Jeremiah 18:1-23--The Potter and the Clay

Jeremiah 18
English Standard Version

The Potter and the Clay
18 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.” 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. 9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. 11 Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the LORD, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’

12 “But they say, ‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’

13 “Therefore thus says the LORD:
Ask among the nations,
    Who has heard the like of this?
The virgin Israel
    has done a very horrible thing.
14 Does the snow of Lebanon leave
    the crags of Sirion?
Do the mountain waters run dry,
    the cold flowing streams?
15 But my people have forgotten me;
    they make offerings to false gods;
they made them stumble in their ways,
    in the ancient roads,
and to walk into side roads,
    not the highway,
16 making their land a horror,
    a thing to be hissed at forever.
Everyone who passes by it is horrified
    and shakes his head.
17 Like the east wind I will scatter them
    before the enemy.
I will show them my back, not my face,
    in the day of their calamity.”

18 Then they said, “Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah, for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not pay attention to any of his words.”

19 Hear me, O LORD,
    and listen to the voice of my adversaries.
20 Should good be repaid with evil?
    Yet they have dug a pit for my life.
Remember how I stood before you
    to speak good for them,
    to turn away your wrath from them.
21 Therefore deliver up their children to famine;
    give them over to the power of the sword;
let their wives become childless and widowed.
    May their men meet death by pestilence,
    their youths be struck down by the sword in battle.
22 May a cry be heard from their houses,
    when you bring the plunderer suddenly upon them!
For they have dug a pit to take me
    and laid snares for my feet.
23 Yet you, O LORD, know
    all their plotting to kill me.
Forgive not their iniquity,
    nor blot out their sin from your sight.
Let them be overthrown before you;
    deal with them in the time of your anger.

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The LORD has a message here to teach Jeremiah and the people about His sovereignty and that He has a plan to mold and fashion them into something wonderful.  However, if they somehow refuse to take that shape of what He originally wants to mold them into, He can choose to make them into something else--something completely different.  The thing is, the clay has no say in what the potter forms it into.  The clay is not really actively resisting here (we can't fight against God as much as the world and the devil want us to think we can), it's just that the original image was marred in some way and the potter wanted to make something that was going to be a good reflection of him and his talent.  He doesn't make bad art.  Remember, we are His workmanship, and we are a reflection of Him since we are His handiwork.  In a similar way, children are a reflection of their parents and parents get both praise when their child does something good and criticism when their child does something wrong.  We don't have the option to just start over and remake our children though (I bet sometimes some of us wish we could), however, God does have the ability to do exactly that and for us to be "born again" and to make us completely new.

The LORD can establish nations and cause them to cease to exist any time He wants.  He can start to punish a nation and then if it repents and turns from its evil ways, He can relent and build them back up again.  No one has any right to question His decision as He is forming and making and sculpting what seems best to Him.  It would be wrong for the clay to say to the potter, "Why did you make this way?  I didn't want to be this kind of vessel.  I wanted to be something different."  Paul comes back to this idea in the book of Romans.  Paul takes it to the level of a "what if" (notice he doesn't say that it's actually the way that it is) that the LORD has every right to make vessels (people) whose sole purpose would to be vessels of His wrath and that they are predestined for hellfire and destruction.  Hypothetically, the LORD would be completely just in doing so and we would not be able to complain about that.  Let's not argue about double-predestination now though, but it fits with the whole thing of what if God decides to destroy a people that is really, really bad and He chose to never send a missionary to them to share the gospel with them.  Would He be just in doing so?  Jeremiah says "Yes."  We also see the idea of the book of Jonah here that Nineveh was terribly wicked, but repented and the LORD saved the judgment meant for them for a future generation..

With all that in mind, the LORD has a plan to fashion Israel (and specifically Jerusalem) into something for HIs glory and good pleasure, but to do that He needs to crush and destroy this marred version of it and start over again.  No one should think that just because the LORD allowed many to be killed and the walled cities to be destroyed and the fertile land to lie fallow so that the Land became desert and wilderness instead of vineyards and groves of trees that the LORD's blessing had forever been removed.  It does no good to try to fight against the Potter's hands, and it will only make the process harder and longer.

The people of Israel and Judah (the people that should be the people of God) have abandoned Him to serve other gods.  It should be as impossible for that to happen as it is for the snow to leave the mountains or for Lebanon to not be known for its cedars.  There are just things that are your identity that should never change.  It should really perplexing to people to see "the people of the LORD" worshiping other gods or acting like the pagan nations around them that did not have the Law or the Prophets.

They have received the curses of the covenant and Jeremiah was sent to tell the people to repent that the LORD might relent.  However, instead of listening to the LORD's message, they decide they need to kill the messenger.  They will do the same thing to Jesus and Jesus will cite this to say this is the same thing they did to Jeremiah and all the other prophets.  They attacked him physically, but they also spoke evil things against him.  Jeremiah asks for them to be repaid for their actions (I think he missed the message that the LORD wants them to repent and would be willing to relent from any judgment they deserved if they did).  However, the LORD is just and it is right to ask for Him to do justly and take vengeance for you, because we should not take vengeance for ourselves.  David did this many times, but he also cried out for mercy when he was the one who was wicked and was "guilty as sin."  We must all fall on the LORD's mercy at some point because we all sin and are deserving of physical and spiritual death, but we definitely want to feel like justice has been done for the innocent (or sometimes not so innocent) victims, especially when we are the ones who feel we have been victimized.

Jeremiah prays for all kinds of things to happen to those who are doing and saying evil things against him, yet they are the very things that the LORD has promised to do to them.  In a sense, Jeremiah, like Jonah is saying, "God, please don't let them repent and escape your judgment."  For Jeremiah, the people did not repent and were judged, but for Jonah the people of Nineveh did repent, and that made Jonah angry.  We need to be careful that we accept the LORD's plan even when it is not what we personally want.  If the LORD wishes to save people that were His enemies, that is something that should be celebrated.