softening, sometimes the crushing and all that is bound up with the realization of His end in us, we do not easily acquiesce in the sovereignty of God. Sometimes it is difficult, but it is a position of peace, of rest of heart, and of spiritual strength when we are able, either as a whole, or on any given question or matter, to really say, "it is the Lord, let Him do as seems good to Him", that is when we are able by the grace of God to say, "The Lord has a right to do what He likes and I do not challenge those rights". That is necessary to God if He is going on with His work to secure His end.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 2)