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Our text in Jeremiah is a very familiar passage of scripture to me and one that I have heard countless sermons preached from. There are some texts that are mentioned more frequently by preachers than others simply because their truths are so applicable to everyone's life. There are some passages of scripture which contain truths so profound that whether or not you make it to heaven depends upon whether or not you learn their principles. Our text this morning is one of those scriptures. Either by preaching, by practical experience, or ideally by both you will have to learn the lesson of the potter's house in order to make it living for God faithfully.

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When God calls men to preach, He uses their unique talents and abilities to develop their own style. Ezekiel was a "charades" preacher and God often commanded him to act out things in front of his congregation. Isaiah was a "Word" preacher. Before God called him to preach, Isaiah was a superbly educated court lawyer. His preaching used reasoning to convince the people of the truth of God's message. By contrast, the prophet Amos was a country boy. He never went to school and spent the majority of his early years watching sheep while he pruned fig trees. The book of Amos is dearly beloved by the Jewish people who read it in the original Hebrew because Amos used "quips" and play on words to express his message. His "country humor" and accent is not obvious to us who read the translation in English. Our first text today was in the book of Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah was an object lesson preacher. God used visions of everyday objects to teach him the message of God for the people. In order to demonstrate how that God was going to allow the Babylonians to take Israel into captivity, Jeremiah once took an oxen yoke and preached with the harness over his head. God continued to use such everyday objects to fuel Jeremiah's messages. He used such things as a walking stick cut from an almond tree and a simmering bowl of beans to represent great truths so that the people could understand.

In Jeremiah chapter 18, God commanded the prophet to go to a potter's house and watch him work. It was after that Jeremiah had seen the process of the skilled potter shaping the clay into a workable vessel, that God began to speak to him and told him that "as the clay was in the hands of the potter, so is the children of Israel in my hands." God wanted us to realize that His dealings with those who serve Him is very similar to the labor of the potter over his lump of clay. In chapter 19, Jeremiah took a finished bottle and met with the leaders of Israel and smashed the pot demonstrating that God would bring judgment upon Israel because of their refusal to repent and get things right with Him. The lesson of the potter's house then means the different between life and death. Between mercy and judgment. We must learn well and remember the lesson of the potter's house.

I took some time this week and studied out the pottery business in this period of history. I have learned more about the working of clay this week than I ever intended to know. I even went to "Hobby Lobby" and looked at their selection of clays. Things are extremely different today. You can buy your clay in prepackaged, ready-to-use lumps and then just bake it in your oven after you have used a mechanical, electrical wheel and custom designed (and expensive) pottery tools to shape it. Books are available that take you step by step through the process. It was not so easy to be a potter in Biblical times.

I learned that the pottery business was a primary industry in that day because it was the only available method for producing vessels for everyday use and even fine china. Every city had a potter and most major cities had a street of potters who placed their creation in competition with each other. The city of Jerusalem had an entire street that was dubbed Pottery lane, and even a gate of the city named for the pottery trade because there were so many potters around. When God commanded Jeremiah to go to "the potter," He obviously meant somebody who was very skilled and very good. Jeremiah did not have to ask "which potter?"

This is important to understand because there were two wheels used in pottery houses of Biblical times: the "fast wheel" and the larger, heavier "slow wheel." The fast wheel made vessels faster and easier but was limited in the types of vessels that were made because all were a product of centrifugal force. The slow wheel's vessels took more time to make and had to be crafted by a skilled potter. If the potter was good, then the slow wheel could produce a greater variety of tools and vessels. Because the slow wheel took longer to produce, more water usually had to be added to the clay in order to keep the clay pliable and workable in the potter's hands. Fast-wheels potters were a dime a dozen because they could produce more vessels to sale with less work and time and skill. From the way that the Hebrew reads, it is obvious that Jeremiah went to watch a potter who used a slow wheel. The potter that Jeremiah went to watch was the best in the city.

Pottery works because when the clay vessel is shaped and placed within an oven, it hardens so that it will always retain it's shape. Even if a clay pot that has been fired is broken, it's pieces are hard and cannot be reshaped into anything else. Clay in it's natural state is not like the clay in your Hobby Lobby or the crafts section of Walmart. Natural clay is not suitable for direct use by the potter. It has to first be "weathered" and then "treaded." Weathering is accomplished by allowing the clay to be exposed to the elements of nature such as storms and change of temperature and wind. As the clay is exposed to these elements, it's resistance begins to break down from a rigid material to a useable form.

Treading is accomplished by adding water to the weathered clay and then repeatedly working the clay to evenly distribute the water throughout all of it. If the clay was in large batches, the potter would walk through the clay to ensure that the water was evenly distributed. If it was a smaller batch, then the potter would work the clay with his hands. Sometimes in this step the clay would become too watered down and a filler would have to be added to "temper" the clay and keep in a workable form. The filler could be anything that caused the clay to come together such as sand or finely chopped straw. Interestingly, the most frequent temper added to clay that had become too treaded was crushed pottery. In every book that I looked at, this was the only practical use of a vessel that had hardened and then thrown out. Once a vessel had been hardnened, it was only good to be ground into a fine powder and used to temper fresh clay by making it into a perfect consistency to mold.

The final step of preparation of the clay was called "wedging." This was almost always done by hand. By wedging, the potter folded and kneaded the clay to remove all pockets of air from the clay. If the potter did not do this, then when the vessel was finished and heated, the air would shatter the vessel and cause it to be good for nothing. When wedging, the potter judges by the feel of the clay in his hands and it's response to the wedging process to determine when the clay is ready to be shaped. All of these steps must be completed before the potter can even begin to form the clay into the desired vessel! The Pottery business in Jeremiah's day was hard labor.

Let me stop here and show you how that this lesson of the potter's house applies to us today. The prophet Isaiah said:

You and I as human beings are the clay. We were created out of the "dust of the ground." We are nothing but glorified clay in rough form. We are naturally born or formed in sin. We are not pretty clay in the spirit, but a diamond-in-the-rough with impurities and rigid to the relationship with God that He desires us to have. The Lord is the potter. When God begins to work in a person's life and draw them closer to Him, He begins the hard work of a potter in your life. The process of the preparation of the clay in the natural potter's hands matches exactly the process in the spirit that God begins in our lives.

People who are still in sin are not very yielding to the master's hand. God has to take us out of our protected environment in this world and allow storms and a change of season to begin to break down our resistance. For people to be saved, they must first realize that they need a savior. That is why God allows people's lives to fall apart and allows tragedies to happen and allows a "cold wind to blow" every once in a while. He is weathering the clay. He is hoping that through a continual exposure to the elements that their resistance to the things of the Spirit will be broken down and they will submit themselves to the process of becoming worthwhile clay in the Master's hands. Don't get mad at God when your unsaved loved ones have tragedy after tragedy and calamity after calamity. Instead rejoice, because that is proof that God is actively working in their lives. The weathering process is preparing them for the potter's house!

The next step is to add water and tread the clay so that the water is evenly distributed throughout the clay and joins with every part of the clay. Jesus continually used water to represent the Holy Spirit in His teachings. In John chapter 4, He told the woman at the well, that if she drank the water that He gave, she would never thirst again. In John chapter 7, Jesus stood up and cried:

Again Jesus was using water to represent receiving the Holy Spirit. When Peter stood up on the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 and preached, he quoted the prophet Joel and said that God had prophesied about this Holy Ghost "out pouring" and that "in the last days," God would "pour out His Spirit upon all flesh." The term "pour out" refers to water being poured from a clay vessel. Again God used water to represent the Spirit of God.

Scientists tell us that there is just as much water in the world today as there was at the Creation of the world. Water does not disappear, but just changes forms. Before the Flood in Noah's day, the world was watered by a mist that rose up from ground. Water had never fallen from the sky before and thoroughly drenched anything. The umbrella business didn't make much money before the Flood! But from the Flood on, God caused it to rain upon the earth. And God repeatedly used "rain" as a symbol of the Holy Ghost. Can I tell you that there was just as much Holy Ghost in the world in the Old Testament as there was on the Day of Pentecost. But God changed the method of dispersing the water of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, a prophet here and there would have a little of the Holy Ghost to get on him and he would prophesy a little bit. But on the Day of Pentecost there was a Flood of the Holy Spirit! They did not get a little mist of God, but they got drenched with the Holy Ghost! They got so drenched that other people could tell that there was something different about them! It was the latter rain of the Holy Ghost! When's the last time you got drenched by a Holy Ghost overflow? Are you dry in God? Then you need more water added to the clay of your flesh! It doesn't matter how dry a ground is, if you get a good enough rainstorm, then that ground can soften and receive seed. You see, the Holy Ghost did not just rain upon the disciples on the Day of Pentecost, but it also got within them! The living water of heaven went into the clay of men. When you receive the Holy Ghost, God is adding water to the clay. Some people think that they do not have to receive the Holy Ghost but are satisfied with just feeling it on the outside. But the clay that is being weathered outside feels the rain upon it. But it's not until the water is mixed within the clay that the clay is brought into the potter's house! You need the Holy Ghost: it's your ticket out of the storms of this world and into the house of the potter!

But even in the natural clay, it is not enough for the water to be added to the clay just one time. The potter then begins to work the clay and distribute the water until it touches every part of the clay! You cannot get the Holy Ghost one time and then say, "okay, I received the Holy Ghost and I don't have to come to church anymore, and I don't have to pray any more, and I don't have to grow or let God's Word deal with me anymore." You've got to allow the Holy Ghost to touch every part of your life! You've got to allow God to change the way you act, dress, and respond. You've got allow the water of the Holy Ghost to touch your job, your marriage, your kids, your finances, your pleasures, and your dreams! And as the potter works the clay, He often finds that He needs to add more water to keep it from drying out. More water also helps to work out the impurities! The Holy Ghost is not just a one time experience but must be an ingredient that we receive more and more of! You need a touch of the Holy Ghost as often as you can get it! It's God's will today to add some more Holy Ghost to even the most moist clay here today!

Sometimes we as the clay get so much Holy Ghost in us that we get to feeling as if we are perfect and that we don't need to pray or study God's Word or fast anymore. It is then that the Master Potter begans to temper us. He takes shattered pottery and grinds it up and adds it to us to cause us to become moldable again. Shattered pottery are vessels that have been rejected by the potter because they were too hard to be useful. God is going to make sure that you get some persecution from people that are hard spiritually. God WILL put a hard case in your life. He will allow someone that is NOT interested in the things of God to be added into the mix. Why? Because He is tempering us. He knows that persecution has a way of bringing the clay together. He knows that persecution has a way of getting us beyond our comfort zone and getting us ready to be molded into His will. He knows that persecution will cause us to pray and fast and study and depend upon Him if we are to survive. That's why after the Day of Pentecost, God allowed great persecution to come upon Peter and the Early Church. It was the persecution that caused them to get beyond their comfort zones of their little lives in Jerusalem and obey the commandment to reach the world. You can truthfully say that it was the persecution that provoked the great revival of the book of Acts. If we are to see that same great revival today, then God is going to have to get us from our comfort zones of the little lives that we have made for ourselves. Life is much more than eating and sleeping; houses and land. It's about more than family and recreation and never ending cycle of work. It's about the kingdom of God and a God that wants to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh and is looking for some vessels that can hold water spiritually and be used to distribute His Spirit throughout this community and nation! And that's why God tempers us and does not allow us to get comfortable in your life, because it is hindering your formation into a vessel of honor!

The last step of preparation before the forming of the vessel begins is "wedging." The potter has to get the air out of the clay or it will cause the vessel to collapse when it is placed in the fire. Jesus used yeast or "leaven" as a representation of pride because it puffs a bread up with air. After you have been weathered, treaded, and tempered, God then has to remove pride from our lives. We all struggle with pride. Show me someone who gets their feelings hurt easily and I will show you someone with great pride. The potter has to take great care to get the air bubbles of pride out of our lives, or we will collapse under pressure. That is why the scriptures say:

Why do some preachers reach a certain level of anointing and then suddenly fall into sin!? Because of the air of pride within them that they refused to allow God to work out. As you begin to see your life take on a useful shape to the kingdom of God, you must guard against becoming prideful of what God has done in your life. If I ever amount to anything in the kingdom of God it is because of His mercy and the work of His hands in my life and not something that I have done on my own. You can't form yourself into a vessel of honor by yourself. All good things come from God according to the book of James. If anything good comes out of your life, then know it is the hand of God working in your life that brought it! But God sometimes has to pop the air bubbles that try to rise up in the clay. He does not want you to be almost finished as a vessel and then fall apart because of pride, so He begins the process of wedging. He puts you in all sort of situations to see how that you will react. He listens to your boasts and the very things that you despise in other people, you will have to face in your own family and life! Why? He has folded the clay back on itself to destroy the bubbles of pride in your life. What goes around does come around, and one day you will need mercy. It's called wedging and God allows it in our lives to remove pride lest we be almost perfected and then become completely worthless.

Then God takes your life and places it upon His will. He keeps adding water to keep you soft and moldable and then begins to shape your life into His perfect will for you. He does not use a fast wheel, but instead uses a slow one. You are probably not going to become everything that God wants you to be in one night, one year, or even one decade. No matter how long you have lived for God and no matter how well you think that you know this Word, you are not perfect yet and therefore God is not finished with you! I've known people to get upset at God because He does not answer their prayers quickly. I've known people to get mad because they wanted all of the anointing that God had for them "right now!" But understand that this is not some factory with fast shaped yet imperfect and generic pieces are churned out. You are not some plastic being poured into a mold to be exactly like all of the other vessels. You are on the slow wheel of the master Potter. His hands are designing a one-of-a-kind creation. He has a perfect design for your life and He is carefully every day forming you into the perfect vessel for your life. Some vessels hold more anointing than others. Some are more practical and some are more pretty to look at. The clay does not determine what it will be. You need to get your eyes off of whether or not you are good looking or as anointed a singer or teacher as somebody else. God does not compare you with others because each vessel that He makes is unique. But God does not make junk, either. No matter what you look like or what you accomplish or how much money you have, if God has shaped your life, then you are a success! He is the Master Potter of the slow wheel. He doesn't make mistakes.

As the hands of the master potter works the vessel, he will often detect a flaw or blemish and so with his fist, He will crush the clay back to a blob, add more water, distribute it throughout all of the clay again, and start over shaping the vessel. Sometimes a potter will have to start over many times in order to get the vessel exactly like he desires it to be. The potter must be patient in order to achieve the perfect vessel with clay.

As you live for God you will find yourself being crushed and remolded time and time again. Why does God have to crush the clay over and over again? Is it because God is imperfect? No, God is the best potter that has ever formed vessels and He cannot make mistakes. There are two reasons why God has to crush the clay of our lives over and over again and reshape it and add more water and work it yet again and they both have to do with the clay, not the potter:

1. Impurities are present that will cause the vessel to fail when it is put to use and filled with anointing. That is, the potter discovers some impurities that were not removed during the preparation time. He then collapses the vessel adds more water, removes the impurities and starts over.

2. As the piece begins to be formed into it's final shape, it resists the shape that the potter has chosen! That is what Paul was saying to the church in Rome in our other text. He said:

Only God knows what you need to be formed into. The problem is that sometimes we as Christians allow ourselves to be formed and shaped and softened until we begin to see the shape that our lives are taking and then, sometimes, we don't like the vessel that God has chosen for us to be and so we begin to resist the final touches of the Master's hands! I've known people to live for God a long time and yet in their final days lose out with God because they wanted to be shaped like someone else or they wanted their ministry to be like somebody else's and not according to the plan that God had for them all along! We must trust the Master Potter to form us into what He wants us to be, even if it is not the ministry or vessel or lifestyle of our own preference!

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There is only one person in the New Testament which the pottery business is closely related: Judas Iscariot. I would like to close this sermon by pointing out that both the reasons that God has to start over with the clay caused Judas' downfall and subsequent destruction as a vessel of God:

1. His dishonesty with the finances continued even despite the repeated preaching and teaching of Jesus Christ. Despite repeated instruction and anointed preaching by Jesus Christ, Himself, Judas continued to steal money and be dishonest as the treasurer of the group. As Judas Iscariot developed as a vessel, his dishonesty became a glaring flaw and impurity that would have caused God to work on him a little while longer. We cannot ignore the teachings of the scripture on any subject, because doing so causes the process of God making us into what we should be to last longer!

The main problem was number 2: Judas Iscariot did not like the vessel that Jesus Christ was shaping him. The real reason that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus was probably not money at all because thirty pieces of silver was not an exorbitant amount. Also after Jesus Christ was arrested and condemned to die, Judas Iscariot took the money back to the chief priests and threw it at their feet. Judas Iscariot had been raised in Judea, the only of the twelve disciple to be raised near Jerusalem and he believed that the Messiah would over throw Roman rule and set the Jewish people free. Judas betrayed Jesus, not because he hated Him but because he was trying to force Jesus into becoming an earthly king. Jesus Christ had been forming the disciples to not respond to the Roman government but be willing to go the extra mile! Jesus Christ was shaping those twelve men into vessels appropriate to a spiritual kingdom. He did not want Peter becoming a vessel of war against the Romans with his sword, but rather a vessel which the Holy Spirit could flow through freely! Jesus had the same plans for Judas Iscariot.

Judas should have been a main pillar preacher of the church. At the Last Supper, it was John and Judas who sat in the place of honor beside Jesus Christ. Judas Iscariot did not have to betray Jesus. One of the twelve disciples did not have to be the one to betray Jesus to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. All the prophecies say is that a "friend" of Jesus would betray Him. Jesus hand picked Judas Iscariot to be one of His disciples because Jesus had a plan of a vessel in mind to shape Judas' life into. The problem is that the vessel began to resist the plan of God for his life! Judas decided to try to force God into making him into what he wanted to be. And without realizing it, Judas took himself off the wheel of the master potter! He would rather take his own life rather than lay it down and allow Jesus to form him into God's will.

As God forms you, you are going to have to give up some of your ideals for your life. God's perfect will for our lives is rarely what we dreamed about in our own minds. There WILL be an unexpected twist in it, and God specializes in taking people's weaknesses and anointing that the most! Moses could hardly believe that God would send someone with a speech impediment to be His spokesperson to Pharaoh. Peter would have hardly been our first choice for the leader of a spiritual revival. God chose Jonah, who hated the Ninivites, to be the bearer of His mercy to those people. God's perfect will for Luke's life did not consist primarily of his physician's duties but for him to write the events of the church around him. God knows us better than we know ourselves and we must trust that His judgment for our life is best!

Judas' connection with pottery is this: The scriptures say that when Judas threw the money down in the temple, that he went and hanged himself. He was so upset over God's choice of vessel that he killed himself. The Jewish leaders took the blood money and bought a field in which to bury people who died without known relatives or friends. That field happened to be a field that had been behind a potter's house. The field was covered in shattered pots and vessels that had been rejected by the potter. It became a perfect analogy for Judas Iscariot's life. Matthew clearly states that the Chief Priests purchased the field with the money that Judas threw down. In Acts chapter 1, Peter says that Judas purchased the field. He was correct. Judas' life became just as that field of broken and rejected pottery because he killed himself and took himself out of the will of God. It did not have to end that way. Judas could have been forgiven for betraying Christ just as Peter was, but Judas took himself off the wheel and allowed himself to become dry spiritually until he was crushed, worthless to the kingdom of God. The scriptures say:

A lion may be the king of the beasts, but it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion! You may have wasted most of your life and perhaps made mistake after mistake. Whatever you do, don't walk out on God and take yourself off the wheel. Don't resist God's plan in your life. Don't ever let yourself become dry spiritually so that the Holy Ghost can't touch you. Don't ever let yourself to fight against the Word of the Master Potter, because you don't want to end up like Judas Iscariot. And you don't have to end up that way. We serve the God of the slow wheel. He is patient and kind and loving. As long as you don't remove yourself from the wheel in the Potter's house and you stay spiritually alive, then there is hope to become a vessel of honor! Learn the lesson of the potter's house: stay on the wheel; stay moldable and workable in the hands of God. Don't grow exasperated and impatient with God. The Master Potter is making a one-of-a-kind creation in your life. All of the shaping and trimming and storms are there to make you a vessel of honor! Stay on the wheel!