The New Has Come

In the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, as noted yesterday, the prophet was sent down to see the potter form clay into a vessel.  In the next chapter a clay pot is again involved:

Thus says the LORD, Go, buy a potter's earthenware flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, and go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you.

…

Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you, and shall say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, so that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there will be no place else to bury.  

…

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their neck, refusing to hear my words.  – Jeremiah 1:1-2, 10-11, 15

As long as we are not “set in our ways”, so long as we are pliable, we have hope.  It might be better to say that so long as we have hope, we are pliable. 

I think there is something else we can draw from these pictures.  God chose a man to bring forth a nation in order to bring a Man, the Last Adam, the progenitor, not of a new nation, but of a new race of men.  Israel was separated out from the nations.  Judah was separated out from Israel.  The line of David was separated out from Judah until God found one little girl named Mary. 

We look back at history and see that, but who saw it coming?  The people of Solomon’s day might have gloried in the magnificence of his reign, but some lived to see the end of it.  Did they think that the breaking away of the ten tribes would serve to bring the Messiah?  Did those who saw the northern kingdom fall ever deeper into apostasy until they were carried away and lost in exile think this was somehow God’s plan?  What did they think when the wicked kings of Judah reigned?  When the prophets spoke out and no one heeded?  When Jerusalem fell?  When the Jews were persecuted and slaughtered by Antiochus Epiphanes?  When the Romans became their rulers?

God took a nation and a people through trials and tests, through disasters and wars, defeat and exile, through brokenness to find one single individual.  The nation He had so lovingly shaped had to be shattered because they had become hardened against Him.  There among the shards, He found something He could take up and use.  He found goodness, righteousness, holiness, surrender.  There was someone who would say, ”Behold, I am the servant  of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.“ 

In my twisted mind, this all ties together with what I said yesterday, so if I repeat myself, that’s the reason.  The Lord was seeking to make that perfect Vessel – Jesus, yes, but, first, He needed Mary.  He needed those qualities found in David and refined through hundreds of years to be both strong enough and weak enough that it might contain the Divine, the Logos and the Light of the World. 

The Law of Moses is given that there might be containers fit and able to bear the truth, that the Receptacle might be found, set apart and formed.  To be filled, a cup must be empty, and no one wants to pour pure water into a filthy cup.  The Law’s job was to form, to empty, and to purify.  The Law could only create the space – the thirst and appetite for the Infilling and Indwelling. 

Ultimately, the Law reached its limits.  It had shaped a people; it has shaped us.  There is still the problem of purity.  Something was needed, and that was the Cross, the Blood of Christ, sufficient to cleanse each container.  

Christ has come.  He lives eternally in the resurrected, glorified body, that perfect vessel.   We are the individual, distinctive, inimitable receptacles making up the new creation.  Now we need worry no longer about the exterior of the jar, its size or shape.  It’s just a jar of clay, shaped for a unique purpose, designed for an exclusive destiny, formed with all the loving artistry of the Creator and made holy by the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord. 

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us  (2 Corinthians 4:7).