In the Potter's Hands...

Jeremiah 18:1-11...

Sermon #4

DRIVING THEME:

Spiritual renewal and moral wholeness are available to us all.

PROPOSITION:

God is still in control and can take broken vessels and transform them to God's use

ANTITHESIS:

We desire to see social justice and transformation in our midst, and the more we look for clouds of hope, the more we see futility and desperation. We are tempted to give up. We are called to follow Jesus on the road to discipleship. We have left all to follow him, but we wonder whether it has done any good. We who are involved in evangelism and church growth become discouraged because the same people whom we thought had gotten the victory, is having a hard time living this Christian life. We feel like giving up.

Drug addicts don't give up drugs. Alcoholics don't stop drinking. The unemployed doesn't find jobs. The homeless still don't have access to adequate housing. Single parents still find it difficult to make ends meet. AIDS patients are still told that a cure for this deadly disease is probably decades away. Our children still go to school on empty stomachs, to meet teachers with empty pocketbooks, in classrooms with empty curriculums. Some of us get discouraged, and we ask, 'Will things ever get better?"

Preachers are giving up. Lay members are giving up. Sunday School teachers lament the deplorable condition in which inner-city children must compete for learning. We look for transformation and change, and none is in sight. Our message is doing no one any good. We want to give up!

THESIS:

Jeremiah faced the same temptation to despair. They even called him the weeping prophet. Jeremiah is despaired by the fact that the people are not faithful, and nobody is paying attention to his message. He has solicited them to change their ways, and to live in the light of God's intention. But to his despair and dismay, he discovers that instead of things getting better, they were only getting worse.

Which one of us hinges our ministry on whether people are getting better or not. Obedience must never hinge on results. It hinges on faithfulness to God. We share a common platform with Jeremiah in that, at some time in ministry, we felt like giving up because results were not what they were promised to be. God intervenes in Jeremiah's life at the moment when he is most discouraged.

RELEVANT QUESTION:

What lessons could we learn from the encounter between Jeremiah and God?

SYNTHESIS:

God directs Jeremiah to visit the potter somewhere in the valley of Hinnom. Jeremiah, when he arrives, sees the potter, and the potter has a piece of clay in his hand. As he tries to make a vessel, it becomes marred. Its not coming out right. Notice some salient features about this encounter:

1. The potter always has something in mind. The potter has intention. He's not fumbling and fidgeting about the outcome. God has a purpose for this creation. We are not the product of cosmic accident or coincidence. We are the product of divine intention. All our efforts in the church simply means that we are trying to align ourselves with God's intentional purpose.

2. Something went wrong; the clay was marred. Sin is a malfunction of God's intention. We all fall outside of God's intention for our lives. Not some of us, but all of us.

Though the clay was marred, it was still in the potter's hand.
The hands of the potter are mighty hands to be in. They are the same hands that flung the stars in place. They are the same hands that lifted the sun out of its oriental chamber and sent its rays galloping across the meandering skies.
The potter had the option of throwing the clay I the junkyard. God has not thrown humanity on the junk pile. That’s what salvation history is all about.
3. I'm glad that the Lord did not throw the clay away.

God has put in us the capacity to be reformed clay.
God has a reputation to reform deformed clay. He did it for Peter. He did it with Paul. He did it with the woman at the well. He did it for Zaccheus. Christ's life was a demonstration of god's ability to reform broken vessels.
The clay that used to be a thief can be reformed.

The clay that used to be a drunkard, and alcoholic, can be reformed.

The clay that used to be a nobody can be transformed into somebody for God. I am a broken piece of clay, transformed by the power of the gospel. "I'm just a nobody, trying to tell everybody about somebody, who can save anybody."