When the Potter Is for Us
By John Piper
“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’?” (Isaiah 45:9)
The majesty of God is magnified when we see him through the lens of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). He commands nothingness, and it obeys and becomes something.
Out of nothing he makes the clay, and out of the clay he makes us — the pottery of the Lord (Isaiah 45:9) — his possession, destined for his glory, in total dependence on him.
“Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3). It is a humbling thing to be a sheep and a pot that belong to somebody else.
This morning I was reading in Isaiah and found another statement about God’s majesty. When I put it together with God’s absolute power and rights as Creator, there was a combustion that went off in my heart. Boom!
Isaiah 33:21 says, “The Lord in majesty will be for us!”
For us! For us! The Creator is for us and not against us. With all the power in the universe and with absolute right to do as he pleases with what he made — he is for us!
“No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4). “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).
Can you think of anything (I mean anything) that is more comforting and assuring and delighting than that the Lord in his majesty is for you?
