It is good to see you tonight and
to see a good sprinkling of visiting friends
among us once again.
These summer days take away our own members
to various corners of the world, of the
earth, but there is this compensating factor that
we are very encouraged by those who turn
in and join us in the worship of
almighty God.
We're very delighted to have those of you
who are with us tonight, some of you
from beyond the borders of this great country
to the south.
We're very happy indeed to have you.
Well now, our subject tonight is clear.
I shall not read again those verses from
Jeremiah chapter 18, but I ask you to
look at them with me, and our subject,
the clay in the hand of the potter.
This episode was ordained of God, I believe,
in order to reassure a bitterly maligned and
fiercely opposed prophet of some very basic factors
concerning God and God's rule of his people
in particular.
We need to bear this very much in
mind as we come to consider the passage.
Speaking in a strictly historical sense, therefore, the
application of the principles embodied here are first
of all to be made to Israel nationally
between the years 626 and 527 BC, but
of course these principles relate equally so to
the church of Jesus Christ and indeed to
individual men and women, so that they have
relevance for all of us that are gathered
here this evening, and I think we shall
see that as we go along.
Now there are two main things that I
feel we ought to be looking at in
order to get the message of the Lord
from this passage.
First of all, the vision that was given
to the prophet, and then secondly the application
of the vision to the people of Israel,
and to ourselves, and to anyone, indeed to
everyone.
So we are going to look at these
two in turn, the vision and the application
of the vision, and you notice that both
are given us in the context.
Here we are not left to our own
ideas as to how to apply the vision.
If we were left to ourselves, then of
course we might make nonsense of good sense.
I don't know whether that sounds Irish or
Scots, I'm not sure, but at any rate,
you know what would happen if we were
left to ourselves.
Well, we are not left to ourselves.
God gives us the key and he tells
us how the vision is to be applied,
and so we simply cannot go wrong if
we follow what we have before us.
First of all, the vision given to the
prophet Jeremiah.
The potter's house which he visited was no
elaborate affair, of course, but a very simple
shack in Old Testament times.
The table or the wheel upon which the
potter wrote his skill was a sort of
revolving table made by himself, and so it
depends on his own ability as a craftsman
as to what it looked like.
It might have looked a shack of a
thing, but at any rate there it was
a kind of a revolving table, and some
means or other whereby generally using his feet
he could cause the table to revolve.
He sat on a seat usually, and with
his feet, sitting on his seat with his
feet, he controlled the revolving of this table,
and then he had the clay before him
on the table or on the wheel, whatever
you like to call it, and with his
two hands free he manipulated.
He sought to bring into existence the kind
of pot or the piece of pottery that
in his mind he had planned.
Now, in principle, the spectacle beheld by Jeremiah
was an exhibition of the prowess and the
perseverance of the potter in the process of
producing a vessel that would fulfill his purpose
or fulfill its purpose, and at the same
time satisfied of the desires of the potter
and bring glory to his name.
Two or three things we need to notice
here.
How does it come about?
How does this work of the potter go
on?
Where does it begin?
Well, ere the potter began his work at
the wheel, he had a plan in his
mind.
Now, my friends, this is so simple, almost
too simple to be saying it, but it
is absolutely vital to the truth that God
has for you and for me tonight.
Before the potter sat on his seat and
put his feet where he would put them
and did anything, he had a plan in
his mind.
The potter was not a dull, daft sort
of man who just sat down at his
wheel for fun.
He came there to do something.
He had a scheme.
He had a vision.
He had a plan.
He had a purpose in his mind.
Before the first movement of his deft hand
or the first turn of the revolving wheel
before him, the wise potter had a plan
firmly set in his mind, and he came
to the table, he came to the wheel
in order to execute that plan in his
mind.
That plan determined the whole process from the
nature of the clay that he would take
into his hand to the manner in which
he would knead it, to use a good
old biblical King James word.
You use that here?
The housewife kneads dough?
Yeah, that's right.
The manner in which he would knead it
and then twist it and make it malleable
and pliable, put his hand in water and
soften it up a bit.
The entire process of what he did with
the clay was determined by the kind of
thing he wanted to make of it.
The plan in his mind determined the process
he was going to undertake.
A delicate ornament, something for the eye to
appreciate, something artistic, something beautiful, would require a
special process.
Indeed, it would probably require special clay, not
ordinary clay.
And the whole process would be slightly different
if it was an ornament to be an
ornament of beauty and attraction, something to gaze
upon.
If it was to be an ordinary utensil,
an ordinary flower vase, well, then it might
not need quite as much attention and perhaps
the most ordinary clay would do.
But everything was determined, every solitary detail was
to be determined by the plan he had
in his mind.
What's he going to do?
What does he want?
What is he going to make?
My friends, God is no more a dabbler
or an experimenter than he's a reputable potter.
God does not work haphazardly or aimlessly, hoping
that something or other will come out of
what he's done before he's gone too far
with it.
That's not our God.
That's some people's view of God, but that's
not the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible, according to the
apostle Paul, works everything according to the counsel,
the eternal counsel of his own will.
Now imagine that.
What it means is this.
He's been in counsel before he does anything.
And that counsel of his took place not
only a couple of years ago, but it
goes back into eternity.
And he's not done anything in time that
was not planned in eternity.
Our God does not come to the wheel
without a plan.
He comes with a plan, and that plan
goes further back than the creation.
It antedates humanity.
It goes back to eternity.
Now we need to remember this.
In the divine potter's mind, there is a
plan to achieve, and every plan of our
divine creator goes back actually before you were
conceived in the womb, before I was born,
before we were thought of.
Now the process by which the plan in
the potter's mind becomes the vessel in the
potter's house is always the same in principle,
though it may vary in practice.
In principle, two factors combine, and they are
very closely and very intimately interrelated in this
matter.
The first of these is the pressure of
the potter's hand.
Having taken the clay that he has chosen
into his hands, having kneaded it—I must use
that word once or twice now—having kneaded it
and softened it and made it malleable and
pliable, then he puts it on the table.
And there it is at the center of
the revolving table.
There it is right before him.
Now he is going to transform that lump
of shapeless clay into some vessel or other
according to what he has in his mind,
and he's going to do it by the
pressure of his hands.
By the exerting of pressure here, less pressure
there, it's the hands of the potter, the
hands of the potter, that are going to
do everything.
It will remain precisely that formless mass that
it always was, unless and until the potter
puts his hands upon it and around it
and takes full charge of it and communicates
to it the purpose in his mind and
the pattern in his mind by means of
the touch and of the pressure of his
own sovereign hand.
The transformation is dependent, let me repeat, upon
the action of the potter's hand.
But now there is something else.
The pressure of the potter's plasmic formative hands
needs to be related, however, to the pace
of the revolving wheel.
I said there were two things.
Here is the second.
The pressure of his hand, but you see,
the pressure of his hand wouldn't do anything
very much more than the pressure of a
child playing with plasticine, were it not for
the fact that as well as the pressure
of his hands, there is the revolving of
the wheel.
And so the two things go on together.
He's got his hands on the clay, and
the wheel is going around and around, and
as the wheel is going around and around,
he puts his hand in water, and gradually
he's doing something, and he relates the two
things together.
The revolving of the wheel and the pressure
of his hands.
The pace of the wheel going around and
the pressure of his fingers.
And it is in the interrelating of these
two factors, if you look carefully, you will
see something emerging.
It only is a bundle of clay at
the beginning, and there is no shape to
it, there is hardly any meaning to it,
certainly there is no beauty to it, and
you really wonder, what can you make of
a piece of clay like that?
But he's got a plan in mind, and
he's got the power in his hands, and
in his feet, in causing the wheel to
revolve, and in the pressure he is about
to bring upon this malleable clay.
Now this is the basic.
This is the abidingly underlying principle that operates
in all pottery, which is not completely mechanised.
The planned vessel is produced by this twofold
process, whereby the pressure of the potter's hand
is so synchronised with the pace of the
potter's wheel, that the can bring exactly what
he desires out of a piece of shapeless,
miserable, one must almost say worthless clay.
That's in principle.
Now in practice, however, the pace of the
wheel and the pressure of the hand are
largely determined by the pliability, or the plasticity
of the clay.
Now my wife and I have an advantage
here, because we have great friends who had
a family pottery which goes back, I believe,
about 200 years.
And a number of times we have sat
there in the pottery and we've watched the
members of the household sitting at the table,
sitting at the wheel, and involved with the
work.
And it really is fascinating.
So I know what I'm talking about tonight.
I've seen it happen so many times.
The pace of the wheel and the pressure
of the hand are largely determined by the
pliability and plasticity of the clay.
You see, no two handfuls of clay respond
in exactly the same way.
The clay may have been taken from the
same pit, but it's very strange.
You may have had a bucket full of
clay and you take out one handful and
it will respond or it will react in
this particular way.
It's quite easy.
You just put it on the wheel and
you carry on and make the wheel turn
and you moisten your hands and you've got
it there in just a jiffy.
A vessel is completed.
And then you'll put your hand into the
bucket and you'll take another handful of clay
to make a similar vessel.
Oh boy, but it isn't working as the
other one did.
There's something resisting.
There's something hard about the clay.
There is something unyielding.
It hurts your fingers.
You've got to moisten it a little oftener.
And you find you've got to exercise pressure.
And when you do exercise pressure, you tend
to exercise too much so that you spoil
what you're doing.
And when you don't exercise pressure, then the
thing doesn't become what you wanted it to
become.
Sometimes the potter will discern therefore a hardness
emerging.
And that resistant hardness he has to deal
with.
Now of course, he can easily deal with
that if that's the only thing he's got
to do.
It's the easiest thing for a potter to
get rid of something hard in clay.
Bring a hammer out and take the clay
out and hammer it if you like or
put a steamroller over it or anything like
that.
He can get rid of it.
But you see, he's after more than just
crushing it.
Making the clay malleable and responsive to his
formative hand is a means to an end.
He wants to bring a vessel out of
it.
And so he's not there to destroy it
as it were, simply to crush it and
make it say, well, I'm yielding.
No, no, no, no.
All this yielding of the clay, if we
may speak in that language, all this pressure
upon the clay to make it become what
the potter wants it to be is really
a means to an end.
The end is that out of that formless
clay there shall come something, whatever is in
the potter's mind for it to become.
The potter has a plan in his mind
and he means to produce a vessel that
will be of glory to his name and
of some use, whatever the case may be.
And so he proceeds.
The potter therefore pursues his plan by varying
the pace of the wheel and the pressure
of his hand.
Where there is resistance, there the wheel goes
faster.
You know, my friends, the providence of God
only hurts the people of God at that
point where there is resistance, where the clay
is unyielding to his hands, where we resist
becoming what he in his mind plans to
make of us, and it is only at
that point of resistance to him that there
is hurt in the Christian life.
The duration of the process through which the
clay passes, ere it becomes the finished article,
is determined of course by the potter's passion
for perfection.
Not all potters are concerned about perfection.
Some are, some are not.
And so that determines how far they're willing
to go.
You see, it's a tiring business, pottery.
Very tiring.
It requires the undivided, undistracted attention of the
potter.
It drains him of energy.
His hands get tired, his feet, his legs
get tired, turning this old wheel all the
time and varying the pace.
It's not easy.
And then he's got to concentrate, he's got
to think of the clay and he remembers
what he's got in his mind, and he's
got to relate one thing to another.
You see, there is mental energy as well
as physical energy involved in this.
A slipshod potter might therefore understandably stop short
of perfection.
And he might very well say, well here
it is, it's good enough now, let's put
it through the fire and all is well.
And he might pack up before all the
resistance has been dealt with, and before all
the stony hardness has been taken out of
the clay.
And he might say, let it go through
the fire.
But of course he would have a very
imperfect piece of pottery then.
And that's how we have our rejects.
That's how we have our seconds.
Some of you may like to go around
the shops buying seconds.
The only rejects I ever liked purchasing were,
I shouldn't tell you this, I don't suppose,
but my wife and I used to enjoy
the rejects of Cadbury's chocolates.
Now you may wonder where you get rejects
from Cadbury's chocolates.
Well I'll tell you.
You know the lovely chocolates you have in
boxes.
If they're not perfectly, if not of exactly
the right size, and if they don't look
right, they're called seconds and rejects.
And those who work with Cadbury's have them
at a couple of pence a pound.
And we had a friend who brought some
rejects home from time to time, and you
know they were very nice.
Perhaps because they were so cheap.
However, you've got the point, don't you?
If the person at the wheel, if the
potter here gets tired or thoughtless, or thinks
that he has come to the end of
the road when he hasn't, that he's dealt
with all the resistance in the clay before
he has, then when the piece of pottery
has gone through the fire, aha, it'll come
to sight.
It'll come to light.
Rarely will that happen with a reputable potter
who takes pride in his work, and who
sees that his own good name is at
stake.
Such a potter will see his glory at
stake in every vessel he produces, and not
until he's quite sure that there is no
resistance in the clay.
It is absolutely malleable and pliable, and he
can do with it exactly what he wants,
and the vessel that will emerge will be
to his own glory, and it will perform
what it was meant to perform.
Only then does he allow it to go
through the fire, bearing his name.
It would appear that verse 4 describes something
that did not simply happen once, but probably
many times.
Listen to what it says.
But the pot he was shaping from the
clay was marred in the hands of the
potter, probably marred over and over again.
So the potter formed it into another pot,
shaping it as seemed best to him.
I believe the Lord had well arranged the
prophet's visit to coincide with something that the
prophet really needed to see.
Our God is the great stage manager, and
he had arranged the visit of the prophet
into the potter's house on this day because
he wanted him to see this, that when
the potter is at work and the piece
of pottery is about to do doesn't really
respond to the pressure of his hand.
It's not the end of the story.
God is not beaten.
God is not cornered.
He doesn't have to abandon the whole project
and say, well I've failed, poor me.
No, no, no.
What he does is this.
He takes it off, and he crushes it
again, and he breaks it, and he puts
his hand in the water, and he moistens
it again, and he squeezes it, and he
turns it, and he kneads it, and he
does all sorts of things with it in
order to make it more pliable and get
the resistance out of it, and any stone
or gravel out of it.
And this time he'll make sure, and then
he'll put it back on the wheel, and
the process will start again.
Ah, but it happens again.
What will he do next time?
He'll do exactly the same the next time,
and it may happen three times, four times,
it may happen many a time, but because
he means to get something out of that
piece of clay, he will make a new
thing of it each time.
Now that's the vision given to the potter.
What's the application of it?
Oh, let me repeat.
Merely seeing the potter at his work was
not in itself adequate, even for the prophet
Jeremiah.
The vision needed to be divinely explained and
divinely applied, so that it could be thereafter
declared with authority to those to whom it
was meant, whom it was meant to instruct.
The prophet needed to be as sure of
the explanation and the application as of the
vision itself.
Then what is it?
One, the reassurance which God imparted to the
prophet, and which he would make known to
all the readers of this book.
That's the first thing.
There is a reassurance which God would give
the prophet, and he wants all the readers
of the book to have the same kind
of reassurance.
What is it?
God would assure the prophet and the nation
at large, and those of us sitting in
our pews in Knox tonight, and the one
standing in the pulpit, that he can do
with man exactly what the potter is doing
with the clay.
God can do with human clay what the
potter in Jeremiah's setting did with actual clay,
material clay.
Look at verses 5 and 6.
Then the word of the Lord came to
me, O house of Israel, can I not
do with you as this potter does, declares
the Lord?
Like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, O house
of Israel.
Oh my friends, let me put it more
personally to you.
As the clay in the hand of the
potter, so are you sitting in Knox tonight,
in the hand of the divine potter.
What a potter can do with material clay,
God can also do with human beings and
with nations.
God is the potter supreme.
When his original and eternal purpose is frustrated,
and the vessel in the making is marred,
what happens?
God is not beaten.
God is not defeated.
You see, God is working against the backdrop
of eternity.
I can't do that.
You and I have got to work against
the backdrop of 40, 50, 60, 70 years,
and we don't know how many we're going
to have.
And so we have to hurry a little
in case our time is gone.
But you see, our God is working against
the backdrop of eternity, and he's got you
and he's got me for the whole length
and breadth of our lives.
And he determines the length of it.
Working against the canvas of eternity, he will
unhurriedly crush the clay in his hands, make
it more pliable than before, so that the
next time he will register progress.
And ultimately his planned vessel will emerge.
God cannot be frustrated.
And that's a great comfort for those of
us who believe in God.
And you and I need this vision.
You see, the concept of God abroad today,
generally speaking, is of a God who can
be beaten right, left, and center.
He's at the mercy of the nations.
He's at the mercy of his people.
He's at the mercy of sinners.
He's at the mercy of everybody.
You can put poor God in a corner,
and really he needs to be bailed out
of his trouble half the time.
And much of our endeavor is to bail
God out of trouble.
Poor almighty God.
No, no, no, says the prophet.
You are the clay.
Nations of the world are the clay.
His people are the clay.
Man, woman, you're the clay.
He's the potter.
And he cannot be frustrated.
And if he needs to crush you the
second time to make you pliable, he'll do
it.
And the third time, and the fourth time,
and the fifth time.
Now that reassurance has both a challenging and
a comforting aspect.
It's very challenging.
It challenges the rebellious in that it assures
such that God will not abandon his original
purpose or plan.
And you see, this is a terrible thing
really.
When God calls you to be a certain
kind of person, then God will not forego
that plan.
And that means that he's going to continue
with you.
That means that he's going to mold you.
That means he's going to pursue you.
That means he's going to break the clay
in his hands.
That means he's going to be with you
until he gets what he is after.
And he alone has the right so to
do.
And you can't just shrug your shoulders and
say, well God, leave it to me.
Many people have done that.
I've heard, I've heard saints of God in
rebellion say, oh God, leave me alone.
I've had enough of it.
I've been in the fire.
Your hand has been heavy upon it.
Job was one of them.
But there are many others.
We were thinking of Job last Wednesday evening.
Oh God, leave me alone.
But you see, God won't leave you alone
if he plans you to be a vessel
unto honor, meat for his use.
For his glory, he's not going to give
up, my friend, until he's got you there.
And he will break us in order to
make us.
He will thrash his people, says William Still
of Aberdeen, to within an inch of hell
to make them what eternally he purposed them
to be.
And William Still is right.
He's the potter.
And he's after something in you, man, woman.
Something of value, something of glory to his
name, a showpiece for angels and principalities and
powers.
He will make devils tremble by what they
see in you.
You think he's going to give that up?
When he spilt the blood of his son
on the cross of Calvary and sent his
Holy Spirit into an unholy world, do you
think he's going to give up?
Not on your life.
Our God is a pursuing God.
By the pace of the wheel of providence
and the pressure of his formative hands, he
will persevere.
That's the story of David.
That's the story of Joseph.
That's the story of Peter.
That's the story of Paul.
That's the story of the early church.
It's God in pursuit, and he won't give
up his plan.
He's had it from eternity, and in eternity
to come, it will be fulfilled.
Of course, do I need to say this?
Let me say it anyway.
The Creator always fulfills his sovereign purposes without
doing despite or damage to the individual's will
or personality.
He can do that.
I can't do that.
We can't do that for one another, but
God can.
He can break us, and the very breaking
is our making.
We are never more whole than when in
the potter's hand we are but plasticine.
That which we have noted is of comfort
to those who respond to God's will because
it reassures such that despite our innate coarseness,
our inbred weaknesses and frailties, God will not
abandon those in whom he has begun a
gracious work, and this is a great comfort.
As we grow in the Christian life, and
as we try to do any service for
God, I'm sure your experiences, my experience, it
is this amazing thing that God continues with
us.
Will he continue to continue?
Oh, the wonder of it that the apostle
could write to the Philippians and be so
assured assured that he who has begun in
you a good work will continue, will pursue
it, and bring it to completion at the
day of Jesus Christ.
He won't give up, says Paul.
That's a great comfort for the obedient and
the humble, for those who want to be
for God's glory, for those who want to
do what God meant for them when he
made us in the first place, and when
he remade us through the Spirit at the
price of the death of Christ.
The great Augustus Toplady puts it very beautifully
in words that are very familiar in some
places.
I think we ought to familiarize them here
too.
The work which his goodness began, the arm
of his strength will complete.
His promises, yea, and amen, and never was
forfeited yet.
Things future, nor things that are now, nor
all things below or above can make him
his purpose forego or sever my soul from
his love.
The potter's good name is involved in all
his handiwork.
A God of glory cannot afford to pack
up halfway through and say, I've done enough,
I can't do any more.
He can't do it without losing his character.
Either he was foolish to begin, or he
was impotent to carry on.
A God of glory must pursue the work
that in wisdom he began, for his character
is at stake.
That's why God won't give you up, so
that for God's own glory, he must persevere
with the work he has begun.
Of course, there are other reasons for that.
There is the grace of his heart, there
is much else, but God will pursue the
work he is set about to do.
And hence the history of men and of
nations, whom God is molding to his will,
is punctuated with new beginnings all the time.
New beginnings.
Have you noticed how in scripture some people
tell you about eras, epochs, or dispensations?
Now, I don't agree with that myself, but
I can understand it.
There are new beginnings in scripture from time
to time.
Scripture starts again with Abram, scripture started again
with following upon the judgment of Noah, started
again with Abram, and it starts again with
David, and it starts again somewhere else.
And you can mention new beginnings to which
I'm not referring.
Now, there are so many of them.
And of course, Pentecost was a new beginning.
Why is this?
Oh, my friends, it is because the sovereign
God will fulfill his purpose.
He, the potter, has full control of the
clay by the pressure of his hands and
the progress of providence he will bring to
pass what is in his mind and in
his heart.
The reassurance God gives.
The rule by which the divine potter pursues
his work upon the coarse clay of the
human life he has taken into his formative
hands is very clear.
In principle, what God does with human clay
is morally conditioned.
This is about the last thing I want
to stress.
But there is something very important here for
our understanding of scripture, of biblical history, and
of much, much else.
In principle, what God does with human clay
is morally conditioned.
What does that mean?
That is, with his eternal plan in mind,
God will always act according to certain moral
conditions.
He deals with us according to certain principles
or a large overriding principle.
And that principle is moral.
What do we mean?
Well, in practice, this inflexible principle will appear
to vary in its application.
God will appear to change his mind, but
as a matter of fact he never does.
For example, the repentance of sinners evidently averts
God's threatened judgments.
God says to sinners or God says to
his rebellious saints, I will bring my judgments
upon you.
And then suddenly he changes his mind and
he doesn't do it.
Have you noticed that?
I know many people were puzzled by this
in scripture.
Jonah was puzzled by it and indeed that's
why he didn't want to go to Nineveh.
God said you go to Nineveh and preach
repentance or there is going to be trouble
within a limited number of weeks.
And Jonah didn't want to go.
Why didn't he want to go?
Well, he knew that if they repented, God
would forgive them and he would look a
fool.
You see, God seems to change his mind,
doesn't he?
No.
God is working according to moral principle.
Not just according to principle, but according to
moral principle.
What is the moral principle?
This, his ultimate goal remains eternally unchanged.
When you and I somehow resist to move
towards that eternal goal, he will warn us
and he will threaten us.
But when we accept his threats seriously and
then repent and turn back and realign our
lives with him, God will forget his thunder
and he will say, that's very well, you've
repented, you come back, I will forgive you,
we'll carry on where we were and he
will not judge us.
But says the prophet, the principle has another
side to it, the kind has another side
to it.
When I say to a nation, oh nation,
I'm going to make something wonderful of you.
You're going to be very highly privileged.
I'm going to call you for a purpose,
a noble purpose, a great purpose.
You're going to be the greatest people in
the world.
And then you sin and in my hand
you prove resistant and hard and unyielding.
And to change the metaphor, you kick against
the pricks and you're irresponsible.
Then says the Lord, what I have promised
to do for you, I will not do.
My promises are in vain.
I will not carry on.
The promises are not for you.
They are morally conditioned.
That's what God says to Jeremiah.
If at another time I announce that a
nation or a 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.
God works on a moral principle and if
we do not accept his judgments and yield
to his sovereignty and become pliable in his
hands, then God's ultimate purpose will continue but
we shall have no place in it.
And if we are to understand the history
of the word and the history of the
world, then we've got to see that these
principles apply.
They apply to every nation under the sun.
There's not a nation to whom these principles
do not apply.
Now I must draw to a close.
Let's apply it to ourselves.
It's all very well to look at these
principles objectively.
It's all very well to think of a
situation in Israel six, seven hundred years before
Christ, isn't it?
Now wait a moment my friends.
We are talking about principles that are eternally
valid.
You and I here in Knox tonight are
like clay, human clay, in the hands of
the sovereign potter, the almighty God who made
us.
Whether we like it or not, we're not
the potters, we're the clay.
He's the potter.
If you do not yield to his hand
as he seeks to make you into what
he planned you to be from all eternity,
God's very promises will become threats.
It is in vain then to plead and
to pray.
Prayer will not change matters, only repentance.
And there is one thing I've discovered, that
we can pray without repentance.
And it's a deadly prayer, but it appears
to be a prayer.
And saints of God can pray and pray
and pray without changing their minds about sin.
Praying will do nothing unless the prayer is
shot through with the kind of repentance that
says to God, I'll yield to you, I'll
come your way.
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
If we return and repent and yield ourselves
to him, God's very threats lose their thunder.
He will continue to work in us and
he will perfect what he has to do.
Until that day when he'll say the work
is sufficiently finished here, it will be concluded
at the coming again of my son.
He will bring to consummation what has gone
on in your life.
How responsive are we to God's word and
spirit as they come to us today, as
they come to us tonight.
God's very passion for perfection is either a
challenge to us or a comfort to us.
Either the greatest conceivable challenge or the most
wonderful comfort ever given to human beings.
Which is it?
See, if God put up with less than
perfection, it'd make it so much easier for
some of us, wouldn't it?
But he won't.
His glory is at stake in every child
of his gathered here tonight.
And he won't give up his passion for
perfection.
And he's working with that eternal day in
mind when his son will come and consummate
and bring to completion that which has already
begun in every believing heart.
Oh, brothers and sisters, what can we say
to these things?
There's only one thing to say.
Let God be God.
Don't try to play God with the Almighty.
Let God be God.
Let us be what we are.
His creatures, his frail creatures, his human creatures,
his creatures who are only here for 60,
70 years, and his creatures who are answerable
to him for what we do with our
time and how we respond to him in
time.
But nevertheless, his creatures for whom he has
the most glorious purpose in mind, and whom
he has prepared to thrash in order that
we should not miss the glory prepared for
us before the foundation of the world.
Are you prone to say that the wheel
on your table or the table which is
your wheel, whichever you like to think of,
however you like to think of it, is
going around a little too fast?
Does providence make you a little bit giddy
from time to time, and are you prone
to shout to the Almighty to stop it?
Don't.
Let him carry on with the work which
his goodness has began.
Express your confidence in him.
Offer him your worship and your obedience, even
though it hurts, so that your life and
mine may be embossed with his glory and
beautified by his grace, and we be in
this world a means of beautifying and commending
the gospel of his saving grace.
Amen.
So let it be.
Let us pray.
O Heavenly Father, we bow and adore your
holy name in contemplation of your sovereign grace
and glory.
Forgive us, our Lord, that our concept of
you is so unworthy and so often unworthy.
Forgive us, our Heavenly Father, that we have
our ideas more from the newspapers and the
books that are published, sometimes bearing Christian titles
but often without Christian content.
Then they are influenced by your word, your
infallible word, and your spirit working within us.
Forgive us, we pray.
We ask that you would bring us to
be exactly what you require of us at
any given point in our human experience, yielded
and still when we need to be yielded
and still, active and buoyant and busy when
you need that of us.
We pray that you will make of us
not just a vessel to be on the
mantelpiece, to be admired, but an instrument in
your hand that you can use even as
we are in the making, and all to
the glory of your name and the furtherance
of your purposes, and that through Jesus Christ,
your glorious Son, our Lord, in whose name
we pray.
Amen.