POTTER

Whe read that when God first formed man, He formed him out of the dust, Gen. 2. 7. Like a potter, God fashioned man according to His will. That same creative power is evident when God transforms and reforms man. By the time Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied, the time had come to reform the nation of Israel. But those prophets were not only speaking about God’s national policy, but also about personal salvation, through which God would reform individuals also. We read about the Potter’s work in Isaiah chapter 29 verse 16, chapter 45 verse 9, and Jeremiah chapter 18 verses 1 to 10. But the personal message of salvation is more evident when we read Isaiah chapter 64 verse 8. There the prophet uses imagery borrowed from the awesome events experienced at Sinai to help trembling and ruined sinners to acknowledge their need of salvation. ‘But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away’, Isa. 64. 6.

All this being true, would such sinners then seek God? No, but rather their stubbornness leads them to a dull fatalism. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee’, Isa. 64. 7.

We see then how stubborn and unchanging the heart of man can be. Although the Christian knows that by the grace of God people can change, still the fact remains that most reject that grace, and therefore do not change. They can, but they don’t! When we come to the Potter, however, we discover someone with more perseverance than we have stubbornness. This skilled Potter is at work in John chapter 8 writing with His finger in the dust. Then in chapter 9 taking dust and moistening it with His spittle to make soft malleable clay and anointing the eyes of the blind man. In Genesis chapter 2, He formed eyes out of clay, and in John chapter 9 He transforms a man’s eyes to illustrate what the Lord Jesus taught Nicodemus: that unless a man is born again ‘he can not see the kingdom of God’, John 3. 3. ‘But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand’, Isa. 64. 8.