Divine Redesign

In this message, we study Jeremiah 18:1–6. The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.”

Whether you're feeling broken, discouraged, or simply longing to grow closer to God, this message will remind you that you're never beyond the reach of the Potter's hands.

In this message you'll discover:
• How Jeremiah's vision points to Jesus
• Why Jesus understands your pain and struggles
• What the cross reveals about God's love for you
• How God is still shaping your life today
• Why you can trust the Potter—even when life feels difficult

If this message encouraged you, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs hope today. I'd love to hear from you in the comments: What area of your life is God shaping right now?

Thank you for watching, and remember:

Renew Your Life—One Step at a Time.

#Jeremiah18 #JesusChrist #BibleTeaching #ChristianFaith #Faith #Hope #Grace #BibleStudy #ChristianLiving #Sermon #ThePotter #PotterAndClay #GodsPlan #TrustGod #RenewYourLife #LifeWithMax

Transcript

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Hi everyone, my name is Max Marcou, and this is Life with Max. Today we're going to look at a sermon I did months ago, and I'm going to share with you my notes, and hopefully, you'll get something out of it. If you are someone that wants a change, maybe it's in your whole life or just an area of your life, I think divine redesign will be helpful. We're going to go way back in the Old Testament to Jeremiah chapter 18. Let's get into it. Verse 1. The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, Go down to the potter's shop and I will speak to you there. Right there, he's saying, Jeremiah, I want you to take some steps here. In other words, I'm not going to speak to you right here. I want you to go down to the potter's shop. There's something that he wanted the prophet Jeremiah to see. And he says, I will speak to you there. Sometimes we have to get out of our house, get out of our chair, and take a walk to see what God's really saying. In other words, get away from distractions or maybe go somewhere to get inspired. Sometimes it's just like, I don't feel like going to church, or I don't like the church I'm going to. Sometimes it's just getting out of your own way and just going to church and seeing what God will say to you there. There have been many times when I didn't feel like going to church and I'm the pastor. I've been pastor for 27 years. And if you think that like every single Sunday I feel like rolling out of bed and I'm excited, I mean most of the time I am, thankfully. But of course there's times when life is hard and there's challenges and you just feel like you'd rather just uh stay home. And uh, but I know that once I get moving and get out of my own way, then uh God is faithful. He's always showing up when I show up. And so uh thank God for that. All right, I'll keep going. Go down to the potter shop and I will speak to you there. So I did as he told me, and I found the potter working on his wheel, but the jar he was making did not come out, uh, did not turn out as he had hoped. So he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over. So that's very common. Uh a lot of my kids are into pottery and through the local high school and one of them in college, and they they know what it's like. Sometimes you start out, you've got this plan, and there's something in the clay, imperfection, something didn't work out. So you start over, and then you produce you know what really was the vision. I'll keep reading. Then the Lord gave me this message: Oh Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to this clay? As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand. Divine redesign. If we look at the whole story, uh God has always come back to his people. His people often have turned away from him, and then they get in trouble. But God is loving, he is the ultimate father who loves his children, you and I. And so this divine redesign is the idea that we can say, God, I'd love for you to help me uh by coming into my mind, my heart, my spirit, and reshaping some things that are not the way they should be. Could just be your attitude. Oftentimes people come to me with deep questions, but really the the the big factor is the attitude, seeing the negative in someone else or even in themselves when there's so much positive to be found. Um, so God loves you, that's for sure, and he wants you to know that you are loved and you are beautiful, you are special, and if there's something that is not perfect, go down to the potter's house. In other words, come to God and allow him to show you how much he loves you. Isaiah 64, verse 8. O Lord, you are our father, we are the clay, and you are the potter. We are formed by your hands. So this is a theme you find in the Bible. Sometimes you you they they are looking at what uh it will communicate to the the typical person of that time. There's a lot of uh people making things and and farming. Jesus talked a lot about uh us as sheep and uh him as the good shepherd. I talked about that recently. But, anyways, I want to say that the Bible's very practical. And if you've ever felt like it's too confusing, which most people, when they start reading the Bible, will tell me that it's too confusing, I would say just break it up into small little stories and try to put yourself there. Try to imagine yourself living in that time and hearing what is spoken and then seeing if it could be applied to your life today. And oftentimes people are amazed at how relevant the Bible is, even now. All right, so I put uh in my notes here, God is actively shaping lives. When we become marred, when we get bumped, bruised, and our attitude or other things get messed up, he doesn't discard us, he reforms us. But that is up to us. As I always say, we have free will. We have to submit ourselves to him and allow him to come in and do some work on us. Philippians, the book in the New Testament, Philippians 1, 6, he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. God doesn't throw away the clay. And the story of Jeremiah and him down at the potter's house, the potter does not get rid of the clay, he simply cleans it up and reshapes it. So if you've had failure, uh you've made big mistakes, things that you just you have regrets. We all have regrets. This is be honest. Um, none of these disqualify you for from being reshaped. All right, surrender determines the outcome. Clay doesn't resist the potter, but we often do. The shaping process requires surrender, trusting the pressure, the stretching, even the breaking. Trying to change is is very hard. I I've said it uh many times that it I can't change people. If you think you can change people, maybe you've got a method that I don't have. But after all these years, I've realized I can't change people, but God can. And I've seen God do miracles in changing people. But they have to be willing and open to God doing that inner work. James 4, 7, another one of my favorite New Testament books. Again, the Bible's broken up into many books. So when you read it, it's it's not meant to be read like a regular book. 66 books in the Bible. So in the New Testament, one of my favorite books, Book of James, chapter 4, verse 7, humble yourselves before God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God and he will come close to you. Now, this is so good, I'm gonna read it twice. Humble yourself before God. Let that sink in for a moment. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. God wants to be involved in your life, he wants a personal relationship with you. And this verse is a great one to remind yourself of how to get rid of the racing in your mind and all the things that are not of God. Humble yourself, resist the devil, come close to God, he will come close to you. So, a few questions. Where in your life do you feel the pressure of the potter right now? Like, do you feel like God's like, hey, I really want to help you? I I see you suffering, I see that you're not satisfied or happy with where you are in your life. You know, identify what is that really? What area of your life do you need some help in? Um and then ask yourself this you know, have I mistaken being marred for being finished? You know, that I you are not finished. If you're watching this, that's proof that you're not finished. That's proof that there's opportunity for a better tomorrow. And it can start today. Last one, what would it look like for you to fully surrender to God's shaping this week? What would that look like? It probably will require some uh change, change of schedule, giving up some things, giving up some uh things that distract you from from allowing God to work on you. And what do I mean by that? Oftentimes we distract ourselves with all kinds of things. They're not necessarily all bad. You know, I love social media, I love watching TV or a good movie. Those aren't bad. Um, but sometimes we just come home from maybe a long day of school or work, and that's all we do, and we never really work on ourselves or allow God, more importantly, to work on ourselves. So I'm not saying you have to do this for six hours a night. You know, even 20 minutes, just get yourself a good study Bible. If you don't have a study Bible, I encourage you to get one. Uh, but you can also use a free app online and just read a story. Read a story of uh in the four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's all four accounts of Jesus' life. Read one of the stories and say, Jesus, am I in this story? Do I know someone in this story? How can you speak to me, God, through this story? And I'm not going to say it works every time, but it works most of the time. And I encourage you, you start to familiarize yourself with the readings and the teachings of Jesus, and you will get to know the heartbeat of God, and you will go closer to him. All right, we'll finish up John chapter 1, verse 10. Uh, Jesus came into the very world he created, but the world didn't recognize him. He came to his own people and even they rejected him. But to all that believed in him, who believed in him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. We will talk a lot about on this channel how God is Father and we are his children. Verse 13 says, They are reborn, not with a physical birth, resulting from human passion or plan, but from a birth that comes from God. So the word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. That's describing Jesus coming into the world. Jesus experienced every pressure that we felt. Actually, when I say that, he it he lived in a time that many say, well, that was different back then. Yeah, it was different compared to today. It was way worse. Biblical time was barbaric. If you think you got a problem with authority, the government, or the way society is now, back then it was tough. I'm not saying it's easy now. I'm just saying that we live in a modern world with a lot of modern checks and balances. Not perfect. The world will never be perfect. But uh in Jesus' time, he dealt with all the same pressures in the sense that we dealt with. Uh, he was pressed, squeezed, so stretched. Um, he knew what hunger and exhaustion were. He knew what rejection and betrayal felt like. There's so much we can learn from Jesus. So let's pray and make this personal. My prayer for you is not for you to just take what I said and, you know, leave it at that. My hope is that you will say, you know, I can see that picture of me being the clay on the potter's wheel, and I do want to be reshaped. You start with your attitude. That's something that we can always use, a little fine-tuning. So let's pray. Lord God, we thank you that you are not distant from us. I thank you, Lord, that you know what we deal with and you've already dealt with it yourself. And I thank you that we can learn so much today of how to not just live, but how to respond to life and living, that you can help us to deal with the pressure as we trust you. We you can help us to deal with the challenges of not being where we want to be right now, but you you'll give us patience and help us to figure out the right next move. I pray that each person that's listening to this today or watching this, that they could imagine themselves on the potter's wheel, being shaped by a loving father who cares about them and doesn't want to focus on their past, but wants to help them heal from their past and move into their beautiful future, having a relationship with their creator, with a father that loves them. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you so much for making some time to study the Bible with me and hopefully you got something out of this. Again, my name is Max Marcou. I pastor Elevation Chapel in Newton, Massachusetts. You can go to elevationchapel.org for more information. And if you're ever in the Boston area or just outside of Boston in Newton, Massachusetts, I'd love to meet you. Have a great rest of your day, everybody. Thank you.