Jeremiah Watches the Potter at His WheelBible World
18:2Jeremiah 18:2
Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.
Arise and go down to the potter's house is a divine command to Jeremiah to go to a specific place where God will cause him to hear His words through the potter's work with clay. Like clay in the potter's hand, Israel and the nations are subject to God's dealings and judgment, and His warnings call them to turn from evil. What happens to a nation is conditional on its course, for turning from evil and repenting can avert threatened judgment, while doing evil can forfeit promised good and withhold promised blessing. A nation's standing with God is not fixed by its ancestors' sins or virtues, but its own choice to turn to God or persist in evil determines its relation to Him. Those who follow God in righteousness receive blessing, while those who persist in their own ways prove unfaithful and cannot be blessed.
God is the great Potter and Master-worker, and people and His workers are the clay whom He molds and fashions for His purposes and use. He seeks to mold them according to His likeness, to reflect His character and reveal His perfection and glory, until the glory of the Potter appears in a shapely vessel molded and polished for service. The shaping involves turning the clay again and again until the Potter's will is wrought out, with kneading, reshaping, waiting, trimming, polishing, pressure, and preparation, and by grace and truth fashioning the human clay until it becomes a shapely vessel fit for use and service.
The verse calls for submission, giving heed to divine instruction and surrendering self to the divine will, yielding as pliable clay to God's shaping. It forbids trying to direct the work, do the Potter's work, or shape oneself, requiring instead readiness to receive divine impressions. Being clay means yielding daily, hourly, and momentarily, being emptied of pride and self-sufficiency to make room for Jesus, accepting advice and counsel and control instead of following one's own mind and judgment, submitting the will to Christ, and living in constant connection with Him under the government of the Spirit of truth. When people surrender self and follow divine instruction, God forms them into shapely vessels revealing the perfection He desires every human being to reveal, but refusing to be molded and cherishing defects and tendencies to wrong instead of remedying them mars the character and brings deformity into its growth.
For a faulty worker the verse means God wants to save him by molding him as clay is molded in the potter's hands. Every word of reproof showing his unfinished and imperfect work and the wrong mold he has placed upon it is true. Such a worker must see his imperfections and put them away, let God take away his defects, and get rid of the peculiarities he has fastened upon the work. He must not throw off responsibility and balk in the harness, which would make him a ruined man, but if he yields and lets God remove what is wrong he will become a more useful worker than before and will triumph with the success of the truth.
Arise and go down to the potter's house is a divine command to Jeremiah to go to a specific place where God will cause him to hear His words through the potter's work with clay. Like clay in the potter's hand, Israel and the nations are subject to God's dealings and judgment, and His warnings call them to turn from evil. What happens to a nation is conditional on its course, for turning from evil and repenting can avert threatened judgment, while doing evil can forfeit promised good and withhold promised blessing. A nation's standing with God is not fixed by its ancestors' sins or virtues, but its own choice to turn to God or persist in evil determines its relation to Him. Those who follow God in righteousness receive blessing, while those who persist in their own ways prove unfaithful and cannot be blessed.
God is the great Potter and Master-worker, and people and His workers are the clay whom He molds and fashions for His purposes and use. He seeks to mold them according to His likeness, to reflect His character and reveal His perfection and glory, until the glory of the Potter appears in a shapely vessel molded and polished for service. The shaping involves turning the clay again and again until the Potter's will is wrought out, with kneading, reshaping, waiting, trimming, polishing, pressure, and preparation, and by grace and truth fashioning the human clay until it becomes a shapely vessel fit for use and service.
The verse calls for submission, giving heed to divine instruction and surrendering self to the divine will, yielding as pliable clay to God's shaping. It forbids trying to direct the work, do the Potter's work, or shape oneself, requiring instead readiness to receive divine impressions. Being clay means yielding daily, hourly, and momentarily, being emptied of pride and self-sufficiency to make room for Jesus, accepting advice and counsel and control instead of following one's own mind and judgment, submitting the will to Christ, and living in constant connection with Him under the government of the Spirit of truth. When people surrender self and follow divine instruction, God forms them into shapely vessels revealing the perfection He desires every human being to reveal, but refusing to be molded and cherishing defects and tendencies to wrong instead of remedying them mars the character and brings deformity into its growth.
For a faulty worker the verse means God wants to save him by molding him as clay is molded in the potter's hands. Every word of reproof showing his unfinished and imperfect work and the wrong mold he has placed upon it is true. Such a worker must see his imperfections and put them away, let God take away his defects, and get rid of the peculiarities he has fastened upon the work. He must not throw off responsibility and balk in the harness, which would make him a ruined man, but if he yields and lets God remove what is wrong he will become a more useful worker than before and will triumph with the success of the truth.