Page 52 - Back to Bethlehem

the hands were working with the clay; sometimes on the outside
and sometimes on the inside. And He observed a very skillful
hand. Sometimes He would press and sometimes He would
scrape off some clay. Sometimes He would pound it. So, He
would poke the clay and scrape the clay and move the clay and
sometimes it seemed gentle and sometimes it seemed hard. He
began to see that when the pressure was the greatest the vessel
was most unique.

So, Jeremiah watched the potter. He saw his mind and
that he had a purpose. He say his hands and saw that he had skill.
But then he kept looking and he saw something else. The clay
was on a wheel. It was called a throwing wheel. In those days
there was no electric motor. In fact, there were no pedals. They
had two wheels; a small wheel on top and a large wheel on the
bottom and there was a vertical shaft between the two wheels.
The clay was put on the top wheel and you saw the potter’s foot;
it was kicking the wheel. The foot decided how fast it would go.
As he’s watching the potter, he’s watching the clay go around
and around. He sees skillful hands and he sees a controlling foot
moving that wheel. The clay is getting dizzy.

You are the clay! We don’t know what God is doing! We
are spinning around and around and we’re confused. Sometimes
He scrapes us and sometimes there is pressure in our life but
we’re always spinning and wondering what is going on. The
potter knows. The potter is skillful. The potter is in control. So,
Jeremiah kept looking. The clay didn’t know what was going on
and when he looked he saw something else.

Jeremiah 18:4, “But the vessel that he was making of clay
was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another
vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.” That was a surprise!
The potter who knew the clay, the potter that was so skillful, the
potter who was in control, all of a sudden the clay is ruined in His
hands. I want to make one little explanation here.

When you think of the vessel being ruined, usually we
think of a shard, a broken piece of vessel, but that’s the vessel