Isaiah 54:16,17

The gracious Lord, still going on to satisfy and silence the fears of his Church and people, here condescends to make use of another similitude, to testify the firmness and unalterable engagements of his covenant and his peoples safety. The smith cannot make a weapon to destroy without God's permission; for both the smith and the weapon, the fire that forms it, and the iron formed, all are no other than creatures and instruments, and can act no farther than the Lord permits and appoints. Everybody, and everything, is subject to God's control, and therefore can never act without his commission. And the Lord speaks of these watchings of his over his people, not as a thing limited to certain characters or situations only, but as the general inheritance of all his servants, whose righteousness is in Jesus. Isaiah 45:24.