with a purpose which is to take this hunk of clay and shape it.  And His problem with us, we’ve got all kinds of designs in this crock of clay.  And when the Spirit of God comes, the New Testament writer says concerning that Spirit of God, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”  One translation says, “We have this treasure in a crock of clay.”  

God created man, put His image in him, walked and talked with him and in his innocence he could have grown along with God.  Man blew it!  God said “For sin comes death.”  The problem that God was having with man was the barrier created by His own integrity between God and man when man had sinned.  Like sheep they sought their way.  They wanted that tree and the fruit of it and a barrier came up.  The Ephesian letter says God broke that partition between us and God, and His own dear Son, worth more to God than all of us put together, emptied Himself of heaven’s glory and turned from what He wanted—and prayed the norm of His life when He said “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: but nevertheless not as I will...but thine”—and on Calvary poured out His life and took upon Himself

all of our sins and as the Mediator paid the debt for every sin past, present, and future—not just that we might get to heaven and flap around on a cloud and play a harp and walk golden streets—that He might now put His hand as the potter back in the restored clay and rework it. 

Salvation, soterion in the Greek, is a continuous process.  I taught last night on Festival from Philippians we are to ‘work out,’ that is ‘carry to the completed process,’ our own salvation, not ‘work for’ our salvation.  Having been saved and in Christ we’re to work out the process to completion.  We are to aggressively make ourselves hang on.  Well, now the reverse side is there.  The partition was broken that

God might reach down and grab hold and apprehend, to use Paul’s words, this hunk of clay—put His Spirit in it and shape it. 

God doesn’t give a hoot or a holler about Gene Scott being a great Preacher.  He doesn’t care at all that the town see big crowds spilling out of this building.  God wants one thing.  This is the one-on-oneness with every one of us.  He wants the image of Himself to come forth in us.  Here’s that dual nature we preached about last Sunday—that little dove in our nature to which the Holy Spirit can find a joining place and that blackbird in our nature which is the flesh and its desires to which that evil supernatural force, the raven from hell, can coagulate.  And God wants this nature planted in us, capable of being fused with His Spirit and bringing forth the image of God.  That’s all He wants!  He wants the dross and the other stuff out.  Every passage in God’s Book says that. 

You know my feeling about promise boxes.  You know if they help you, use them, but it is as Follette says, it’s usually going and finding an isolated Scripture and pulling it out like a club and trying to beat God over the head with it saying “I found this now.  You may not want to do it, God, but I got you.  You better do it.”  Romans 8:28’s in all of them: “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them which are the called according to his purposes.”  Literally in the Greek: “God enters into all things,” including the messes that we create with our self-serving rebellious natures.  “God enters into all things.”  

           Some people are so prone to over-interpret every circumstance.  They’re running around whispering and saying what they know God’s gonna do.  We create a lot of our own messes but that doesn’t make it hopeless.  The literal Greek of Romans 8:28 is “God enters into all things.”  Every situation that has gotten out of sync with His purpose, God enters in like the marred vessel in the hand of the potter.  “He