By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
February 4, 2024
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Isaiah 40:21–31 (ESV)
21 Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; 23 who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. 24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
There are days when I pull up the latest news and feel as if everything around me is going crazy. I am sure we all get to feeling this way at times. I listen to the stories being reported, and I wonder if the people involved had listened at all when they were in school.
I shake my head at times. I worry and I fret. I ponder what I can do to change the course of history. And I realize that there really is not much that can be done, at least on a larger scale. The only thing that I can change. The only area I can really make a difference is in my own life, and those people within my community that I can encourage.
We often get caught in this over arching narrative of the twenty-four-hour news cycles. We get bombarded by reports of how terrible everything is and if we do not vote a certain way everything will just get worse. But as we watch these reports, do we take a step back and examine the reality around what is being said?
Isaiah was an important man in his culture. He is probably the only prophet of Israel that actually held a position within the society where he could encourage change on a larger scale. He was a member of the royal family. Many believe that he was a courier of sort, which would mean he carried messages from the throne of Judah to various other governmental offices both within Judah and the surrounding nations. As I sat reflecting on today’s passage, Isaiah’s position within his culture weighed on my mind.
For most people within any culture our scope of knowledge and influence is fairly minimal. Isaiah was not like us. He saw the way governments operated. He was involved in what a book I have recently been reading would call “the game of whispers.” meaning he heard the plots and schemes of those that held power. But what he knew better than any of us is how the manipulations of rulers, often came with a cost, and the ones that often paid the price were those that were ruled.
I opened to this passage and my first thought was not super spiritual. I love this passage, it contains some of the verses that provided some of the greatest encouragement in my journey of faith. But my initial thoughts were, “This is going to get me in trouble.”
This is the first thing that came to my mind because we are currently living in an era of history where people are frequently easily offended. We live in a time when people that say things we might not appreciate are mocked, ridiculed, and canceled. It is not exactly the best time in our nations’ history to speak from the writings of the prophets, because the words of the prophets tend to cause social discomfort.
“Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?”
I want us all to take a deep breath right now. And I want us to be open to hear. Isaiah begins this section with four questions. These are rhetorical questions, meaning they are not supposed to be answered directly. Instead, these are queries whose intent is to shock. The questions seem to encourage us to take a step back and remember, but when these rapid fire questions occur it is often a literary devise that draws attention to what is lacking or being neglected.
Isaiah was a scholarly man. He did know, he did hear. That was his job, not only as a prophet of God, but in his daily life. He would travel around carrying and composing official correspondences between empires. He looks around him, and he is observing that there is within these various places a blatant disregard of learning. The people he is working around are so caught up in their own contemporary understanding that they refuse to listen. They refuse to hear or even discuss other perspectives, and this refusal is leading them in a direction they are too blind to see.
Isaiah is calling his contemporaries ignorant. He is calling the leaders within the royal courts ignorant. He is calling the people within the surrounding empires ignorant. And he is calling those that read and listen to his teachings just as ignorant. This, unfortunately, includes us.
“Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?” Isaiah is clearly telling us that we are missing the point.
“It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.”
Isaiah tells us that we are ignorant. He says we are either distracted from or willfully neglecting something of importance. And the thing that we are neglecting is the reality of who we are.
“It is he who sits above the circle of the earth.” Him not us. I know that I often look at things within scripture in a manner that some might find odd. One of my favorite novels is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and in that novel the whole purpose of earth is to help the mice figure out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. There are times when I think that quest has been my reality. I have always been fascinated with various religious traditions and I have tried to seek out the common themes and to where they diverge. There are many similarities between various religions, but there are differences as well. According to our scriptures that divergence happens in the beginning.
Why were humans created? What is the point of our existence? According to many religious ideas humanity was created to serve the gods. But that is not the concept our scriptures teach, we were created to bear the image of God. We might miss this small seemingly insignificant nuance, but it is a big deal. Even within Christian traditions we often take the stance that we are servants of God. Many well-meaning and righteous people have lived with that mindset. Many have even done great things for God while living under the ideology of being a servant of God. But what does this manner of thinking imply?
In the pagan worldview of the ancient near east, there were those who were the offspring of the gods that were the rightful rulers of the people. They were the living gods on earth, the sons of god. They were giants, they held power and everyone under their authority were their servants. They were slaves. In this mindset the kings, emperors, the tsars, and warlords were the only ones that had rights. Isaiah worked for one of those kings.
The idea of an image bearer is different. Yes there is still a hierarchy, but it is different. It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and we bear his image. We are not servants or slaves but representatives or ambassadors. To bear the image is to be something.
“and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers:” Often when I think of this phrase, my mind begins to think of insignificance. I think of the spies that Moses sent into the promise land, and they reported back that there were giants in the land and that they were mere grasshoppers in comparison. That is what many think Isaiah is saying. God is siting above the circle of the earth, and we are just insignificant grasshoppers compared to his holiness. But there is another way to look at this.
To bear the image of God is to be God’s ambassador to creation. What we do, what we say, how we interact with those around us is to represent the one whose image we are bearing. The image is not just a reflection but what we do and who we are. What does a grasshopper do? They devour, destroy. They swarm into an area consuming everything of value, and they move on leaving nothing. We do not hear about swarming locust in North America much anymore. There was a minor plague of locust in the 1930’s but the most significant swarming event occurred in 1874 caused by the Rocky Mountain Locust. But that species of locust is now extinct and the only remaining locust in the United States is the High Plains Locust which is very rare. It is not something that occurs here, but locust are still a problem throughout the world especially in Africa.
Isaiah is saying from the very beginning we were created for a purpose. We were to be representatives of God to the world. We were to reflect and extend throughout all creation what was important to God, but instead became swarms of locusts. We devour. We destroy. We take what once was fruitful and abundant, and we cause a shortage. God stretched out heavens as a tent wishing to dwell with us, but the princes, the emperors, the warlords have left nothing in their wake.
Do you see why I said this was going to get me into trouble? But Isaiah does not stop.
“Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth…” Here Isaiah speaks about the princes. There are people within a society that believe that they are God’s gift to humanity. Monarchies state they have a divine right to rule. Dictators often believe they are the smartest person within a society and without them the world would crumble. And I will not mention some current political ads going around.
Scarcely are they planted. Is difficult to translate. The words translated to scarcely literally mean also not. So the idea is that they are not planted, they are not sown. They are essentially weeds. These monarchs think there is some divine right to rule, but Isaiah says, no you were not planted you are just a weed sucking the life out of what was supposed to be there.
Yes, now I am really in trouble. We might think God ordained, or God’s providence dictated this or that. God gave authority to governments for a reason. Have I never read Roman’s 13? According to Isaiah the kingdom’s of men are weeds and grasshoppers. They destroy and infest. They corrupt and waste. All governments of mankind are empty.
Now that we are all thoroughly riled up. We should probably say why Isaiah says this.
“Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel. My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God? Have you not known? Have you not heard?” Isaiah repeats what he started with. We are ignorant. We are distracted or willfully negligent.
“The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”
Isaiah is reminding us that God is the one that created, God is the one the established everything that we see and feel. God set this all in motion, and God does not stop. He says that God’s understanding is unsearchable. We might think this means we cannot know or that it is pointless to question, but no Isaiah means that there is no end in what we can learn if we turn to God.
What can we compare God to? Look up into the sky and see the stars that hang in the heavens. Who put them there? Who formed them? Who devised the laws of gravity that holds the billions of stars together and ignited the fusion reactions that cause them to generate life giving light and heat?
Its unsearchable meaning there will always be more questions than answers. We will constantly search and study and will always find more. The kingdoms might think they are mighty. They might think they are God’s gift to the earth, but to this day we cannot harness the power of the stars. And even if we could, we would likely use that power for what?
Isaiah lived in a time when empires were at war. Egypt was rising in the west, Assyria was rising in the east, and Babylon to the north. Great empires striving to rule the known world. And Israel and Judah were caught in the middle. We are God’s chosen people, they would claim. We were promised this land. And Isaiah laughs through his tears.
The nations of this world strive for dominance. We seek power, influence, wealth. But what is that really? The great band from my home state says, “All we are is dust in the wind.” We are weeds and grasshoppers, if we neglect what was initiated at the very beginning. We were not created to be slaves or servants, but Image bearers. Each of us were created to carry that of God to the world around us. We were created to share and encourage, we were created to make the entire earth into the Garden of God. We have neglected our duty, and have distracted with by the wiles of power.
“The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Isaiah is urging us to learn. He is urging us to be open to discussion and willing to admit that we might be wrong. He pleads that we will stop looking to the kingdoms of men for our identity and instead remember who we truly are. We are not slaves, we are not servants relegated to bow knee in submission. We bear the image of God, as does the person beside you, and the one sitting in a trench in Ukraine or in the deserts of Yemen. The quests for power and dominance will all lead to destruction, but something will always remain in the wake. Let us focus on those things. The oppressed and the powerless. The ones that need help with their math homework or a ride to the doctor’s office. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength … You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide said that the meaning of Life, the universe, and everything was forty-two, but the greatest commandment as quoted in Mark 12 has forty-five words, forty-two if you drop the Hear O Israel. Surely that is significant.
The world may seem to be going crazy, but are we focused on what is most important? Are we looking toward the proper directions? Are we seeking our hope and strength from the one who figured it all out eons ago and gave us a purpose from the very beginning.
Previous Messages:
Broken Dreams Restored
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…
The Mind of Christ
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…
Walk as Children of Light
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…
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