I have been a bi-vocational pastor for over twenty years. Studying for my messages has always been difficult for me, because it can get time consuming going through several books. Since I have always worked outside the church, time is something that always seemed to be in short supply.
About ten years ago, the church I serve gave me a bonus at the end of the year. I used this bonus to purchase a Logos Bible Software package. This purchase was the best investment I have made in my own personal spiritual growth and study, as well as for the church.
If you are wanting to enrich your own study I encourage you to explore the Logos options as well. I know the initial investment might seem a bit too high for many. That is why it took me ten years to decide to make the purchase. But believe me it will completely change the way you study. And they now have various options for those with more limited budgets.
I am not a paid to promote the software. I am simply a person that loves it and encourages anyone I meet that is a “Bible nerd” like me to use the software.
You can download the basic software for free and slowly expand your library or purchase one of their packages. I started with the Bronze package and have gone up to Gold over the course of a few years. They have several newly published commentaries as well as many that have passed into the public domain.
And for those pastors that do not have the most up to date computer systems, there are passionate programmers volunteering their knowledge and time to make this valuable software available on Linux. Many of those that are working on the project are willing to help you personally get the software to work on your system. I admit that the Linux version does not work as well as the Windows desktop version at this point, but as far as I can tell, the most important features work great.
If you have questions about the software or how I use it, feel free to ask. As I have said I love it and feel that it has greatly improved my messages and study.
https://logos.refr.cc/jaredawarner
Thanks,
Jared A. Warner, pastor
Willow Creek Friend Church
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church May 10, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 3:13–22 (ESV) 13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church May 03, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 2:2–10 (ESV) 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 26, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 4 (Faith and Practice of EFC-MAYM pg 61) Do you provide for the suitable Christian education and recreation of your children and those under your care, and…
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
December 17, 2023
Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship
Isaiah 61:1–4, 8-11 (ESV)
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. 4 They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
8 For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9 Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed. 10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.
Holy anxiety. Advent. This time of year, we just cannot wait till Christmas. When I think of this time, I am often reminded of the statement in CS Lewis’s Narnian book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where they lament that it is always winter but never Christmas. This is often how we feel, but have we thought about what that means?
The ancients that constructed the liturgical calendar, in my opinion, were inspired. Not inspired as in the calendar is equal to scripture, but inspired as in they had great insight. Winter is the dark time of the year. In ancient times winter was the incarnation of anxiety. Questions were constantly running through the minds of people. Existential questions relating to their survival. Will we have enough food, will we freeze, will there be enough snow to water the ground? Will the seeds survive the cold? Will there be spring?
I grew up on a farm and often these questions would go through my mind as well. Not so much the heat and food questions, but the question about the future of our crops. Winter snows are important, a winter without snow is a sign that the crops will not thrive in their season. So, this dark time of winter has been a season of anxiety. It is a grim time of year. Our energy decreases because our bodies are not producing vitamin D because there is a lack of sunlight on our skin. This lack of sunlight can also cause our psychological well-being to diminish, giving rise to an actual clinical diagnosis of seasonal depression.
We understand this time deep in our bones. We feel it in our achy knees, in our moods, in our soul. We long for something. We long for warmth, abundance, and light. We are trapped in darkness and despair, longing for something to bring us hope.
Those that constructed the liturgical calendar understood our human nature. They understood that we needed something to hope for during the darkness of winter. We needed something to look forward to. We needed Christmas. But they also knew that we need the longing and the yearning. We need to be reminded that life is not just filled with celebration and joy. Life is also filled with hardship, injustice, and struggle. We need to understand hope and despair, joy and sorrow, necessity and abundance. We need to understand because that is life. There are times where it is winter and not Christmas. And that time is Advent.
This time of Holy anxiety encourages us to consider the struggles we face. To embrace our current lot in life. To embrace it but not dwell in that place because like everything in life this too will pass. Winter comes and winter goes. As the teacher in Ecclesiastes states there is a time and season for everything under heaven.
Isaiah like that teacher in Ecclesiastes recognizes this cycle and he prophecies about it. He spoke prior to the battles between Israel and Judah that eventually lead to the complete destruction of the Northern Kingdom. He pleads for repentance, he predicts invasion and destruction, and then he offers hope. He cycles these themes over and over.
Today’s passage comes in what some scholars call third Isaiah. They say this because there are three movements in this work. The first is the call for repentance and this first book or movement is primarily written in a narrative format. It speaks about all the terrible things that are occurring in the world which will eventually lead to destruction. The second book or movement contains mostly poetry, and it is in these epic poems where Isaiah speaks of the invasion, impending exile, and suffering. Then comes the third book, which is also largely poetry, where Isaiah speaks of hope, redemption, and God restoring all the nations to himself.
The 61st chapter of Isaiah is one of the most well-known portions of his book. It was this portion of scripture Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth in the fourth chapter of Luke. Jesus read this passage to those people in his hometown as he began his ministry and announced that the long-anticipated hope was at hand.
As I considered this week’s passage, I spent most of my time reflecting on the first couple of verses.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.”
Isaiah wrote these words to a people who would be living through a long dark winter. These words were written to bring encouragement to those that had faced and are continuing to face struggles. And he writes, “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” We all look at this verse and as soon as we read the words our mind is moved to Jesus. And this is right to do, but we need to remember that these words were written to a people that did not know Jesus, and yet they found these words encouraging. I want us to let these words speak to us. Let the words meet us in our current life. Let us not look at them as solely the ministry and mission of Jesus, but as words of the prophet giving us hope.
When we see the phrase the Spirit of the Lord God, in this passage it is speaking of the power of God, the strength and the life of God. Isaiah is telling the people that the strength of God is with them, on them, and in them. When Jesus tells the disciples to go and wait in the upper room on the day of his accension, he is encouraging them to wait for this very thing. He is telling them to wait for the power of God, the helper or Holy Spirit to come to them and empower them. We so often look at this as being Jesus’s mission and ministry, but this is not just for Jesus. We are the body, and Christ is our head. This is our mission; it is the mission of the Church because the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us.
“Because the Lord has anointed me.” The word anointed was what attracted my attention the most. Often, we think of this as being a thing of honor because we often see this word being used when a king is chosen. We see that the apostles were anointed with the spirit at Pentecost. We often say that our pastors are anointed. We see this word as indicating something special.
I began to look at this word, to study this word. It might surprise you that this word although used in honorable ways, anointing simply means to smear oil on something.
This year my siblings and I splurged a little and bought my parents a Christmas gift that is beyond our normal holiday budget, giving them a Blackstone griddle. I made the purchase on black Friday, which was not my intention, because I as a former retail worker usually pledge to not shop on black Friday because of the amount of abuse customers and employers enact on those that work that day. But this year due to the death of my grandfather I lost track of the days. But we bought this grill, and it was heavy, so I lugged it from Kansas City to the farm for Grandpa’s funeral and we had to try to figure out what we wanted to do with it till Christmas. We eventually decided it was stupid to lug that massive thing around Kansas multiple times, so we just gave it to them early, and while we were all there, we put it together and prepared it for use.
Preparing this type of grill for use is like preparing a cast iron skillet for use. You smear oil on the surface and heat it up. You do this multiple times until the oil has filled all the microscopic pores within the surface and leaves a permanent film upon the cooking area. This is what I want us to think about when we consider the word anointed or anointing. It is preparing a cast iron skillet. It is working oil into a baseball mitt to prepare it for the season. Anointing is putting mink oil on your leather shoes to protect them from the harsh environment of winter. It is not necessarily signifying honor, but a preparation for use.
God is smearing us with his Spirit. He is rubbing it into the surface so that we become saturated with his power. He is preparing us for use because there is work to do.
As a farm kid, I am aware of how this works. Every day before I began working in the field, I would grab the grease gun out of the tractor. I would go to the various bearings on the implement I was using and would prepare it for use. We added the grease because the environment we worked in was harsh. Without the grease, without anointing the bearings and smearing them with oil, we would have friction that could cause great damage. Especially during harvest season. We greased the bearings and oiled the chains; we prepared our tools for use. And that is what Isaiah is speaking of here. Yes, Jesus is anointed. He is honored, but the anointing is because there is work to do.
There is much work to do. “The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives.”
I want us to think about what is being said here in relation to the anointing. Isaiah begins with bringing good news to the poor, some translations render this afflicted. When we see this word, our mind usually goes to wealth. The haves and the have nots. What is the work to be done regarding the poor? We might think this is about social welfare. Our culture is being read into this passage when we see this in economic terms. In ancient times the wealthy were those with ruling power, and the poor were the oppressed. When Jesus says in the gospels that the poor will always be with you, he is not speaking merely about the people that lack means, instead he is speaking about the people that have power lorded over them.
The poor will always be with us because that is the nature of the kingdoms of men. Those that have power will often use the power they have to maintain power. They often exercise this with little or no concern for those they govern. They take care of themselves first, and only after they have all they want and need, then they consider others. And usually when they consider others they only consider those that might assist them in maintaining their privileged position. The poor will always be among us, because when the power structure changes the oppressed tend to become oppressors. It becomes a vicious cycle of oppression. But Isaiah says the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. What is this good news that is being brought?
I sat studying the phrase “to bring,” as well. These first couple of verses use three words here that mean similar things, but each is a little bit different. The first is to bring good news, then send me to bind, and finally to proclaim. The first to bring is a term of embodiment. The second compulsion and the third is an invitation. This is interesting to me because it is life. But there is even more to these words.
Each of these have additional meaning, these additional means do not necessarily apply to understanding the message, but I find them interesting to the overall picture. To bring, or to bear can also mean to rub or to smooth. This is like the use of sandpaper to smooth the rough face of wood, or the use of abrasives to polish stone.
The poor or the oppressed are often rough. They have been broken and splintered over years of abuse. We have been anointed to smooth the rough edges. To make what was once inhumane ugliness beautiful by breaking that cycle of oppression. We are to embody the opposition to the cycles, to live a different lifestyle.
The next action is, “Sent to bind up the brokenhearted.” This is straightforward, to bind is to wrap up as in putting a bandage on a wound. And the brokenhearted means destroyed in spirit. The broken hearted are the people that are hopeless. The anointed one is compelled to bring healing, to revive hope. We are urged to actively participate in reversing oppression and those things that cause harm.
Then we come to proclaim. This is to speak up, speak out, and invite. It is to make those around us aware of what is going on right before our eyes. We are to proclaim liberty to the captives.
When I think of captives or the opening of the prison, I often think of the incarcerated. Yes, those that are in jail are captives, but this is not exactly what is being spoken of here. The captive in this sense is a prisoner of war, or an exile. Those that were deported or refugees that were forced from their homeland. Isaiah was fully aware of how this would be taken by his countryman; he had just told them that they would be the captives. The northern kingdom of Israel was scattered to the nations, and Judah was exiled in Babylon. They knew or would know the reality of captivity.
But the anointed of the Lord is to proclaim liberty to the captive. I like the word liberty. It is something that we all should like because we live in a nation that claims to be a haven of liberty, we even have a statue and bell to prove it. But what exactly is liberty? The word describes free flowing or running. It is a river that freely flows across the land unhindered by a dam. This word is also used to describe the swift flight of a bird, particularly the swallow.
I want us to imagine this in our minds. Picture the free flight of a bird. The birds joyfully sing their songs as they jump and fly from one branch to another. Jesus once said, “consider the birds they do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much greater value than they are?” The birds are the freest creatures of all creation. They migrate north and south unhindered and unrestricted. We know this because Canadian geese are all over the place, and never once have I seen them present a passport.
Isaiah is telling the people that we will be empowered and prepared to smooth the rough edges caused by oppression, to bind the wounds once caused by injustice, and proclaim unhindered freedom like that currently experienced by the birds of the air.
Advent is a time of holy anxiety. It is a time of longing and yearning. We recognize the cold darkness around us and desire the warmth and security of the light. Isaiah is with us in this advent. “To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.” The term year here speaks of the cycles of the seasons, particularly spring. Isaiah is saying that the darkness will subside, and spring will come. The land will once again bear fruit and the birds will sing. This too will pass.
We are often distracted by the darkness around us. We think that the world is falling apart and there is no hope. We find ourselves longing for Jesus to return, just as many ancients longed for the Messiah to come. But we are distracted. We are distracted because that is what the kingdoms of the world want us to be. They want us to stop paying attention to Ukraine and focus on Gaza. They want us to blame the immigrants instead of the people that are exploiting the immigrant for personal gain. They want us to continue the cycles of darkness. But we are not obligated to play that game. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon us, because the Lord has anointed us to bring good news to the poor, he has sent us to bind up the injured and to proclaim liberty to the exiled.
It might be winter now, but Christmas is coming. The light will overtake the darkness and redemption is in the air. God is with us, and this is the Lord’s Day. Let us roll up our sleeves and prepare ourselves for the work he has appointed us to. The work of Loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others. Let us join with Christ in reversing the damage caused by our own rebellions, and restore hope.
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 12, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:3–9 (ESV) 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 05, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili John 20:1–18 (ESV) 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the…
To Donate to Willow Creek Friends Church Click here:
To donate directly to Pastor Warner click here:
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
December 03, 2023
Click Here to Join our Meeting for Worship
Isaiah 64:1–9 (ESV)
1 Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence— 2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4 From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. 5 You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? 6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. 8 But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.
We meet once again. Another day to worship and according to the church calendar today marks the new church year. As Friends we do not usually follow the traditional church calendar, at least not as a whole. This is a tradition that I do not always follow. I like the church calendar. I like that people from other denominations can come visit our Meeting and hear the same scriptures being read that would be read at theirs, and that similar themes will be presented. I say similar because the things I see in the pages of scripture and will speak about are not always going to be the same as someone else.
I began using the lectionary when I started ministering among you here at Willow Creek. I did this primarily because it gives our various volunteers a list of scriptures months in advance so that they can begin to prepare and practice songs that might go with those passages. I do reserve the right to venture out of that traditional framework.
The interesting thing about the lectionary. It is a three-year cycle of scriptures that correspond with various church seasons. The beginning of the year is Advent, followed by Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and ordinary time. This list of scriptures within this three-year cycle often contains books and passages I rarely think about, and yet even though this list was compiled decades ago, each week the suggested scripture I have used has been the right one for that week.
According to the church calendar, today is the beginning of the new year. I have considered this over the years. I have wondered why the new year does not begin with Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord? Why do we start the year a month before Christmas?
After many seconds of research on google, I began to understand. Advent means, the beginning of an event, the invention of something, or the arrival of a person. I sat thinking about this as I was praying, Advent is the beginning of an event. It is the period of time waiting for someone to arrive.
It is fitting that the new year begins with advent because that is how life works. I sat sitting in my blue chair thinking. I had just finished reading Albert his devotional for his Jesse tree project and I sat thinking about my life as a dad. I thought about all the various moments we have shared as a family. And how the events we share this year had a time of preparations months or years in advance. Albert plays goalie for his team now, but seven years ago I remember his first game. He would be sitting on the bench waiting for his turn to play, he would stand up to go onto the ice and his little helmet could just barely been seen over the top of the boards. His coach had to lift him up over the boards because the step going in and out of the players bench was too tall for his little legs to manage and yet he wanted to be out there.
Seven years we have waited to watch him today. But this all started before that. Some people have asked me why I allowed my son to play this game so early in his life. To be honest I cannot tell you. Since the day he could walk he has wanted to play hockey. David and Vicky even brought a hurling stick back from Ireland to give to him because he has always had a hockey stick in his hands. I laugh as I look through his old pictures because in nearly every one, he has hockey gloves on and a stick in his hand. Even his doctor has sat in the office playing hockey with him from the time he could walk.
Events build up to this moment of time. Every one of those events is part of the process. They build upon each other, compounding together until the moment arrives. And each of those events continues to build on into the future until the time of fulfillment.
When does life begin? I know that this has become a political talking point, but I want us to think about it. When did your child’s life begin? When did the life of your niece, nephew, or grandchild begin? We celebrate the days they were born, but what happened before that day? I cannot speak for everyone, but I do remember that Kristy and I spent many hours getting the room prepared. We built a crib, hung cute little pictures, and built a changing table. We organized baby clothes, bought baby clothes. We had diapers nicely stacked ready to use on the day this long expected baby came home for the first time. For nine months we prepared and waited in anticipation. Albert was just as much a part of the family in those moments as he is now. And for those of us who have experienced a miscarriage we can often mourn the loss of that child just as dramatically as we would any loss of a child because they are already part of our family.
Advent, the beginning of the event. The waiting for the arrival. Anticipation or as I have often called it Holy Anxiety. Anxiety is an emotional response, a feeling of fear, dread, or uneasiness. Usually when we speak of anxiety it is in a clinical sense when those feelings of distress do not go away, or they prevent us from participating in our daily lives. I like the concept of Holy Anxiety because I do find it fitting.
The past couple of weeks for us have been difficult. Yes, part of this is because of the loss of my grandfather, but for Albert it has been particularly rough. The Independence Community Ice had an unscheduled maintenance problem, so he was not able to play hockey. The first few days were not bad, but after a week he became irritable and fidgety, he even said it is boring without hockey. Now you understand why I spoke so much about this silly game today. We have just spent the past two weeks trying to explain something we do not understand. I have a deeper understanding of the words of that classic Christmas song “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” When the lyrics say “mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again.” We want Christmas to come, or in my case we want the ice to be fixed again. We want the celebration, the family, the joy, and the hope of a brighter future, but things must happen before that day comes.
Isaiah wrote in his oracles, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence…” Isaiah lived during the days of the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah and began his ministry prior to the Assyrian invasion that scattered the northern tribes among the nations. Israel was still free; they were still their own nations and yet there was this fear and dread that surrounded them.
Isaiah could sense what was about to happen. He knew that their enemies were going to come. He knew that the people of God would face times of trouble, he knew. Anxiety. “Oh, that you would rip the sky open and come down,” he cries out to the lord, “to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!”
Isaiah knows something is about to occur, something dreadful. It does not sit well in his mind. Israel has a purpose, a divinely appointed purpose. This is why Isaiah cries out the way he does. He cries out because Israel was called to be a light to the nations, they were to reveal the one true God to all. They were supposed to be, and yet they were not.
This past year I made a pledge with myself that I would spend more time speaking from the Old Testament and for the most part that is what has happened. The reason this has been more difficult is because there is so much more work and study that I must do to be able to present anything that sounds like a complete thought. When we enter the Old Testament scriptures we are entering into a different time and place. We know this but we often do not let that knowledge exist within our minds. This is a problem with most scripture because we are looking at it though eyes that are thousands of years removed from the time that it was written. The New Testament is easier because it is closer to us historically. We know what happened in the Roman empire because we have writings from that time period. But much of the history and culture surrounding the Old Testament has been lost in the sands of time and that of the desert.
We often read into the text, a western or Latin culture, but they were not Romans because Rome did not yet exist. There was no Caesar ruling the world, instead of that emperor there were others. We often laugh at the ideas and consider them to be silly superstitions, but the Old Testament world resembled the writings of Homer more than Shakespeare. It was a time when gods battled on earth and in heaven. Where giants or those great men of renown ruled the nations. Men that claimed to be the offspring of the gods. When we read the stories of Hercules the great ancient hero that battled with mythical beasts, are the stories dissimilar to the stories of Samson? I am not saying that the inspired words of scripture are fictional stories, but I do want us to take a step back and understand that the people that wrote these words were from a time and place without science as we know it today. And yet they were amazing. They did not have calculus or even algebra and yet they constructed the pyramids and the Parthenon. They did not have a compass, and yet they were able to navigate the world using the stars in the sky. They did not have the internet and somehow through careful study and observation they could predict when cosmic events would occur and were often able to adjust in their lives to prepare for those future events.
How did they do all this? If we were to take them at their word, they received this information from their gods. We are enlightened today. We claim to know better, yet often we are relearning things those ancient people already knew. We do not want to accept the possibility that they had access to some supernatural intelligence, so we entertain the idea and are entertained by the concept of ancient aliens.
Isaiah, this ancient man of old, looked out at the world around him. He saw what was going on, and he knew the promise that was made to the man that began this advent, Abraham. He knew that this ancient father was promised to be a nation that would be the light of all the nations. Through him and his offspring, God would reverse all the evil that had come into the world. He would redeem all the nations and bring them back to the place we were created to inhabit. Israel was to show God to the world.
“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.”
Isaiah might as well be writing to us today, and yet he wrote these words thousands of years ago. It does not even matter where we are from or what cultural background we have, these words ring true. There is something wrong with the world. We are doing things that we know are not right, and yet we do them anyway. Just turn on the news and you can see it played out before our eyes. We know that innocent people are suffering at the hands of others. And that we have justified those actions in our minds because we want something they have for ourselves. We justify, but that justification does not make it right.
We are often polluted and diluted. We say in our minds that we are right, but have we taken a step back and examined beneath the surface? Albert wants to play hockey, but the ice has melted. We want Christmas today, but we must wait. Isaiah wants God to reveal himself fully to the world, but God has another plan.
God wants the world to know him. He wants everyone on the face of this earth to know that they are loved and created in His image. That is our calling and mission as people who claim to be his people. We like Isaiah want God to rip open the heavens and for Jesus to come in the clouds. I have heard the sermons on this my entire life. We live in a similar holy anxiety as Isaiah did in those ancient days. My grandfather heard those sermons, as did my great grandfather. For over a hundred years we have been told that the end of the world is upon us, and yet tomorrow has become today and the anxiety continues the advent is still anticipated. We have listened to these messages we have read the books and watched the movies. We fear being left behind, and in that fear have we missed the point?
“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah looks at the calamity that is upon them, he pleas that God would just rip the heavens apart and reveal himself to the nations, yet God does not work like that. God has a different plan. He works the clay.
My wife has a fine arts degree in ceramics, so I often dwell on passages like this and remember the countless hours of watching her work with clay as I sat reading a book, well acting like I was reading a book. I watched her sitting at the wheel as a vessel seemingly magically appeared before my eyes. I observed her manipulate something I would have called mud into something profound. We are like that clay.
Isaiah says this somewhat metaphorically, but this is also what is explained in Genesis. God said, “Let us make man in our image.” And he created man out of the dust of the earth. He created humanity out of clay. He molded and formed Adam, we often see this as man but Adam means of the soil or ground. God takes this clay figure and breathes life into it and places it inside a garden called Eden. This clay figure is the image of God. But what exactly does that mean?
When God created this mud man we know as Adam, he said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish, over the birds, over the livestock, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Does that give us any clue as to what the image of God is? The image is not the creativity we possess, or the mental capacity we wield, but it is dominion and position. We were place into the creation to be caretakers or stewards over all that God created. We were created to be God’s representatives to the plants, animals, and creepy things. We are living into God’s image when we allow God’s wisdom to live through us into the world we reside.
We want God to rend the heavens, but what does God want?
We want God to come down and make the mountains quake, to make his name known to our adversaries. Yet maybe in this time of advent, in this time of holy anxiety God is encouraging us to bear his image. Maybe he is encouraging us to show those around us the true hope that is found within the teachings of God.
“Behold, please look, we are all your people.” Is this what we see as we gaze upon those around us? Is this the prayer we speak as we pray for peace in Israel and across the world? Is this our identity and image? We want and we anticipate, but before we can have, we must wait for God to continue to work the clay. But as we wait, we can hold onto the promise that God will reveal himself to all people. And that God will himself known. He will fulfill what he has said he will fulfill, but until that time we are his people, here now. And we have work to do.
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church March 29, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 3: Do you attend regularly the services of your church and participate in them actively? Do you prayerfully endeavor to minister, under the guidance of the Holy…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church March 15, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Ephesians 5:8–14 (ESV) 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church February 22, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Romans 5:12–19 (ESV) 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all…
To Donate to Willow Creek Friends Church Click here:
To donate directly to Pastor Warner click here:
