“Remember now, that You have made me as clay; And would You turn me into dust again?” (Job 10:9)

The clay and it’s purpose belongs to the potter

The story of Job’s life is a demonstration of how a man of God should correctly deal with great loss and pain. Job suffered on multiple levels: he lost his children, lost his possessions, was stricken with devastating health issues, and was criticized and badly advised by his wife and friends, yet he remained faithful to God. Job had a firm understanding that he was formed by the hands of God as a potter forms clay, that he belonged to Him, and that he must honor Him no matter what.

“Behold, I belong to God like you;

I too have been formed out of the clay.” (Job 33:6)

Job’s response was remarkable because he started by worshipping God and never sinned or blamed God. And at the end of the narrative, Job not only receives a restored health but more possessions and a beautiful family, than that from which he’d begun in his former years (Job 42:12-17). Job had a positive outcome because he understood that God was his maker and that he belonged to God.

We are the clay, God is the potter

 “But now, O Lord, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand.” (Isa. 64:7)

“Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.” (Jer. 18-3-4)

Therefore

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.” (Psalm 139:13)

“But who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?” (Rom. 9:20-21)

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10 ESV)