Hands of the Potter

Brendan Shea

Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago • Presented 4 years ago

0 ratings

· 4 views

Notes

Transcript

Sermon Tone Analysis

Emotion

Language

Social

View more →

Some of you may know this others of you this may be new information, but before I was the pastor here I was an online admissions counselor

And honestly it was a pretty good job while I was finishing up school, but there was one part of the job that I could not stand and it was letting someone know that they got denied or if they had credits that they thought would transfer telling them that they would not transfer.

Because what we would do is buy the information of different people and then give them a call to tell them why they need to get their online degree in whatever field it was.

And whenever this would happen often times what we would do is we would give them other options or or classes they could take to get into the program they would want.

I was basically the telemarketer who would call you and tell you a message that you do not want to hear.

But often times what would happen is before I would finish giving them their options I would get hung up on or yelled at.

Because they were really not happy with the news I got to deliver.

But you know people really do not like to hear bad news.

And something I learned from being an online admission councilor was often times when you deliver bad news people get so upset that even if there is a way to fix whatever is wrong they often times do not want to hear it.

And if you were with us last week we began our series fixer upper where we have been going through the book of Jeremiah and talking about how God is working to redeeem His people from their sin.

Because like we talked about last week these people were really evil people,

and what happens is this guy Jeremiah comes along and last week God called Jeremiah to speak a message to really nations and kingdoms and it was a harsh message.

and and what we learned was for some this was to tear down, uproot, destroy and for others it meant to plant something or build something.

And from where we were last week to leading up to this week Jeremiah has been telling the people really a message that isn’t very popular but He say’s judgment is coming.

And even Jeremiah doesn’t like this message because he was known as the weeping prophet

He would cry as these people are being judged

and so he is giving this message and he has been giving instructions about how people can stop it by turning to God,

but the people are so angry by this that they are not interested in what Jeremiah has to say.

and some of them actually try to take Jeremiah’s life.

And there is really not much hope for God’s people. Its is a really gloomy outlook,

But in the middle of all that God gives Jeremiah a message of hope.

But the people have to decide how are we going to respond to this message.

So Turn with me to

Because really today we are given a message about how God can shape us into something beautiful but we have to decide like the people in this story on if we will let Him or if we will do it our own way.

So once again we are in

Jeremiah 18:1–12 NIV

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 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. “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.’ ”

So like I said there is this big mess where people are just being unfaithful to God. But in the middle of this God tells Jeremiah to go to the potters house and it is there that Jeremiah is given a really powerful message.

Because Jeremiah gets to the potters house and what happens is God uses something ordinary like clay, to speak a powerful message that we are reading thousands of years later.

and really that says something about if we ever say God you cannot speak through me or use me

I am not the best speaker or teacher, or no one will listen to me.

But if God was able to speak through clay He can speak through you.

And Jeremiah gets to the potters house and it says the potter is working on at a wheel that is spinning and he is shaping the clay

and the clay

and really the first point I want you to get is we are the clay and God is the potter.

Because God created us and throughout our life He is shaping us into who He wants us to be.

Sometimes it is through the word and other times its through circumstances in our life, but God is wanting to shape our life

But what happens often is while God is calling or shaping us we do not want to accept how He is shaping our life and what happens is we become damaged.

and in this passage the clay that this potter is working with gets Marred and flawed and this really represents what is going on with the people of Israel but really it also represents our life when we are disobedient to God or when our is impacted by sin.

Because what happens is you have this beautiful creation but now that beautiful creation is flawed

and the issue is if nothing is done about this flaw the clay will dry with the flaws and you get an ugly pot.

But this passage says the Potter actually notices the flaw and He doesn’t throw the whole thing away but he actually shapes it into something else.

and there are two implications here that I want us to get.

The first is really good news because in the midst of our mess ups God is working to redeem us.

because He is able to see those rough patches in our life and He uses those rough patches to glorify Him.

Its almost like how potato chips were created.

Did you know Potato chips were originally created as a mistake?

there was a customer at a restaurant once who ordered potatoes and they kept getting upset because they thought the potatos should have been sliced thinner and should have been crispier.

so they sent it back a few times and after awhile what happened was the chef got so upset that he actually made it so the potatos were way to thin and crispy

And what he did out of anger actually created one of our favorite snacks.

But you know as odd as that illustration is that is what God does with our mistakes.

Because we might be flawed, but God is able to work those flaws and mess ups we have into His design.

and not only that but He makes something amazing.

And that is a great message but there is a second part of that message which often times we do not like to talk about and that is that even though God works our sin and mess ups into something great the final product is somthing different then the original plan.

In verse 4 it says that the potter shapes the clay into another pot, not the same pot.

And really what this means is that our sin and mess ups are going to impact our life.

There are consequences for our actions and because of that our life is going to look different based on our mess ups.

If you think of the story of King David in the Old Testament, He was someone that was supposed to build the temple for God, but because of a huge mistake He made God wanted His son Soloman too instead of him.

And David actually responds to this by praising God, because even though He can’t build the temple anymore God is still going to use His family and David as well, just in a different way.

But occasionally that

and really that is where God wants our heart.

He wants us at a place where we acknowlege the flaw and then ask God how is it that He wants to shape that flaw.

Because we love the idea that we are forgiven (which is true)

but we often times we respond like the Israelites in this passage where we say what they say in verse 12 because they say “We will continue with our own plans.”

Basically we don’t like how God is reshaping us.

and we are going to do our own thing!

But God does not want this, and it is a little bit of a harsh message but it ends on a happy note.

Bec

Because if you are in this room you are not a pot that has dried and is all messed up, but you are clay.

Your life can be shaped into something amazing

You know I took a ceramics class in high school and I remember it was a freshman class (Somehow I put it off until I was a senior because I wasn’t the most artistic)

You know I took a ceramics class in high school and I remember it was a freshman class (Somehow I put it off until I was a senior (I wasn't the most artistic)

But as you can imagine in a class full of freshman and a senior that put the course off for a few years, there were some pretty big mistakes that were made.

But we had this amazing teacher and whenever we came to her she was always able to turn the mistakes that we would make into something that actually was great.

But you know God is wanting to do that in your life today. He see’s your mistakes but in the middle of that He is waiting to redeem and reshape your mistakes to glorify Him.

Related Media

Related Sermons