09-03-25 - THERE WERE POTTERS - 1Chronicles 4:23

MESSAGE BY PASTOR ROB INRIG

   FROM BETHANY BAPTIST IN RICHMOND, BC.

I invite you to pray with me: O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servants for whom our prayers are desired. Look upon them with the eyes of thy mercy (Gaby P, Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Stevie A, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Margarita G, Fega G,  Rosy Ch, Patricia L. Lina J. Manuel D. C, Yuya N. Mercedes L. )   Comfort them with a sense of thy goodness; preserve them from the temptations of the enemy; and give them patience under his affliction. In thy good time, restore them to health, and enable them to lead the residue of their life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant that finally they may dwell with thee in life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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You can also add names with family and friends struggling with health to

the prayer and we will all pray for everyone

Bless our Lord!

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God the Father, we thank you for your answer to our prayers with 

The good news is that with the recovery of health for some

Strengthen them so that they may regain their faith in you

And that they may be witnesses that you love them and 

that you respond when we trust and believe in you

Thank you Father God in the name

of Jesus our Lord of Lords and King of Kings

Praise be to your name

always and forever, AMEN.

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Among the great things we see in the Bible’s unfolding of God’s plan of redemption is that in His Word we see people just like us.  People who manage to do things right and then step into events doing things, oh so wrong.  Who do things well and then mess everything up.  

Imperfect people who sin, who fail, who stray and yet people who God redeems and uses as He forgives and transforms.  Not perfect people but changed people who repent and learn to trust and obey God. Those who are justifiably regarded as heroes of the faith, yet people who are also tragically flawed, shown exactly as they are – sinners in need of a sin forgiving God.

And in the people God gives us to see, this morning I want us to see in these, people like us. 

There are the heroes of faith who both inspire with their exploits and disappoint with their failures.  There’s Abraham who with incredible faith, leaves what he knows and follows God into the unknown.  On the journey he does many unthinkable things because of strong unwavering faith then is almost sidelined because of his great lies and his failure to trust.  There is Moses saved by God, favoured by God who driven by some cruelty he sees, responds by committing murder.  There is David, who we’re told is a man after God’s own heart, a man who stands head and shoulders above all, who then driven by lust, commits adultery then engages in coverups that eventually lead to murder. Then there is Elijah, a man of great courage, amazing victories and bold faith who after significant victory falls to unimaginable lows of fear, depression and defeat.  He and other heroes of faith, people with a nature just like ours as James reminds 5:17. 

Yet in these and others like them who are powerfully used by God, we are given great examples of what it means to follow a loving, long suffering, merciful God, who takes the fallen and imperfect, using them, There is none righteous, no not one, to bring us His truth. 

The pages of Scriptures filled with ones such as these – the prominent – though flawed, the gifted – though inept, the courageous – though weak.  These are also the ones, God used to bring us His Scripture – each one so different than the others.

There’s the one who watches waves and determines winds, analyzing where fish and fowl will gather – a calloused hands, prove it to me fisherman like Peter.

There’s a hated one, familiar with Jewish Scripture but partnered with Roman life.  He in some ways living a disconnected life between faith spoken and faith lived.  He a despised traitor to his people, a tax collector like Matthew.

There’s the analyzer of facts – who observes, researches, assesses - a truth gathering, diagnosis making doctor like Luke 

There’s the driven seeker for truth.  Intelligent, zealous, unwaveringly committed.  But only able to see what he needed to see until he was made blind when real sight was given – the uncompromisingly focused religious like Paul. 

Along with these, shepherds, soldiers, prophets and farmers – radically different but God’s Holy Spirit conveying revelation truth in one unifying story that all will point to Christ.

And then there’s Mary Magdalene, although not a writer of Scripture, one who ‘writes’ a powerful gospel of a transformed life. She used by  many, authentically loved by none, a person hopelessly lost who becomes gloriously found.  

These just a few, all different, all looking at life through very different lenses.  Yet the pictures they show coming together as one that ultimately will reveal to us:

the fulfiller of prophecy, a healer of lives, the master of creation, the redeemer of the lost, the answer to the searching.  Jesus –  God come in flesh so we could know Him.

Most of these people I referenced earlier are familiar to us but let’s be honest, they seem so distant from us in the victories they win and the great things they do.  The failures we identify with, the victories not so much. 

So this morning I want to take you to some people to which we may better relate.  These not prophets or kings.  Actually we barely find the ones I’m referring to in the word of God, their presence so vague, they’re given little thought.  Most almost unmentioned, some not named.  No great exploits.  No singling out for important awards.  Yet these ones, seen and valued by God. Not named in the accounts we are given but known and named by God who knows everyone who knows Him by name.  

In this, I want us to consider some perspectives that are important to think about, especially when thoughts come trying to convince us we are of little value to God.  No exploits.  No large gift.  Not many with outgoing personalities that help us make sense of what they did.  Instead people like most of you and me.  Even true of the many we often think are the especially gifted, or the all put together not knowing that they too often have their hidden insecurities and doubts. 

For a few moments let me take you into Scripture where, if you’re thinking anything like what I just referenced of sitting in the back seat of who God wants to use,  you will fit well with some who are mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:23.  The fact that I am referencing people from Chronicles, a book most barely look at in any significant way, should tell you that most of those referred to this chapter will mean little to you.  Why would they?  Other than a man named Jabez in :10 who Bruce Wilkinson made popular a few years ago in a little book called, The Prayer of Jabez and his prayer, Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory!, you would have turned the pages of this and a few other passages, hardly giving them a glance, because they give little more than a listing of a bunch of names.  This list might assist in providing an accurate historical and genealogical record but it doesn’t seem to give us much else.  Except what more or less seems like a throwaway observation in verse 23, "There were the potters.  And they were the ones who dwelled at Netaim and Gederah lit: among plants. There they dwelt with the king for his work.

And yet in this verse?  God letting us know something very different for we who think of ourselves as insignificant, just someone hiding amongst the plants and hedges 

I’m speaking of the potters as if that was to amount to anything except .... 

Without their contributions how was life-giving water to be carried into homes?  How was the king’s table to be filled with food and drink in order to honor those who would be invited to sit as the king’s table? How were those who had come to negotiate trade to be properly honoured without the food and drink celebrations that accompany such transactions?  

What would be used to contain the oil that would light the palace and homes throughout the kingdom?

Admittedly, on occasions such as these and in others where life just gets ‘done’, who thinks of things like this?  Not one thought given to containers that housed the wine or provided fuel for light to shine. Who thinks of containers that enable celebrations to go long into the night or allows the mundane to be done long after daylight disappears?

But these all possible because of a potter has spent much of his day working with mud.  Nothing honouring or noteworthy in searching out the dirt from which something could be shaped. I mean, mud is mud until that mud gets into the hands of someone who shapes it into something else.

Mud -workers or if you like, potters, who shape the worthless into something good.  Bringing value to what otherwise is overlooked.  Until hands take hold, moistening, spinning, sometimes flattening, then reworking and with renewed vision, recreating.  Under creative hands – a goblet formed, a plate to hold the meal for a king, a container to hold fuel that will illuminate a home.  

On rare occasion perhaps one of their creations will be briefly admired due to a design made, a colour added or a larger size vessel created but the attention given to these is just momentary.  Truth is very few of the potters’ creations received any attention.  They were just the ordinary shaped by unseen mud-workers that few saw and fewer cared about.  

These potters would never sit at the table of the important.  They would never hear the laughter and celebrations of those gathered at the table of the king. They were simply the unseen people who provided what was needed. Crafted by those who hid behind plants and hedges yet without their work, the life all enjoyed would have been very different.  But there’s something even greater in the artistry of what they do and that is that it is done, In the service of the king. 

Question: ever been in that place where you feel what you do, what you have to offer is little more than a mud-worker - feeling unvalued, living in the unseen, doing the unknown?  Day after day doing the repetitive and for what?  Little value given.  Little difference made.

Like the restaurant server doing her best, but not really connected with unless something is wrong.  The labourer’s pride in his workmanship, hidden, never seen behind surfaces that cover.  The teacher working long into the night, providing what won’t be appreciated for the many hours it took.  The ‘is it making any difference’ parent wondering if what’s given will ever be enough.

Yet all these seen by God.  Potters just like you.  Like these referenced in Chronicles not named but quietly faithful, who are always seen and honoured by God.  How do I know?  Because Scripture tells us, My eyes will be on the faithful in the land ... Ps 101:66.  Proverbs says, A faithful person will be richly blessed ... Prov 28:20.  To ones like these, Jesus saying, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master’  Mtth 25:23   And Paul telling us that faithfulness is one of the evidences of being filled with the Spirit Gal 5:22.

Faithfulness seen like the unseen in the church - the balcony hidden sound techs ensuring best sound, screen operators who bring seem-less flow for those ‘in house’ as well as those online, the greeters at the door, the child and youth workers who invest time and energy doing their part in  shaping lives, the translators who enable God’s Word to be read every week in this place and reaching those far beyond the walls of this church. 

Not the prominently seen like those up front but God placed ones, your witness right where you are.  

Faithful ones - behind the scene ones.  My intention this morning, to acknowledge those who faithfully serve – yes but also to encourage you to step forward to add your gifts to theirs, to see yourself not as someone who comes and goes, thinking you have little to give to the work of Christ.  Instead seeing that each of us has been called to be a potter in what God wants to do in this place.  Some setting the table, some building the table, some organizing the table and some clearing the table. 

Serving Jesus:  preparing the coffee; helping with sound or slides even as you learn; a vocalist adding your strength to worship; a baker, a once-a-month teacher of kids; an organizer of events; the initiator of a new ministry, a volunteer at VBS.  Doing as Peter encourages, As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace.  If anyone speaks, do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. 1 Pet 4:10-11.

Prayerfully asking God to show you how and where He wants to turn the abilities He planted in you as a gift He wants to use.  Using you as you step out, His gift in you made alive by His Spirit.  He taking your gift that you’ve thought of as too small, and not even a gift at all, and breathing His life into it to do something far greater than you can imagine.  

It’s possible you still think what you have to offer is not enough.  Well then consider another of the unnamed we read about in Scripture.  She with no obvious skill.  No product she could create.  The environment less than ideal.  Based on her circumstance she was now in a place where anything she might have once had to offer for God to use, had been taken from her.

She is an unnamed servant girl who was taken captive by a foreign power.  A young Israelite girl who had been seized by an Aramean army then dealt as a servant to Naaman, one of this army’s powerful commanders.  We read of this 2 Kings 5.  She was brought to a foreign land which meant being ripped from family, at best physical separation from mother and father, brothers and sisters.  At worst, forever separation, they killed in the invasion.  Everything she’d known, everything she loved, gone in a sudden, traumatic moment.  Her experience little different than Israel’s horrific October 7th terror.  So think this as we briefly revisit the account.

Given what she had experienced, she would have been very justified in joyfully watching her captor suffer in the pain that was now his.  Victorious on the battlefield, he had been defeated by a greater enemy, one he couldn’t defeat - leprosy. His fate now similar to hers, where he would inevitably lose everything he valued.  The first loss would be the loss of power and privilege when he was ripped from the position he held.  His greater loss would be when he would be stripped of home, of relationships, of  identity.  But our focus for the moment isn’t on him, it’s on her and what possible good could she bring into a situation like this? .

She could have not even tried and instead revelled in the fact that things had turned out for him as they had but she didn’t.  Bitterness hadn’t poisoned her life.  How else to explain her actions when she learned of her master’s condition?  Instead of acting as he might have deserved, complicit in the captivity she was now in, she gives him the one gift she had to give – a caring heart – allowing her to direct Naaman to where he could be healed.  

Her actions telling us that despite what she had experienced, she still had a hold on her faith.  The truth of what she had learned and believed as a girl not ripped from her.  It’s a pretty impressive thing to be said for someone who was surrounded by other gods and other beliefs.  Pretty impressive for someone who had suffered so much.  Her trust in God still held to even though the prayers she no doubt prayed hadn’t been answered as she would have liked.  

Connected to the faith she still believed to be true.  Instead of resentment and wanting revenge, a young, unnamed servant girl who, despite what she had experienced, still expressed faith in God and the power of His prophet, Elisha.  It was because of that she could give the gift she had to give suggesting that Naaman seek healing in Israel, her homeland, the land from which she had been taken.

A gift given by an unnamed, unsaved, unseen servant girl that the Bible will not let us forget.  An unnamed, faithful servant girl God used.  I doubt the girl’s advice would have been even listened to had she not already earned  a voice by serving Naaman’s household well.  She, used not by doing the spectacular but used FOR the spectacular.

And briefly just one more - this reference not to the unnamed but to the almost unknown, Shiphrah and Puah.  These two who, as Hebrew midwives, saved Moses.  Little did they know where their actions would lead, by what they did, they would play a massive role in delivering their nation who in turn, would one day deliver a king, who is the King above all kings.  In the immediate they were just two offering the gift they had by refusing to obey Pharaoh’s decree to kill all newborn Hebrew boys.  They putting their own lives at risk, letting an infant boy live Ex 1:15-21.  They refusing the orders of a ‘king’ and by their refusal, they would serve the purposes of the King of kings.    

Unsung heroes in the shadows of the Scriptures.  Those who like Helen Keller could say, I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but my chief duty is to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

So here we have it – potters, servants and midwives who God sees and to whom He will one day say, Well done!  His Well done! not based on some spectacular done but on our gifts that are used and given back to Him.  His well done! said to those who encourage and build up.  To those who by their care come alongside to offer a cup of water in His name.  Who come alongside others with water to moisten those whose lives have become hard ground.  To those who have the courage to step out and act.  

Potters who serve in the unseen, the seemingly unspectacular.  Very often unacknowledged and the unappreciated.   

Paul in his instructions to a young Timothy, says it this way: I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. Other translations render this, FAN INTO FLAMES THE GIFT; KEEP ABLAZE THE GIFT, AND REKINDLE THE GIFT.  2 Tim 1:6. 

Potters who in the service of the king who: shape, mold, pour into, encourage, speak compassion. Parents who call out greater  vision for their kids. Potters-greeters who authentically make newcomers feel at home. Potters- people whose gift of organization takes a vision, bringing the pieces and people together to bring that vision to life. Potters who join with others in small groups to grow in faith and relationship with one another. Gathered with others to go deeper with God. 

Potters who pray and serve allowing God to pour His Spirit into their gifts.  Potters who believe and step out to touch lives encouraging them to be all that God wants them to be for His kingdom.  Seeing even the smallest seeds of gifting and helping those seeds grow to be  

Potters like you that I am asking you to step in and use your gift here in Bethany   

Young men and women who see visions, and old men and women who dream dreams Acts 2:17.  A unified, Spirit-led, God-empowered people fully invested in God’s kingdom where we do the part we have been called to do.  

People who will invite others to discover the Jesus that we know.  

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.   Jam 1:17, Rom 12:6, I Cor 12:7

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