Have you ever watched a potter as he sits at the potter’s wheel with a lump of clay in his hands. As the wheel spins, the potter’s expert hands work the wet clay, fashioning, molding, forming the mass of mud into the desired shape. Maybe the potter’s strong fingers press and pull to form a bowl or a vase, a pot or a plate. The potter starts with a glob of goo. With practiced and proficient hands, the potter transforms something worthless into something useful and beautiful.
The Bible uses the potter and his clay to illustrate God and His creation. Our Creator formed and shaped the universe and its inhabitants like a potter shapes his clay. From nothing, God created everything!
Furthermore, our Savior, like the potter, transforms something lifeless, destined for eternal death and separation from God, into adopted sons and daughters, saved, sanctified, and sustained by the great grace of God. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
The prophet Isaiah warned the residents of Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom concerning their spiritually wayward ways. Though they had watched the Northern Kingdom fall to Assyria due to their constant transgressions, Isaiah’s readers were following the same path toward their certain downfall. Judah pridefully refused to bow to God’s direction. “Woe to the one who argues with his Maker—one clay pot among many. Does clay say to the one forming it, ‘What are you making?’ Or does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?” (Isaiah 45:9).
Judah was like clay that mocked the potter, saying, “you have no right to form me and fashion me!” Isaiah responded, “You have turned things around, as if the potter were the same as the clay. How can what is made say about its maker, ‘He didn’t make me’? How can what is formed say about the one who formed it, ‘He doesn’t understand what he’s doing’?” (Isaiah 29:16).
Years later, Jeremiah watched as the potter worked at the wheel. God asked, “House of Israel, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay?” (Jeremiah 18:6). The answer, of course, is yes. God is the Omnipotent, Sovereign, Almighty Potter.
And in the New Testament, Paul wrote to the Romans saying, “has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor?” (Romans 9:21).
Here's our problem. To proclaim that God is the Potter, one must admit that he is the clay. We are not God. We are not the potter. We are the clay. We are reliant upon God to shape us, form us, transform us. To pray “Thy will be done” required that I lay aside “my will!”
We must learn to pray, “Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we all are the work of your hands” (Isaiah 64:8). Not my will, but Thy will be done!
