The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
The Potter, Part 2
The biblical allegory of the potter and the clay appears numerous times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Last week we explored most of the Old Testament incidents in which faithless Israel is warned of the coming judgement in the form of the Babylonian captivity (Isa. 41:25), explanation of Israel’s required repentance and recognition of absolute dependence and faith in God’s hand of mercy with no other recourse or control over individual lives (Isa. 64:8-9), Israel’s backslidden condition required a just response from God, the potter rejecting the vessels of unfaithfulness (Jer. 18), and the metaphorical switch of honorable worship-oriented gold vessels transformed into common clay vessels because of sin (Lam. 4:1-2).
The final Old Testament potter metaphor is found in Zechariah 11:12b-13 (ESV): “And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the LORD said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’– the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter.” This passage is an object lesson in which Zechariah, following God’s command, became a shepherd of sheep destined to be slaughtered. After a month he quit and asked for his wages. Intertwined within the passage are three separate prophetic concepts, two of which revert to outcomes involving the nation of Israel. The first is the breaking of the staff called “Beauty” (Favor, or Grace) to demonstrate the annulment of God’s covenant with Israel. The third is the breaking of the staff called “Bonds” (Union) signaling the beginning of internal strife and disunity between Judah and Israel.
The second prophetic concept in this passage is the action of Judas when he regretted his betrayal of Jesus. The thirty pieces of silver that Judas received for his betrayal of Jesus (Matt. 26:14-15) connects to the price of reparation for a slave who had been gored by an ox (Ex. 21:32). “Then when Judas, His betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ They said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury since it is blood money.’ So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me” (Matt.27:3-10). Verses nine and ten are spoken directly from Zechariah 11:13. The origin of the term “potter’s field” is uncertain; but by Zechariah’s time, it appears to have been an idiom that was already understood as a place set aside for the burial of indigents and strangers.
The potter-and-clay allegory returns to the creative sovereignty aspect of God in Romans 9:18-24: “Therefore has He mercy on whom He will have mercy and whom He will, He hardens. Thou wilt say then unto me, ‘Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His will?’ Nay! But, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, ‘Why have you made me thus?’ Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy which He had afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom He has called, not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles?”
Both Grace and Election are taught in Scripture. Many have tried to reconcile the two, but we need to recognize that God’s ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:8-9). We cannot understand everything about Him and the Bible speaks to us in terms as close as human language can clarify Theology. The two stand together in God’s eyes, even if we do not get it. To those who would dismiss it, the spectre of Election cannot be ignored if we are intent on preaching the entire Word of God. My opinion is that it is a matter of perspective: when Scripture deals with God’s point of view, He sees it as Election, His choice as the potter with the clay. But when we look at our salvation, we see it as the Grace and Mercy of God, poured out on those who believe in redemption through the blood of Christ. That is the message we share with whomever God puts in our path because we are called to preach the gospel to all (Acts 1:8), not to try to dissect God’s part in it.
Finally, Revelation 2:27-29 brings back the metaphor of fragile clay pots, the products of infidelity and rejection of God, not sturdy enough to stand unscathed in the wake of judgement: “And He shall rule them with a rod of iron. As the vessels of a potter shall they [the nations] be broken to shivers, even as I received of my Father. And I will give Him the morning star. He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches.”
The biblical progression of the potter and the clay reflects the chronological necessities of God’s relationship to man. In the Old Testament, though there were a few Gentiles who looked for Him and found Him, He spoke primarily through and sought a relationship exclusively with Israel, His chosen people who rejected Him. In the New Testament, He gave His Son (Himself incarnate) to die on the cross as the final and only effective sacrifice for sin (John 3:16), not just for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles. The entirety of His human experience – His rejection by His people, His betrayal by Judas, His aloneness on the cross – point to Almighty God loving us and desiring that we know and trust Him.
“Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay:
Mould me and make me, after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.”
(Great Hymns of the Faith, #388. Adelaide A. Pollard)
