Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 9, 2020 | Stand Strong - I Am The Clay

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February 9, 2020 | Stand Strong - I Am The Clay · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting today, this is our theme for the book of Jeremiah, January, February, March, all the way up to Easter.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a Jeremiah challenge going on.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: This last week we read chapters 17 through 20.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll preach today on chapter 18.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, read with us four chapters 21, 22, 23, and 24.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Raise your hands if you're reading with us through Jeremiah.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome, awesome.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm doing devotionals, four devotionals on those four chapters each week.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I even know a couple high schoolers doing them.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you to do those.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you know, I'm working way too hard.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So great to have you guys with us.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And stand strong is our theme today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: My message is entitled, I Am the Clay.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've heard the story about the horrible flood in the southeast part of the country, and the waters kept rising, people fled town.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: This man climbed out of his window, climbed up onto the roof of his house.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was gonna wait it out, but the waters kept rising.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: A rowboat came by, the man called and he said, Get in and I'll get you out of this.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Man said, It's okay.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got faith in God, I'm trusting him, he will rescue me.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Waters kept rising.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: A guy came by in a speedboat.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Get off the top of that roof.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jump here in here and I'll save you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy said, Hey, I got faith in God.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know he's gonna rescue me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, the waters got right up.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's having to just barely, you know, stay out of the water, top of his roof.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Helicopter flies open, drops a rope.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Helicopter flies open or over, over, drops the rope, guy yells out, grab the rope, and I'll save you.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: He calls up, he says, I'm trusting the Lord, the Lord will rescue me.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Waters went up a little bit higher, he floated off, he drowned, went to heaven, got mad, went to God.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: He said, God, what gives?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know I trusted you, you know I depended on you, you know, I called out to you, you didn't do a thing for me.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And God shrugs and he says, What more could I do?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I sent you two boats and a helicopter.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that old story illustrates my theme for the morning, which is a very philosophical theme, something people have argued about for thousands of years, that is God's side versus man's side, what's called determinism and free will.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: In theological terms, it's God's sovereignty and man's freedom.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So on one side, you have this determinism, which is the idea that everything happens is fate, you know, it's determined.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you have this other side, free will.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The real question is, am I the captain of my ship?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: This question is not asked primarily in Christian circles, but primarily by everybody else.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Am I the captain of my ship or am I sailing on a ship controlled by some unknown autopilot?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the church, we face the same issue because we talk about God being in control, God's sovereignty, and can man deviate from God's plan?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's man's free will, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's discussed by everybody, it's argued about by everybody.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh frankly, there's a quote by one of the Kansas City Chiefs that ties into this in the last week, week and a half.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, my favorite quote is your favorite quote, and that is the quote from Andy Reid, Coach Andy Reid, this last Monday when he was at a press conference, and they asked him, Did you sleep last night?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Not a wink.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then they said, Did you spend the night with the Lombardy trophy?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I didn't spend the night with the trophy, I spent the night with my trophy wife.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Great quote.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the quote that has to do with this morning sermon was a quote a day or two before that by Tyree Kill, wide receiver, really speedy guy for the Kansas City Chiefs.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: When they ask him who's gonna win, and he said, Of course, the Chiefs.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sure?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Yes.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of course we'll win.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to know we're gonna win.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says, because every day over the last two weeks I've gone home after practice and I have played Madden football, Madden NFL video game.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, What happened?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I said, We won every time.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, every single game I played, I threw the ball to me.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had Mahomes throw the ball to me, and we won every game.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fixed.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way we can lose.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, was he right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was it determined?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Was it fate?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, no, I watched the game.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It could have gone either way.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It really was tight.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you hadn't caught that 50-yard bomb on third and 15 with seven minutes to go, the outcome of that game might well have been different.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the primary picture in the Bible for this debate between fate and human choice or human action is the picture of the potter in the clay.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the primary picture of that is carried to us in our chapter this morning, Jeremiah 18.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, turn to the 18th chapter of Jeremiah or ring it up on your cell phone as we take a look at it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is the best symbolic act, as scholars call it, the best show and tell, the most famous one in all of Jeremiah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take you to the first 12 verses here.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about the implications of this for your life and my life.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't care so much about solving the philosophical or theological problem, but it has incredible implications for you and your future.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the show of the show and tell is when God says, listen, this is the NET Bible, New English Translation.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to Jeremiah, go down at once to the potter's house.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Jerusalem, 600 BC.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're only 20 years away from Jerusalem, collapsing and falling entirely to Babylon.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but the Lord says to prophet Jeremiah, go down at once to the potter's house.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll speak to you from there.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Further there.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I went down to the potter's house and I found him working at his wheel.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that day, Jerusalem was not the megapolis it is now.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little peanut of a place, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe 20,000 people if you include the suburbs.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So at the top of Mount Zion, the highest area, was Solomon's temple.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was up there, and then you had the priests who lived close by, and then you have in the city proper, you have the king's palace.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: This would have been where David was walking around on the roof.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Shame, shame.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, but this is 400 years after that.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have where the people live, and down the south, down at the lowest part, you have the shops.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have the potter shop and so forth.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: We know that because we are told in other places in Jeremiah, what they would do is they would take the broken down pottery and the other trash and they would throw it out the gate down into the valley.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is the famous valley of Kidron, the Mount of Olives to the right.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's 50 feet lower today than it was than it is today.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But then you have the Valley of Henam, which was also called by them in that day.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Their nickname was the fire pit, because it was always burning.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: There were dead children's bodies because they were unfortunately sacrificing some of their babies to the god Molech, who was set up here, you know, and they had trash down there and dung, and they would throw pottery out there, and so that's why the potter shops were down here.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah got up and he went down.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in your Bible, it may say, Arise and go down, or get up and go down.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But what that means is go down at once to the potter's house.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah didn't say, Let me catch another cup of coffee first.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We read, he said, So I went down to the potter's house.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Immediate obedience.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, I caught him, I found him working at the wheel.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, or literally, behold, he was working at the two stones.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, have you heard about the guy who fell asleep at the wheel?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Ruined his pottery.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ruined his pottery.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh sorry.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, he was working at the two stones.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: You like that?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, that's not my only pun this morning.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we have two stones here.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's plural.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: We had a stone that his foot moved, and then he had a horizontal bar in there hooked to another stone that he rotated and then he worked the clay.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is 600 BC.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly enough, a very similar thing, you know, they were still making pottery the same way 2,000 years later, in the days of Robin Hood, Martin Luther, 1600 AD, he rotates the stone with his foot, and but then it turned into wood, and then he made pottery there.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if any of you have ever seen a potter work or ever fashioned something on a potter's wheel, you know it's it's really cool.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you haven't, if you're like me, you know, and you don't have much gift with that.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: At least you made mud pies when you're young.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe when you go to the beach, you know, our tech guy, Sam, have you ever looked on his Facebook page?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever they go to the beach, he spends, he abandons his wife for like the whole day, gets like hairspray and water, and builds these castles and other stuff on the beach.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is rather remarkable, okay?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: People like me, though, I still appreciate pottery.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have an addiction to ancient Israelite pottery, but I love looking at good pottery.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So probably a lot of you can sympathize with this amazing picture, which is a picture in the Bible of God's relationship to man.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there are three, uh, as we get to verse four, we see that there are three key phrases here.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now and then, this is the show part, Jeremiah's watching the potter work, there would be something wrong with the pot he was molding from the clay with his hands.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he would get this rework the clay into another kind of pot as he saw fit, which tells us four things.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: These three phrases tell us four things.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: For one, that clay can resist and even thwwart the potter's plan.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Once a potter in Topeka allowed me, she allowed me for a little while to knead some clay, to make it soft, to squeeze it, put water on it, and to put and to try to work something out of it.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was astonished at how hard that was because the wheels moving and that centrifugal force, and she kept saying, press harder, be harder.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, this is work, you know.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because clay resists your hand.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: It tends to fight you, and you have to work with it, and it's hard, no matter how soft you think you've gotten it, and that has profound implications, doesn't it, for this whole debate of determinism, the potter, versus free will, the clay, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Determinism is the potter controls everything, the clay has no chance at all, but we're reading in this passage that the clay actually has power to resist.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it happens to be really popular in today's scientific circles to say that free will is an absolute illusion.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the Atlantic magazine, it used to be the Atlantic Monthly, a cover of that magazine said there's no such thing as free will.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Picture a man starting to walk through an arrow, every which step of the way there is a number associated with it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that's numerology or whatever.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Scientists say that free will is an illusion today.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, they're simply agreeing with the horoscope or with numerology or ancient pagan religions of tearing apart bodies and livers and so forth.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your horoscope.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, if if you're born today, you're an Aquarius, and you should know, I know you're gonna really be sad to hear this, that you love people and you love art and you love romance.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: What a surprise.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: You may be surprised though.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: The one startling thing here is you like organic meals.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, they they get back to what you like here, and you also like looking good.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hear it for looking good.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you may not be into, you may not be into uh the zodiac, you may be into numerology.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were born, by the way, today, on February 9th, in the year 2000, your number happens to be four, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And everything about your life is determined by that life number.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to be the only number that's outside of one through zero.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm number 11, which happens to mean come talk to me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm psychic.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's me.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm psychic, according to numeral.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So so uh this one is determined by where the planets were the day you were born, and this is determined by your actual birth date.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, that's so stupid and so silly, but people really do believe that.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: The average horoscope, 70 some percent of the readers of Cosmopolitan magazine say that they are fixated and addicted to horoscopes.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The average one is a 24-year-old female.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a lot of people today that believe in a kind of determinism that your fate is determined.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite cartoons, Calvin and Hobbes.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Calvin asks Hobbes, do you believe our destinies are determined by the stars?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hobbes, nah.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I do.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Really, how come?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Life's a lot more fun when you're not responsible for your actions.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can we all say amen?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And become determinists.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the question of God's sovereignty as well, and man's free will, what we oftentimes call predestination.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, how much of your life is set ahead of time?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're 20, 30, 40, you're going, wow, do I really have any choice?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: This passage says, yes, that clay resists and at times thwarts the potter's plan.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: There is a human element.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: However, we must balance that because the Apostle Paul in the New Testament picks up Jeremiah's picture and he says in Romans 9, the potter has the power, the potter does as he wills.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is form say to the one who formed it?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you make me like this?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't the potter have the right over the clay to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for destruction?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: The power of the potter, I think, is illustrated by Clint Eastwood.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know he was a potter?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I fashioned a pot and he went over and told him, you know, at the fire at the kiln, he said, bake my clay.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know that?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, sorry.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: My second pun.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I may have a third one for you, okay?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, how do you how do you balance this God side and this man's side?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite book on the issues, one I'm taking some guys through now.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've been taking people through it for a couple of years, called Hand Small H.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's your hand, my hand, human hands.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hand in, capital H hand, God's hand.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is a balance.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the most fair and balanced book on the subject of God's sovereignty and human freedom I have ever seen, entitled The Beauty, subtitled, The Beauty of God's Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Randy, great guy, I know him, out in Gresham, Oregon, quotes A.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: W.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Tozer as saying, a God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom on his creatures, he would be afraid to do so.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So somehow the Bible teaches both sides, God and man, but we get into Jeremiah 18 and we find that, first of all, the clay can resist the potter.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, can you say, thank God, the potter does not throw away the clay?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: What happens?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're forming a pot, you're forming something else, and then maybe you've seen it, and then the whole thing gets a little warped, it gets catty wompous, and it's just as ugly, and you know, it's ruined, it's spoiled, it's warped.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the potter could take that clay, could throw it away and go out to the hill and dig himself some more clay, but he doesn't.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: The point of this is that he reworks the clay into another kind of pot as he sees fit.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy that the potter doesn't throw away the clay.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Third, what he does is he revises his plan and he reshapes the clay.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, the potter remains in control and accomplishes his goal as he sees fit.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let me run this by you one more time, these four lessons.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you another translation, quite a bit different, more literal, actually.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever the vessel he's making from the clay was spoiled, this time says spoiled instead of something wrong.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is more accurate, spoiled, ruined, warped, he would turn around and fashion it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The word turn is actually in here, picturing how the potter goes, oh, what a mess.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then he goes, Okay, I'm gonna do this with it now.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he turns and then fashions it into another vessel according to his liking, as the apostle Paul would say, according to the pleasure of his will.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And those four lessons once again, clay can resist.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can resist and even thwart the potter's plan.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, the potter does not throw away the clay.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, the potter revises his plan, reshapes the clay.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, the potter remains in control and accomplishes his goal.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's verses one, two, three, and four.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the show.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now comes the tell, as God says to Jeremiah, I the Lord say, O nation of Israel, can I not deal with you as this potter deals with the clay?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: In my hands you, O nation of Israel, are just like the clay in this potter's hand.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the lesson here is huge.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: God is the potter, and I am the clay.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't get clearer than this.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think that a couple hundred years later, the Greek philosopher, the greatest philosopher perhaps of all time, Aristotle, agreed with this.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: After all, you say, why would you think that Aristotle would agree that he was the clay and that God's the potter?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is, after all, he was taught by Plato.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, sorry about that.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Makes sense to me.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Makes sense to me.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Isaiah 64.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 64 says it very well.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are the clay, and you are our potter, and we all are the work of your hand.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: God is the potter and I am the clay.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: God is the potter and I am the clay.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now we get to really surprising four verses.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is the choice, verses 7 through 10.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: God says, There are times when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if that nation stops doing wrong, I will, and the word actually suddenly is in here and not translated very often, but if that nation, I will, at the very moment that I see a change in the heart, in the activity of the person or the nation that I am about to judge, if that nation stops doing, I'll cancel the destruction I intended to do to it.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, you remember that famous story, don't you, about Jonah who ran away from God and finally went to Nineveh.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: He did not want to go to those evil, awful, terrible enemies of his, and they said, but he said, 40 days you're going to be destroyed.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately, stunningly, all those pagans in Assyria fell down.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: They all wept.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: They even put sackcloth and ashes on their cats, dogs, and cows.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: They pulled down their idols.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: They repented.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: They went back to God.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Jonah, tell them I'm not going to destroy them after all.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah was so mad.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says, If I'd have known this, I'd have never come and preached.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want them to repent.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted them to get killed, you know, as in K-I-L-T kilt.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: But they were repenting, and God says, It's my principle.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: My principle.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've turned, they've repented, therefore I'm going to forgive them.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then he flips and goes the opposite direction, 9 and 10.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are times using the same words.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, there are times I promise to build up and establish a nation or kingdom.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if that nation does what displeases me and doesn't obey me, then I'll cancel the good that I promised.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, I'll revoke the good that I promise to do it.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll do it suddenly.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do it immediately.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting how God flexes depending on your activity?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like the famous story of the middle-aged woman who went to the hospital.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: She had a heart attack, and as she was lying on the operating table, she had a near-death experience.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And while she was having a near-death experience, she met up with God.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: She says, God, I guess this is it, right?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm dying.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's over.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, No, actually, not really.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've got another 30 years to live.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when she woke up on the operating table, she was giddy, she was happy.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: They sent her to her room.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: They told her it'd be a lengthy time of recovery in the hospital.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Yes, I'm gonna take advantage of this.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So she called in all special doctors, and she had a liposuction, and she had collagen injections, and she had, you know, they sucked all that stuff out of her belly and they changed her hair, and you know, they did everything so she looked just totally suave because she was gonna live for another thing.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: 30 years, they discharge her from the hospital.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: A month or two later, she walked out of the hospital.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: As she's walking to her car, she got hit by an ambulance and died.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: She goes to heaven.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: She marches straight up to God and said, Well, Gibbs, I thought you told me I had 30 more years to live.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: God says, Yeah, I did.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: God shrugs and said, I didn't recognize you.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: But that illustrates kind of, not perfectly, the fact that God can have plans for us, but they are conditional.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: They depend to some extent on our activity.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I will reverse the good or reverse the ill, depending on your behavior.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we end the passage with an invitation, which is almost like Billy Graham, you know, at the end of his message, putting up his hands and saying, please, because God says this to his people.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He says, So now tell the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem this.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord says, I'm preparing to bring disaster on you.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm going with you, with your pot, right here.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm making plans to punish you.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So every one of you, stop the evil things you've been doing and correct the way you've been living and do what's right.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: They could have changed.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: They could have stopped right then.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: They could have turned around, and God being all messed up, and God would have revised his plan and he would have done something wonderful with them.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because God loves to rework marred vessels.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: I collect, like I said, ancient Israelite pottery.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is a this is a little juglet.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is a beautiful uh juglet.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell it would have been difficult to work this, you know.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what is it, 2,500 years ago, at about the time of Jeremiah, they would have put uh either olive oil or, if they were well to do, perfume in here.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so they could have poured olive oil from this at the table.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful little, but you can tell it's got this delicate little handle and a slim neck, and you can you can imagine how, as the potter is making this, it would be easy for the clay to fight the potter and for this thing to come out marred, and then wow, what's he going to do?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't throw the clay away.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: I picture the potter, and maybe this was the very potter Jeremiah was looking at, because this oil lamp comes from the very days of Jeremiah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think that Jeremiah perhaps saw this being made.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: That the potter took that juglet and dreamed up another way of using it, a way that could really be useful, and he made an oil lamp out of it.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know that this dates from 600 BC?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have all of the oil lamps from ancient Israel, and this is the first time that this is the first time they ever put bases on oil lamps was around the time of Jeremiah.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody finally got smart, the oil lamps were kind of wobbly and the olive oil would drip out.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: They put the wick right here.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: They had some that had two wicks, but that didn't work.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: It burned the oil too quickly, woman would have to get up too often at night to replenish it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they used one wick, one wick here, so it's filled with olive oil, and this is flanged out.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was the way it was in Iron Age II, which it's called in archaeology, and they had this base.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was really heavy.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I could actually drop it right here, and probably wouldn't break.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, I have dropped it, and it's strong.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if this happened to you, you might say, if God shaped you into something new, you might say, you know, my plans for my life were that I was going to be fragrant.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: My plans for my life was that I was going to go to Hollywood, I'd become a singer, I'd be something that everybody would absolutely adore, it'd be something beautiful, something graceful.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: But then after that accident happened to me, or after I lost my voice, or after I, you know, went through that, I'm not there anymore.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do now?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You ask that person.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: They say, well, actually, uh, I do have a Bible study, or I get to share the light with people.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have a Bible study with my friends, and we talk about Jesus.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: You see, God doesn't say that plan B is worse than plan A.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: He just says that when plan A falls apart and gets messed up for whatever reason, whether it's your fault or somebody else's fault, you stay in his hand.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: He keeps his grip on you, he keeps caring for you, and he fashions you into something different.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: We can be happy for that, can't we?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so now his invitation is, you know, you're heading downhill, but if you'll just allow me, if it just becomes soft and pliable and turn toward me, I'll reverse what's happening and I'll make your life great.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the sad end of this story is that Jeremiah reports to the Lord, they just keep saying, we don't care what you say, we will do whatever we want to do.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: We will continue to behave wickedly and stubbornly.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, just 20 years later, they went into exile to the mighty Babylonian army, and some of them were never seen again.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But they had a choice.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: They got an invitation.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let me review really quickly nine lessons from the potter's house.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them you've heard already, some of you haven't.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, God is the potter and I am the clay.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like the clay in the potter's hand, says verse six, so are you in my hand.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: You are the clay.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, God has a plan to fashion me into something beautiful and useful.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what God's goal is.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have plans for you.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is gonna quote God a few chapters later, famously in Jeremiah 2011.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have plans for you, plans for a future and a hope for you.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're good plans.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want to form you into something beautiful and useful.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that means he's not finished with you yet.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care how old you are, I don't care how young you are, I don't care whether you think you're fashioned and complete, you're not.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: No matter who you are, until you stand before him, you are a work in progress.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's working on you.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's planning to make you more beautiful and useful than you are today.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Problem is, numbers four, five, and six, I'm not naturally pliable or soft or cooperative.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm resistant.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like a stubborn son whose father begs him to be compliant, even offers him rewards, and he says, no way.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like clay that resists the hand of the potter.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that I can fight my potter's hand and I can even thwart his plans.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's not the kind of a God who treats me like a robot and forces me to do his will.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, though, when I do this, I get messed up.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I get spoiled, I get warped, I get ruined.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's happened to you.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's happened to me.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps as you sit there today, you're spoiled, warped, and ruined.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: But positively, seven, eight, and nine, God does not throw me away.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: He keeps me in his hand.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes up with a new plan.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, in this new plan, he gives me a choice.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Will you be pliable?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Will you go along with my agenda?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to form something wonderful out of you.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Will you fight me or will you join me?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Number nine, or before number nine, that's why he writes famously, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, number two, pray, number three, seek my face, number four, turn from their wicked way.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'll hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just waiting, but I'm waiting for that if.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm waiting for you to become pliable and cooperative in my hands.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's inviting me to become soft in his hand and yield to his plan.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you know Melody and I take these trips over to Israel every year or two.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's been several trips back now that I took the group at their request, some of the people in the group, to my, I guess, my favorite pottery shop in the old city of Jerusalem.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's called by the Baiduon Shop, B-A-I-D-U-N-Kadir, K-H-A-D-E-R.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Baidun's famous.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's been in National Geographic.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: His was the very first shop that the British allowed in 1930.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: His was the only shop in Jerusalem for a while.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's fabulously wealthy.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: He and I, uh since I first my first time over there in 1973, I bought a lot of stuff from him, bargained him down, we're friends, and he knows me by name, and vice versa.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I took this group there some years ago, not that many years for this trip.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: We went in, and as I was looking at his stuff, now by the way, his shop is nothing at all like Hobby Lobby, where everything is really nice, and like most pottery shops, you know, everything nice, a pot here, pot here, pot here, everything labeled.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, this shop of Baidune has got stacks of stuff up against the wall and everything.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like it's this old shop that dates, it's 80 years old, and it's so cool, and it smells cool.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's dust everywhere and valuables everywhere, and coins and nails from the, you know, the cross and stuff like this and pottery.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the most reputable shop in the entire world of ancient Israelite pottery, which is why I like it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm in there on this day.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, he has a fancy shop next door where he has one pot here for a thousand, another pot here for two thousand, and so forth.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go over to the fancy shop if you want to.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just don't expect to bargain over there, okay?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: But in this shop, I notice behind his desk, I notice this beautiful zoomorphic.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: In pottery, you call it zoomorphic, means it's an animal figure of a pitcher or a pot or something like that.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is the potter.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some expert potter who, even though it's really hard to make narrow, beautiful, little delicate vessels, decided he would actually spend maybe an entire day and make an animal, make some sort of a pot into an animal with an animal face, always either a bird or a cow, at least, usually those two.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw this, and you can go into pottery shops all day long and never see one of these things.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can go online even today and look at some of the biggest pottery shops in the world of ancient Israelite pottery, only find one out of a thousand pieces that's like this.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw this piece, and it was absolutely beautiful.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was a bird, it was shaped with a bird's head, and and and it would you put wine in it, and then you would pour it, and the wine would shoot out the bird's mouth like this.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was astounded.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Would you like to look at it?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yes.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he brought it over and he put it on a ledge.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I stared at it and I just kept marveling how beautiful it was.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: He caught air and said, Would you like to buy it?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Ha ha right.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, I said, remember, I'm the guy that bargains you down to$100 on things each time I come.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I don't have the money to pay multiple thousands of dollars for a one-of-a-kind, rare, beautiful piece like this.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so he went on, and he and the other group, people in the group, are shopping, and he's selling them stuff, and so it was an hour or two later, and we decided, you know, it's time to leave.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting them together, and as I turn, after saying goodbye to him, my elbow hits this pot and knocks it to the floor and shatters it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: There have only been a few times in my life where I've been as mortified by something I did as them.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I fell to my knees, I wailed, I tried to pick up pieces.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was absolutely gracious.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it, he said, don't worry about it, I'll sweep it up, throw it away.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm so so sorry.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I stayed there as he swept it up, and then he said, Would you like the pieces?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, I would.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I put him in one of those little plastic bags, and I took him and I took him home, and I took him to Melody and I said, Melody, I know it's crazy.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Part of this thing just exploded into dust, 2,500 years old.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there are teeny little pieces here, pieces a little bit larger.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you can do anything with this, wow.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: She worked on it in secret for the better part of a year, and then she presented it to me, one of the finest gifts she's ever given me, I think.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: My next birthday.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I uh cherish it.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I cherish it for a couple of reasons.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: I cherish it because it's rare, it's one of a kind, it's beautiful.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I picture how a uh a wealthy woman, it would have taken a wealthy woman on any day, but this is the days, these are the days of Jeremiah, actually, that this dates from.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah and Isaiah would have poured wine in here and then would have in front of her guests poured it out of the bird's mouth into their cups.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love it because it's so rare and it's so beautiful, it has wings, it has a tail, it has a bird's head with a kind of a crest.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you know why I really love it.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love it because it was broken, and you see the marks of brokenness all over it.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: You see holes where the pieces were so tiny they just couldn't stay.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you see a vessel that has been reworked when it was broken, and has been remade into something absolutely, I think, beautiful.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't take the rest of my collection for this one piece.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think when I was young, when I was in middle school, high school, I used to think I was absolutely unique.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know, I know I'm a little weird, but you know, nobody has ever felt the way I do about things.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has ever felt as lonely as I do sometimes.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's ever felt in love that's unrequited.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she never looks back.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: I felt unique.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize that I was like everyone else.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was just a piece of clay.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: The older you get, though, especially in the ministry, you realize you're talking with people and you realize, wow, there's they come to me and they say, Man, they messed up their life in high school, or messed up their life in college, did some crazy things, sowed some wild oats.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that person, they came to me and said, Wow, I married the wrong person, or I treated, I said the wrong thing, and my marriage got really ruined.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: It got spoiled.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or man, when I was raising my kids, oh my goodness, this one kid, we just didn't get along, and then I said something, and they haven't spoken to me since.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just feel like an absolute messed up, spoiled, ruined failure as a husband, or as a father, or a mother, or as a Christian.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I like that pot, that beautiful wine juglet that's broken and shattered because it reminds me that God's not done with us yet.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he loves to take broken people, people who, wow, to be honest, we're alike, aren't we?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I messed up my life and high school and college did things that I'll always regret.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was married and knew that I'd endangered my marriage because of my behavior.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had children and endangered a relationship with a with a child because of what I'd said.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, my vessel was really, it was a mess, and it was close to being ruined or spoiled or forever broken.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow God kept a grip on me and he cared for me and he repaired me, he made something different, something usable, something beautiful out of me.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes to us today and he says, Listen, just two questions.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, don't I have the right to do with you as a potter does with his clay?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, won't you be soft and pliable in my hands and go along with my plan for you?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you'll like it when I'm done.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Will you just respond to me?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Have thine own way.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Have thine own way.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thou art the potter, I am the clay, mold me and make me after thy will.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Watching and waiting, yielded and still.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me in a word of prayer, will you?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: In this moment, we all come face to face with the fact that we ourselves have been broken.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: We ourselves have gotten messed up.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've said things, we've done things that we regret, and it has temporarily at least spoiled us, ruined our relationships.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we are so, so grateful that you keep us in your hand, that you reshape us.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: You say, I want to rework you, I want to make something better, something beautiful out of you.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll just stay with me, if you'll just allow me to change your heart, make you something new.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll let me be the potter, let you be the clay.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we do that in this moment.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: We tell you that this day, this week, this month, this year, the rest of our lives, we want to be yours, your pot, your juglet, your bowl, your lamb.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Shape us and make us something wonderful.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just because that's what you want.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 40:21
  unknown: Amen.