The Potter's House (Dr. Ralph West, Sr.)

the family of First Baptist Church Indian training welcomes [Music] join with senior pastor dr. Mike whitson as represent decision for life welcome to First Baptist Church Indian Trail [Applause] when I got the invitation I was coming to First Baptist Indian Trail I put out my lexicon to make sure that I represented our church and the law at the bright way so I wanted to get you know some big and heavy words to express my gratitude so here goes let me try I'm hippopotamus Lee happy an elephant Lee glad to be here on tonight worship has been rich and rewarding what a warm and winsome expression of God's grace that we have already encountered I'm glad to be here I want to invite you to take your Bibles now I actually have a physical Bible but I didn't bring it with me that may not be a good way to start but I do have a Bible would you stand with me for the reading of God's Word in Jeremiah chapter 18 commencing at verse 1 in concluding at verse 8 this text is so tailored to teach us tonight that when you put your life in God's hands your failures are never found hear what God says to his people from his word the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord go down to the potter's house and there I would give you my message so he went down to the potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel but the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands so the Potter formed it into another part shaping it as it seemed best to him then the word of the Lord came to me and he said can I not do first Baptists Indian trails as this Potter does like clay in the hand of the Potter so are you in my hand Israel this is the Word of God you may be seated several years ago Sherita and I were in London and we took a cab to take us on Regent Street between Oxford and Piccadilly Circus I was told that the most famous Potter that ever lived had a store dedicated in his name Josiah Blake Wedgwood and so I took a trip to his house to see his work he was an eighteenth-century Potter and a Trinities to a father that was a Potter and in the great yellow fever epidemic he lost one of his legs and learned how to turn the wheel with the other leg and somewhere not since then are now his ability to touch and tone the texture of the pliable clay has never been matched it was a delightful experience to go and see what Wedgwood had accomplished and for a store to be named in Arlington it was a trip I took a young preacher to the potter's house but then I thought in a higher holier sense another trip of a nother prophet that had gone to a house to go to see the work of a Potter at the wheel working with clay and the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and said go to the potter's house and I want to show you my word there's something inherent in pottery that seems to be matted to the Ministry of God and how he works at the life of the there's something unchanging regardless of where you go powders work the same way I was in Mexico once and I went and I saw a powder working his craft and he worked at the same way that I saw a 17th generation model work adjacent to the grave of Abraham and Sarah at Hebron there were different locations and geography but no different than the way the powder worked in Johannesburg South Africa working at the wheel technology changes instruments that we use in technology change but the way Potter's work at the wheel worked the same way I don't know if that's why God told Jeremiah to go to the potter's house or not but it seems that he sent him to a place where Jeremiah could experience that God works the same way yesterday today and forever more here tonight if you would for the next little while go with me to the potter's house because that seems to be some life lessons that you and I can learn tonight and that we can apply to our heart and experienced a great grace that only God can give to us in the potter's house we do learn that lesson that all of us have encountered some failures and some because of fear you have gotten out of the race but failure tonight according to this text is not final inside the Potters Hut you see the Potter and by the way for those who are students of Scripture this is an allegory not all text like this are to be interpreted this way but this is an allegory that the Potter stands in for God and the wheel for life circumstances and the clay for Humanity in it we learn lessons about the power that the powder that the vine Potter is like the human powder in only one way and that is the divine powder and the human powder have the same privileges to touch the texture and tone it at will whenever wherever and however they want to touch it that's the similarity of the divine Potter and the human partner one of the great battlegrounds that humanity wrestles with is over the battlefield of the mind Chuck Colson said that the greatest battlefield of the mind is whether or not we believe in the creation or not if we can get that right we can get everything else right but if we believe that we are some kind of fortuitous accidental biochemistry then we're gonna have a rough go at it but if we believe that there is a God and I believe there is then we believe that God has the divine right as creator to touch us wherever whenever and however he wants to touch us but the divine party is different from the human Potter in some other ways for the human puddle is filled with flaws regardless of how skill Blake Wedgwood might be and other Potter's there's always a flaw in that technique in that texture the way they touch and tone they're not perfectionist but not so with God God is the perfect partner that when he touches us he always gets the best out of there's another way in which the divine party is not like the human Potter and that is the human Potter can only work at one vessel at a time I've seen them working that craft and they'll stand there and that that will rather they'll sit there and there work that clay and they keep their focus on what they are working on and if they are distracted from it just these slightest distraction can cause a serious flaw and Mar the vessel in the hand of the Potter but not so with God God can work with us tonight and First Baptist Indian Trail while he's working with the people at the church with our walls in Houston Texas where the human Pollock had only worked with one vessel God the and work with billions of vessels and not more any one of them at any one time but then as a final differentiation and that is the divine Potter is not like the human Potter in the sense that the human Potter never created the clay it has to rely upon a creator but God who has created the clay knows how best to work with the clay hopefully tonight if I don't say anything else you will leave home leave here to go home with a sense of encouragement over maybe some wife a husband or son or daughter or grandchild that seemed to have gotten out of the way to know that since God created them God knows how to reach them grab them and bring them back to himself hallelujah tonight father layer if we left tonight out of the hut of the Potter you and I really said enough to be encouraged but change the angle of vision and you see that Jeremiah didn't stop just with the Potter but he looked at the wheel and owned it was the clay and the clay was symbolic of humanity and so as he looked at the clay he said we too like the Potter are like that clay in one way and that is we have been created for one single purpose and that is to yield our lives under God in the same way that a lot yields to a key arbol years to our violin yields to a bow bow we too are created to yield to God and as only when we yield to him do we really experience what peace and real life and real joy really looks like some years ago I was in what people in Western Europe say is the most famous address in that country number 19 for Gaza Street in Vienna some of you know what that room represents it is the waiting room of the famed atheist psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud the same bro gave furniture sits out there and I stood then I thought that he was a man who made such a contribution to medicine and one thing that he would say to his patients though if you want peace you need to get rid of your neurosis and he said the biggest neurosis you need to get rid of is the Renault Renault the Roses that there is a God up there out there somewhere he said get rid of that and you'll have peace and then I thought about how he lived his life a man with absolutely no peace then before I left I said you know sigmund freud's room is still kept the way it was when people would enter in that but he's gone but the very one that he said to get rid of is still here some of y'all to get that limited he says get rid of God get rid of this image of Jesus and I looked at and I said fraud been gone but Jesus are still here and when you are gone and when I'm gone he'll still be here in fact heaven and earth will pass away but the Lord Jesus were stared for Hellfire if that's all I had to say that too would be enough for us to leave here saying I understand the role of the party and the clay the step to the other side and look at another angle of vision and there is the power there's the clay on the wheel but there is the wheel itself and the wheel turns round and round and round sometimes up and sometimes down and sometimes level to the ground circumstances have a way of getting at the best of us circumstances sometimes people get so frustrated with them they say that these circumstances have broken me they they break me but tonight the very things that can break you are the things that God can use to make you God can take those very circumstances in your life to make the difference especially when we understand what we've been made out of one day a rosebush had a conversation with a footbath and in the conversation the footpad said to the rosebush I'm always amazed when people step on you you get sweeter but when they step on me I get harder what's the difference and the rosebush says the difference is simple the song that melts the wax hardens the clay he said it's what you're made out of it's what's inside of you is how you respond to the circumstances around you some people in bad circumstances they get bitter there are some other people in bad circumstances they really get better there are some people that quit and there are others that join in and that's what circumstances of life does it's kind of like the dramatic monologue that our Robert Browning conducts with Rabbi Ben Ezra when he talks about the wheel of the plastic dance and that is these circumstances turned round and round and round and you don't know where they're gonna leave you but you have left up to you how you're gonna respond to the circumstances that have happened to you I don't know what's gonna happen to us but we do have a right and a responsibility of how we respond to what has happened to us and this is the image that Jeremiah had when the word of the Lord came to him and said go into the potter's house but you know what's strange other people that actually think great people that we know have reached their heights went out some sirree is circumstances I mean you can go down the list and just name whether they be athletes or academics or people who have reached Heights and almost always in all of their lives there's some hard circumstance that help prepare them to where they are I'm a music lover I don't know anything about music and y'all better be glad I don't cuz I probably wouldn't speak to anybody but I love listening to music and I have had the chance to sit in Mozart's hearts I didn't know anything about how to listen to Symphony music I had to actually take a course so how do you listen to this and so I sat in there and the DOS song gave me some background on what some people say is the greatest musical genius in world history said Mozart have been many times exploited by Lil pol his dad he would take advantage of his gifts to make money for the family Mozart then would leave and he would go to Vienna and he would almost be a vagabond in some ways in a sense of not having a job for six years and moving 13 times or 11 times in 13 years but he never stopped writing music out of work but he never stopped writing music moving from place to place and he never stopped writing music he never lets circumstances stop him from doing what he believed God had called him to do and tonight I encourage you I even and challenge you that whatever circumstances you are going through from one place to the next don't stop doing what God has called you to do I don't care how hard the church is keep on preaching I don't care how difficult the sir Stan's keep on singing it doesn't matter how bad life is cheap on uttering cheap on leading keep on teaching until the Lord says well done good and faithful servant will done circumstances that's how God makes us but beyond how God makes us look at how life Marrs us in the fourth verse there's the beautiful image that when Jeremiah sees the Potter at the wheel working he notices that the pot in the hand of the powder gets marred and he goes back and reworks the power now I want to say that for a minute because look at the beauty of what this word is saying Jeremiah observes as the word has shown to him that the power works at a vessel the vessel is marred in the hand of the power and if I got to be more let me be marred in God's hands because if God is holding me then God can sure help me and God can fix me and God can keep me so here he is working and the Potter is being the pottery is being marred but do you see what happens the product keeps going back to the very place where the pottery has been marred which is a picture of God's patience that God keeps on going back to the very place where we need him the most when the Potter is working at the wheel and the claim is in his head he takes his delicate fingers and possibly feels a rock or stone or stick he has to pull it out the remover might Mar the very vessel that he's working on but he goes back and starts working filling in and reshaping possibly but he stays at it until he gets it right and so tonight some of you God has been working and working and working in your life until he gets it right I hear what you're saying that's my neighbor not me because when you look at the story or this allegory you pick up and you said well who we gonna blame because a lot of times we want to blame the Potter you know we get mad at God and we blow up at him and we say it's God's fault as a pastor I hear people say that to me pass you don't understand as if I live on another planet some of you you very people say that to you and they come to you they know you're Christian they know you go to the church and they need help they feel like you can help them but then they make this comment what you don't understand as if you don't live in the real world where we live in is in the real world it's the real world but they blow up at God but other times other times they blow up at their circumstances don't they yeah they blame the circumstances the wheel that turns up round and round they blame that so I was in Hawaii and we go up to the what is the big volcano and I was looking for a lot of spewing you know flames I'm looking for drama Kilauea and and all I saw were Klum's a smoke coming up and this where she was all excited about it and I act like I was excited about it and at the absorber Tory the man observes all he says it's a active volcano I couldn't see this cuz it's carried down in the earth then you remember a couple of years ago this active volcano starts spewing out its lava and it's tearing up homes and towns in its wake and I said that that's people I know underneath the skin beneath their prams of smoke that come up yet but they're boiling inside mad a guarded mad at life and just waiting for the right moment to spew everything out waiting for word I said that's people that blame circumstances so if you can't blame the parlor and you cannot blame the wheel who do you blame like preaching to y'all I see you ready to just say you blame the clay it's nothing wrong with the Potter getting that wrong with the wheel all aw but is something wrong with the clay clay is broken and it's marred and it's scarred and at best we can say tonight that we have a god that is patiently working with us not my pastor used to say this when you would go and you were put in a church and he was staying to give the pass of the charge I can hear him now in my ears he would say there are three things that I want to say to you tonight and then he would say number one be patient number two be patient number three be patient we chuckle at it because we know if it had not been for the patience of God with us many of us wouldn't be here tonight that God has been patient with us and he's been so patient to work with us because he knows what he's working with one of the top leaders in all of the world even now when they say who a top leaders in the top five the name Moses still appears and for the first 40 years of Moses life he's working working working to become somebody he learns math and astrology and science in architecture and he's working at being somebody then one misstep in life sends him to the backside of the desert and he spends the next 40 years learning that he's nobody and in the last 40 years of his life he is celebrating that he has learned that when a person thinks that they are somebody and only learned that that nobody think that that God can use anybody tonight many of us are used because like Moses we remember when we was trying to be somebody only to discover we were nobody and now we'll rejoice it that God can use anybody I'm done but let me preach the gospel now because there's one last thing in the story you see how God makes us how light Mars us but then finally how God mends us how God puts us back together and that's always a process that God is working and working and working on us to get us back to make us into what he wants us to do and to be so here it is and I see now you got Jeremiah down at the potter's house and he sees what's taking place and then God says I want to put Jeremiah 18 into practice because in the nineteenth chapter you discover that Jeremiah comes in with this beautiful pottery and he walks to the edge of the cliff and he throws it down he has Congress and the Senate and he got that the Southern Baptist with him and the National Baptist all following him and he breaks this this beautiful piece of pottery and it shatters into pieces that's chapter 19 in fact when you go to the Holy Land they'll take you to that place and you can dig down in there and find the rubble and only does that happen when the pottery just won't work right in God's hand so God says I've got to fix Ralph's West and Apollo in a house can do it so I gotta get me a powder that's an expert in dealing with broken materials so when he tried everybody he could try Abraham didn't work Isaac couldn't do it Jacob can do it and Joseph couldn't do it God said to get a part that knows how to specialize in broken material and so he reached over and he saw his own son and he said I'm gonna send you six hundred years into the future and this is what we read and the word became flesh because it had to become when it was going work out and so the word became flesh and we dwell and he dwelt among us and we beheld the glory let the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth and the night the only reason why you were here the night it because we have a God in Jesus Christ that went to a hill called Calvary and all that all read across i'm preach for myself they hung him up that and he died but thank God he didn't stay there but I early one Sunday morning he got up with all power power the street natural life power to pick you up power to raise the dead power to give sight to those that cannot see power to unstop deaf ears that they may hear the melody of God power to put running in your feet clapping in your hand sure in your heart and I'm gonna sit down when I tell you but this joy that I have the world didn't give it to me and the world can't taken away this love that I had the world didn't give it and the world can't take it away this peace the world didn't give it and the well can't take it away I better sit down now but my soul got happy there's hope the world did not give it and the world can't take it away this hope have this joy only God can give only God can't give it only God can give it thank you for watching decision for life our location Life Group and program information available online at FB CIT dot org we hope you will take the opportunity to join us in person thank you from the family of First Baptist Church Indian Trail [Music]

Channel: First Baptist Church Indian Trail

Views: 7,045

Rating: 4.6266665 out of 5

Keywords: Dr. Mike Whitson, First Baptist Church Indian Trail, North Carolina First Baptist Church, Worship Service 2018, Baptist Church Service 2018, FBCIT worship music, First Baptist Indian Trail music, Indian Trail Christmas Musical, You are Great worship, How Great Thou Art worship, Amazing Grace worship, Our God worship, In Christ Alone worship, Holy Holy Holy worship, Everlasting Doors worship

Id: 4L569iOmc7U

Length: 34min 6sec (2046 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2019