God was pleased to create a world, to set it revolving in space among the countless orbs which shine in the heavens around us. He was pleased to allow sin and death to enter that fair scene. Who can argue with God? He was pleased to choose and to call a people out of the world, and to permit them to destroy themselves while He, with long-suffering, bore with them "till there was no remedy." He was pleased to send His Son to endure the cross and to bear His wrath.
Who was before Him in all this? Not one! In all things He wrought, He permitted, He ordered, and it is He who challenges the stubborn heart which would say, "Why doth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His will?" Rom. 9:1919Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? (Romans 9:19). It is He who deigns to reply, "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?" Rom. 9:2020Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? (Romans 9:20).
Have you ever stood in the potter's house and watched him as he performed on the wheels? The workman takes the lump of clay; he presses it to the wheel; the wheel revolves before his eye. Where is the vessel now? It is in the mind of the potter. Before it is formed, the design is there. His fingers shape the mass before him, and gradually it grows up before his eye. Gradually the thought in his mind is transferred to the clay and it rises up before him, and the thoughts hitherto unexpressed grow into the vessel which his fingers mold.
He sees a flaw, an imperfection in the clay. Others looking on have not detected it as did the artist's eye. He crushes the clay under his hand into a shapeless mass again. Again his fingers mold and fashion it into his design. Again and again defects appear. Again and again the clay is reduced to a shapeless mass until at last it rises in perfection of design before him. His eye surveys it with satisfaction and pride and he removes it from the wheel to take its place with the choice things of the earth around.
Where was the vessel before he began his work? It was in the potter! Where now is the potter? He is seen in the vessel! All that his mind designed and wrought is seen there. The vessel is fit for that which he had intended.
This is the history of man. The clay is in the Potter's hand. God's fingers fashion it but it is marred; the clay needs more of His patient manipulation and skill. It is not yet smooth and even, nor pliable to His hand. He crushes it time after time. The perfect vessel stood before His mind and purpose before His hand had taken the clay and placed it on the wheel. But when all is done, He has transferred His thought with unerring skill to the clay. The Potter is now seen in His own handiwork. It is a vessel of mercy which He has prepared for glory.
How important, as these crushing’s take place, is the need of the interpretation of these skillful workings of the hand of the Potter! How often are the lessons misunderstood or not apprehended at all! In the history of men in the Word of God these actions are seen and the results are reached. In them we read the history of His dealings with our own selves and the handiwork of God. We look, then, for the lines of beauty resulting from His hand. We yield ourselves to the things which happen and see the end of the Lord. We know how it is that all things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to His purpose.
As a Potter, the Lord God took of the dust of the ground, in the first creation, and fashioned it into a man. Then "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." But the vessel was marred. Again the divine Potter takes of the same lump and puts forth afresh His skill to form a vessel of mercy for eternal glory: a new creation in Christ.
F. G. Patterson