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’m not preaching
the message I prepared. I felt the Lord speak to
my heart and I’m going to obey that inner compulsion and
go to the place that I’ve been with this Church more
than once, that God wants us here today—Jeremiah 18.
“The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord,
saying, Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and
there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went
down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a
work on the wheels.” In the margin of all of my Bibles
I’ve written G. Campbell Morgan’s translation: “Behold,
he wrought his work on the wheel.” “And the vessel that
He made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so
he made it again another vessel.” And this is the
verification of the translation of Morgan: whether the
original is clear or not, it is obvious it’s not just a
random, free-expression work of art but it’s a
purposeful work—“The potter wrought his work on the
wheel”—because when the clay is marred
in the hand of the potter “so he made it again another
vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make.”
The 6th verse makes it clear there’s a human-God
relationship application. “O house of Israel, can I not
do with you as this potter? saith the Lord.
Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye
in my hand.” Now I’ve probably preached on this chapter
a hundred times but as with so many truths of God you
got to realize them.
Seventy-five German Christians in 1727 were praying and
seeking God and the Holy Spirit fell on them and the
Moravian |
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Revival began. Those 75 German Christians went out and
did more missionary work for God in a very short time
than the entire Church had done in 200 years. Count
Zinzindorf writes of them and their great work. Their
lives touched Charles and John Wesley. Charles received
a deeper experience of commitment with God and he and
John, the sophisticated Anglican preacher, were on
shipboard in the Atlantic when a storm hit that
frightened the sailors. The only people who weren’t
scared on board were the Moravians—a little band of
Moravian Christians—and John came upon them and they
weren’t praying, they were singing. He said, “Why
aren’t you praying?” They said, “If it be the Lord’s
will that we drown in this storm then we have instant
entrance into Glory and that’s what we all want.” John
began to talk to the leader and ask him what they had,
and that he wanted what Charles had already gotten from
God and they had, and the leader said “It’s of grace.”
And John said, “I don’t have it. Should I quit
preaching?” And the very wise leader of the Moravians
said, “No, preach grace because it’s in the Bible.
After you get it, preach it because you have it, but
preach it first because it’s in the Word.”
The older I get and the more I serve the Lord, the more
I understand that God is kind enough to give me insight
into His Word. And there’re lots of things that I’ve
preached in His Word that I thought I had realized, but
now I know I only touched them and only had a glimpse.
And as the life with God brings the reality of
engraftation, until the truth is ingrown you can’t
really realize them. That’s why some passages of
Scripture that you’ve read a hundred times will, as Karl
Barth has said, ‘leap out and seize you like a beast’ at
certain points of your Christian journey because they
give meaning to what’s happening and give direction
through an experience.
I feel like I’ve never preached on the Potter’s House
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