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Jeremiah takes a field trip to the potter’s house, and God uses a parable to teach him and us some important lessons.
How are we like the clay jar and the potter shapes? How is God like the potter, and very importantly, how is he different?
The potter can do whatever he or she pleases with the clay jar, and God can do what he pleases with us. The good news is that God wants to shape us into the kind of people he always imagined we could be.
God wants to save us from all the stuff. Cooperate with grace, and let him do it!
Pastor Rick Stevens can be heard Saturday and Sunday at 8 AM ET on the iHeart Radio Network. Find all the Faith is…with Pastor Rick Stevens episodes also available on the America Out Loud Podcast Network.
Jeremiah 18:7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17 in the potter’s parable is God’s call for Israel to repent.
11: Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.
12: And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.
God’s grace goes down to zero, exponentially, if there is no repentance. The same sovereign God that selected and was gracious to Israel, harshly judged Israel time and time again because of their sin in history. The gospel (goods news) was given to Israel first, who to a large part rejected it. God’s initial selectivity did not include the Gentiles.
Jeremiah 12:1 — Righteous are You, Adonai, when I plead my case with You.
Yet I speak with You about justice. Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the treacherous thrive?
The existental reality of God’s sovereignty Isaiah 46:5, 45:6, 45:8, ‘there is no other God’, versus the declaration of the potential exercise of that sovereignty Jeremiah 18:7, does not occur in a vacuum, but usually has a historiological setting.
Spreading the payment of the student loan debt to other Americans, after cancellation of some of the debtors owings, I mean lessening Judea’s sin debt by offsetting it to its neighbors, the Moabites and Phillistines, in hope to escape God’s judgement, is that not to call God ‘stupid’. America owes God bigtime, He will show a nation of homosexuals, transgenders, gun owners (the self-righteous) what sovereignty is all about.