“Oh house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord.”

Life was tough for these guys.  I mean, can you imagine having a job where the results included your being derided, widely rejected, accused of treason, jail time, and sometimes torture and even violent death?  Wow, bring it on, right?  Wrong!  Yet this was the fate of some of those godly men the Lord called to be his prophets.  It was not on anyone’s Top Ten list of fun or relaxing vocations to pursue.

The life of a prophet was often unpredictable.  From confronting kings to making fantastic predictions, from walking around naked to marrying prostitutes, life for the prophet was hardly dull.  To the casual observer, it would be pretty hard to think that God was behind it all, but he was.  So when the Lord told Jeremiah to “go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message” (18:2), it could be anything from rather routine to something very bizarre.  On this occasion, thankfully, it was the former.

His trip to watch the potter was a graphic reminder of exactly who God is and what he would do.  “ ‘Oh, house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?’ declares the Lord.  ‘Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.  If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.  And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it’ ” (vs. 5-10).

In other words, the potter was master over the clay.  He could do with it as he pleased.  Ditto with God: he is sovereign in his choices regarding man and nations. The point for Jeremiah was nations, and one in particular: Israel.  It is true that we can make many applications of the potter and the clay — that God works individually with each vessel, that he has a purpose for each vessel, that he gets his hands “dirty” in the process, etc. — but these were not menu options for Jeremiah.  Israel must repent or be judged was.

The idea of God’s sovereignty over the nations is found many times in Scripture, but not necessarily connected with the potter illustration.  The only New Testament reference with it is in that sticky and sometimes confusing section, Romans 9.  Paul picks up on the idea of nations — Israel first (v. 4) — before he moves on to distinguishing Esau’s descendents (Edom) from Jacob’s (Israel, v. 12).  Living apart in their lifetimes, Esau never really “served” his younger brother, so he must mean their descendants.  Then Paul moves on to the nation of Egypt, represented similarly by Pharaoh.  True, as an individual he rejected God by repeatedly hardening his heart, but Pharaoh’s actions nonetheless were Egypt’s.

To properly understand Paul’s point about the Potter in Romans 9, we need to keep two primary points in our framework: (1) The Scriptures everywhere say that God is merciful and showed his mercy to all by sending his Son, and (2) God gives nations and individual people a choice regarding his provision.  Some say, citing verse 21 (“Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?”), among others, that God pre-determines outcomes by choosing them before a nation makes its choice or a person makes his/hers.  This strains the credulity of the two framework points above as well as evidence in the text here and elsewhere.  By using the middle voice, verse 22 says that, “the objects of his wrath prepared themselves for destruction,” i.e., by their own choice.  Nowhere does this chapter say God individually selected some among the many that were lost to be saved.  Service and nations are in view, not individuals and salvation.  It simply says that God “raise[s] up” (v. 17) unbelievers and unbelieving nations to do his bidding and bring him glory, and he is not unjust in doing so.  Jeremiah 18 agrees: “if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent…” (v. 8), i.e., the Potter shows mercy.  “And if [a nation] does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it” (v. 10).  The Potter glorifies himself with a just judgment.

It’s easy to lump people into categories like Calvinistic and Arminian, then quickly dismiss them.  It is more difficult to diligently study what the Potter’s says.  This much is clear: the Potter is the I Am who lives in the constant present.  Are your present choices attracting the Potter’s mercy or his judgment?