The Potter And His Clay

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

The parable of the potter and his clay, in Jeremiah 18.1-4, is first of all to the house of Israel. "0 house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye in Mine hand, 0 house of Israel" (verse 6). Who can say, who has read the story of Israel in the Scriptures, that Israel as the clay has not been marred in the hand of the Divine Potter? Even as early as the end of their journey through the wilderness, the casting off of Israel nationally in this dispensation of grace is envisaged.

"I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation" (Deuteronomy 32.21).

This passage in the song of Moses is quoted by Paul in Romans 10.19. This people who are described as a foolish nation, and were once no people, are the people of Romans 9.24-26, who were called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.

That clay, which was Israel, had been carefully selected by God, who in His dealings with Abraham and his seed patiently waited till they had multiplied as the sand of the seashore, and as the dust of the earth. Alas, for the most part, they were as unstable as sand, and as movable as the dust.

"He (Israel) forsook God which made him,

And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation" (Deuteronomy 32.15).

There were glimpses of sunshine and days of revival in their long history, but these were interspersed with long periods of gloom and darkness. Even in their best days idols lurked in the shades to emerge when the light of revival began to fade.

As time advanced more and yet more, in the writings of the prophets, pictures of the coming Messiah began to appear; Messiah as the coming King of the house of David, and Messiah as the Sufferer at the hands of and on behalf of the people; One who would bear their griefs and carry their sorrows; One who would be given gall for His meat and in His thirst vinegar to drink; One upon whom would be laid the iniquity of us all. Holy men pondered deeply such things, and sought to peer into the future, as directed by the Spirit of Christ, and wondered what manner of times these would be. How earnestly these watchmen looked for the dawn! Indeed they looked for the Lord more than the watchmen look for the morning.

At length far out in the wilderness a cry of a lone man was heard:

"Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3.1, 2). It spread through the land of Israel. Men went out to see and to hear, and many were alarmed and bowed in repentance before the vehemence and power of the speaker's message. Here was a prophet and much more than a prophet! Among those who came, came priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask the speaker, who was none other than John the Baptist, who he was. No doubt his godly and aged parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth, had long since gone to their rest before these days. When asked by the priests and Levites, John did not say that he was a priest of the course of Abijah, of the house of Aaron. He did not even say that his name was John. He did say that he was not the Christ, neither was he Elijah, nor the prophet of whom Moses spoke. Who was he ? He said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet" (John 1.28). Who he was in himself mattered little to him. He was the clay; the thing that mattered was the hand of Him who fashioned the vessel for His own purpose. Indeed it was the treasure of the word of God that the vessel contained that was of first importance. He was the voice of the Divine Speaker whose words muted the hearts of many in those days of revival in Israel, a revival that was outside of the rulers of the nation.

Why did John preach in the wilderness? Alas, the cause was that those in authority had silenced the voice of God in the city and in the temple. The high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, were Sadducees, mere materialists who knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Thus John, the son of a priest is in the wilderness, free to preach there the message of God, and the people were as free to obey it there. Their freedom was found in being free from men's ways, plans and purposes. The word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness (Luke 3.2). God passed over Caesar, Pontius Pilate, three Tetrarchs, and two high priests, seven men who were something among men, but nothing before God. His word came to this outsider, John, in the wilderness, a man for ever great, than whom was none greater of such as are born of women. He was the Lord's messenger who was to point out to Israel the One who was the Messiah, and to prepare a people for Him (Luke 1.17). What people was it that John was sent to prepare? This is an important question. Was this Israel or was it that people who repented and were baptized by John? Was this not the people that the Lord alluded to in Matthew who went into the kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders, a people who accepted John's baptism as the way of righteousness for them? The chief priests and elders saw this happening, but did not repent themselves afterwards (Matthew 21.28-32). He started a work of preparing a people apart from the leaders of Israel whom he called a generation of vipers.

While John was busy in the Lord's work, in the crowd which surged forward, confessing their sins and to be baptized, came Jesus of Nazareth. Why was He here among those sinners? In what He was about to do was a shadow of the dread reality of His baptism in death's cold waters at the end of His life's work. He stood there among the transgressors as He did at the end. He had no transgressions to confess. No words of repentance from a broken and a contrite spirit escaped His lips, no tears of repentance dimmed His eyes. He had come to John's baptism, as in every successive act of His life, to fulfil all righteousness. John, the porter, opened the door of the fold to the Shepherd who entered the fold by baptism as the sheep did. The Lord did not climb up some other way in order to enter (John 10.1-6). With lowly dignity He waded into the waters of the Jordan and was dipped by John, buried by baptism into death in figure, the precursor of that other baptism of Calvary wherewith He was to be baptized. Death and resurrection were impressed upon Him and upon His teaching from the first to the last, and these still continue fundamental to His doctrine. He sought the Jordan as He sought Jerusalem, Gabbatha, Gethsemane, and Golgotha, and at last He trudged the road to the place of the skull in company with the two malefactors. These two were but a token of the vast, uncountable multitude of the world's transgressors with whom Christ was numbered, and we are of that class. Here, in close proximity, transgressors could reach out the hand of faith to Him, as did the robber by His side in those precious moments of his nearness to Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

Did the Lord know the purpose of His first coming to earth ere He left His Father's throne, or did it gradually dawn upon Him as the years of His ministry passed by, that the Cross would be the termination of His work on earth? Surely He knew all, for had not the Spirit of Christ foretold His sufferings ? Did not the whole of eternity as well as time lie before Him as an open book? Were not the whole of His works known to Him from the beginning or from eternity? (Acts 15.18). Though He began from the time of Matthew 16 to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem to suffer many things and be killed and rise again from the dead, it was not that He was not well aware throughout all His life on earth and from all eternity that He must be killed and rise again. Such a thought that He was ignorant of the purpose of His coming is both odious to His Deity, and to the revelation of His sufferings and atoning death in the Old Testament Scriptures.

When His disciples asked Him, in Acts 1.6-8, if He was restoring the kingdom to Israel, He told them that it was not for them to know times or seasons which the Father had set within His own authority. Their business was to stream out from Jerusalem as His witnesses in the power of the Spirit to the uttermost part of the earth. Times and seasons have to do with Israel and their restoration, as we learn from 1 Thessalonians 5.1-4, and with the day of the Lord in which Israel will be made another vessel as shall seem good to the Potter to make them. During the ministry of John the Baptist, and that of the Lord, Israel is seen as a marred vessel in the hand of the Potter, but He was not at that time going to make them another vessel. Nevertheless the day will come when that clay, which is Israel, will be made another vessel more glorious than ever they were even in the days of the glory of the Solomonic reign, which is, in its early years, a picture in miniature of the coming reign of Messiah.

J. Miller | Mar 1960
The Potter And His Clay