Isaiah 45:9
Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands? Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?
Isaiah 45:9 stands in Isaiah 41-45, where God's purpose for His people is very fully revealed, and the chapter reveals the greatness of His love and compassion and demands prayerful study with the full stretch of the faculties of the mind. The chapter should be put in form and brought into schools as a valuable study, better than romance or fable, with lesson books containing its loftiest themes of thought in pure, excellent language full of elevating, ennobling principles.
Its surrounding context calls Jacob and Israel to remember that they are His servants who shall not be forgotten, whose transgressions He has blotted out as a thick cloud, whom He has redeemed and in whom He has glorified Himself, and to return to Him. It commands all the ends of the earth to look unto Him and be saved, for He is God and there is none else, and declares His word sworn by Himself in righteousness that shall not return, that unto Him every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear, that in the Lord are righteousness and strength, that all incensed against Him shall be ashamed, and that all the seed of Israel shall be justified in the Lord and shall glory. It tells of the city being sought, whose Builder and Maker is God, teaching that heaven is home, that citizenship is above, and that lives must not be devoted to a world soon to be destroyed.
In its plain sense the verse places the created thing under its Maker's authority, for God formed the earth and all things for His purpose and they came into existence at His command, not from matter that already existed. As clay cannot challenge the one who shapes it, people as creatures have no right to contend with their Maker, judge His work, question His authority, resist His commands, or demand an account of what He does, though potsherds of the earth may strive with one another. The verse therefore directs reliance on God's wisdom rather than turning away from Him to look to finite human beings for wisdom.
God is not unjust when He uses His people to punish wicked nations that have rebelled against His authority, practiced idolatry, and led Israel into sin. Resistance to God is refusal of the One who both made humanity and seeks to save it, who is the mighty source of power and the source of love and blessing. In light of Christ's sacrifice to redeem humanity and the eternal riches offered to those who accept Him, striving against the Maker is unreasonable, and people should accept Him and let Him shape their lives.
The verse warns that God is displeased and His blessing is withheld when workers in His work resist His stated will and principles, persist in selfishness such as taking large wages, join in unholy confederacies in which one worker upholds and sustains another in a wrong course, and leave necessary reforms unmade.