SERMON REFLECTION – 28th November 2021
- by Bro Antoine
HE is the Potter and we are the Clay
In Jeremiah 18:1-6,”God asks Jeremiah the prophet to go down to the potter’s house.
When the Lord says something, He requires us to move. We ought to stand and work for Him when we hear His voice. Obeying is key. If Jeremiah hadn’t gone to the house, he wont have learnt what God was trying to teach him.
What struck Jeremiah’s mind when he went?
There was a big lump of clay somewhere in the house.
Clay as raw material has lots of branches, stones, impurities.
How workers were preparing the clay for the potter to work on the clay.
Preparation:
The clay was being cleansed.
It was watered and trampled upon with feet to make it homogeneous. Then lumps are formed depending on vessel sizes.
After lump is prepared, its placed on the wheel. Different speed of wheel and pressure determined different vessels that are prepared.
When we accept Jesus as our saviour and Lord, we are re-created and are reconciled with the Father. Hence we become a new creation. In the garden of Eden, we were separated. But the Holy Spirit comes in us when we accept Jesus and He enables us to continue to surrender. He helps us to transform and become more Christ like. Therefore, we are driven by the Spirit and not by our own flesh.
We are made ready to start the work by the Potter’s work on the wheel.
The clay doesn’t know what is happening to it, but only does the potter know what’s happening.
The potter adapts and re adapts the clay to get the desired shape. Or, he throws it in a bucket and restarts the process later on.
Israel was in a similar situation when the Lord was adapting it.
When we are in the hands of the lord, we don’t let the Lord shape us. We can live all our lives without accomplishing the will of the lord that is already planned.
We can also delay the process.
It’s very important to set our life according to the purpose of God.
We are living in a time where difficulty is increasing.
The process might get longer and difficult.
The preparation process includes removal of impurities and being spun on a wheel.
While shaping, the clay undergoes pressing and releasing.
The trials that we face are a will of God. Every one who is the son or daughter of the Most High is at some stage in the process.
When we accept and submit ourselves to Him, it begins the process within us.
The Lord works on us so that we can be vessels of honour. We need to ensure that God’s plan is being fulfilled through our lives.
The modelling and the turning process involves drying the clay and putting it in the oven, which if often time consuming. It can take several days to dry up and cook. The first heating may be upto 900 degree sin an oven followed by a second time of cooking at 1200 degrees. This is required for strength and consistency.
It took 40 years for the stubborn Israel to complete a journey of a few weeks. That’s how the process is delayed.
We must be careful in relation with God for complete submission. If we don’t work according to His will, we delay the process.
When we put out faith in God, according to His promise in Jeremiah 29:11, we don’t live in fear since God already knew everything before created us in this time. We should submit our lives to Him completely as individuals and as a church so that He can mould us and shape us as vessels for His glory. Practice is always better than theory.
God is working for His purpose since the beginning of time. He is trying to reconnect to humanity for the salvation of the people.
Galatians 5:1 says, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Jeremiah 1:5 says,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Psalm 139:16 says,
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
The ultimate plan is the salvation of the world.
God works as a potter. The potter has the whole right and we as clay, are to submit to Him.
Just as Romans 9:21 says, “Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honourable use and another for dishonourable use?
We must therefore, seek the face of the Lord before going ahead for anything that we do.
