The potter’s house teaches—and I want to learn it.  I thought I’d learned it but I really want to learn it.  God’s got a purpose and

He didn’t send His Son to die and peddle cheap grace, as Tozer says, hat in hand outside the doors of men’s heart hoping they’ll finally wave at him with consideration.  God set out to fill a gap in heaven, emptied by Lucifer when he was cast down, brooding over the face of the deep that was hit with a cataclysm.  He said “Let us make man in our image” and He created man with a purpose.  That purpose included what is, as Niebuhr puts it, “an indigenous quality of God’s image in us.”  

The very essence of God’s image is self-determination—self-determinative creative ability—that free side of God that makes us say “Praise God!”  Not like the Puritans that say God in order to be God must be good—God in order to be God just has to be all powerful.  He doesn’t have to be good, but He is.  With absolute power He has proven Himself, and revealed Himself faithful and good with the freedom to be otherwise.  He put that in us, and He created us in His image with that little capacity in us that can corrupt the freedom to choose other than what He wants.  It’s as stupid as an ant talking back to a locomotive, but God was not creating a machine.  He wanted other sons like unto His own dear Son and He put into man the capacity which is freedom, which is the essence of Godness.  Man misused it, continues to misuse it, and that’s the root of sin. 

At the choice between God’s will and what we want, the inevitable chapter is written in every life in front of me and throughout our lives: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we’ve turned every one to our own way.”  Those things we call sin—the so-called catalogue, which, by the way, can all be chopped off and I can become the holiest looking man in town to the behavior list—if you don’t take care of the

root….  God sees the heart and sin is ‘I want my way.’  The potter’s house teaches only one way is gonna rule in His house because the potter’s house is His house.  He wants clay that doesn’t talk back.  He wants clay that’s in His hands.  He wants clay that surrenders. 

Go back to every message of the last 2 weeks, the way to move into the presence of God where the Lord of Hosts stands in Psalm 84 was at the altar.  At an altar death occurs and absolute recognition of God’s rights settled.  The principle of the potter’s house puts in visual form everything we’ve been saying from God’s prose for weeks.  I can’t make you do it.  As we preached last Sunday, unless the Word of God finds that honing device in us—which is that residue of His image—it’s not gonna take root.  If our sin has reached such a rebellion that we ricochet it off and don’t apply it to ourselves…. 

Why I always preach to me first; you’ve never ever heard me preach a sermon that didn’t go through Gene Scott before it got to you.  As we move into what I believe God is doing to me and going to do in this Church, let’s get it straight.  Some of my earlier remarks might seem unkind.  I don’t want us beginning in the Spirit and ending in the flesh and caught up in our own spiritual pride and deciding we’ve figured out this is what God wants.  And I don’t know what God would’ve done if I hadn’t been the one that prayed it down.  There is only one boss—God!  That’s the ‘Principle.’ 

What’s He want?  Since it’s a choice between my wants and His wants what’s He want?  God’s never ever varied in what He wants.  That’s the second word: ‘Purpose.’  God’s not a free-expression potter.  Say it with me—when He made man what did He say?  “Let us make man in our own image.”  God is not a bellhop.  God’s not a waiter.  God’s not a butler.  God’s not a banker.  God’s not a cook.  God’s not even a coach.  First and foremost, He’s a potter