and that the toughest guys that God ever had to work with had to learn this principle tells me something.  And our self-will and our continued attempts to try to find what we call ‘God’s will,’ which in essence boils down to trying to get God to approve our will, and what some people call struggles and confusion as they deal with God, which really boils down to the same thing again—we want God to approve our will, or change in some degree or in some small part of it His unchanging will, so that God can accommodate to us and our wants a little bit more easily. 

The potter’s house settles it.  That’s why the first word is written down.  Now I’ve been in potters’ houses all over the world.  I’ve preached on this chapter so many years.  I made it a habit wherever I was in a primitive society where the potter’s work as a craftsman work was still in effect, I’d seek out a potter’s house from the high plateaus of Columbia and Bolivia to the squalor and heat of Calcutta.  They’re all the same.  There’s a potter, there’s clay, and there’s a wheel.  Those are the elements.  The clay may be different in texture, it may be different in color, but it’s always a potter, clay, and a wheel.  The principle that comes as you watch it is that the clay doesn’t have any rights.  The principle is—because God’s the potter in this parable and that’s why He interpreted it Himself—the principle is God as the potter can do what He wants.  He has absolute right to work His will on the clay. 

Now one of the tough guys, Isaiah, coined the phrase in ludicrous picture.  In one of Isaiah’s passages he imagines the ridiculous.  He says “Doth the clay say to the potter, what makest thou?”  ‘What are you doing with me?  What are you shaping me into?  Just stop this spinning bit and shaping bit and crushing bit long enough for us to have a talk and let me find out what it is you’re making with

me because I may not like it.’  “Doth the clay say to the potter, what makest thou?”  Nonsense!  God has all the rights. 

You’ve heard me preach on this.  I’ve heard sin called everything from automobiles to the hem on your skirts.  They used to say in Oroville, when Dad would go up to the Free Pentecost Church, he could preach under the anointing only if he took his tie off.  I’ve heard everything called sin.  It all comes from one root.  Isaiah said it: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we’ve turned every one to our own way.”  You needn’t think that that’s gonna change just because you’re in the Church.  You needn’t think that that’s gonna change just like that because you had an experience with God.  I see people in the Church more determined to have their way than all the sinners I’ve ever met in my life.  And they are the worst kind because they hunt and peck until they find a Scripture to justify it.  

Sin is rooted in that desire to have my way and that root inevitably produces the compounding of sin that God hates.  The desire is not to sin but “we’re corrupt,” as Paul said, “according to deceiving desires.”  And the corruption produces rebellion, and that’s the sin God has so much trouble dealing with.  We’ve passed a certain point.  We now are no longer just wanting our way, we’re rebellious against anything that seeks to stop it.  It’s like a horse that you haven’t got tamed yet and you can’t get his bit in the teeth. 

Man, I had one once.  My cousin had trained him—fastest quarter horse I ever knew about; won every race he was ever in and my cousin had trained him that when you squeezed your knees he was to take off.  Well the very natural response when you get on a horse is to squeeze your knees.  First time I got on the horse I squeezed my knees and I had air under me instead of the horse.  He was gone!  When that horse got the bit in its teeth—that’s rebellion!