The Potter And His Clay

by J. Miller | Category: The Potter And His Clay | Feb 1960

In past years when the Scriptures were more carefully and studiously read than they are by many today, such matters as emerge from Mark 1.2, 3, and Matthew 27.9, did not escape notice. In the former scripture we have quotations from Malachi and Isaiah, yet the whole is said to be written by Isaiah the prophet, and in the latter we are told that, "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet," and in this portion reference is made to what was done with the thirty pieces of silver, even to buy the potter's field to bury strangers in. But there is no reference to the thirty pieces in Jeremiah, that transaction of pricing and selling the Lord is found in Zechariah 11.13. The solution of the problem seems to me to be in the fact that the Holy Spirit credits the latter prophecy to the earlier prophet, who was the first to speak of such matters. The latter prophet was simply adding details to the revelation through the earlier prophet. The Author of the Scriptures being the Holy Spirit was expounding the contents of the words of the earlier instruments He had used, the earlier instruments being Isaiah and Jeremiah.

The subjects of the potter and the potter's field, the clay and the vessel, are matters of deep interest, not merely in regard to the human potter, his field, his clay, and his vessel, and the ceramic art, but in the profound lessons that are entailed in the potter's use of the clay of the marred vessel.

The acquisition of the potter's field with the money which was cast by the covetous hands of Judas the betrayer on the pavement of the temple at the feet of the guilty priests and elders is also of profound interest. As these priests saw the bag and perchance the silver coins rolling around on the pavement, they rightly described the money as the price of blood. Innumerable have been the acts of selling, and often the selling has been the price of blood, but in all the transactions which have stained the hands and consciences of men none has been so vile as that of Judas and the priests and elders, the proceeds of which lay upon the temple pavement.

Did the priests pick up the silver? or were they too holy to soil their fingers with money to which adhered the supreme act of iniquity? Perchance they sent a slave to gather the silver pieces. But this silver must not go into the holy treasury; it could only be used to buy a field for a graveyard, not a graveyard for the Jews, but one in which to bury the common clay of strangers. Such are the superficial facts of those dark moments of tragedy, which were to have a meaning in misery for ever for Judas and other actors on the stage of these the greatest events that the world had known, because they touched upon the Person of the world's Creator.

There is a much deeper meaning in the potter's field, his workshop, his wheel and his clay. There is a Divine Potter; His field is this earth, from whence comes the clay, the material with which He works. Here is His workshop in which He moulds His vessels, and here too is the burying ground for the broken vessels which time has cast aside. It was in the field that God moulded the first man, before He had planted a garden in which He later put man (Genesis 2.7, 8), and in the field has passed an endless procession of men, great men, and yet only men, as God calls them, "a potsherd among the potsherds of the earth " (Isaiah 45.9).

Jeremiah was told to go down to the potter's house where he would hear the LORD'S words. He went and saw the potter at work. He wrought upon his wheels. He watched him making a vessel in much the same way as is done today, though thousands of years have gone by since then. As he watched, the vessel was marred in the hands of the potter. What the cause was that the vessel was marred we are not told, but the attractive part of the story, to us men who were marred in the hands of the Divine Potter through sin, is, that the Potter did not cast the vessel from Him. He would, as the potter of Jeremiah, make it again another vessel as seemed good to the Potter to make it (Jeremiah 18.1-4).

Paul, in dealing with divine election and the supreme right of God to make creatures as He will, asks the question, " Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? (Romans 9.20, 21).

There is no evidence that the potter made the second vessel inferior in design to the first, that the marring of the first led to a frustration of intention with a consequent drop in the quality of the second vessel. If we apply this to the ways of the Lord with men, we see the original work of God in the making of mankind marred in His hand. God did not cast man from Him; He began again in the work of redemption to make another vessel. The result of this, through the repentance of men, will be that a more glorious work will be accomplished than in God's original work in the creation of man. His work in redemption upon the subjects of divine mercy is more glorious than man was at the beginning. The work unfolds the excellence of the Divine Worker, as, perchance, could not have been revealed had sin not entered into the world, and had not man been corrupted thereby in his whole being. Here in God's redemption is revealed the beauty of the work of God. Man, redeemed from his fallen state, becomes like the prism which splits up the spectrum of the sun's light, and there is seen the exquisite colours of light, colours so beautiful and so varied in their gradations as to cause the eye to marvel at the wonders of light. Even so in man repentant and redeemed, man who once was darkness, but is now light in the Lord, we behold the love, grace, mercy, peace, goodness, gentleness, meekness, humility, faithfulness, long-suffering, and all the other beautiful attributes of the character of God.

Man may not challenge the fact that His Maker made him of earthy material, a fact which can be demonstrated, but he may challenge the truths of redemption and resurrection. He may even say that it is impossible for the Creator to bring back the body that is buried in the earth, or in the sea, or yet again that is reduced to gas and ashes in the crematorium, but it is just here that redemption marches on in triumph in One who says, " I am the Resurrection and the Life." The Redeemer of the soul is the Redeemer of the body (Romans 8.23). It is He who wept among the weepers near the grave of Lazarus. His were tears of love ("Behold how He loved him!") of sympathy for human sorrow, tears that sprang from a heart of infinite love for men, especially for such as were His redeemed.

Of the one-time lost sinner He makes another vessel as seems right for Him, the Potter, to make it. He not only even now makes of the soul another vessel, but of the body also He will make another vessel suited to the redeemed soul as seems right for Him to make, for as we have borne the image of the earthy (Adam), so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly (Christ) (1 Corinthians 15.49). Adam was fair and beautiful as he emerged from his original element, the dust, fair as the flower which rises glorious from the earth, with which Solomon in all his spun and woven glory could not compare. But Christ in resurrection, who is the second Man, the Lord from heaven, has a beauty beyond compare. As heaven is higher than the earth, and Christ infinitely beyond Adam in all things, so in the resurrection the saint will be a second vessel of glorious beauty, even like the Divine Potter Himself, a vessel as seemed good for the Potter to make. Such will have a beauty of having a body like unto "the

body of His glory."

J. Miller | Feb 1960
The Potter And His Clay