The Potter

DALE SCHULZ - 1989 - Potter / center of the wheel - Oak Lodge

We have had some very wonderful meetings here. I am sure we are grateful to have been in such an atmosphere and been so conscious at the Lord's presence, the Lord speaking and the Spirit of the Lord moving and as I just thought back on what we have enjoyed, there was just a prayer in my heart that what I would bring and share in this meeting would not in any way detract from what has been accomplished and we fear sometimes that – well, we just know that apart from the Lord’s guidance, we could so easily hinder rather than help.

I would like just to turn your attention to Jeremiah 18 this afternoon for a little while, and we might consider Jeremiah's experience at the potter's house and we can just read together a few verses. The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying ••• so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel. I want to read one more verse, it is a sad, sad verse, I don't think it has any relationship to our convention at all but let us just look at it. V.12 And they said there is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices ••• evil heart. It just rather shocked me when I read that verse a little further on. It was the response to Jeremiah's message to the children of Israel, and just to think with such a wonderful message of hope that there could be this response to it, they would say there is no hope. Everything about that message was hope but we just feel so very confident that hope, in every heart that the Lord's message of hope is stimulating and encouraging and inspiring in every heart.

The message to Jeremiah was: go down to the potter's house, then it just says: he went to the potter’s house and that helps us understand Jeremiah there has a little anxiety in his heart to get God's message, to be where God’s word would be revealed to him. Jeremiah just went and all you folks have come to convention. I am sure you have come for the same reason, because you are anxious about God’s message, you want to be where God’s message can be made clear to you, written upon your heart in a very real way. So he went to the potter's house and saw the work of the potter. Well, I am sure we feel we have been at the potter's house here. I just feel this appreciation as I stand here looking out over you folk. I just feel that I am looking out over the work of the Potter in this part of the country. This is the Potter’s work.

If we went to a pottery we would see vessels in various stages of process, we would see the clay that has just come into the pottery, we would see the vessels that have been completed, we would probably see a vessel on the wheel being shaped; we would see vessels on the shelf drying after they have been formed on the wheel, and we would see some vessels that had been through the kiln, through the fiery experience, and we would see them in different stages of process and our brother Robert was telling us today about this process we are going through. Looking out over you folks too, we see you at various stages of the process but it is so good that we are here in the Potter's house. This is where the work goes on and as Jeremiah found, even when things go wrong as sometimes they do, with one vessel it was marred but the potter made it again another vessel.

Maybe, I can just say something about that just at this point. I visited a pottery over in our country. As we were watching the potter work we asked about this little part of it, when something goes wrong with the vessel on the wheel what do you do? Well, he kind of knew why we were asking, he knew we were ministers. We would know something about Jeremiah 18 and he said: Well? in this pottery we don't, if something goes wrong with the vessel on the wheel we'd just throw the clay away, we don’t bother reworking the clay. In that particular pottery the clay comes into the pottery and all the preliminary work has been done, it is ready for the wheel. He said: we are not really equipped to rework the clay. He said: my time is valuable, clay is cheap, we just don't bother, and we throw it away.

I just felt so grateful that we have a Potter that He doesn't think that way regarding the clay that He works with. He doesn't say the clay is cheap. He doesn't say that the clay is precious to Him, the blood of Jesus purchased it, it is not cheap. These lives of ours they are not cheap, they are precious. He doesn't consider His time too valuable to work on them again and I am sure we feel that if the Potter didn’t have that kind of heart, well, I wouldn't be here. I don't know how many of you would say that but I think that would be the expression of many, maybe all, that we have needed mercy. What if the Potter hadn't remade the clay, what if He hadn't made it again another vessel? We would have missed so much, God’s Kingdom would have missed so much in the life of Peter when he failed. What with David, if the Potter hadn't made it again another vessel when he failed? What with Jonah if the Potter hadn't been willing to rework the clay to make it another vessel as seemed good to the Potter to make it?

I might share a little thought with you regarding Jonah. We studied Jonah not so many weeks ago where I have been and just some little fresh thoughts about Jonah as far as I was concerned. I might just share with you regarding the piece of clay that the Lord did remake, but there is a wonderful thing about that book that I appreciated and that is: the book begins with God speaking and the book ends with God speaking. It is a wonderful thing that the beginning and ending of the book God is speaking, still speaking to Jonah and Jonah at both ends of the book isn't really in such a wonderful spiritual condition. The beginning of the book he is just rebellious, in the end of the book he is angry, that is the last thing you read about him, he is angry but the hope of the book is that God was still speaking and I like to just remember that the book of Jonah just gives a small little segment of a man's experience; there is an afterwards to this book of Jonah that we really don't know very much about.

But there is a little verse back in 2 Kings 14 it may be good to just look at it. v.25 it says there about the Lord restoring the coast of Israel ••. according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah ••• and this is something that happened several years after the book of Jonah took place, this is part of the afterwards to Jonah's life, he referred to as God's servant. There was an afterwards of trueness and if we just had a little part of Peter's life and didn't have the afterwards, we have a wonderful afterwards recorded of Peter's life - we could be left with a part that would leave us with questions, wouldn't it, if we just had a little segment. The book of Jonah is a little segment of his life.

Well, then Jesus speaks always in positive tones of Jonah and I enjoyed this little thought about Jonah's experience that is recorded there in the first part just saying no to the will of God, running away, trying to run away, saying no and then he went through all that storm and experienced being taken to the depths and the Lord just planning experience after experience, the Lord having his welfare in mind and Jonah might have thought at times things were totally out of control but here was God planning his experience; God sent the storm, God prepared the fish. God spoke to the fish and said to deliver up Jonah to the shore and God prepared the gourd, caused it to grow then prepared the worm, then sent an east wind to come along to destroy the gourd and God was just working things out and often in our experience, that is what is happening, we hardly know it at the time, God is working things out.

Now, the first part of the book he is saying No. Then he got willing, then he got to the stage in his experience where he was outwardly in the will of God but inwardly out of tune with God. Sometimes, that is where we are, outwardly in the will of God, inwardly out of tune with God and he couldn't appreciate what God was doing for those people of Nineveh because he was out of tune, but God was still speaking. I enjoyed thinking of Jonah in connection with Jesus' words: except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. We think of two stages of Jonah's life. One stage he said no, he wouldn’t fall into the ground and then he got willing to go into the ground and maybe for a little while to die but then he got to that little stage where he was in the ground but wasn't dying, but God was still speaking, and we can just feel confident that Jonah learned to die, he learned to really die. We have been hearing about that previously in the meeting.

Anyway, let's come back to the potter and the clay. I kind of strayed. It's wonderful to know when things go wrong that the Potter will make us again another vessel. Well, just thinking about going to the potter's house and seeing what happens there, one thing we know is that the clay itself is all brought there to the potter's house. That is what the gospel is about, finding the clay, bringing it to the Potter’s house. There's a lot of clay in the world, not all clay is potter's clay. There are a lot of people in the world, there's just a few that the Lord is able to work with but, as you know, the wonderful thing is that it isn't beyond any of us to be potter’s clay, it is not beyond any of us. Potter's clay feels its need of God, it is not beyond anyone to feel their need of God. Potter’s clay is willing for the process, it is not beyond any of us to be willing for the process. It is not beyond any of us to be brought to the Potter's house. And placed in the Potter's hand because the ability is the Potter's, not our ability. If we counted on our ability that might just cancel us right out, in fact, it would, without question but this is the Potter's skill, we can all come to Him. It is not beyond any of us to be potter's clay.

Then, the Potter has a house, that is where He works, that is the fellowship of God’s people that is His house. We are so glad to be part of this House, just so grateful. Those of us who come from another land, we come here, we just know right away: this is the Potter's House. It is just like the Potter's House where we come from, we look out, we see those vessels they are just like the vessels where we come from, we see the kind of beauty that is being developed in lives, we see a love for Truth and righteousness in this world of sin and corruption, and it is the Potter's house. That is where He brings all this clay.

I heard one of our fellow servants who was over in a foreign land to him preaching the gospel and over in that land he went to a potter's house, and there they weren't quite as mechanized as in some other parts of the world, the equipment was very simple, many people were employed working the clay that was brought in there just right out of the place where it is dug, all the preliminary work was done there; we saw people working, working that clay and some of it was a work of cleansing, some a work of compacting, getting little air bubbles out of the clay; those little air bubbles, maybe they are something like pride, God's work is something that works that out of our lives, doesn't it? I enjoyed what we heard the first night - true unity depends on humility, wherever there is division, there is pride. Do you know there is a little verse, I think it's in Proverbs~ that says: only by pride cometh contention. Isn’t that quite a verse? Where there is contention, for sure there is pride. Part of the process is to get rid of the little air bubbles. What happens later? After the vessel is formed it goes to the kiln, heat is applied; that is the test and then if little air bubbles are still there, it hasn’t been detected and worked out, what can happen in that heat is that the little bit of air expands and forms a pressure and just kind of blows the side out of the vessel; in the test you get a little explosion, that is like pride.

Anyway, this servant of God watching all this work going on, he was talking to the potter what are all these people doing? And in the language of that country the potter used a word that meant this: they are making the clay obedient, getting the clay into the condition that when it gets on the wheel it is going to just respond to my hand; they are making it obedient and a lot of people are working, a lot of work was being done. This servant of God asked: do some of these other people work on the wheel? No, he said, just I do all the work on the wheel. Well, he said there’s a lot of people preparing the clay, can you keep up to what they are doing? Oh, he said, that's easy. I can easily keep up to what they are doing. It takes far more time for them to make the clay obedient than it does for me to shape it when it is on the wheel. I wondered with our lives if a lot of God’s effort, and even at convention here, is just making the clay obedient. That hymn says: Oh soften me and mold me and for Thy will prepare, and in all this work the Potter is making you soft. There needs to be the right amount of water in the clay then when it gets on the wheel and the potter begins to shape it, he is continually using water, he has a pail of water right beside him and dips his hand in; he doesn’t touch that clay without his hands being wet. This water, we know, is like God’s Word. That is what God uses to make us obedient, to soften us, that is what He uses then to shape us, to accomplish this work that He is anxious to do.

One time the potter was working, when he got finished working he said to those who were watching: did you notice with this vessel that the walls of the vessel are not even, but the thickness varies one side to the other in the walls of the vessel? He said, the reason that it happened like that was because I didn't get the clay perfectly centered on the wheel, there was just a little bit of wobble to it on the wheel, it made it so that the end product, the walls are not unified and the very first thing the potter does when he moves the clay over to the wheel is he tries to center it on the wheel. Maybe we can say that it's wonderful we are in the potter’s house but the work gets done when we are in the potter's hands and I hope none of us will be satisfied just to be in the Potter’s house. Some of us have spent all our days attending meetings, going to conventions and we might get familiar with the Potter’s house - wonderful to be here but we need to be in the Potter's hands, that is where the work gets done. That is a very individual thing, to be in the Potter’s hands.

Then getting this clay centered on the wheel, I like to think the wheel is like the will of God and then if the Potter can just get us centered right in the will of God, the will of God for you and the will of God for me, and the Potter knows where that center of the wheel is and the Potter’s hands will be pressuring us toward the center and I hope we will appreciate the center of the wheel. Sometimes I fear the center of the wheel, sometimes we might be afraid of the center of the will of God but that is where we need to be, that is where the work is perfected, in the center of the wheel, and if the clay is a little off center there will be a wobble, the work can't be done so perfectly and if the clay would get far enough off center the wheel would reject it, the centrifugal force of the wheel would just dispel it.

Sometimes we feel or would entertain the thought we would like to live somewhere near the border, we somehow fear the center of the wheel and want off the center and we would like to know how far off center we can be and still stay on the wheel. There is no mark on the wheel that tells where that place is, we have no way of knowing where that would happen. Someone has said: we are so prone to trust what we should fear and so prone to fear what we should trust. We sometimes fear the will of God. That is what we can trust the most and sometimes we are so prone to trust our own thinking and our own will; that is what we should fear.

I knew a young lad that grew up in a very good home, he is the youngest of four, his eldest brother is in the work, his two sisters are hearty professing women and this boy professed for a little while but somehow he feared the center of the wheel and he got off center and eventually the wheel rejected him and he was off the wheel altogether and maybe a good 20 years have passed, maybe 25, since he left the wheel and life has been cruel to him. He went down the road of drug addiction, the road of a broken marriage, illegal trafficking and in trouble with the law. He trusted what he should have feared and wonderful to say just a few months ago he came back, his life is on the wheel again, he is very anxious to find the center, very anxious, but he has come back with scars, some scars will remain the rest of his life, some scars even in his mental capacity, they will never be restored, we can trust the center of the wheel.

My companion and I visited a young lady in our field a few years ago, just a routine little visit that we try to accomplish for the young people away from home, and in the city where we were this young lady was at university. We had some concern about her because she was so talented with music, that is what she was studying at university, music, the distance she could have gone with music was really quite unlimited and we worried about her plans. Anyway, this day we were just having a little visit, we weren’t going to bring up our concern really, we just wanted to be an encouragement to her. She began to tell us, it was just her second year at university, she began to tell us about a relationship she had had that she had broken off. She said she just realized that wasn’t for her; he was a professing boy, but then she began to tell us about the university year, she said: it isn’t meaning as much to me as last year, I am just not getting as enthused about university this year. She went on a little bit about that, she told us her music does not enthrall. She went on and we were just wondering, she just continued on and on talking like this. Finally we thought we knew what she wanted to tell us. Are you wanting to tell us that God is speaking to you about the work? Yes. That is what she wanted to tell us and that was the center of the wheel for her, and now she has been three years in the harvest field; she was among the row that were at the airport when I left and wonderful to see her life in the center of the wheel.

She had quite a test upon her when she had been a year in the work. She had an elder sister in the work and that sister gave up in Linda’s first year in the work, hadn’t been all that easy. Her mother died when she was young, she had quite a bit of growing up years without her mother and then in the music world, that was a big adjustment; her first year had its difficulties, we wondered just what would happen when her sister gave up but, you know, Linda just put her roots down deeper, she is still in the center of the wheel. The center of the wheel for you may not be the work, but there is a center of the wheel for every one of us.

When the Potter works He works with one hand in the vessel the other hand outside; if the work is all on the outside, it would be an ornament but not a vessel. God is interested in vessel. God is interested in lives that have an inward capacity to hold something much more precious than themselves and He works on the inside and on the outside. Sometimes, maybe we could feel that maybe His work should all be on the inside but the Potter can't work like that, there needs to be pressure from both sides. You would end up with some odd looking piece of pottery if the potter just stuck his hand down the middle and there was no support on the outside in shaping on the outside. The Potter works on both sides and He will affect our heart. He will affect our mind, our activities, our standard, how we live, how we do business, how our home life goes, He will affect it all. He will affect how we spend our time.

We were talking to some young folks sometime and they were asking us about a certain place, wondering about going and we just said to them, if you went there, what would you think if you saw some of the workers there? Without any hesitation they said: we would be shocked. We just asked why would you be shocked. Because they have better things to do and you know, if we would go someplace where we would be shocked to see the workers, you think Christ would be there? Would we want to be anywhere, where He would not be with us? Moses prayed: if Thy presence go not with me, carry me not up thence, was his prayer. The time comes for the kiln testing.

One potter told us he said that lime is the clay's worst enemy, you get a little bit of it in the clay and you put it into the kiln and the chemical reaction with the heat, it would explode and affect other vessels, not just the vessel with the little bit of lime. There is a verse in Hebrews 12. v.15 Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up ••• many be defiled. A little root of bitterness could be something in our heart that would be like the clay's worst enemy, that in a certain situation there is a reaction that is wrong and it damages others, the tests bring it out. Somebody said: fill a barrel with anything, as long as you keep the barrel still and quiet, you hardly know what is in it but put it on a wagon or trailer and take it over a rough road, then you know what's in it, and we all prove that in our experience when we are tested over rough roads, what is in us spills out and we need to watch that we have grace.

I would just like to speak about the glazing, the final firing, just in closing. Have you ever watched a potter putting paint on pottery? You wonder why he is using the paint he is using because to us it just looks so drab and dark, we wonder why he is using it, it is not beautiful at all. It is marvelous what happens when the glazing material gets into the kiln, those colors change; the colors that look so drab become radiant; blacks become reds, things like that; it takes the final firing to bring that out and I just thought of the final firing being death. Some day we are going to face the final firing. Maybe some things in life we will never understand about, but the final firing will make the difference and when that time comes our tears will turn into joy. Jesus said: Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. Joyful; that happens in the final firing when all tears are wiped away, our suffering turned into glory - suffering must precede the glory - we may not understand now but in the final firing the color will be brilliant and the cross that we carry here will be exchanged for a crown in the final firing.

I think we will just sing the closing hymn for this meeting because it is a hymn I value. It is a hymn of prayer and it is 370, and we have the wonderful privilege of praying for each other as we go through this process. The 1st verse of 370 is a prayer for God's people, the 2nd is a prayer for His servants, and the last 2 applies to all of us. I wonder if we could sing it this way this afternoon in closing. If just the Lord's servants sing the 1st verse - that is the workers praying for God's people. The 2nd verse the workers are silent, you folk sing? This is your prayer for us, then all sing the last two verses. We do appreciate your prayers for the workers; we long to be faithful in praying for our friends. ~ ~ ~ ~