Giving God What He Wants
Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 03 August 2002 19:00
Some of you have heard comedian George Carlin's routines before. He specializes in asking questions that make you look at your assumptions in an entirely different way. For example, Carlin asks:
- Why is it called a hamburger when it's made out of beef?
- Why do you put suits in garment bags and put garments in suitcases?
- Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
- Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
- Why do they lock gas station bathrooms-are they afraid someone is going to sneak in there and clean them?
- You tell a man there's 400 billion stars and he'll believe you, but tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it? Why?
- If people evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
- Why are there five syllables in the word monosyllabic?
- When two airplanes almost collide, why do they call it a near miss-it sounds like a near hit to me?
- Why do banks charge you a non-sufficient funds fee on money they know you don't have?
- Why do you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?
- Why are they called apartments when they're stuck together?
- Why are they called buildings when they are already finished? Shouldn't we call them builts?
- If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of that stuff?
The prophet Jeremiah had some why questions of his own. For example, in chapter 6 Jeremiah asks, "Why won't they listen to me? Why won't they hear your Word?" Later, in chapter 12, he asks, "Why do the wicked rule your land, God? Why do they prosper? Won't you do anything?" And most heart wrenching of all, in chapter 20 Jeremiah asks, "Why have you given me a ministry like this God? Why must I make a fool of myself talking to people who only ridicule me?"
Why God? Anybody here ever ask that question? I know I have. That's why the passage today is so intriguing to me. In Jeremiah chapter 18, God takes an everyday scene and gives Jeremiah an answer to these questions. He doesn't answer directly. He never answers the why questions directly. Instead, God answers by telling Jeremiah who He is and what rights He has as sovereign God. The image He gives is a rich and powerful one. Then He takes it a step further. God makes it clear how He expects His people to respond. I believe if we pay attention to Jeremiah 18, we have a chance of hearing from God today.
REVIEW JEREMIAH MESSAGES
1) God's demanding love as theme of Jeremiah's ministry.
2) Began at the end of his life.
a. Jeremiah was right even though didn't want to be.
b. Learned from Jerry's personal story as well as the story of the nation of Judah safest place to be is in the center of God's will.
3) Then went to his call.
a. We noticed the call of God has four characteristics: prevenient, personal, constructive, challenging.
b. noted some of us have felt called of God.
c. But in our doubt and busy-ness we sometimes forget. But we have felt the press of His hand.
d. Are we responding? Are we living in light of that call?
4) Then looked at an early sermon of Jerry's in which he attacked the unfaithfulness of God's supposed people. We looked at the nature of unfaithfulness - knowing that we ourselves are often unfaithful - and we observed 7 things:
a. Our unfaithfulness is not God's fault;
b. It is a double offense to God;
c. It makes our condition worse;
d. It cannot be whitewashed;
e. It sometimes doesn't recognize itself;
f. God will not respond to it;
g. And the way back to God from unfaithfulness is repentance.
This business of repentance was also the substance of the prophetic word two weeks ago. And it is the point that God revisits in chapter 18.
Jeremiah 18:1-12
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : 2 "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD . "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
11 "Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, 'This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.' 12 But they will reply, 'It's no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.' "
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 18
1. God is in charge.
a. The analogy assaults our pride.
b. We are not self-made people.
c. Also Isaiah 45:9; 64:8; Romans 9:19
2. We are marred (blemished, flawed, ruined)
3. God cares for me.
a. Doesn't throw away the marred piece of clay.
4. I must respond to God's Word to me.
5. I can respond.
SO HOW DO I RESPOND? OUTLINE OF MY RESPONSE.
REPENT:
- Realize I'm not God.
- The idea is not just that I'm not in control, but that God has complete prerogative. He can do with me as he chooses. My job is simply to decide if I will participate with Him or not.
- Some of you today need to bend your will to the will of the potter.
- Earnestly accept my worth.
- Difficult concept for some of you. Some of you need to experience the care of the potter today.
- Profess my ruined character and my guilt.
- The point is not to feel guilty. The point is to recognize our need.
- Expend myself wholeheartedly in pursuit of God.
- Jerry himself said: "When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart." (29:13)
- iNnspect my heart and actions fearlessly.
- Turn away from wrong (and toward right) actions.
Author Philip Yancey writes:
In high school, I took pride in my ability to play chess. I joined the chess club, and during lunch hour could be found sitting at a table with other nerds poring over books with titles like Classic King Pawn Openings. I studied techniques, won most of my matches, and put the game aside for 20 years.
Then, in Chicago, I met a truly fine chess player who had been perfecting his skills long since high school. When we played a few matches, I learned what it is like to play against a master. Any classic offense I tried, he countered with a classic defense. If I turned to more risky, unorthodox techniques, he incorporated my bold forays into his winning strategies. Although I had complete freedom to make any move I wished, I soon reached the conclusion that none of my strategies mattered very much. His superior skill guaranteed that my purposes inevitably ended up serving his own.
Perhaps God engages our universe, his own creation, in much the same way. He grants us freedom to rebel against its original design, but even as we do so we end up ironically serving his eventual goal of restoration.
If I accept that blueprint--a huge step of faith, I confess--it transforms how I view both good and bad things that happen. Good things, such as health, talent, and money, I can present to God as offerings to serve his purposes. And bad things, too--disability, poverty, family dysfunction, failures--can be redeemed as the very instruments that drive me to God.
Citation: Philip Yancey, "Chess Master," Christianity Today (5-22-00), p.112
Allen Dale Golding
When we were missionaries in the Philippines, we vacationed in Baguio City in the mountains of Northern Luzon. While there, we visited the St. Louis Silver School, where silversmiths are trained. We admired exquisite workmanship in the workshop and gift shop, and took home a souvenir-a pure silver money clip embellished with a distinctive design. I carried that slip for the next 24 years. One day it finally broke as I slipped a few bills into it. I then took the two pieces of the money clip back to the silver school in Baguio. One workman, about my age, asked if he could help me. I explained my predicament and laid the pieces in his outstretched hand.
After examining the pieces for a minute or so, he looked up at me and said, "I designed this clip. I was the only one to make this design. I made all of these that were ever made."
I asked, "Can you fix it?"
He said, "I designed it. I made it. Of course I can fix it!"
Citation: Allen Dale Golding, La Mirada, California
Steve Nickles: God's care
About a month ago I bought my two-year-old daughter Sarah an aquarium. We went together to the pet store to pick out four fish to put in the tank. One of the fish died two weeks ago when Sara was at her grandparents' house. My wife flushed it down the toilet and didn't tell my daughter about it.
This morning Sara found one of the other fish dead. She found it caught up in one the fake plastic bushes. My wife called me at the office and said that Sara had something to tell me. In her two-year-old way, she explained to me the fish had died, she found it in the bushes, and her and Mommy were going to have a funeral for it in the back yard.
I realized that this was the first of many losses she would experience in life. I broke into tears, however, when the last thing she said to me before she hung up the phone was, "Daddy, keep me from getting caught in the bushes."
Citation: Steve Nickles
What this passage tells us is even more astounding. Not only can God protect us and provide us with warnings about the bushes, but when we choose to go into the bushes anyway, He will remake us - resurrect us.