Lined up on the shelves in a regimental order the vases were mute witnesses to the conversation between the potter and his friend. The potter’s foot struck the wheel with a rhythmic beat, while another lump of clay was placed on the turntable. The skilled hands quickly brought to life before Jeremiah’s eyes a vase of beauty, where moments before there had been the lifeless lump of clay. The potter was now satisfied with the results, for this was his second attempt to make this vase.
“Are we not like the clay in God’s hands,” Jeremiah said. “Yes, God can take us, work us through His fingers and if we are pliable, without too many defects, He can shape us to become a vessel to manifest His glory. But what good is it if the clay refuses to conform to the hands that will use it? Nothing at all. Waste!” said Jeremiah.
“Good day friend, I will see you tomorrow,” he said as he threw the uncooperative lump of clay on the heap of waste.
Winding his way through the narrow streets, out through the south gate, Jeremiah sought the peace and seclusion of the olive trees. Brushing the clay dust from his robe the slight breeze caught it up as a whiff of smoke drifting in the direction of Anathoth. It was there, his home town, that God had taken hold of him and said he would make him a “defensed city, an iron pillar, brazen walls against the whole land, against kings, princes, priests, people of the land.” His commission now was to appeal to the people of Judah to return to the God of their fathers.
Suddenly he was aware of divine direction. He had lost now the nervous tension that came with the first experience of receiving a message from God.
So the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, “Go to the people and tell them. Cannot I do with you as this potter, behold as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, 0 house of Israel.”
The next day Jeremiah called at the home of his friend to ask for one of the vases from the shelves. Quickly he made his way to the temple, seeking out the elders and priests asking them to accompany him to the east gate.
“What mad thing shall we see now? What is the vase for anyhow?” asked the priests.
Reluctant, murmuring discontent, they followed the prophet to the east gate. Directed by him they all gazed down into the valley of Hinnom.
“This valley will soon be called the Valley of Slaughter,” said Jeremiah.
“Doom, doom, doom, that’s all we hear from you.”
“Nevertheless it will be so, because the people have forsaken their God. Have you really tried to stop the people burning incense unto the other gods ? Or the sacrificing of their sons on the altars of Baal ?’
Jeremiah’s voice becomes louder, “And what of the temple which is polluted by the worship to these foreign gods?”
God has said, “He will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place and will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives.”
Turning again to the valley, Jeremiah raises the vase above his head casting it into the valley smashing it into a thousand pieces.
As with Judah, Israel and Jeremiah, so God has taken us from the mound of mankind to work, create a vessel of honor fit to manifest His glory, and in time to grace His kingdom.
Moving on the tread wheel of life there is an urgency with it. God’s word must be allowed to work in us and through us — to remove the foreign parts, parts that do not conform. If left, they will splinter the vessel when it is tried and tested in the fire.
Paul exhorts, “If any man defile the Temple of God, him shall God destroy for the Temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One