The passage from Jeremiah 18 is very sobering. What it is saying is that God will have his own way with us both individually and corporately as a nation.
This sermon was preached in 1974, when in cultural terms America was closer to God. Yet darker days were ahead for us as a nation. It would be nearly a decade before we escaped from the "malaise".
I fear that we are entering a time where we will either be broken down and remolded as a nation, or broken down and cast into hell with those nations that have forgotten God.
So Jeremiah, watching, learned that an individual or a nation is clay in the Great Potter's hands. He has a sovereign right to make it what he wants it to be. He has the skill and design to work with the clay and to bring it to pass. And if there be some imperfection in the clay, something which mars the design, spoils the work, the potter simply crushes the clay down to a lump and begins again to make it yet a vessel according to his own mind. In the verses which follow, this lesson is applied to the nation:
Then the word of the Lord came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it." (Jeremiah 18:10 RSV)
In other, more direct terms, this is the same lesson Jeremiah learned at the potter's house, applied to the nation. When the pressure the potter applies is successful in turning the clay in the right direction, the potter seems to repent, the pressure is relieved, and the clay is allowed then to remain in the form it has taken. But when something in the clay resists, the potter then seems to repent of making a vessel at all, and he crushes it into a lump, and begins again to make it yet into the vessel he desires.
The wicked shall be cast into hell and all the nations that forget God.
Lord Jesus, this nation is held captive by those who control the minds of its people in ways never imagined by us. We pray that you end that control, and bring to light the corruption that so-called national leaders pursue in darkness.