Word of Salvation – February 2025
Filthy Rags And Potter’s Clay
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on Isaiah 64:6-8 & W.C.F. 6
Reading: Isaiah 64, Westminster Confession – art.6
Singing: BoW.385 To God be the glory
– BoW.372 I know not why God’s wondrous grace
– BoW.210 Have Your own way, Lord
– BoW.117 Hallelujah, hallelujah all you people
Theme: As we realise that even our best is unclean we cast ourselves on the sovereign love of our Father.
Introd: Christians all agree on why there is sin and evil. The answer is in Genesis 3, the story of The Fall.
What Christians don’t agree on is the result… the outworking of The Fall.
Our disagreement can be explained by two differing pictures of evangelism.
The typical view of evangelism and missions today goes something like this:
We bring the message of hope, the gospel of Jesus, to needy people.
And we trust that some will be wise enough to embrace that gospel.
It all depends on whether we can make them see their need of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That process of bringing the gospel is then explained in these terms:
You are like a person who has fallen out of a boat.
You are thrashing around hopelessly… unable to swim.
And me presenting you with the gospel is like me throwing you a lifeline.
But you need to grab that lifeline if you want to be saved. It’s all up to you.
We Reformed Christians look at that a little differently.
We too want to bring the message of hope, the gospel of Jesus to others.
Because we know that through the gospel God breathes life into the spiritually dead.
Only God makes people spiritually alive and He does so through the gospel.
So our picture is not of the unbeliever thrashing around hopelessly in the water.
The picture is rather like someone who has already drowned.
You are like a person dragged up from the bottom of the lake who is unable to respond.
But through the gospel that we bring God does a work of resuscitation.
He breathes the life of Christ into you thru the hearing of the gospel.
A] THE TEACHING OF TOTAL DEPRAVITY.
- In Isaiah 64 we also get a picture of people who – humanly speaking – are beyond rescue.
The imagery is not of a drowning person… but something equally vivid.
We are spoken of as being unclean. And that is relevant for us today.
We still talk about someone having “some dirt on us” if we have done wrong.
But in Scripture uncleanness goes much further than someone having some dirt on us.
Sin as uncleanness took on special meaning for the Jews: it was moral uncleanness.
And moral uncleanness barred them from God’s presence.
This idea of ‘uncleanness’ was enshrined in the Mosaic law.
For example, there was the leper – lepers were regarded as unclean.
They were cut of from the community of God’s people and from fellowship with God.
They were not allowed in tabernacle or temple.
And now here the writer confesses to having become unclean.
All of us have become like one who is unclean.
To make sure we get the point the writer adds that our works are unclean
They are compared to filthy rags that stink in our nostrils.
Previous generations were coy and embarrassed about this verse.
Because the expression Isaiah uses is literally “a garment of menstruation”.
Again that’s very telling: In the OT all bodily discharges were considered a defilement.
It made a person unclean… and the unclean was basically regarded as an outsider.
Ritual purification was needed to deal with the uncleanness.
What is particularly telling that this is not said of our wicked deeds or about our mediocre actions.
This is said about our best: all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.
In the light of that Spurgeon asked the question:
If this is what our righteous acts are like, image how our unrighteous acts appear to God.
- The context of Isaiah 64 is the Jews facing inevitable exile in Babylon.
It is pictured in these chapters as already an accomplished fact.
But now here Isaiah represents the faithful remnant who will survive the exile.
He speak on behalf of the believing, faithful people.
So that makes these words even more telling.
Okay… there is a sense in which this a confession made on behalf of the whole nation.
He confesses the awful sin of Judah that brought about God’s judgment.
Their sin that is pictured elsewhere in terms of Jerusalem being like Sodom and Gomorrah.
There was a monstrous and degrading evil that brought God’s judgment on Judah.
But notice that Isaiah confesses in terms that he himself identifies with.
It is not just the wicked in the nation who are like this… we all are.
Here is a picture of our natural condition apart from God’s grace.
And here it is particularly the faithful remnant taking an honest look at themselves.
This is a common theme in Isaiah – there is in Isaiah a very strong awareness of sin.
Probably because Isaiah had that awesome vision of God in His holiness in chapter 6.
At that time too he saw his own sin as well his people’s sin.
Woe to me… for I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.
Always in Isaiah there is that awareness of the reality that sin cuts us off from God.
Sadly, the nation as a whole did not see it any more – they had lost sight of it.
There were like Christians who won’t talk about sin because it causes low self-esteem.
So in vs.1 Isaiah expresses the wish for God to rend the heavens and come down.
Like God came to Moses in the burning bush – and as He appeared to Israel at Sinai.
So that they might again see themselves in the light of God’s awesome holiness.
- The truth of this prayer in Isaiah 64 is reflected in the Westminster Confession.
It reminds us of the events in Genesis 3 – The Fall of our first parents.
And then it zeroes in on the results of the fall: We became completely polluted in all our faculties.
In theology we call this Total Depravity.
If you remember the acrostic for the doctrines of grace – it’s the ‘T’ of TULIP.
This teaching about Total Depravity is not politically correct in many Christian circles today.
Instead the stress today is on how valuable we are in God’s sight.
That we’re made in His image… and we are loved by Him.
And Jesus was sent to save us… so we must be worth saving.
And all of that is true… it’s gloriously true.
But we kid ourselves if we think that this is because of some inherent value in us.
It is only because of God’s undeserved love and grace.
Grace is precisely what we have not deserved.
And grace becomes even more awesome
when we realise what kind of fallen creatures God sets His love upon.
In Isaiah we never hearGod saying: Don’t put yourself down, Isaiah!
Things aren’t really that bad… it’s okay… you’re basically good.
No… Isaiah accepts the reality that Genesis 3 left us this horrible legacy.
Even our most righteous deeds are like menstrual rags.
B] THE OUTWORKING OF THIS TEACHING.
- If we think that this is the end of the matter then please note that Isaiah goes on.
This uncleanness that alienates us from God is only one side of the picture.
The sin of Genesis 3 has also impacted us another way.
Isaiah says: We all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Isaiah now speaks of sin in terms of a dead autumn leaf.
It was once alive… but now it’s dead.
It is picked up by the winter winds and it’s blown away.
So our situation is more than that we are unclean before God.
We are morally and spiritually dead by nature.
Again that’s not a pretty picture.
I understand why Christians today would rather skip Isaiah 64:6.
I appreciate why some of us [at BCRC] do not like listening to these things.
Not only are our best deeds like filthy rags…
We are unable to produce anything but filthy rags by ourselves.
Logically this makes a lot of sense.
Genesis 3 shows us that sin alienates us from God.
And if we are alienated from God then we are cut off from the source of our life.
There is deadness.
We were not people thrashing around on the surface of the pool waiting for a lifeline.
We were lying at the bottom of the pool, comatose, waiting to be resuscitated.
So our text correctly shows us how destructive The Fall was… shrivelled up like dead leaves.
It vividly pictures the instability and disintegration that sin brings… blown around by the wind.
- It was the exile that especially highlighted this for Judah.
Judah was banished… separated from God – and God hid His face from His people.
Isaiah pictures for us the situation as it would have appeared to the exiles.
OTOH people just didn’t care about God anymore.
In vs. 7 he laments: No on calls on your name.
No one strives to lay hold of you.
OTOH because of their sin, God has hidden his face from them.
You have made us waste away because of our sin.
It’s a rather hopeless picture of Judah’s situation.
If you want more of the same you only have to read the verses before our text.
There’s some more graphic language there about God’s holy anger.
There’s even a question that implies the impossibility of any solution – humanly speaking.
How then can we be saved?
That sort of language is not unique to Isaiah 64.
From our side, we so often hide from God… Adam and Eve already did that in Eden.
And by ourselves we human beings are not at all inclined to try to lay hold of God.
Sin alienates us from our God and from the source of our life.
That’s why Paul, in Ephesians 2 speaks of us as having been dead…
Dead in our transgressions and sins.
So we fool ourselves if we think we have the ability to reach out for the lifeline.
That person lying on the bottom of the pool has no ability to respond.
That leaf driven by the wind can do nothing about its condition.
- The Westminster Confession does not hesitate to reaffirm this teaching of the Bible.
It says clearly and concisely what is not regarded as politically correct in our day and age.
The language is extremely blunt.
It not only highlights that we became dead in sin.
It not only reminds us that we have inherited the same death in sin as our first parents.
It not only tells us that this makes us guilty and puts us under the wrath of God…
and that it makes us liable to eternal misery….
It even dares to say that we are now completely inclined to all evil.
And that all our daily actual sins stem from this sad situation.
And then the most striking thing of all…
that even we who have been born again by God’s Spirit…
will struggle with the fallout of this for the rest of our lives.
Some effects of it remain even in those who are born again.
Although we are pardoned and renewed yet the patterns of our old nature stubbornly remain.
The sinful impulses will continue to trouble us all our days.
It has left a legacy that will last until Jesus returns to bring us home.
That has some very practical implications for us today.
It means you and I need to be very humble before God.
We must remember that God is never terribly impressed by anything we do.
God is only ever impressed by what His Son, Jesus Christ has done.
It is only as Jesus makes us alive that we are able to do good.
But even then our very best still needs to be purified and cleansed by Him.
And only when His perfect work is applied in a saving way to our works will they have any merit.
Indeed… then we discover that they are Jesus’ own good works.
Prepared for us to do beforehand.
Done through the enabling work of His Holy Spirit.
C] THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD OUR FATHER.
- It’s beautiful how we so often find some gems in the Bible in unusual places.
Some of those Scriptural gems often come in the context of human ugliness.
That’s also the case here.
We get these horrible pictures from a horrible time in Israel’s history.
Sad pictures of total depravity and human inability.
Pictures of spiritual deadness and human hopelessness.
Pictures too of God’s anger and His judgment against a wayward people.
But then suddenly we get those beautiful lines of verse 8.
Words that inspired Adelaide Pollard to write that beautiful hymn:
Have your own way, Lord, have your own way.
You are the Potter I am the clay.
Mould me and make me, after your will.
While I am waiting, yielded and still.
It’s wonderful… because here is the answer to our human dilemma.
Isaiah leads his people to cast themselves on the mercy of their God.
God is now addressed as their ‘Father’
That’s imagery that we find in many other places in the Bible (cf. Ps.103),
A Father is one who gives life to his children. And God is that Father.
So the reason for hope and life is not found in us but only in the love of the Father.
- Yet for Isaiah God is more than a Father… so he uses the imagery of the Potter.
Again, its imagery that we find in some other places as well.
But it’s telling picture language.
That Potter is busy making and moulding various items.
Some are mugs and plates for household use.
Others are beautiful works of art to please the eye of the beholder.
But they are each one the work of the Potter’s hand.
So Isaiah is teaching His people in this prayer to cast themselves on the mercy of God.
On God who is our Father who gives us life.
On God who is a Potter who can make of each of us a vessel for His glory.
The heavenly Potter gives meaning and purpose to our spiritually dead lives.
That’s a thought-provoking contrast. Filthy rags and potter’s clay.
Our own inability to make anything good of our lives.
Over against God’s ability to do something marvellous with us.
Purpose and meaning and beauty… all out of a lump of very ordinary clay.
How humbling… and yet… how amazing.
In these verses the stress lies very much on God’s absolute sovereignty.
That’s clear not only from the context of human inability.
That is especially clear because it is the potter that is in control of the clay.
It is not the clay that dictates terms to the potter.
God is in charge… and only God can do a wonderful work with human clay.
So in these words of this prayer Isaiah is trusting that God will not forsake the work of His hands.
It is only God’s sovereign love that makes him confident about the future.
That’s the only reason why there is hope beyond the exile in Babylon.
God has to do what we cannot do ourselves and He will do it.
- When I read The Westminster Confession I find the same strong sense of God’s sovereignty.
We’ve come across that in previous chapters of the WCF.
In fact there more clearly – particularly in chapter 3, dealing with God’s decrees.
That all things happen according to God’s wise and holy plan.
But I see it in this chapter too.
We often ask the question: Why did God allowed The Fall to happen?
God could have prevented it but He didn’t.
Okay, He didn’t cause it… but He permitted it to take place. Why?
And then the answer is:
That God in His sovereign wisdom and holiness
planned to order even sin to His own glory.
It’s perhaps not the kind of answer we would have liked.
But it’s the only answer that Scripture and our confessions give us.
God is the Potter, we are the clay… the work of the Potter’s hands.
And He does all that He does for His glory.
In the rest of this chapter there are just some hints at how this worked out for God’s glory.
Thru the gospel of Jesus Christ our guilt is pardoned and our corruption is deadened.
Thru the good news of Jesus the spiritually dead are resuscitated.
New life is breathed into them through the Spirit of God applying the gospel.
In this way the spiritually dead are regenerated… born again to enter God’s Kingdom.
The answer to spiritual deadness and total depravity is not despair and hopelessness.
The answer is to bring the gospel… praying for the Potter to keep making vessels for His glory. Amen