In Isaiah 64: 8 God reveals Himself as a “potter”: “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.”
The Hebrew word for clay is ‘chomer’ which means as bubbling up. That is of water, a wave, of earth, mire, or clay, like cement or mortar. Moses wrote that God formed man out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2.7) The Hebrew word for dust means clay, earth, mud, ashes, dust, ground, mortar, powder and, rubbish. Water is a factor since mud consists of water and clay. So even after God breathed life into Adam, he was and we are today, just living dirt and water.
The Hebrew word for potter is yatsar. It’s related to other words that mean “through the squeezing into shape or to mold into a form, especially as a potter.” Figuratively it means to determine or form a resolution. The Potter determines what He is making, what the pottery will look like. All of us are the work of His hands. It expresses the humblest of truth, that we are the created thing and that our God and Creator made us out of clay with His own hands
Jeremiah writes about another potter: “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: ‘Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words’. Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: ‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?’ says the Lord. ‘Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!”’ (Jeremiah 18:1-6).
Marred is translated from the Hebrew word shaw-khath meaning to decay, batter, cast off, corrupt, destroy, lose, mar, perish, spill and waste. Even though God as a potter formed humanity into His own image, man became useless to Him; man marred His clay through sinful behavior deviating from God’s image.
After the initial “marring” of God’s image in the Garden of Eden, God began His process of remaking humanity into another unmarred vessel, molding and shaping us according to His will. The automatic carnal impulse is to act on our own will. We need to rebuild our own mental pathways with this simple truth because the more we resist the Potter’s will the more pressure it will take to reshape us into the image of God.
This begs the question of just what is God’s spiritual restoration process?
Christ states the first step: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.. . .And He said, ‘Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”’ (John 6:44,65).
The clay has no power of its own to be drawn by God. The Potter personally selects the clay, picks it up and begins to mold it. In John 15:16 we see again that God through Christ selects the clay personally and purposefully. Christ said: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.” The intent for our selection is so we can become useful to God, for His good purpose.
The next step required in the making of a spiritual piece of pottery is the “aging” process, a process of fermenting the clay. Over time that clay will begin to smell differently than it did. Organic matter inside the clay will begin to break down separating from the clay leaving the clay purer, a more malleable product to work with. This fermenting process of clay is analogous to the process of an individual coming to repentance, a process of getting to know God and putting His words into our hearts and minds. God instructs in Job: “Now acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace; Thereby good will come to you. Receive, please, instruction from His mouth, And lay up His words in your heart” (Job 22:21-22).
The instruction from God’s mouth, His law, the intent of His law, all the words of the Bible, begin to reveal us to ourselves. We begin to realize that we are carnal and that our thoughts have all been directed at ourselves and our self-promotion. But with repentance, self-centeredness is ready to be washed away in baptism. “If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up; You will remove iniquity far from your tents” (Job 22:23). Repentance means turning toward God.
The third step in forming a complete spiritual masterpiece is a process with clay known as “wedging”. Wedging is the process of mixing the clay by hand and pressing it like kneading bread dough. The wedging process is tough, serious, and essential. And it follows the aging of the clay.
We might liken the “aging” of the clay to Passover. (John 6:53-56). The “clay” is given spiritual life through the blood and body of Christ, which results in the forgiveness of sin. It results in grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The goodness of God leads us to repentance and the obvious blemishes in the clay are removed away first. But God very mercifully doesn’t show us all the “foreign matter” at once. That’s where the wedging process comes in. There are many more impurities that need to be removed that are not so obvious. We could liken this wedging to the Days of Unleavened Bread.
In 1 Corinthians 5:1-2, Paul is writing to baptized members of the Church. Sexual immorality, an obvious sin, required an obvious response. But the sin that’s not so obvious was among all those who were aware. They were tolerating sin. They were compromising, turning the grace of God into licentiousness, and thereby denying Christ. Paul told the Corinthians to put that man out of the congregation so he might come to his senses and repent. (I Corinthians 5:3-8).
This compromise which was born of pride can cause our own destruction. God through Paul said the hard things (wedging) that needed to be said to the Corinthians to save lives. Paul said in verse 2, “and you are puffed up.” Figuratively, it means to make proud or haughty. To compromise with sin, was a haughty way of propping the self up as more righteous than God. Purge out (verse 7) means to cleanse thoroughly. That is what wedging is all about. It’s to clean out thoroughly. The Master Potter doesn’t stop kneading, He doesn’t stop pummeling, He doesn’t stop working with that clay after baptism (I Corinthians 5:9-11). God wedges the clay for a purpose.
What we see is that the Master Potter is not interested in destroying lives through compromise. He is interested in saving lives through the power of the Holy Spirit leading humanity to repentance within the process of changing the self into the image of His Son. Paul gets specific about the changes we need to make: “Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; ” (Hebrews 12:12-15).
The potter can also shape a vessel with the addition of a turning wheel, in which the potter has his hands on the clay, molding and shaping it. Either way we are in the potter’s hands. We can make the process easy, we can make it difficult, or we can make it impossible, depending on our choices because we are living clay. We have the power of choice. We can complicate things, or we can simplify things, or we can destroy the work in progress. Job is an example of allowing God to continue the process of removing the bubbles in his clay. “Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8).
Yet, in Job 33: 8-13 Elihu is contradicting Job because Job is finding fault with God. Job has assessed the Potter, finding fault with the molding process that he was experiencing. A blemish has been revealed in this piece of clay. Elihu expands on Job’s imperfection asking “…Do you say, ‘My righteousness is more than God’s?’” (Job 35:1-2). Elihu continues contending with Job throughout Job 35-37. Then God begins to answer Job from His point of view of the Potter to the clay.
God begins speaking to Job from His perspective stated in Isaiah 45:9: “Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands?'” He begins asking question after question, makes statement after statement, that Job could not answer, things that were far too great for Job to even imagine. God revealed to Job how capable He is (Job 38:1 – 41:34).
It was enough for Job to get the perspective that he needed: “Then Job answered the LORD and said: ‘I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1-6).
Through the exercise of truly loving authority, humanity can be freed from the bondage of sin. God’s correction through Paul helped reshape many vessels of clay in Corinth. God has a purpose for every single method that He uses in shaping us with one objective in mind: “Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as deemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:9-11).
Marshall Stiver