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Potter Throwing A Vase
How Would Jeremiah 18: 1-6 Be Changed To Agree With Dispensationalism?
On a Christian forum someone asked "...does this mean that Israel gave
up their birthright, so that physical Israel is no longer inherit the
promises of G-d? So the pharisees are the Jews who have rejected Jesus to this day?"
(Spelling God as "G-d" is often an indication the person is a follower of a theology,
such as Hebrew Roots, the Sacred Name Movement, or Messianic Judaism).
The dispensationalists teach that God has two peoples, the Jews and
the "church," that the Jews remain God's chosen people, and that
sometime in the future, perhaps in the tribulation, God will turn
again to the Jews and save all of them who ever lived, all alive then,
or some of the Jews alive at that time. This is postponement
theology, or rotating theology, that God dealt with the
dispensationalist idea of what Israel is, or "all Israel," for several centuries, and then after the Cross he
dealt with the "church," but toward the end of the age he will rapture
the "church" to heaven, and then he will deal with the Jews once more.
If all this is so, then lets look at what Jeremiah 18: 1-6 would say in the parable of the potter as God:
"The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 2. Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.
3.Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.
4. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: and so he set that pot on the shelf to be brought out again at a later time. Then he made another pot different from the first pot,
out of a different lump of clay. 5. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
6. O house of Israel, and house of the church, cannot I do with you as this potter?
Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel, and house of the church."
I changed verses 4 and 6 to conform to dispensationalist theology.
Now lets see what God actually said in Jeremiah 18: 1-6:
"Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the
potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me
not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no
understanding?" Isaiah 29: 16
Isaiah 29: 16 points to Jeremiah 18: 1- 6:
The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
2. Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause
thee to hear my words.
3. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a
work on the wheels.
4. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the
potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the
potter to make it.
5. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
6. O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the
LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine
hand, O house of Israel.:
God turned things, or the world, upside down for physical Israel.
This is what the Jews in Acts 17: 1-6 complained about. "Now when
they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to
Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews:
2. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath
days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,
3. Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and
risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto
you, is Christ.
4. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and
of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a
few.
5. But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them
certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and
set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and
sought to bring them out to the people.
6. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain
brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned
the world upside down are come hither also;"
In the parable of the potter, pointed to in Isaiah 29: 16, God the
potter made physical Israel which he found to be marred. So he made
the same lump of clay into another pot, or vessel, which seemed good
to him. Finally he said as God he can do whatever he wants with
Israel as clay in his hands. Israel in this parable was not put on
the shelf as one people of God for a while, and God did not make a second,
entirely new people of God to be dealt with differently, called the
'church." Instead, he transformed physical Israel into Israel reborn
in Jesus Christ. The promises to physical Israel are to Israel
reborn in Christ; its still Israel as God's one people, but it has
been transformed and made spiritual and not mired in the flesh and the
physical.