A sermon on Jeremiah 18:1-6 by George Whitfield (1714-1770)
abridged and preached by Nathan Nettleton

This sermon is a heavily abridged version of a sermon first preached by the Revd George Whitfield, an English preacher who preached an average of ten sermons a week for thirty four years in the mid 1700’s. Though a clergyman of the Church of England, he had a huge impact on the evangelical movement across Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist and especially Methodist churches.

At sundry times, and in diverse manners, God was pleased to speak to our ancestors by the prophets, before he spoke to us in these last days by his Son. To Elijah, God was revealed in a small still voice. To Jacob, by a dream. To Moses, he spoke face to face. Sometimes God was pleased to send a prophet on some special errand; and whilst he was thus employed, to give him a particular message, which was then to be passed on to all the people. We have a very instructive example of this kind in our first reading.

The word of God came to Jeremiah, saying, “Arise, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” And so Jeremiah goes as he is told, and had you or I accompanied him to the potter’s house, I believe we should have seen him silently, but intensely watching, all attention, as the potter worked at his wheel. He takes notice, that “the vessel was of clay;” but as he held it in his hand, and turned round the wheel, in order to work it into some particular form, “it was marred in the hands of the potter,” and consequently unfit for the use he before intended to put it to. And what becomes of this marred vessel? Being thus marred, I suppose, the potter might have perfectly justifiably thrown it aside, and taken up another piece of clay instead, but he did not. “He made it again into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”

“Then,” adds Jeremiah, “the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand (marred, and unfit for the first designed purpose), so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” At length, then, Jeremiah has his sermon given to him, to be delivered to the whole house of Israel, princes, priests, and people: short, but pungent, even sharper than a two-edged sword.

What! says the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, must I be denied the privilege of a potter? May I not do what I will with my own? “Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hands, so are you in mine hands, O house of Israel. I made and formed you into a people, and blessed you above any other nation under heaven: but, O Israel, you by your backslidings have destroyed yourself. As the potter therefore might justly have thrown aside his marred clay, so may I justly un-church and un-people you. But what if I should come over the mountains of your guilt, heal your backslidings, revive my work in this time, and set you aright? Behold, as the clay is in the hands of the potter, lying at his disposal, either to be destroyed or formed into another vessel, so are you in my hands.”

What God says here of the house of Israel, is applicable to every person everywhere. For every one of us, offspring of Adam and Eve as we are, is in the sight of the all-seeing, heart- searching God, a “piece of marred clay”, but remember, when we first came out of the hands of our Maker, we were far from being in such poor shape. For as Moses declares, “God created humanity in his own image,” and struck with a deep sense of such amazing goodness, he immediately adds, “in the image of God he made them.” But now humanity is altogether a piece of marred clay. For clearly the blindness of our understandings, the perverseness of our will, the rebellion of our affections, the corruption our consciences, the depravity of our reason prove this charge; and does not the present disordered constitution of our bodies confirm the same too? Doubtless in this respect, humanity, in the most literal sense of the word, is a piece of marred clay. For God originally made us of the “dust of the earth.” Clay indeed it was, but clay wonderfully modified, even by the immediate hands of the Creator of heaven and earth, “after his own image.”

“For dust we are, and to dust we must return.” This among other considerations, we may well suppose, caused Jesus to weep at the grave of Lazarus. He wept, not only because his friend Lazarus was dead, but he wept to see human nature thus laid in ruins and subject unto such dissolution and decay.

Let us here pause a while with our sympathising Lord, and see if we cannot shed a few silent tears at least, upon the same sorrowful occasion. Who is there amongst us, who upon such a bleak review of humanity’s present, real, and most deplorable depravity both in body and soul, can help taking up David’s lamentation: “How are the mighty fallen!” Who can refrain from weeping over such a piece of marred clay?

Let me move then to the absolute necessity of this fallen nature’s being renewed. It is my heart’s desire and prayer to God for you that you all may have mansions prepared for you in heaven, but give me leave to tell you, were you now to see these heavens opened, and were you to see and hear the messenger of the everlasting covenant, Jesus Christ himself, giving you all an invitation immediately to come to heaven; heaven would be no heaven to you, indeed it would be a hell to your souls, unless you were first prepared for a proper enjoyment of it here on earth. For Heaven is rather a state than a place; and consequently, unless you are first prepared by a suitable state of mind, you could not be happy even in heaven itself. For what is grace but glory in action? What is glory but grace triumphant? This consideration made a pious author say, that “holiness, happiness, and heaven, were only three different words for one and the same thing.” So to make us blissful partakers of such a heavenly state, this “marred clay,” these corrupted natures of ours, must necessarily undergo an universal change; our understandings must be enlightened; our wills, reason, and consciences, must be renewed; our affections must be drawn toward, and fixed upon things above; and thus old things must literally pass away, and behold all things, even the body as well as the faculties of the soul, must become new.

So by whose agency is this marred clay to be formed into another vessel? How is this great and mighty change to be accomplished? It will not be by the mere dint and force of moral persuasion. This is good in its place. But I would as soon go to the grave-yard, and attempt to raise the dead with a “come forth,” as to preach to dead souls, if I did not hope in some superior power to make the word effective.

Neither is this change to be wrought by the power of our own free-will. This is an idol everywhere set up, but we dare not fall down and worship it. “No one (says Christ) can come to me, unless the Father draw them.” Our own free-will, if improved, may restrain us from the commission of many evils, and put us on the path of conversion; but we might as soon attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the tide, and calm the most tempestuous sea, as to imagine that we can, by any strength inherent in ourselves, subdue or bring under proper regulations our own unruly wills and affections.

No, this heavenly potter who alone can re-form a new vessel, is the Almighty and Holy Spirit of God, the third person in the adored Trinity. This is the Spirit who at the beginning of time moved on the face of the waters, when nature lay in chaos. This was the Spirit who overshadowed the Holy Virgin, before that holy child was born of her: and this same Spirit must come, and move upon the chaos of our souls, before we can properly be called the children of God. This is what John the Baptist calls “being baptised with the Holy Spirit,” without which, his and all other baptisms avail nothing. This is that fire, which our Lord came to send into our earthly hearts, and which I pray the Lord of all lords to kindle in every yet-to-be-renewed one this day.

Other miracles may come and go, but this miracle of miracles, turning the soul to God by the artisan hand of the Holy Spirit, this abides forever. For it is the Spirit who sanctifies us. On this account, true believers are said to be “born from above, to be born not of blood, nor of the human will, but of God.” Their second, as well as their first creation, is truly and purely of God. It is, therefore, called “a creation” as the first man was, “after God in righteousness and true holiness.”

To produce this glorious change, this new creation, Jesus left his Father’s bosom. For this he led a persecuted life; for this he died an ignominious and accursed death; for this he rose again; and for this he now sits at the right hand of his Father. All the precepts of his gospel, all divine revelation from the beginning to the end, all centre on these two points, to show us how we are fallen, and to begin and complete a glorious and blessed change in our souls. To deliver a multitude of souls of every nation, language and tongue, from so many moral evils, and to reinstate them in an incomparably more excellent condition than that from which they are fallen, is an end worthy of the shedding of such precious blood.

Why then would anyone hold out against it? Why would you not rather bring your clay to this heavenly Potter, and say from your inmost souls, “Turn us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned?” This, you may and can do: and who knows but that this very day, yes this very hour, the heavenly Potter may take you in hand, and make of you vessels of honour fit for the Redeemer’s use. Others that were once as far from the kingdom of God as you are, have been partakers of this blessedness. What a wretched creature was Mary Magdalene? And yet out of her Jesus cast seven devils, and after he rose from the dead, he appeared to her first, and she became as it were an apostle to the apostles. What a covetous creature was Zaccheus? He was a griping cheating tax collector; and yet, perhaps, in one quarter of an hour’s time, his heart is enlarged, and he was made quite willing to give half of his goods to feed the poor. And to mention no more, what a cruel person was Paul. He was a persecutor, a blasphemer, injurious; one that breathed out threats against the disciples of the Lord, and made havoc of the church of Christ. And yet what a wonderful turn did he meet with, as he was journeying to Damascus? From a persecutor, he became a preacher; and afterwards a spiritual father to thousands, and now probably sits nearest the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. And why all this? That he might be made an example to them that should hereafter believe.

So believe, repent; I beseech you, put your trust in the gospel, and instead of being vessels of wrath, and growing harder and harder in hell fire, like vessels in a potter’s oven, you will be made vessels of honour, and be presented at the great day by Jesus, to his heavenly Father, and be translated to live with him as monuments of rich, free, and sovereign grace, for ever and ever.

And you, who have already entrusted yourselves to God’s hands to be remade, pray for those who have not, and pray for yourselves too. For you, and you only know, how much there is yet lacking in your faith, and how far you are from being partakers in that degree, which you desire to be, of the whole mind that was in Christ Jesus. You know what a body of sin and death you carry about with you, and that you must necessarily expect many turns of God’s gracious wheel, before you will be wholly delivered from it. But thanks be to God, we are in safe hands. He that has been the author, will also be the finisher of our faith. Till then, help us, we pray, Almighty God. Behold, we are the clay, and you are the Potter. Behold, we put ourselves as blanks in your hands. Deal with us as seems good in your sight, only let every cross, every affliction, every temptation, be overruled to the stamping your blessed image in more lively characters on our hearts; that so passing from glory to glory, by the powerful operations of your blessed Spirit, we may be made thereby more and more fit for a full, perfect, endless, and uninterrupted enjoyment of glory hereafter, with you O Father, you O Son, and you O blessed Spirit; to whom, three persons but one God, be ascribed all honour, power, might, majesty and dominion, now and to all eternity. Amen and Amen.