In Jeremiah 18:1-4, we learned that Jeremiah was sent to a Potter’s house to see an illustrated sermon. There he saw the potter at work. There he could see that a potter has the liberty to make whatever clay vessel he desired. And if the product turned out to be different from what he had in mind, he also has the freedom to re-shape it into another vessel.
From what he saw a message, a message from the Lord for the people of Judah emerged. The essence of the message told in Jeremiah 18:5-13 is this: just as a potter decides on the kind of vessel he would make from a lump of clay, so also would the Lord determine the destinies of nations.
In
verses 5-10, God made known that while He might have pronounced a judgment on a
nation and when that recalcitrant nation chose to repent, He could withhold His
judgment on her. Conversely, the opposite could also happen. If a nation to which He
had promised blessings chose to rebel and not walk according to His
instruction, He would withdraw the blessings and send judgment. With that said,
God through Jeremiah was warning the people of Judah to repent, and He would avert
the destruction. But hopelessly, Judah obstinately refused His kind overtures but
persisted in following through with the stubborn plan of their evil
hearts.
The
inescapable lesson we glean from this passage is that while God has the final
say in what will happen to us, He is not unreasonable. The kind of outcome we will
experience is conditional. It depends on how we respond to Him. However, there
is this strange curiosity about our fallen nature. We must experience pain to know
that pain is real. For example, when we can tell a child not to touch a hot stove
because it will burn his fingers, yet he would ignore the warning and touch it and be burnt. Faith in God demands that we
take Him at His word, especially HIs warnings. We must do as He had instructed. For God will never say something that He will not bring to pass. He always keeps
His word.
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