The Potter and the Vessel
By L. A. Reed
THE time of Jeremiah was a time of great apostasy in Israel. As an index of the times and the people, we need nothing more significant than their rebellious and wicked treatment of Jeremiah. They mobbed the faithful prophet. They threatened him with death. They put him in prison. They dropped him into a miry dungeon. But through it all God protected him and gave him warning after warning, promise after promise, and these He delivered to the people faithfully and without wavering. The history of that time is mainly the history of the infinite mercy and long-suffering of God, waiting for some token of repentance on the part of His sinful people. Long and faithfully, through His prophet, He pleaded with them to turn from their wicked ways and escape the threatened calamities, but they would not listen. Jeremiah’s first message is a warning of the coming of the kingdoms of the north to possess Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah, unless they cease from their evil ways. Over and over again was this prophecy of evil given: “I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction. The lion has come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant.” “Behold he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind; his horses are swifter than eagles. Wo unto us! for we are spoiled.” But even at this time there was hope; the very words point out a way of escape. “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved.” Thus line upon line of prophecy and promise God sent His people through His faithful prophet, interspersing the solemn warnings with some of the most precious and gracious promises of salvation, conditioned on repentance. Through seventeen chapters of the book of Jeremiah we read the alternate warnings and promises and then the wonderful assurance that, if they will cease from sin and observe His holy Sabbaths, none of the threatened evils shall fall upon them. He promises to give them an uninterrupted line of kings and princes to sit upon the throne of David, and the beautiful city of Jerusalem shall stand under the sheltering providence of God as long as the world endures. Following all this, in the first verses of the eighteenth chapter, we have presented the wonderful parable of the potter and his wheel. Jeremiah is sent down to the potter’s house, where he sees the potter fashioning a work upon 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, as it seemed good to the potter to make it.” Then the word of the Lord comes to the prophet to teach him the meaning of the parable of the vessel that was marred in the hand of the potter. “O house of Israel, can not I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, are ye in My hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” In these words we have clearly stated both sides of God’s providence for nations and for individuals. If the vessel be marred, He can make another vessel as seems “good to the potter, to make it.” That is to say that Israel was now a marred vessel, marred because of her insubmission to the hand of God; but the Lord can remedy the calamity; however, Israel must place herself submissive as clay into the hands of the Potter. Nevertheless, if the potter have made a goodly vessel, if it is still in the plastic state, there is a possibility of its being marred. No nation or individual is beyond the possible danger of turning aside into ways of evil that lead to perdition. If the clay falls out of the path destined for the vessel of honor, it becomes marred,—a vessel of dishonor; and when it has once become hardened into this distorted shape, there is nothing left for it but to be broken in shivers. Israel would not hear the word of the prophet. God’s promise of an eternal dynasty of kings; His promise that, if they would obey Him, Jerusalem should stand forever; and this wonderful message of warning and hope in the parable of the potter’s vessel, were all alike unheeded. Israel was utterly disobedient and unreasonable. She had left the “snow of Lebanon, which cometh from the rock of the field,” and had put her trust in a broken, empty cistern. She had left a plain, smooth path to walk in the rough way of the thorns of the wilderness. Because the chosen people had failed to heed the parable of the marred vessel, God sends them another parable out of the house of the potter. And this second parable logically follows the first parable. It is a recital of the fate of the marred vessel when once it has been hardened into its distorted shape. Jeremiah was told to get a potter’s vessel and to take a number of the ancients of the people and of the priests forth into the valley of Hinnom, and proclaim there the word7of the Lord. And when Jeremiah had led the people forth to the valley, he was to break the vessel in the sight of the people that accompanied him. Thus was he to act out for them a parable. That parable was terrible in its import. “Thus said the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that can not be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury.” Thus did God point out to them the irretrievable ruin that awaited them, if they persisted in the path of transgression. We know that God bore long with them, and sent them many promises of His protection, if they would but turn to Him. Even when the Babylonian was at the gate, and the city was besieged, God sent King Zedekiah a message, that if he would go forth and yield himself up a captive to the besieging king, his life would be spared, the city would not be destroyed, and none of the people would be killed. But Zedekiah was not brave enough to obey the word of God, and terrible was the captivity of the people. But not even then did the awful fate delineated in the breaking of the potter’s vessel in the vale of Hinnom fully overtake them. The complete fulfilment did not come until after they had rejected the Son of God, when Titus, the Roman, came to take away their city and their nation. Then was the vessel shivered in pieces. Then it was that in awful truth they buried the dead until there was no more place. Over a million of the people were slaughtered in the taking of the city. We call it the judgment of God, and such in a sense it was; but it was the fruit of their own doing. It was the harvest for which they had sown. They had been loading the cloud for years, and now it burst. It fell in torrents on their heads. They chose Barrabbas instead of Christ, and the cruelty of Barrabbas they were to feel to the end. God’s mercy waits long; He gives us opportunity to be redeemed from our evil ways; but His word is true; sooner or later destruction awaits the hardened and impenitent.