Tell all your friends! Tell your Home Team Leader – it’s important that your home team finds time to complete one or all of these studies before you arrive at the gathering.
Why do the Bible Studies?
Doing these studies will help your home team prepare for the gathering. They help you explore the Hands ON theme and allow you to get the most out of the gathering experience.
HANDS ON – PRE-GATHERING BIBLE STUDY
by ©William Grant Cliff, 2010
“…we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah 64: 8b
1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
2 so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
3 as when fire kindles brushwood
4 and the fire causes water to boil—
5 to make your name known to your adversaries,
6 so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
7 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
8 you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
9 From ages past no one has heard,
10 no ear has perceived,
11 no eye has seen any God besides you,
12 who works for those who wait for him.
13 You meet those who gladly do right,
14 those who remember you in your ways.
15 But you were angry, and we sinned;
16 because you hid yourself we transgressed.
17 We have all become like one who is unclean,
18 and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
19 We all fade like a leaf,
20 and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
21 There is no one who calls on your name,
22 or attempts to take hold of you;
23 for you have hidden your face from us,
24 and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
25 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
26 we are the clay, and you are our potter;
27 we are all the work of your hand.
Some Background:
Isaiah is addressing Israel while in exile. They are lost, they are desperate, they feel alone, and they have been crying out to God – hoping that God would act in a clear way, the way God had acted for their ancestors from old times. The whole way through Chapter 63 of Isaiah, the people call out to God look down and see their situation. They rehearse the wonderful history that they have had with God as their champion, bringing them out of Egypt, passing them through the Red Sea, leading them through the desert, and claiming Israel as a child – never to be separated from God.
But the cynics among the people have been asking, where is God now? What has he done for us lately? Having rehearsed the history, we are left wondering what it is that we expect of God, considering he seems absent; and that frustration boils over in the first 8 verses of Chapter 64; our passage for study.
The Text which confronts us:
Israel is begging for God to act, not just look in on them, but really act. So Isaiah puts it to God this way: He shouts a tremendous cry for vindication. (lines 1-8) then testifies to the oneness of God, (lines 9-12) reminds God of his promises, (lines 13-14) makes a confession of unfaithfulness, (lines 15-20) tells God what this abandonment means, (lines 21-24) and then surrenders into the right relationship which God intended from the beginning. (lines 25-27)
Our World meets Isaiah’s
There is much in this passage that speaks to us today as a people in exile. The Church does not have the place it used to have in society, and being a Christian is no longer assumed as a cultural identity. In fact being a young Christian is a daunting task of claiming Christian identity while trying to be accepted in school, among friends and in the workplace. Isaiah’s people saw this exile as a punishment from God for their unfaithfulness to the covenant. I am not sure that we see the Church’s failing position in society that way (should we?), but it has some echoes in our common life. Isaiah also made it clear that as soon as the relationship with God was restored, things would get better.
Being lost, feeling abandoned by God, wondering if those who mock God or say that God doesn’t exist are right; these are the same things the people of Israel felt when they were in exile, and it is from this place of desperation and discomfort that Isaiah speaks to us in our exile.
Hope in the Midst of Darkness
Complete surrender, to allow God to be God and to allow our humanity to be human is the very beginning of the right relationship. Beginning in Eden, humans have loved to believe the lie that we can be just like God: that was what started the whole train of sin and grief that has spun itself all the way down to today. This is the lie that gets in the way of our right relationship. It is like we are shouting at God: “YOU are the clay and we are the potters!” The lie will make God into what we desire, what we need and promises that we will be happier for our efforts. But God is not willing to be used like that. Nor is God content to let us live very long in the lie which will eventually destroy us if it runs on for too long. Notice the hope in the middle of the passage:
From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
This is the hinge on which the door to a hopeful and right relationship swings. No one has ever seen any other God but this one. No other deity has revealed itself the way this God has, and no other God has asked for this deep relationship which is lived out in the smallest ways – the littlest bits of faithfulness being noticed by a God that reveals his name simply as I AM. But this relationship is one where we wait on God, not the other way round. The hope is in the waiting.
Good News/Bad News
So there is good news: that God is still faithful, has acted in the past and act in the future; and bad news: that God is waiting on us to understand who we are in relationship to God in order to act. As much as we read about the powerful and majestic God enthroned in majesty and making mountains tremble, that same sovereign God is not willing to overrule us when it comes to giving up our freedom. We may be clay, but we have to accept that we are clay – and not God. And we are pretty special clay at that. We are clay that breathes! Clay that can walk, and talk and think and pray and laugh and sing and know that God loves us just as we are as clay - but we also have to admit, as clay, that we can never be the potter. We have to give up finally and admit that when it comes to the world and our relationship to one another – we are not in charge – God is.
So what can we ask one another?
• What kind of world are we building when we think that we are in charge? How do we treat the earth? How do we treat each other? What is our track record when we think we know what’s best?
• How often have we exchanged places with the potter, Making God the clay and begin to mold what God thinks.
• Can we look at the world with the conviction that we are all the work of one hand – God’s hand; and not separate works by separate forces?
• What are the advantages of being the Clay with which God changes the world? The disadvantages?
• How do we proclaim this kingdom (of Clay-made vessels filled with good news) to a world which wants to make itself into its own image?
• How can we meet the challenges of being a young Christian in our own communities?
On the way to CLAY 2010
Be thinking and praying as you prepare and travel this season – be thinking of what God has prepared for you to see, hear and experience in one another. What kind of astonishing relationships and transforming word can and will form you if you will come to God as clay – clay that can praise – clay that can love – clay that can know God and know God’s will. Remember that this relationship has been forever transformed and deepened by Jesus – the One who walked with us, as one of us and showed us the way to know God in the way that old Isaiah asked: “Oh that you would come down…” but in this case, not as a mighty warrior who would shake mountains and split the rocks, but rather as one that would shake hearts and split open prejudices and heal brokenness so that we might be healed.
Prayer for the journey
Lord, we are travelling far to meet you, even though you were with us when we left and are already where we are going. We are travelling far to meet you, so that we can see you in one another and learn from you, by learning from one another. We are travelling far to meet you, because you went so far to find us. Sought high and low far and wide and finding us, laid everything down so that we might breathe freely the love which you breathed in us so long ago. We are clay, but we are your clay. Made in your image, free to choose, free to love, free to dance, free to know you. As you have made yourself known, In Jesus. We are clay we are living, breathing, loving knowing, searching, praying, puzzling creatures of your hands and we are yours. Make us what you will us to be. And we will know then what it is to be free. In Christ, in the church, and in one another. Forever and ever. Amen.
