When the Potter Is for Us: Boom!
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By John Piper
About The Grace of God
Part of the series Taste & See
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 is God! It is he that made us and we are his, 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.
I said all that last Sunday. 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 is a combustion that goes 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! Who has seen a God like this, who works 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?
Sunday morning between 5:30 and 7:30 a.m. I was coughing every minute or so with one of those irresistible feathers in my throat. I said, “Lord, please, I can’t preach if I have to cough so often. People will only think about the cough.” I was sitting in my study with the Bible in my lap looking for some assurance that God would act. It came from Psalm 145:19, “He fulfills the desire of all who fear him, he also hears their cry and saves them.” The Lord gave me deep assurance that he would fulfill my desire because I knew I feared him. I said: Well, if I have to quit in the middle of the sermon, there must be some deeper desire of my heart that will be fulfilled besides the desire to preach. I really believed that. And I had peace. What happened? I made it! We made it. Just barely in the second service. And I praised the Lord all day. I promise you, it is sweet to be a pot when the potter is for us in his majesty.
Under the Majesty,
Pastor John
