Sermons on Biblical Characters

by Clovis Gillham Chappell

But in admitting that God plans every life, can we believe that He plans for some to go wrong and for others to go right? Can we believe that He plans for one to become a Judas and the other a St. John? Is it the purpose of God that one shall develop into a Moses and the other right at his side shall grow up into a miserable and distorted wreck that we call Pharaoh? In other words, is Judas as much a part of the plan of God as John? If so we are of all men most miserable because we have a wicked God.

But we know that such is not the case. God never planned that any man should go wrong. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. He is the eternal lover. He loved Moses, but He loved Pharaoh no less. And Judas was as dear to God's heart as John. And whatever failure they made of their lives, and whatever failure you and I make of our lives, we do not make because God forces us to do so. In whatever way we go wrong, we do not do so because God planned that we should. We do it because of our own willfulness and wicked rebellion against God.

In other words, though God plans your life and mine, He cannot in the very nature of things, force us to enter into His plan. You who are fathers and mothers realize that. Many parents have made beautiful plans for their children only to have those plans despised. Our children are not ourselves. They have independent wills. They have the capacity for entering into our purposes for them and thus bringing us joy unspeakable. They have also the capacity for despising those purposes and breaking our hearts.

How, then, do we explain this strange text, "For this cause have I raised thee up that I might show forth my power in thee"? Because it is a fact that this death in the Red Sea was not an accidental death. It is a fact that this corpse here upon the beach is not here by mere chance. This king was flung here by the power of a disappointed and grieved and rejected God. He lies here dead upon the shore according to the deliberate plan and purpose of God. But while this is true, we need to keep this big fact in mind: Though Pharaoh lies here according to the purpose of God, this was not God's first and highest purpose for him. But Pharaoh resisted and rejected every noble and worthy purpose that God had in his life. By his own rebellion he made it impossible for God to realize any purpose in him at all save the last and the worst.

Do you remember that story in Jeremiah? One day the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Jeremiah saying, "Arise and go down to the Potter's house and there I will cause thee to hear my word." And Jeremiah went down and heard the message. Arrived within the Potter's house, three objects at once drew his attention. There was a man working, the Potter. There was the instrument with which he worked, the wheel. And there was the substance upon which he worked, the clay. In the Potter's hand the clay was misshapen and unsightly. The cup was not yet finished in the Potter's hand. But there was a place where it was finished, and that was in the mind of the Potter. The Potter could already see the finished product. He was trying to make the cup according to the ideal that he had in his mind.

But we read that the cup was marred in the making. That is, there was something in the clay that resisted the Potter. Now, what did he do with the marred cup? We would have expected him to throw it away, but he did not. He made it again. What a gospel that is for failing and sinning men like ourselves. How glorious that, when we resist God's purpose and all but wreck ourselves, He will make us again. Truly we would be a hopeless race but for the fact that we have a mighty God who is able to remake us even when we have rebelled against Him and have thwarted His blessed plans for us.

He made it again. Yes, but notice this. He made it again "another vessel." He changed his plan for this latter vessel. He realized that he could not make it according to the fine ideal that was in his mind for the first vessel. That one refused to realize the best, therefore he made it into another vessel. He sought to make it realize the second best.

There is a truth here of tremendous importance that we are prone to forget, and that truth is this, that having rejected and resisted God for days and months and years, God cannot make of us what He could have made if we had entered into His plans from the beginning. If you reject God's best for you, then He tries to get you to realize His second best. If you reject this, then He seeks to bring you to the next best. But remember this, God cannot, in the very nature of things, make as much out of a fraction of a life as He can out of the whole of a life.

Now, suppose, the clay upon which the Potter was working had been marred again. Again he would have undertaken to have made it into another vessel. But all the while that clay would have been becoming less and less plastic. All the while it would have been becoming more and more difficult for the Potter to shape it according to his purpose.

Thus the time would inevitably come when it would no longer be capable of being shaped by his hand at all. Then what would be the result? Step outside the Potter's house and you are in the Potter's field. About you lie broken crockery and shattered earthenware. Why is it there? Not because the Potter made vessels for the stupid purpose of breaking them to pieces. They are there because there was something in the clay that so resisted the hand of the Potter that he was able to make nothing of them but these shattered and misshapen and broken wrecks.