A Trip to the Potter's House | Dr. Joel Gregory

0:00 By the grace of God, thank you, Master Tim, for the invitation to be back here, even yet once again. The Lord is in this place tonight. Yes, He is. A word tonight about a trip to the potter's house. If you join me in the word of God from the prophecy of Jeremiah, the 18th chapter. Jeremiah, among other things, was the Lord Jesus' favorite and most quoted and referred to prophet of all the prophets. And in the 18th chapter, he writes these words laden with imagery and significance. The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord.

1:00 Go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words. So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay kept on being spoiled in the potter's hand.

1:27 And he kept on reworking it into another vessel as seemed good to him. This is the word of God for the people of God. again Lord we pray knowing that the letter kills but the spirit gives life we pray that the words of this text might mount up off this paper with wings aloft of the spirit and may this message have our secret password on it for everyone listening in Jesus name Amen Thank you. Well, I've seen it. I've seen it in Mexico. I've seen it outside of Beersheba, where Abraham and Sarah are buried. I've seen it outside of Bangalore, the village in it.

2:26 I've seen it at home in Texas. And it's the same everywhere. A potter, a clay, and a wheel. it's one of those events in human history that's the same from 600 BC until AD 2023 isn't it just like God to attach a truth about himself that never changes to a craft that never changes. So that any time these words are read, in any century and anywhere, people understand the image. You know, the Lord Jesus was like that. The most profound things he said about Christian discipleship related to things that never change.

3:20 He said, you're the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world. The psalmist talked about a tree by the rivers of water. The word of God uses images that anywhere anybody can understand. And here, the potter, the clay, and the wheel. If you were to distill this passage down into a single sentence, it would be this. When you put your life in the hands of the divine potter, your failure need never be final. Now I want to hand you some things about this and I'll take my seat. First thing you see in this is how God makes a person. That's the three things in this image. The potter, the clay, and the wheel. How God makes a person.

4:14 Now you understand God as a potter is a metaphor. It's a figure of speech. It's a way of speaking. Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, is invisible, dwells in eternal light. To call him a potter is an accommodation to the way you and I can think. God is like a potter in one way and one way only. And that is, he has the right to touch your life anytime, anywhere, any way he wants to, to shape your life. he's like a potter in one way and in one way only and it's right to touch your life you know one of the greatest saints of the ancient church was an african a north african augustine sometimes called saint augustine in what is today algeria in north africa He was a pagan who became a Christian and he famously said, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Now you might say, no, Joel, that's not who I am.

5:25 Somebody says, I was born to be an entrepreneur. No, that's not the deepest truth about you. Because what if that effort fails? So you don't understand. I was born to be an athlete. I can run jump play but what happens when you get old and can't do that anymore i was born to be a writer and create but what happens if that doesn't so you see every way we define ourselves short of the fact that i am made for god to touch me ultimately fails you and in the quietness of midnight there's a voice in your heart that will tell you that god's like a potter in one way and that is He had the right to touch it. Now God's not like a human potter in any other way. Every human potter has some flaw of technique. There's a lack of dexterity. In fact, it's a sign of a handmade piece of clay that it's not quite symmetrical. Something is a little bit...

6:22 There's no flaws when God touches your life. Had you let him touch your life every day, everywhere he wanted to, it would always have been a perfect touch. Well, God's unlike a potter in another way, and that is potters that I've watched them take all of their concentration to work on one vessel at a time. It takes everything they can do to shape and contour that vessel. God is able to work in the lives of 7 billion people at the same time, so relating what he's doing in your life to my life and others life to get his perfect will done we quote that verse all things work together that means that God is at work in seven billion lives and let me remind you this that doesn't wear him out you say isn't no isn't that no not at all in fact God is at work at your life with his eye on you his ear listening to you his hand touching you as if you were the only person on this planet that's biblical truth jesus says the hairs of your head are numbered he means that god pays attention to you as if you were the only one to whom he paid attention no human potter can do that a human potter can only work at one vessel but wait a minute god is unlike a potter in another way and that is no human potter ever made the clay he works with. Clay's a gift.

8:00 Everywhere I've seen a potter, Mexico, India, the Holy Land, there's a mountain of moist clay but no potter made that clay. Now I want to dwell with something you for just a minute about who owns you. Recently, the great preacher Tony Evans in Dallas preached a series about who owns you. Now that question is so basic, we can miss the forest for the trees. Who owns you? Why? To ask that in a secular humanistic environment is to be considered ridiculous. That's why I own myself. No, you don't. You didn't get here by your own vote.

8:51 You weren't part of the committee that got you here. You don't own. In fact, come a little closer to me. Human beings do not create anything. Now, here's what I mean. Everything on this planet that is used by human beings is not created, but it's recombined. The wood that I'm standing on, no scientist can make that wood. The plaster in this beautiful gilded auditorium, the primary colors that make all other colors, those were given by God. You look at these, these, these, these towering buildings around us, the iron, the steel, that was here to begin by. Nobody made that. The glass was made out of silicon. In fact, let me remind you of something so obvious it's ridiculous. If ever a scientist in the world were to get together and have a convention and say we're going to create one bug on one pane of glass in this city they couldn't even create a bug.

9:57 true you see God owns you by wider creation as well as he does everything else but look at second image that's the clay the clay is you the clay is your humanity now you're like clay as a figure of speech in one way and one way only and it's this that you were made to be touched by the divine potter and that's the deepest truth of your life deeper than your dna than your thumbprint that's you but your human clay is unlike a potter's clay in any way no potter's clay ever leaped up off the wheel and slapped back the hand of the potter and said i won't have you touching me there and no no no physical clay ever took the hand of the potter and nailed it to a cross until the potter bled to death you're like clay in one way and that is the deepest thing about your humanity is that you were designed to yield to the potter's touch But look at the wheel.

11:20 You say, well, that's my life just going in circles. Well, no, that's not what it means. The wheel is what Robert Browning, the poet, called the plastic dance of circumstance. The wheel that turns you round and round is the days of your life. Good days, bad days. Victorious days, defeated days. Elated days, depressed days. that wheel is the circumstances of your life that God uses to shape you and sometimes those circumstances are pleasant and sometimes they're judgment but God uses the circumstances of life to shape who you are you know I've often thought about that because of an experience in my own life And I'm not saying this to be self-referential, but that truth was driven home to me.

12:19 I was a sophomore in high school on a gray November day. I borrowed my father's Oldsmobile 88. You wouldn't remember that, some of you. It was a car. I drove it to downtown Fort Worth, got out of it, and waited in front of a wooden barricade for two hours because somebody had said that the president of the United States might come out of the Hotel Texas where he and his beautiful wife Jacqueline had spent the night. And I waited there for hours in the mist until John F. Kennedy walked out of that hotel and by one of the strangest coincidences of my life walked straight to the police barricade where I was. I shook his hand, looked at his red hair, looked in his blue eyes, shook L.B.J.'s hand, the vice president, John Conley's hand. I was in fifth period biology that afternoon at one o'clock when they pulled Walter Cronkite, the anchorman on the speaker system.

13:20 He was weeping and he said the president had been assassinated. I remember I looked at my hand, but that's not why I'm telling the story. I'm telling the story because not many days later, a librarian came tearing down the central stairs of Arlington High School screaming. she had a library card with a book checked out to Lee Harvey Oswald. And it turned out that he had lived near my high school, studied with the same teachers, played on the same field, driven under the same church steeples, lived so many circumstances exactly the same. And by that time, I had already committed my life to be a minister of the gospel. and somebody in so similar circumstances had committed himself to be infamous in history. And I don't tell that to be self-referential or dramatic, but I tell you that just to say this.

14:19 The very circumstances that you say, break me, may be the circumstances God wants to use to make you. And similar people, come out of different circumstances. Now that's how God makes a person, potter, clay, but wait a minute. How does life mar a person? See, Jeremiah looking at this, there he was in a common place. This wasn't the temple, this wasn't even the school of the prophets. It was a common place. He was watching this potter and as it turned around and around, the clay impeded the potter's desire. something and it frustrated regarded what he wanted to do maybe it was a stone maybe it was a piece of wood maybe it was a dry place and the tense of the verb in the Hebrew language is it kept on being marred there's a question whose fault is it that we're marred in the hands of the potter some people want to blame the potter that is they're mad at god oh yes they are i've talked a little bit counseling they come in with one problem but when you get one inch deep they're mad at god why did god take my mother why did god afflict me with this affliction why they're mad at the potter and they blame the marring of the clay on the potter. Let me assure you, if in your life there's anything good, it came from the potter. Every good and perfect gift comes down from above from the father of light. If you've got a friend to your name tonight, it came from the potter.

16:12 If you could put one foot in front of the other, it came from the potter. If you've got a job, if you've got a roof over your head, don't blame the potter because the clay didn't work out. I was fishing, well, several times out on Lake Powell. Lake Powell is on the border of Arizona, Utah. It's in the middle of nowhere. They flooded Glen Canyon in 1963. You can go so far up branches of that lake you won't see anybody for an entire week. One time fishing out in the desert smoke was coming out of cracks in the desert rock. Strange looking. Consulted a fishing guide and found out that time immemorial jagged forks of lightning had made their way down through cracks in the earth and ignited subterranean deposits of coal. And you don't know that unless it rains. But when it rains the smoke comes out.

17:12 Do you know some people are that way? Life is going to rain on you. And if you're mad at God, the smoke comes out. No, it's not the fault of the potter. Well, other folks want to blame the wheel. If I had just had different circumstances,

17:36 let me go back to what I said a minute ago. you didn't get a vote about the year in which you were born and nobody on earth ever got a vote about that just think about that I could have been born in 1848 1748 or 1648 and my life would have been different I didn't have a word in that I could have born in New York City or London or Paris or Beijing instead of Fort Worth Cowtown Texas my life would have been different and I didn't get a vote in that you didn't get a vote in who your parents were and yet some people always want to blame their circumstances.

18:12 Let's just talk about circumstances a minute. I suppose the most famous family in the world, if it's not the most famous, it'd be hard to nominate anybody else, is the Windsor family. Now the Windsor family, that's the last name of the royal family in England. King Charles III is actually Chuck Windsor. Now I wouldn't call him that. But you look at that family. The family has everything. Palaces, private jets, luxury yachts, servants. Do you know King Charles even has a person who puts toothpaste on his toothbrush? minister of the tooth rush I guess I don't know what it is and yet if you study the 150 something year old history of these people who have everything everything the treasures of art thousands of acres of land servants at their bidding just read about them they're not particularly a happy group in those circumstances they're really not you know Chuck Windsor himself hadn't always been that happy you know the story his great grandfather Edward VIII was king for less than a year he wasn't happy with being the king he resigned from being king married an American lady his grandfather Edward VII was married to the one most beautiful women in the world. Alexa, right? He wasn't happy with that marriage. And his mother wasn't happy with anything after Prince Albert died, including Edward. She said, when I look at my oldest son, it makes me a horror. I shudder. That's not a compliment, is it? Here were people with what would be the enviable circumstances of anybody in the world. Palaces, wealth, land.

20:17 they have not been a happy but let me tell you something somebody sitting here tonight or somebody listening to me beyond here who lives up in a walk up flat and American Express may have a hit man after you but you know Jesus and when you wake up in the morning the first thought you have is good morning Jesus and even though he's unseen all day long he's with you as Jesus and when you go to bed tonight the last person you'll talk to is Jesus and if people looked at your outer circumstances they'd say you don't have anything to be happy about you're happier than Chuck Windsor. Let me tell you that right now because of Jesus. well I'll leave that right there okay no the one thing you can do is not blame the potter or blame your circumstances you can embrace the clay now here's what I mean embrace the clay meanings you say about yourself what God says about you and what God says about you you need to recognize first of all the law says you're a person who is iniquitous now that's a big word it's not just that we do wrong stuff it's what we are and even proud people admit they they trespass sometimes you know the word one of the words for sin is trespass that means god drew a line and i say i don't care whether you drew a line i'm getting on the other side of it God but that's what you do but the problem's deeper than that the problem the Bible says is who we are and it uses the word iniquity it means there's something in Joel Gregory that is twisted and only God can straighten it out it's like a picture that's hung crooked everything in it is

22:22 crooked we don't like that it's like a piano that's out of tune now if a piano is out of tune every chord you play doesn't sound right you don't like that well it's like navigating when when something is one degree off if your navigation equipment's wrong the further you go the further away you are from where you're supposed to be you don't like that have you ever been to the house of mirrors at the circus where you have convex concave mirrors and they You look distended. That's iniquity. And because of that, we trespass. And if you want to be right with God, you'll say what he says about you, and then, thank God, throw yourself on his grace, and he straightens out what's bent.

23:12 That's what happens when you come to Jesus. Take responsibility for the clay. stop blaming the potter and stop blaming the wheel of circumstance now one other thing and i'm going to sit down how god makes a person how life mars a person but thank god how god mends a person how's he did well first of all divine patience look what this says it says it kept on being marred and he kept on making it again now any other potter had a mountain of clay next to him and if one piece didn't work out he'd just throw it away scoop up some new clay but thank god he's long-suffering he's not willing that any should perish you want to find out about that just read the word of god look at moses moses lived to be 120 years old he spent 40 years as a prince in egypt and then because he tried to do the right thing the wrong way, tried to pull off an exodus, but tried to do it by killing an Egyptian. God sent him to the backside of the desert till he was 80. If you'd looked at Moses's business card when he was 80, it had two lines, 40 years, Prince 40 years, assistant shepherd.

24:27 that's a short resume but then God used in the last 40 years as the mighty man of God you know what D.L. Moody used to say Moses spent 40 years thinking he was somebody 40 years out in the desert finding out that he was really nobody and the last 40 years finding out what God can do where there's somebody who finds out without God he's a nobody. there's somebody here listening to me tonight who believes God has given up on you now come close to me if the blood is running in your veins if you're taking air in and out of your lungs God has not given up on you he's long suffering not willing that any should perish and the person here who could be closest to the kingdom of God in the reign of Jesus tonight is somebody said God gave up on me God's patience but wait a minute God's process now there's something that's not mentioned in the text that was there by absolute implication potter clay wheel but what do you do with clay once it's formed you put it in the what the fire the kiln it's useless without there it's limp in fact people who work with clay tell me that even the the lustrous sheen on clay comes because it's fired in the furnace one somebody came in here tonight you got a family fire a financial fire a vocational fire a relational fire an educational fire you came in here in the fire let me assure you from my own life lived through plenty of them god fixes in the fire what he's going to do in your life that's why james the younger half brother jesus said consider

26:32 it all joy when you fall into sudden ambushes of trial because that is what god uses to work out steadfast endurance grit in your life the way God mends you is his patience but he also puts you through some fires and don't think God's not working in your life tonight because you're in the fire that's how he fixes what he turns on the wheel always what if Christians were exempt from fires you ever think about what spoiled brats we would be all you had to do was walk down the aisle here at Times Square no more fire Listen, so many things could happen, you know, if life were that way, American Airlines could say we have a Christian on every plane.

27:29 It will get there. no God fixes it on that wait a minute I'm going to sit down but there's also part of God's process is divine probation here's what I mean no this doesn't go on forever there was and I'm going to start another sermon don't get nervous just look here this is a pendant hanging off this the next thing that happened chapter 19 another day the Lord says going by a potter's earthenware jug take the well it's the equivalent of the city council and the ministerial alliance and go to the brow of the hill of Gehenna then look at 1910 and break the jug in the sight of those who go with you yes patience and process but there was probation another day god said jeremiah go down to the potter shop and get a fired tureen a big jug and go to the brow of the valley of gehenna that's the biblical word for hell itself and break it.

28:56 You know, going to Israel, I've gone down in that valley and you don't have to scratch two or three inches deep until you find pot shirts, broken pieces of pottery that didn't work out. When I think about this message tonight, I think about people leaving this beautiful church two different ways. Some of them yielding to the potter's hand. and going out the door for him to use you in the city.

29:25 But somebody else, brittle, no, and life winding up a broken piece of pottery that never yielded to the potter's hand. It's a sense in which everybody will leave one of these doors tonight, pliable and moldable or not.

29:47 I know how life is. somebody here's thinking, I don't want to do that. I got my own life, my own way. Like the poet said in Invictus, I'm the captain of my ship, the master of my son. Let me ask you this. Would you even bring that attitude to God tonight? Really? F.B. Meyer was a great preacher a little more than 100 years ago.

30:15 Young preacher. He's a young preacher. Lived in a boarding house with a other young priest. And there was a missionary that came back from China, C.T. Studd. He was a great cricket player in England. And F.B. kept looking at him. Saw something different. Have you ever seen a Christian? Man, something is different. And C.T. Studd looked at F.B. and said, Yeah, F.B., if there's anything different about me, it's that I've given God the key to every room in my heart. That's a simple phrase, isn't it? that b meyer wrote years later something like lightning went through me because i knew i had key that god didn't have and he said i prayed all night i didn't want to give him that key never said what it was what was the key he never said but he says as dawn came i prayed this pathetic prayer lord make me willing to be willing.

31:11 And he said it wasn't so much I gave it to him as he took it. somebody tonight that has your fingerprint on it you say I own myself God did it to me I don't have circumstances like you had let me say this in a moment when this altar is open that is the minimal prayer you can pray Lord make me willing to be willing. Would you bow with me?

31:52 The past is going to come. and lead us going forward but with head and heart bound before the Lord under his word faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God the potter's hands at work tonight and would you be