SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bible and make your way to the Old Testament book of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah is one of my biblical, one of my favorite biblical writers.
SPEAKER_01: And he also writes one of the largest books of the Bible, so it makes it easy to find.
SPEAKER_01: Book of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: If you would make your way there, please, as we look together at God's word this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Going to be looking specifically at Jeremiah chapter 18.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 18.
SPEAKER_01: The United States of America has endured many polarizing periods in its history.
SPEAKER_01: It took less than a hundred years in our history for the spirit of independence to drive wedges into our people, leading to a civil war.
SPEAKER_01: If you follow through our nation's history, in the next hundred years after the Civil War, we would be brought into international politics such that we would endure world wars and fighting for allies.
SPEAKER_01: Along the way, this country has endured war opposition, civil rights conflicts, assertions of sexual rights, personal rights, gun rights, school choice rights, and of course abortion rights.
SPEAKER_01: And all of those have been polarizing in one form or another.
SPEAKER_01: Can we fail to mention COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccinations of all kinds, food and gasoline shortages, government and political scandals, freedom of religion, freedom of speech concerns, and riots from all of those that polarize?
SPEAKER_01: We're currently in the midst of economic polarization.
SPEAKER_01: And recent Supreme Court rulings have generated celebrations and conflagrations.
SPEAKER_01: What are we to make of our history?
SPEAKER_01: That which is long past and that which is currently being established.
SPEAKER_01: I saw a picture recently that endeavored to give some perspective, not on our history or our nation, just on the idea of perspective.
SPEAKER_01: The image was a lineup of planets next to the sun.
SPEAKER_01: And some creative person decided to put the words you are here, pointing to the earth compared to the sun.
SPEAKER_01: Perspective changes things, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: A wet spring stirs up anxiety if you've survived a 500-year flood.
SPEAKER_01: The power of flame on a match can bear a hideous intent if you fought wildfires or if you've lost a home to a fire.
SPEAKER_01: Drive to the Rocky Mountains and you will instantly feel quite small.
SPEAKER_01: But even those majestic mountains are exceedingly small in view of the sun's magnitude.
SPEAKER_01: And if the mountains are small compared to the sun's magnitude, where does that put us?
SPEAKER_01: Our sun is a small star in a universe.
SPEAKER_01: And even that universe is diminutive, is small, is tiny when we understand that God hung those stars in place with his fingertips and he knows each one by name.
SPEAKER_01: Perspective can be helpful.
SPEAKER_01: But perspective can also be very painful.
SPEAKER_01: This morning I want us to be open to both.
SPEAKER_01: Both the helpful and the painful, from the words recorded by the prophet Jeremiah serving mainly in the city of Jerusalem, between roughly 625 BC and 685 B.C.
SPEAKER_01: In the second chapter of Jeremiah, we read these words of God.
SPEAKER_01: O heavens, those stars in the sky, they should be appalled.
SPEAKER_01: They should be shocked.
SPEAKER_01: They should be utterly desolated.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because God says, My people have committed two evils.
SPEAKER_01: They've forsaken me, number one, the fountain of living waters.
SPEAKER_01: And number two, because they've forsaken me, they've hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water.
SPEAKER_01: As a result, Jeremiah wrote that the nation of Israel had provoked God to anger.
SPEAKER_01: And as a result of his anger, God had decreed disaster against Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, that astonished God's people.
SPEAKER_01: And so they asked, Well, what did we do to provoke you to anger?
SPEAKER_01: Why have you done this?
SPEAKER_01: Why are we earning judgment?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what Jeremiah was to say.
SPEAKER_01: Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, because they've gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers.
SPEAKER_01: For behold, every one of you follows his own stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I will hurl you out of this land.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that word hurl is the same word that Jonah uses for being hurled into the sea.
SPEAKER_01: I will, God says, hurl you out of this land, into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds harsh.
SPEAKER_01: Until we understand that God had already been offering salvation and blessing and peace to his people again and again and again and again and again and again and again for hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_01: And over and over and over again there is this repeated refrain you did not listen.
SPEAKER_01: They spurned him.
SPEAKER_01: They chose broken cisterns that would not hold water, instead of choosing the water of life.
SPEAKER_01: And God had given, had had enough.
SPEAKER_01: His mercy gave way to his justice.
SPEAKER_01: And so he told Jeremiah that he would be sending a nation of warriors to kill and to destroy.
SPEAKER_01: And the prime target would be the beloved city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: When is it that grace and mercy gives way to justice?
SPEAKER_01: Now all of that is the background to Jeremiah chapter 18.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible, I encourage you to turn there and we'll read if you would follow along with me.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 18, the word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Arise, Jeremiah, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.
SPEAKER_01: So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.
SPEAKER_01: And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand.
SPEAKER_01: And he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.
SPEAKER_01: Then the word of Yahweh came to me, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done?
SPEAKER_01: declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.
SPEAKER_01: And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build it and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Thus says Yahweh, look, I am shaping, fashioning, molding a disaster against you, and devising a plan against you.
SPEAKER_01: Return everyone from his evil way and amend your ways and your deeds.
SPEAKER_01: But they say, That's in vain.
SPEAKER_01: We will follow our own plans.
SPEAKER_01: We will every one act according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, thus says Yahweh, ask among the nations.
SPEAKER_01: Who has heard the like of this?
SPEAKER_01: The Virgin Israel has done a very horrible thing.
SPEAKER_01: Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Syrian?
SPEAKER_01: Do the mountain waters run dry, those cold flowing streams?
SPEAKER_01: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_01: But my people have forgotten me.
SPEAKER_01: They make offerings to false gods, they made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, and to walk into the side roads rather than the highway, making their land a horror, a thing to be hissed at forever.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who passes by it is horrified and shakes his head.
SPEAKER_01: Like the east wind, I will scatter them before the enemy.
SPEAKER_01: I will show them my back, not my face, in the day of their calamity.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Every disciple of Jesus should watch a potter work.
SPEAKER_01: It's best if it's in person.
SPEAKER_01: But YouTube could probably work in a pinch.
SPEAKER_01: God described his interaction with his creation through the image of a potter.
SPEAKER_01: A potter's work is messy.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning with a lump of clay, he would work it with his hands, adding water to keep it moldable.
SPEAKER_01: And it can be a splattery, watery, muddy mess of a job.
SPEAKER_01: That lump of clay sat on a wheel.
SPEAKER_01: The words that Jeremiah used here indicate a double wheel.
SPEAKER_01: So if you can imagine taking the axle off of your car with a wheel at each end and turning it on end.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of what we have here.
SPEAKER_01: There's two wheels, a top and a bottom, with an axle in between.
SPEAKER_01: And the potter would sit on a bench or on a stool and turn that wheel with his feet on the bottom wheel so that the top wheel would be turning and he would have his hands free to work that clay.
SPEAKER_01: Softening the clay with water, he would spin it around and around while his hands added pressure to shape that moldable clay into a pitcher or a bowl.
SPEAKER_01: Had to be perfectly balanced, or the wheel's motion would cause it to just collapse on itself.
SPEAKER_01: The formation had to be smooth, with no pockets, no air bubbles.
SPEAKER_01: And if the potter saw, excuse me, some kind of defect in the clay, or somehow that the shape wasn't exactly taking the form that he wanted, he would add more water to it and return it to a simple clump of clay.
SPEAKER_01: And he would begin working it again into something useful.
SPEAKER_01: It's a task that is quite enjoyable, but takes a lot of patience.
SPEAKER_01: Like the image of a shepherd, the potter was an everyday picture for ancient Israel.
SPEAKER_01: It was an image everyone could understand, everyone could imagine it in their minds.
SPEAKER_01: But is that why Jeremiah was sent to the potter's house?
SPEAKER_01: So I went down to the potter's house.
SPEAKER_01: And there he was working at his wheel.
SPEAKER_01: And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in his hand.
SPEAKER_01: Something went wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And he reworked it into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to do.
SPEAKER_01: God intended to give Jeremiah a message using an object lesson.
SPEAKER_01: But the lesson and the message were not only to the prophet.
SPEAKER_01: God was sending a message to his people, to the nation of Israel, to the people who had spurned his message again and again and again.
SPEAKER_01: So God is taking Jeremiah and he's saying, Go down to the potter's house, and I'm gonna give you a lesson through the potter, and you are to take that lesson and turn it into a message for the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: So what was it that God sent Jeremiah to learn?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we learn that Jeremiah was to watch the potter.
SPEAKER_01: Because like the potter works with the clay and is sovereign over that clay, making it into whatever he wants, so too God is sovereign over people.
SPEAKER_01: God sent Jeremiah to deliver a message then to the people in Jerusalem, to say to them, they're doing whatever they wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01: They believed that they were free, free to live and to act and to do whatever they wanted to do, however their hearts desired.
SPEAKER_01: They're God's chosen people, after all.
SPEAKER_01: Never mind that their kinfolk in the northern tribes had already been deported, scattered.
SPEAKER_01: But here God's people are still thinking, yeah, that's them.
SPEAKER_01: We're not like them.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that always the way of our hearts?
SPEAKER_01: To think that we're not like that.
SPEAKER_01: The lesson of the potter is that people are like that clump of clay in God's hands.
SPEAKER_01: If they follow and obey him, he will mold them into something good, into something useful, into something proper for his use.
SPEAKER_01: But if they refuse to listen to him, if they refuse to obey him, then like the potter, God will begin to re-mold them.
SPEAKER_01: They will ultimately submit to him, whether they like it or not.
SPEAKER_01: It's just how comfortable the process will be.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is about ancient Israel, God's chosen people through whom he would send the Savior of all people.
SPEAKER_01: But passages like Isaiah 46 show us that this applies to people of all times and nations of all kinds.
SPEAKER_01: We are not free as we think we are free.
SPEAKER_01: For God stands over us to guide, to protect, and sometimes to reshape or even destroy.
SPEAKER_01: In some ways, we are like Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't take much to look around us in our world and to see the rampant evil on display, even in our own country.
SPEAKER_01: We can see the need, not for more or even fewer laws.
SPEAKER_01: We can see the need for not more or even less governmental control, but a need for a change of heart.
SPEAKER_01: We celebrate changes and statutes that bring our country into a greater obedience to God's desires, but laws don't change hearts, do they?
SPEAKER_01: More than laws and regulations, people need a heart change that comes from God's saving grace.
SPEAKER_01: We also sense parallels in people's hearts today with those in Jeremiah's time.
SPEAKER_01: The rampant desire to do whatever one thinks is right for himself, for herself.
SPEAKER_01: Even if it celebrates the freedom to sin.
SPEAKER_01: That should be a weight that drags us down, as it did the prophet Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: But there's encouragement here for those times when the depravity of culture overwhelms us and we feel that weight of the curse of sin.
SPEAKER_01: And that encouragement is God is sovereign over people.
SPEAKER_01: God is still the potter when the world seems out of control.
SPEAKER_01: God is still the potter who yells, stop.
SPEAKER_01: And no, I am God.
SPEAKER_01: And if people rebel too much, his mercy will end and his justice will act.
SPEAKER_01: As the potter with the clay, so too God is with the people he created.
SPEAKER_01: We are clay in the hands of God.
SPEAKER_01: When does grace and mercy give way to discipline and judgment?
SPEAKER_01: We learn that like the potter with the clay, God is sovereign over people.
SPEAKER_01: We also learn that like the potter with the clay, God is in control of all nations.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah recorded the words of God beginning in verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do it.
SPEAKER_01: And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build it and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.
SPEAKER_01: We tend to look at the world and national events only from a human perspective.
SPEAKER_01: Tomorrow you may celebrate our nation's Independence Day.
SPEAKER_01: That's a fine thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: But the proper thing for a Christian to do is to celebrate it as independence given to us by the hand of God, not by the hand of revolutionaries.
SPEAKER_01: We tend to look at the world and national events, and we see nations coming into existence through war, separating people groups into distinct nations.
SPEAKER_01: Other countries go to war to subdue and to assimilate others, but we need to remember that God Himself says he is the one who brings those things to pass.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he is the potter.
SPEAKER_01: Nations at war with nations or people with people do not signify an absence of God, but the active presence of God molding the clay.
SPEAKER_01: Because, like the potter with the clay, God can determine to do differently.
SPEAKER_01: He can bring disaster on a nation and judge.
SPEAKER_01: Against them.
SPEAKER_01: And he can do differently if they repent and begin to listen to his words.
SPEAKER_01: But sadly, the typical response is a rejection of God's grace, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: The more God's grace is displayed, the more his patience is on display, the more people forget about him.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the reaction of God's people for his call for repentance in verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, thus says Yahweh, ask among the I'm sorry, verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: But they say, that is in vain.
SPEAKER_01: We will follow our own plans.
SPEAKER_01: And we will, everyone, act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I'm going to give you one more chance.
SPEAKER_01: Return to me.
SPEAKER_01: Repent of your sinfulness.
SPEAKER_01: Repent of doing what's right in your own eyes and listen to me.
SPEAKER_01: Ah, that's worthless.
SPEAKER_01: God, you know that's not going to get us where we want to go.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, of course, because where you want to go is not where you should go.
SPEAKER_01: What a reaction.
SPEAKER_01: God sent Jeremiah to the potter's house to teach his people the incredible power of their God so that they might be moved to repentance and return to their God in humble trust.
SPEAKER_01: And they say, that's not going to do any good.
SPEAKER_01: It's astounding, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: And yet it's no different today.
SPEAKER_01: We still follow our own plans.
SPEAKER_01: We still act according to the stubbornness of our own hearts.
SPEAKER_01: We do.
SPEAKER_01: Whether we're willing to recognize it and admit it or not.
SPEAKER_01: When I was a boy, I did many foolish things.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I suppose I still do foolish things, but there are some that I no longer do.
SPEAKER_01: The railroad tracks ran through town just a few blocks from my home and behind my best friend's home.
SPEAKER_01: And about halfway in between us, those railroad tracks crossed the little Missouri River.
SPEAKER_01: So as boys are bound to do, the tracks and that particular bridge that you see there became a natural playground.
SPEAKER_01: Our parents eventually found out and told us not to play on the bridge, not to play around the tracks because of the danger of trains coming through.
SPEAKER_01: Listening to our parents was the wise thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: Obeying our parents would keep us safe.
SPEAKER_01: Listening to our parents would teach us wisdom and help us know the power and the danger of the trains.
SPEAKER_01: Do you think we listened?
SPEAKER_01: We were little boys.
SPEAKER_01: Of course we didn't.
SPEAKER_01: We knew better than our parents.
SPEAKER_01: We knew that the train only came through once or at most twice a day.
SPEAKER_01: So the chances of us being in danger were very slim.
SPEAKER_01: And this was a wide open stretch of railway about two miles long, just perfectly straight.
SPEAKER_01: So we knew we could see a train and get out of the way if it was coming.
SPEAKER_01: It continued to be our playground.
SPEAKER_01: This particular bridge has a walkway on one side of it that is outside of the bridge itself.
SPEAKER_01: It's perfectly safe.
SPEAKER_01: Might scare you quite a bit if a train came through.
SPEAKER_01: So we played on that walkway.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the only thing that we did.
SPEAKER_01: You will see if you look closely that there are concrete supports that go down from the middle of the bridge down to the river, and so we would walk down the middle of the tracks to those concrete supports, and we would crawl down between the bridge portions to get on top of those concrete things.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way we would have had time to get out of those situations if there was a train coming.
SPEAKER_01: By God's grace, I am alive today to tell you that that is an unwise decision.
SPEAKER_01: Kids, listen to your parents.
SPEAKER_01: I did not repent of playing on the railroad bridge because I thought that listening to my parents was a pointless thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: I thought hearing my parents' wisdom was in vain, and so we continued to play on the railroad bridge.
SPEAKER_01: The fun it presented was far more desirable to me than the safety that my parents encouraged.
SPEAKER_01: So I continued doing what I wanted to do in the stubbornness of my heart.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what sin does in us.
SPEAKER_01: God teaches us what is right, He shows us the wise way to walk.
SPEAKER_01: We hear our Father tell us to turn, and yet we refuse to stop playing where we should not play.
SPEAKER_01: We desire the pleasure of our sin more than we want to obey the voice of our Father.
SPEAKER_01: And if we continue in our sin long enough, eventually we will get struck by the train.
SPEAKER_01: There were no trains in Jeremiah's day.
SPEAKER_01: But there were potters.
SPEAKER_01: There were potters who would take great pains to carefully fashion an object, only to completely undo everything it created and start again.
SPEAKER_01: The people in the time of Jeremiah no longer cared to listen to the wisdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: They did not want his salvation.
SPEAKER_01: They refused his grace.
SPEAKER_01: They kept pursuing their sin.
SPEAKER_01: They refused to listen.
SPEAKER_01: It's astonishing.
SPEAKER_01: So when does the train come?
SPEAKER_01: When does God's mercy and grace turn to judgment?
SPEAKER_01: That's why God said to Jeremiah in verse 13, ask among all of the nations.
SPEAKER_01: Go take a pole, not of your own people, but of all the other nations.
SPEAKER_01: Who's ever heard of this?
SPEAKER_01: Who has ever heard of a people turning away from their God?
SPEAKER_01: My people have forgotten me.
SPEAKER_01: They've made offerings to false gods.
SPEAKER_01: Those gods have made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, made them walk in the side roads, not the highway, making their whole land a horror, a thing to be hissed at forever.
SPEAKER_01: See, turning away from God to worship false gods made the people like drunkards who stumble around and can't find the road.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they were a nation of drunkards who can't find the interstate.
SPEAKER_01: It's so astounding, God says, that everyone who passes by is horrified and just shakes his head in astonishment.
SPEAKER_01: See, the nations all around knew that Yahweh was Israel's God.
SPEAKER_01: They knew what God had done for his people.
SPEAKER_01: They feared Israel's God.
SPEAKER_01: They knew of his covenant with them.
SPEAKER_01: But because of their refusal to hear him any longer, those passers-by would now be horrified at Israel's astonishing spurning of her God.
SPEAKER_01: You would be horrified.
SPEAKER_01: If you invited someone over to dinner and you carefully prepared a wonderful meal for them, and when they arrived and saw what you had prepared, they said no, thank you, and instead went outside and enjoyed a maggot-infested meal.
SPEAKER_01: You would be shaking your head and go, I don't I don't understand this.
SPEAKER_01: It's no different with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: God had provided them with everything.
SPEAKER_01: And they chose something other than Him.
SPEAKER_01: And those on the outside could not understand why they would reject the water of life for leaky cisterns.
SPEAKER_01: And at this point, by implication, God returns to the image of the potter.
SPEAKER_01: The potter begins anew when there is a fault of some kind in the vessel he is making.
SPEAKER_01: God said to the Jewish people living in the promised land, he says, like the east wind, I will scatter them before the enemy, I will show them my back and not my face in the day of their calamity.
SPEAKER_01: And so we learn with Jeremiah that like the potter with the clay, God's mercy and grace can turn to judgment.
SPEAKER_01: God would turn his back on them in the time of their greatest need and rescue them no more.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, there's a time when God says, You want to play on the railroad bridge?
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01: That's the choice you want to make.
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01: But it's worse than that.
SPEAKER_01: In judgment for turning against him one too many times, God becomes the train.
SPEAKER_01: God becomes the enemy.
SPEAKER_01: God becomes the warriors beating down the people.
SPEAKER_01: God would act against his rebellious people like the spoiled clay vessel reworked in the potter's hands.
SPEAKER_01: And so we come away from this understanding that there are some fundamental principles for our life in this world and how we must go forward in an increasingly evil society.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Jeremiah describes an irreligious society.
SPEAKER_01: But it's a land with a past of great leaders, of magnificent kings like David, who were men after God's own heart, but had since drifted away to a place of deafness to the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: The world was a depraved mess of people doing what's right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sure, there were a handful of prophets declaring the word of God to people who would not listen.
SPEAKER_01: You would think I was talking about the year of our Lord 2022.
SPEAKER_01: This is Israel's national and personal history.
SPEAKER_01: But we fail to properly hear the word of God from Jeremiah until we seek to apply this truth to our lives.
SPEAKER_01: So what is there here that applies to us today?
SPEAKER_01: Well, first, I think we have to be impacted by the field trip to the potter's house.
SPEAKER_01: And there are at least two applications here, one national and one personal.
SPEAKER_01: What God showed to Jeremiah was intended to be directed to the national level.
SPEAKER_01: God says to the nation of Israel that he can pluck up, that he can tear down, he can even build up a nation if he so desires it.
SPEAKER_01: Just like the potter can do to the clay, so too God can do for entire countries.
SPEAKER_01: That's nothing new if we read our Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: God said through Job, He makes nations great and He destroys them.
SPEAKER_01: He enlarges nations and he leads them away.
SPEAKER_01: Are we listening to God?
SPEAKER_01: What about what Isaiah says in Isaiah chapter 40, verse 15?
SPEAKER_01: Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket.
SPEAKER_01: And we are accounted as the dust on the scales.
SPEAKER_01: How much does the dust on the scales weigh?
SPEAKER_01: Perspective.
SPEAKER_01: We are insignificant.
SPEAKER_01: We must never forget, my friends, that our nation, all nations, are in the hand of God.
SPEAKER_01: And he does with them what he desires.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot assume that God will allow this country or any country to succeed.
SPEAKER_01: Or that he will keep it from failing.
SPEAKER_01: That it will continue forever.
SPEAKER_01: But we should know that we need not worry that things in our country or things in our world are outside of God's power to change.
SPEAKER_01: You need not worry about God's lack of control over politics.
SPEAKER_01: You need not be worried or anxious about God's lack of control over economics.
SPEAKER_01: You need not wonder if God is concerned about international policy.
SPEAKER_01: That old spiritual is right.
SPEAKER_01: But we must not forget that the potter can remake the vessel.
SPEAKER_01: Judgment may come, discipline may come, and God's own people may suffer because of that judgment.
SPEAKER_01: See, in Israel, the righteous suffered some consequences of the sin of the unrighteous.
SPEAKER_01: God's mercy and grace eventually do give way to his justice if there is no repentance, if there is continued refusal to hear.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah ends up carted off to Egypt against his will.
SPEAKER_01: Daniel, Azariah, Mishael, and Azariah end up being deported to Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: Ezekiel is in Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes God's people suffer the consequences for the sin of their people.
SPEAKER_01: Israel was God's chosen people.
SPEAKER_01: They lived in the land God promised to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: They had God's word, and yet judgment still came because the nation rejected him.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, we have a wonderful country by the grace of God, but it is not beyond God's judgment.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I would argue that if you read Scripture as a whole, it's already under the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_01: Like Jeremiah, we must be prepared for whatever the potter may choose to do in his sovereign control over all nations.
SPEAKER_01: And that may mean that we have to trust through suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Are you ready to do that?
SPEAKER_01: Are you ready to say the potter knows best?
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah trusted God, but still suffered the effects of his people's sin.
SPEAKER_01: And yet God is very clear here.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 11, return to me and amend your ways.
SPEAKER_01: If anyone repents and turns to him, God will turn to something other than the severe judgment that he intended.
SPEAKER_01: It was not too late for Jeremiah's people, even though Nebuchadnezzar's war machine was marching toward Judah.
SPEAKER_01: It's not too late for our nation.
SPEAKER_01: It's not too late for any nation.
SPEAKER_01: God calls all people to repent, including our country.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the pastoral epistles say, pray for your nation.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for people in positions of authority and power, for kings, for governors, for mayors.
SPEAKER_01: But we cannot look at our nation as a whole and wait for something to happen.
SPEAKER_01: Repentance begins with the one who hears.
SPEAKER_01: And we are hearing.
SPEAKER_01: Do you have ears to hear?
SPEAKER_01: Repentance begins with our own hearts.
SPEAKER_01: You and I, my friend, are the clay in the potter's hand.
SPEAKER_01: We're made from dust, remember?
SPEAKER_01: God molds and makes us according to his will, just as he can build up a nation and tear it down, so he can do with us as individuals.
SPEAKER_01: If we have been pursuing our own ways, our own desires, rather than his heart.
SPEAKER_01: And he calls us to listen and to turn to him.
SPEAKER_01: He's constantly working in you.
SPEAKER_01: If you belong to him, he is working slowly and patiently with you, his piece of clay to mold you into the image of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: The process is slow.
SPEAKER_01: It takes a lifetime, but the master potter is at work.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes he has to restart what he's doing in us.
SPEAKER_01: He's sovereign.
SPEAKER_01: And if we fight against him, if we refuse to listen, doing what's right in our own eyes, he can start all over.
SPEAKER_01: There is a reason to be aware of God's pending judgment.
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason to be mindful of the need for repentance, both personally and nationally.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't want to end on that.
SPEAKER_01: I want to end on a positive tone.
SPEAKER_01: There is also every reason.
SPEAKER_01: No matter where you are on the face of this insignificant ball in the universe.
SPEAKER_01: No matter if you're on this side or the other side, if you're in the north or if you're in the south, there's every reason to trust your God when the world seems to be falling apart.
SPEAKER_01: Because he will never forsake his own.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus sent his disciples out into a world that would hate them.
SPEAKER_01: He sent them out into a world that would persecute them.
SPEAKER_01: He sent them out into a world that would not understand them.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he said, Do not fear, do not be anxious, for I will never leave you.
SPEAKER_01: I will never forsake you.
SPEAKER_01: There is no need to fear, my friends, the work of the potter's hands when you walk with him with open ears and faithful obedience.
SPEAKER_01: And one day soon, maybe today, the Lord will send his righteous ruler for the second time.
SPEAKER_01: And when he does, all sin and all wickedness and all rebellion and all refusal to hear will be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus will rule as the perfect king forever.
SPEAKER_01: And all his righteous ones will be with him forever.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, lift up your eyes to the hills and see where your help comes from.
SPEAKER_01: It comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you, acknowledging our allegiance first and foremost to you.
SPEAKER_01: The great King of all the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Who did not see his glory and his power as something to be held on to at all costs, but was willing to humbly set that aside so that you might come to this insignificant place and give it an untold significance.
SPEAKER_01: Because you, the glorious one, became a slave and died a slave's death, so that we might be rescued forever.
SPEAKER_01: Rescued from our own wills, our own desires, so that we might rejoice and seeing you and seeing your way and your will as the best thing for all of us.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we beg for your grace, your grace to continue working in us and molding us into your image.
SPEAKER_01: We beg for your mercy that as we continue to close our ears and to continue to play on the railroad bridge, that you would be merciful to us, that you would forgive us of our sin, that you would forgive the sin of our people, that you would open the ears and the hearts of our president, of our congressmen, of our state and local leaders.
SPEAKER_01: And that you would open our ears and we all might be drawn to trust in the Potter who gave his life for us.
SPEAKER_01: May we see you, Lord Jesus, in the day of your coming and rejoice at your coming rather than groan for not having listened.
SPEAKER_01: We praise you that you've given your life for us, that you've given a ransom for us.
SPEAKER_01: We praise you that through your spirit our hearts can be changed.
SPEAKER_01: We ask that you would do that to the praise of your grace.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.