Jeremiah 18:1-11

The account of Jeremiah’s visit to a pottery workshop contains several challenges for the modern reader. The first of these might be the call to pay attention to the events of our everyday lives. The prophet heard a message from God in the midst of common, ordinary activity. He was not in the temple, on a mountaintop, or by a bubbling stream. No heavenly being delivered a word and no music was playing. No smoke. Not flashing lights.

God invited Jeremiah to “go down to the potter’s house” so that he might hear a divine word for his people (v 2). Perhaps Jeremiah spent too much time in the office, hanging around the temple, or at his home, a quiet little village just a short walk from Jerusalem. God said it was time to get out among the people where life really happens.

Nothing symbolized real life quite like pottery in the ancient world. As archaeological excavations in Israel over the past centuries have revealed, earthenware vessels were the plastic of their day. Archaeologists have unearthed literally thousands of pottery shards at every level of human occupation. Everything from storage containers to cooking pots to home décor and lighting was made of clay. So every village or city contained a potter’s workshop. This centuries old craft required hours of backbreaking work from dawn till dusk. Potters must dig and mix clay to just the right consistency, shape all kinds and sizes of vessels, burnish, paint and fire them in kilns at just the right temperature. Elbow deep in mud, spinning wheels, pumping bellows, it was messy, dirty, sweaty, exhausting work.

So the potter’s house in Jerusalem was likely not only located “down” geographically from the Temple area, but it was also “down” socially from the refined, educated, “spiritual” world of priests on the Holy Hill. The pottery district was probably located near the Gihon Spring at the juncture of the Kidron and Hinnom valleys many feet below the imposing Temple Mound. It was a place where hands got dirty with everyday life.

Today we might imagine God inviting his servant to an auto repair shop to listen for a word. Like Jeremiah, we could watch men and women going about their routine tasks wondering what God could say through that. What might we learn from the one changing a road-worn tire with dirt and grease smudged on his face and shirt? As he lifts the car, loosens bolts, separates old tires from rims, replaces them with new tires (just the right size, price and tread), airs them up to the proper pressure and secures them once again to the wheel, what do we see of God in that?

That day in the potter’s shop the attentive heart of Jeremiah “heard” God say, “Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as the potter has done?” (v 6). This was not likely an audible voice, any more than it would be today. Jeremiah simply noted “the word of the LORD came to me” (v 5). The total control of a master potter over the clay spoke volumes to Jeremiah. This is a second challenge for the modern reader: to recognize that God is like a potter and people are like clay. God is absolutely sovereign and we are absolutely dependent. God can shape and reshape us as He pleases. Earthly kings do not determine the shape of things to come, not even Babylonian kings or presidents of superpowers. God still runs the universe. God might choose to “pluck up and break down and destroy” or change his mind and decide to “build and plant” (vv 7-9). Like the master potter, God’s choice depended on how people (the clay) responded to his touch.

The role of the clay in the hands of the potter is simply to remain malleable, no small task for human beings. Jeremiah observed that the vessel the potter was making became “spoiled” (shachat “ruined”) in his hands (v 4). Something was not right. The clay did not become what the potter intended for it to become. It could no longer function as the potter intended it to function. So also, Israel had not responded to the Master’s touch. The LORD had “plans to prosper [them] and not to harm [them], plans to give [them] hope and a future” (Jer 29:11). But they had been like the nation that “does evil” and is “not listening to [God’s] voice” (v 10). As a result, God announced that He would be like “a potter shaping evil against you,” which turned out to be the invasion of ISIS-like Babylon and the horrific holocaust of 587 BC (v 11).

Yet, the outcome could have been different. If Israel would have been like that nation that “turns from its evil,” then, the LORD said, “I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring” (v 8). There was hope. But Israel, like clay, must be willing to be “reworked into another vessel, as seemed good” to the LORD (v 4). This is God’s desire for his people: to be malleable in his hands, open to whatever, whenever, however. God calls those who would live with Him to adjust to the circumstances, go with the flow, take it as it comes, and follow the lead of the Spirit daily. Total surrender. Entire sanctification. Complete allegiance. That’s God’s call to us.

This brings us to one more challenge in this narrative. God told Jeremiah to tell his people, “I am a potter shaping evil against you” (v 11). In other words, God told his prophet to tell people the whole truth. Jeremiah must not only announce God’s love and forgiveness, but God’s judgment as well. God instructed the prophet to let people know that He would hold them accountable for their sin if they did not change their ways.

I wonder what that might look like today. Do our people need to know that sin carries catastrophic consequences? Should we call them to a different lifestyle or let them stay as they are? After all, we are all broken people. Shouldn’t we just tell them how much God loves them and let them continue in their sin? Is there a moment when we must be totally honest with our people and let them know about the other side of God’s love, His judgment? Do we need to let people know how much God hates sin because of what it does to us? Jeremiah said it was part of the word of the LORD that came to him that day. Could it be a word for our people today as well?