Jeremiah the Clay Pot

The mercy of God is exquisite.  The judgement of God is a wonder to behold.

Have you ever read Jeremiah 18 of the time when God tells him to go down to the potter’s yard and wait to see what God will say?  Whilst there, the potter shapes the clay but it goes wrong, so the potter collapses it all down into a big formless lump and starts again.  This is a picture of divine judgement on God’s hard-heartedly wayward people just before the Babylonian invasion of 587 BC.

But here’s the sweetness of it: Even when God collapses a person or a people down because they are ‘marred’ with sin, remember, His hands are still all over you, shaping and forming, never giving up, working his purposes out, creating for Himself a people as His own treasured possession.  I find it helpful to remember that judgement serves salvation, and whatever stage I am at in my life, God’s hands are all over me, shaping and forming.

Doesn’t it make you want to sing?

Click below for the full sermon.

Jeremiah 18