The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on March 12, 2023. The Bible verses used are Jeremiah 18:1-11.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to get a message from God?
Maybe some of you have gotten messages from God.
There are times when I’ve thought I have. Now, I’ve never heard a voice
thundering from heaven, the way it happens in the movies. But there have
been times when I thought God was giving me a message in one way or another.
Because that’s the thing. God has all kinds of ways
of giving us messages. Sometimes it can be a voice, either an external
voice or a voice inside our heads. Sometimes it can be an inner feeling,
a sense that God’s Holy Spirit is prompting us to do something. Sometimes
God uses other people to give us a message. God’s ways of giving us
messages are limited only by God’s creativity, and God’s creativity is
completely unlimited. So God can give us a message in any way God
chooses. And it’s up to us to be alert and recognize the message God
gives us.
In our reading for tonight, God has a message for
Jeremiah. Now, God had given Jeremiah messages before. God had spoken
directly to Jeremiah. But this time, God says, I don’t want to just use
words to give you my message. I want to give you a demonstration.
So go down to the potter’s house.
Now, the potter’s house was simply the place where someone,
a potter, created pottery. Pots, cups, bowls, whatever. Have you
ever watched a potter at work? If not in person, you may have seen a
video someplace. It’s really pretty fascinating. They start out
with just this blob of clay. It does not look like anything. And
they work with it, and they put it on a wheel, and they spin the wheel, and
they shape it, and they keep working with it, and eventually this formless lump
of clay becomes something useful. And in fact, sometimes, it becomes
something beautiful.
God sends Jeremiah down to watch the potter at work.
And God says to Jeremiah, here’s the deal. The potter, that’s Me.
The clay, that’s the people of Israel. So what you need to know, and what
you need to make sure the people of Israel know, is that I can make of the
people of Israel anything I choose to, because I’m God.
Now God gave this message to Jeremiah as a warning to the
people of Israel. The people of Israel had come to think of themselves as
God’s Chosen People. And there was truth in that, but they had come to
believe that this meant they could do no wrong. They thought that they
could do anything they wanted, that God would protect them no matter what,
because they were God’s Chosen People. God wanted to remind them that God
was not obligated to protect them no matter what. They would only be
God’s Chosen People if they continued to honor God and follow God. If
they abandoned God, God would be free to choose someone else. God had
created them, just as a potter creates something out of clay, and God could
destroy them if God chose.
But as I was thinking about this passage this week, it
seems to me that there are message for us that go beyond that. This
analogy of God to a potter and to us as the clay works on at least a couple
more levels for us.
For one thing, it reminds us that God is the Creator.
Just like a potter has a plan for what he’s going to create when he starts
creating, God has a plan when God creates each of us. God knows what it
is that God wants each one of us to be. And as we go through our lives,
God keeps working on us. God keeps molding us, keeps shaping us. God
keeps working to make us into what God had in mind for us to be when God
created us.
Now, of course, the analogy breaks down a little bit,
because the clay has no power to resist what the potter does. You and I
do have the power to resist God. Now don’t take that the wrong way.
You and I are not more powerful than God. But God allows us to resist God
if we so choose. God will keep working with us. God will keep
trying to mold us and shape us. Even when we’ve gotten all wobbly and
unsightly, God will keep trying to bring us back to what God wants us to
be. But, unlike the potter with the clay, God refuses to force us.
God will allow us to resist if that’s what we choose to do.
But there’s one other thing about God being the potter and
us being the clay. A potter is a skilled craftsman. And one of the
things that’s fascinating about watching a potter at work is that no two pieces
of pottery are exactly alike. They may be similar, but they are not the
same. And in fact, the potter does not even have the goal of making two
pieces of pottery that are exactly alike. The potter wants each piece of
pottery to be different and special and unique. The potter sees the
differences even when the lumps of clay are still just lumps of clay. To
you and me, a lump of clay just looks like a lump of clay. But not to a
master craftsman like a potter. To a master potter, each lump of clay
looks a little bit different.
A potter can look at that lump
of clay and see things in it that no one else can see. The potter knows
things about that lump of clay that no one else knows. And before the
potter even starts to work on it, the potter can see exactly what that lump of
clay should be. All of the ways it’s the same as the others, and all of
the ways it’s different. All the things that make that lump of clay
unique. And all the time the potter is working on that lump of clay, all
the time the potter is shaping it and molding it, the potter keeps that vision
in mind.
That’s how it is with us and
God. God never creates any two people to be the same. We may be
similar in some ways, but no two people are exactly the same. God does
not want us to be the same. God wants each of us to different and special
and unique. After all, God had told Jeremiah earlier, at Jeremiah Chapter
One Verse Five, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were
born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
God had a plan for Jeremiah
before Jeremiah was even conceived. Before Jeremiah was even beginning to
be formed in the womb, God saw exactly what Jeremiah should be. God saw
all the ways Jeremiah would be like everyone else, but God also saw the ways
Jeremiah would be different. And all through Jeremiah’s life, as God was
molding and shaping Jeremiah, God kept that vision in mind, so that Jeremiah
could be what God had planned him to be.
God has a plan for you,
too. And God has a plan for me. Before any of us was even formed in
the womb, God had a plan for each of us. God sees all the ways were like
other people, but God also sees all the ways were different. And all
through our lives, as God molds us and shapes us, God keeps that vision in
mind, so we can be what God has planned us to be.
Now, that all sounds really
good. But here’s the question: do you believe it?
Take a look at your
life. Can you see God at work? Can you see God molding you and
shaping you? Can you see God working to make you into the person God has
planned you to be? Can you see that your life is following God’s
plan? Do you even believe that God has a plan for your life?
As I look at my life, there
have been times when I thought God was at work in my life, and there have been
times when I did not. I can tell you that it’s a lot easier for me to see
God’s plan for my life now, when I’m sixty-four, than it was when I was
fourteen, or when I was twenty-four, or even when I was forty-four. There
have been plenty of times when I wondered what God was doing in my life, or if
God was even doing anything at all. I can look back on it now, now that
I’ve seen how some of the things I was dealing with turned out, and see that
God was at work, that God was still molding me and shaping me. I can see
it now, but I often could not see it at the time.
If that’s you, I want to
encourage you to hang in there. Spend some time in prayer. Try to
stay alert and see if God might be giving you a message in some way. But
until you get that message, don’t give up. Keep doing the best you can to
love God and to follow God and to serve God. Be patient. God is
often at work in ways we don’t realize at the time. Keep trying, keep
praying, and don’t give up on God.
But here’s the other
thing. It’s true that, at age sixty-four, I’ve been able to see how some
things have turned out. But not all of them. There are things that
have not turned out yet. God is still at work on me. God is still
molding me and shaping me. God is not finished with me yet. And God
is not finished with you yet, either. God continues to work on us all our
lives.
For over twenty years, I was a
lawyer. For about seventeen years now, I’ve been a pastor. Does God
have something else in mind for me? I don’t know, but I suspect the
answer is yes. Because the one thing I know is that as long as we’re here
on this earth, God has reasons for us to be here. God never stops molding
us and shaping us as long as we’re here.
I asked you to take a
look at your life. As you do, keep that in mind. God is not
finished with you yet. God is continuing to work on you. Maybe you
have something else in your plan. Maybe you don’t. But our plans
are not what’s important. God’s plans are. God is still molding you
and shaping you, and God will continue to do that as long as you’re here on
earth.
If there’s something else God
wants you to do, God will let you know. Be alert, so you can hear God’s
message when it comes. But if it does not come, keep doing your best to
serve God, to love God, and to stay faithful to God. God knew you before
you were even born. God knows everything you’ve done. God knows you
now. And God will know you in the future. God created you to be
special and unique, and God has a special and unique plan for you and for your
life. And God is still working on you, so that you can be exactly who God
has created you to be.
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