I was particularly moved on Thursday when I saw a photo of group of people who had gathered at Elim Christian College in Auckland to mourn the death of 6 students and a teacher the day before in a kayaking trip that went terribly wrong.
The father of one of the girls who was drowned said what everyone else wanted to say,
“We are saying to God, Why has this happened? Where does this fit into your plan? I do not have an answer to that.”
This message is part of a series in Jeremiah called ‘Reality Bites’
This is the kind of reality that we cannot avoid?
These are the kind of questions that will inevitably be asked somewhere in our lives.
Sooner or later we will come to the same haunting realization that this father came to,
‘I do not have an answer to that.’
The inevitable question that follows,
How does this affect your faith?
Can faith withstand the unfair, inexplicable and unimaginable?
Yesaterday, after the wedding I spoke to a Uniting Church Minister.
He told me about something that happened 14 years ago while in ministry at Booleroo Centre. A vibrant 36 year old Kindegarten teacher, married with 2 children 10 and 7, suffered a stroke. Lost use of every part of her body. All she could do was breath and move here eyes. Her mind was as bright as ever in all this.
She spent 3 months in Hospital and 2 years in Julia Farr Centre. Now needs constant care as she is confined to wheel chair, with a little more but very small amount of movement in her body.
Told me he was talking about his wife!
What do we make of the passage we read this morning?
What kind of Potter is at the wheel?
v1
Have Thine Own Way, Lord. Have Thine Own Way.
You are the potter. I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will
While I am waiting, yielded and still
That hymn has a special affinity with us.
Written by a lady who was named Sarah Pollard at birth, but she didn’t like the name Sarah, so she adopted the name Adelaide.
She was an interesting lady who wanted to go to Africa for missionary service and was really distressed when her plans continually came to nothing.
One night, completely discouraged, she attended a prayer meeting where she listened to an old lady pray. Rather than pray for all manner of blessings, this dear old lady poured out her heart to God for an understanding of how God works in our lives.
Adelaide Pollard went home and read this passage about the Potter at the wheel. That night, before she went to bed she wrote all 4 stanzas of this hymn.
v3
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Wounded and weary, help me I pray!
Power, all power, surely is thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine!
Read Jeremiah 18:1-4
….. go to the Potter’s house
Things have changed in our day.
This generation thinks of the Potter’s house as the place where Harry lives!
But in Jeremiah’s day – it was a common place.
Today God might say to us,
Go down to Macca’s or Starbucks and there I will give you my message.
You know the biggest problem for God is to break into our everyday world.
·How can God get us to see the serious in the midst of the frivolous?
·How does God give us a revelation in the midst of the routine?
You see Israel couldn’t grasp why Jeremiah was making such a fuss with his preaching.
These were tumultuous times.
Powerful empires were ready to strike at their land.
Conventional wisdom said that disaster could be avoided by making political deals with other nations.
Assyrians from North would think twice about invading if the Israelites had Egypt by their side.
So the nation becomes more secularized, politicized.
With it comes a weakening of spiritual foundation.
Mark explained last week, they adopted all sorts of godless beliefs and practices in the temple, yet when they came to worship they cried out,
….the temple, the temple, the temple of the Lord [7:4]
But they couldn’t see, the Lord was no longer in the temple!
No amount of religious jargon could make up for the rottenness that filled the temple!
I just wonder if you are dosing off now thinking….
“How did those people ever get like that?”
That’s the problem – we can never see where WE are at!
I read an article during the week that tried to wrestle with what’s happened with the Church in the last 30 years.
We have engaged in cultural understanding.
We have tried to react to the growing sense of irrelevancy of Church in secular society.
We have tried to come to terms with traditional church, mega church, emerging church and ‘I’ve had enough of Church!’.
We have become user-friendly, seeker-sensitive and almost obsessed with not offending a world that takes pleasure in reminding the Church of all its historical baggage.
No one can argue with the passion to be culturally and personally relevant with our faith, but at the same time surveys reveal the Church has all but lost its passion for gospel.
It shows up a deplorable lack of knowledge of the Bible.
It shows that this generation has little place for prayer.
It shows that more than ever we are fearful to stand up for what we believe.
We have engaged in environmental issues, justice issues, poverty issues, political issues, all of which are necessary, but we have lost our heart for that which matters most!
Put it simply –
What if we save the planet but never see a member of our family come to Christ and be saved?
This seems like a flash back to a by gone era, but in fact it reveals just how much we have been duped into losing a sense of reality!
We have come to think it’s either/or.
God says I want you to save the planet, but I want you to do even greater things – be engaged in saving lives, seeing people brought the Kingdom of God!
How does God show us what’s really happening?
Says to Jeremiah
…. Go down to the Potters house and there I will give you my message
What did he see?
Read v3-4
He saw something being RE-MADE!
I saw it the other day at a servo.
I went in for one of those ‘wild bean’ coffees.
Told bloke I wanted flat white, extra hot in a take a way cup.
I watched him!!
When he was finished I noticed he had made a cappuccino in a glass and it had no steam coming out of it!
Before he gave it to me he saw the words that were about to come out of my mouth and he said,
“I don’t think this is hot enough”
He tipped the whole lot out and started again!
That’s what Jeremiah saw!!
He had seen it a thousand times before, but this time he saw something else.
He saw what God could do!
God broke into his everyday world and showed him something extraordinary!
God is a God who can re-make us!
Jeremiah saw God remaking the clay!
God making something out of the mess.
God reforming the clay into something magnificent.
Isn’t that something that burns away deep in heart of everyone of us?
Older we get -
·the more we are saddled with the limitation of our past;
·the more we are burdened with what we can’t change.
·the more we wish we could rub it out and start again!
Eg.
‘Extreme Makeover began in November 2002 in UK. Idea was simple – turn ‘ugly ducklings into swans’
Involve plastic surgeons, eye surgeons, dermatologists, cosmetic dentists, makeup artists, hairstylists and personal trainers bring about this transformation.
We shouldn’t be surprised at popularity of such shows. Thought of a complete make-over lurks not far beneath surface of every one of us.
Year’s ago Andrew Lloyd Weber was asked to explain the popularity of “Phantom,” in Phantom of the Opera. He said it was because, like the phantom, everyone has parts of themselves that they feel they need to hide.
Can you imagine Jeremiah?
He has been preaching destruction upon the nation.
He has revealed the broken heart of the God they spurned.
Read Jeremiah 2:4-13
What now?
Is that it?
Has the Potter done with this clay?
Does he dispose of it as a bad loss?
Jeremiah looks spellbound as he watches the Potter take that clay and crush it, and then reshape it into something that ….seemed best to him v4
Here are a people on the brink of disaster and Jeremiah sees what God can still do!
What is the message he has to take back to the people?
Read v11
…..turn [repent] from your evil ways
Let’s go back one step.
Why is this so hard?
Why is turning around so difficult?
It’s like the old joke –
How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: What do you mean ‘change’!
Why do we find it hard to change?
Even worse – why can we see what we should be and still not change?
Part of the problem is that we see change as something we have to DO. We tend to think change depends upon acting on certain facts, analysis or information. We approach change by engaging our LEFT BRAIN!
What we’re missing, says John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and expert on organizational change, is the RIGHT BRAIN. “Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people’s emotions and feelings.”
I find all this very interesting because by and large the Church has always tried to bring about change of heart by engaging the left brain.
We preach the message and that message is largely about facts, information and analysis.
In fact for a long while, we were warned off engaging people’s emotions and feelings.
It was like that was only a shallow response to God!
That’s why God took Jeremiah to the Potter’s House.
Up until now he had been faithfully preaching the message but now, everywhere he went, he had a vision of the POTTER!
He was moved by what he saw.
It stirred his heart and it empowered his message.
Christian history has been a struggle of faith that keeps reverting back to words, creeds and clichés.
We become left brain believers who are no longer moved and stirred into action because we have lost the vision of the Potter at work.
That’s why the 10 Commandments couldn’t do it.
Though shalt not – cannot change us!
That’s why the Pharisees couldn’t do it.
More rules and regulations just make us more creatively deceptive than holy!
We will never begin to change until we have a life changing vision of Jesus on the Cross, taking that which is marred and broken and useless because of sin – making us new!
How does God motivate a Church that doesn’t want to change?
….. for Christ’s love compels us, because we are all convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died and was raised again.
[2 Corinthians 5:14-15]
You need to be COMPELLED before you are CONVINCED!!
Every now and then I jump on the piano and I’ll play the same song.
Many of you know what it is.
Keith Green wrote it.
It’s a song that moved me at a particular time of my life and while you think it’s the only song I can play on the piano, it’s actually become a bit of an anthem for me.
It says,
My eyes are dry My faith is old My heart is hard My prayers are cold And I know how I ought to be Alive to You and dead to me
But what can be done For an old heart like mine Soften it up With oil and wine The oil is You, Your Spirit of love Please wash me anew With the wine of Your Blood