“The Potter’s Clay”
Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
12-3-2023
In the name of our God who shapes us into His holy people, dear friends in Christ. There’s probably not a many of you who are familiar with the TV show called “Saturday Night Live.” To a certain extent, that’s good because their humor nowadays has gone right into the toilet. But it used to be really funny. Anyway, back in the 1980's there was a segment of the show called “Mr. Bill.” Mr. Bill was a “claymation” character. It’s where they take clay and mold it into different shapes and act out a story. All kinds of crazy things would happen to Mr. Bill. He’d get squashed or something like that and then the human hands would reshape him for the next episode. Mr. Bill would often protest about his circumstances with his famous cry, “Oh… No!” But in the end, he was at the mercy of the person that made him.
In verse 8 of our text, the prophet Isaiah says, “But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” It’s a beautiful illustration to remind us of our relationship to God. We are the clay; God is the potter. We are at the mercy of His hands which shaped us. But any similarities with Mr. Bill end right there. Unlike that little clay figure, we are alive and have been given the ability to function on our own and make decisions. Things don’t just “happen” to us. We have a free will to make choices and an eternal soul which God created. Even so, we’re still at the mercy of our Creator. The only question is whether we resist or submit or to His divine shaping.
You know, the more you think about it, that description is very accurate of us as “clay” in the hands of the Heavenly Potter. No, no, no. I said HEAVENLY Potter, not Harry Potter!! {I can see that some of you have never heard of those books.} God is the Heavenly Potter who shapes us. That picture which Isaiah employs goes all the way back to Creation. When God created Adam, Genesis 2:7 says that the Lord God “formed the man from the dust of the ground.” Guess what Hebrew word is used there for the word “formed.” Yep. It comes from the same root that the word “potter” in Isaiah comes from. God shaped Adam like a potter taking a worthless lump of clay and working it into a useful masterpiece. And then God breathed into him the breath of life.
That’s how mankind began; as a lifeless lump of clay in the hands of God. When God was finished, that lump of clay became a living being with a soul. Mankind was a perfect masterpiece. And those first humans had a perfect relationship with their Maker. Adam & Eve submitted their free will to the holy will of God. They could easily and joyfully say, “O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” But then, something changed. The devil came along and convinced them that God had left something out when He created them. They gave into the temptation to reach out and “be like God.” No longer were they willing to submit to God’s perfect will to shape their lives. Rather, they were molded by their sinful desires. God’s perfect masterpieces were marred and twisted and ruined with sin.
Picture this in your mind. A potter sits at his spinning wheel with a lump of clay in front of him. He pushes and presses and squeezes that clay until it’s in the shape he wants it. But when he steps away for a moment, someone slips in and starts poking and pushing on that clay until it’s unrecognizable and ruined. What will the potter do? He’ll sit back down and begin pressing and squeezing and reshaping that lump of clay back into the form He wanted it to be in the first place.
That’s what God wants to do for us. We are marred, twisted, and ruined by sin. He wants to reshape our sinful forms and make us into the beautiful masterpieces He intended. But here’s the problem. We’re not just a mindless, lifeless lumps of clay like Mr. Bill. We have the awful ability to jump off the Potter’s spinning wheel, away from His reshaping hands. And we also can talk back at God like a kid chiding their parent and blaming them for everything that’s wrong in their life. Isaiah wrote down those accusing words that were on the lips of Israel. In chapter 63 he quotes them as saying, “Why, O LORD, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?”
It’s almost comical to envision the clay talking back to the Potter, blaming HIM for all their faults. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. And yet, that’s what happened with Israel. They start off blaming God for hardening their hearts. But the reality was totally the opposite. God didn’t harden their hearts. They did. They were the ones who had turned away from God’s corrective hand. In the previous chapter of Isaiah, they remembered the “good old days” when God came down visibly on Mount Sinai with lightening and earthquakes. He was their awesome God and everybody knew not to mess with His chosen people. No other nation had a God like their God who “acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.”
Uh oh! I sense a problem. Had Israel always waited for God to act on their behalf? Not hardly. During Isaiah’s time, their country was under attack. And as they had done many times before, they were calling on a foreign power, namely Assyria, to come help them, even though Isaiah warned them not to. The other shoe drops in verse 5. It says, “You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?” They’ve just answered their own question. Did God harden their hearts and cause them to stray? No. They just confessed that they were at fault. Nothing they could possibly do would correct the problem. All their righteous acts were like a filthy, polluted garment. These lumps of clay have recognized that they have a fatal spiritual flaw and they can’t do anything about it. In their current condition, the Potter has every right to discard them.
Thankfully, though, they were not without hope. Verse 8 begins with a Gospel word: “But now…” “But now, O LORD, you are our Father.” They were totally hopeless because it was their sin which had brought them to ruin. But even now they could still call upon the mercy of their Heavenly Father. That’s a clear sign that faith was still alive in their hearts. Although they had sinned terribly and rejected the corrective hand of the Potter, they could repent and call on Him to be saved. “We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Those are words of confession and submission. Submitting to the hands of the Potter who could fix their sin problem which had ruined their lives.
Have you figured out the connection to you in this lesson yet? Christian friends, you and I are made out of the same, stubborn clay as those Israelites. Like them, we try to blame God for our wayward and hard hearts. As if it’s His fault for us sinning. People blame God for homosexual behavior, their addictions, and their tempers. Because, after all, that’s how God supposedly made them. The clay is shaking its fist at the Potter. How ridiculous! But that’s what we do. When Israel felt attacked, they sought help. Not from God but from human powers. And we’re no different. Where do you turn when you’re in a crisis? To God? Or to a bottle, or a pill, or perhaps to Dr. Phil? Or maybe you just trust in yourself to fix things?
The answer is apparent. We have sinned continually against God. As Isaiah says, we “fade like a leaf.” Nothing we could do—no righteous act of ours—will fix the problem. By all rights, God should just discard us; throw us away eternally. Listen, God knows all your sins that ruin and mess up your life. More importantly, He knows all the sins which have ruined you spiritually and made you a worthless lump of human clay. How then can we be saved? Well, do you remember the “but now”? Those Gospel words are for you and me too. Isaiah tells us, “But now, God is our Father.” In spite of all our sins and rebellion against Him, God loves us and keeps His promises. That’s why He sent His Son into a world full of sinful human clay to save us from destruction.
You see, God wants to reshape you. He wants to form you into the masterpiece He intended you to be. He began His work when you were Baptized as His child. The Holy Spirit formed in you the Holy image of Jesus Christ. But sin is all around us and we give in to those temptations daily. It presses on our earthly clay and threatens to ruin the masterpiece which God has created. The Holy Spirit is there continually reshaping you. But first you have to submit to the hands of the Divine Potter. That’s what you’re doing when you confess your sins and repent of them. You’re saying, “Lord, I am the clay, you are the potter. Please reshape me!”
However, that means you’ve got to quit jumping off His pottery wheel. It won’t be comfortable, because God will squeeze out the sinful stuff that’s messing you up. He’ll push you in directions that you’re not so sure you want to go. But I can guarantee you this. He will patiently and tenderly reshape you into the perfect masterpiece He wants you to be. And He will continue to reshape you until the day you die because you are the loving work of His almighty hands. Yes, we are at the mercy of the Creator’s hands who formed us. But they are the hands of our Heavenly Father who in mercy has saved us and remade us in the image of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!