From Complaining to Compassion.

If you have your Bibles today, we are going to be in Isaiah, bouncing around a bit today from 10, 11, and 12. Some of it will be on the screen. This is our first sermon installment in our series for Lent through the book of Isaiah, so I'm going to do a quick overview today to try to get us somewhat familiar with where we're at. There's a QR code on the screen that goes to a Lent guide, a reading plan throughout Lent as we prepare for Easter, so I want to encourage you to scan it and follow along. We've been posting in our Slack channel too, another plug to be connected there, our weekly fasting practices. Every week as a church we are fasting from food sunup to sundown on Tuesdays, and if you're in a community group, we're breaking that fast together. We also have additional practices, and this week, which we're talking about in our sermon, we attempted to fast complaining from our vocabulary. I won't quiz you on how well you did. But every week we have a different practice, as well as a reading plan through Isaiah and the Gospel of Mark, so I encourage you to follow along there.

Before we dive into the text in Isaiah, I want to give us a big picture overview. Isaiah is in the Old Testament, part of the Hebrew scriptures. It's a prophetic voice, Isaiah coming and announcing both judgment and hope. There's a lot we're stepping into here with the Israelites and with God's people. I want to talk first about the literary and historical context, so we know a little of what we're walking into. There are three major sections we're going to see in Isaiah. The first, chapters 1 through 39, starts with Isaiah coming with both judgment and warning. You'll hear a lot of harsh judgment language, him speaking on behalf of God to the people, because there's a lot of corruption, a threat of Assyrian invasion, and all of this stuff. As you move through chapters 40 through 55, we start to see more comfort and hope. So we start with judgment and warning, and then it comes into comfort and hope. Then we move to the end of Isaiah, 56 through 66, which is restoration and future glory, the real hope and restoration that is coming.

Some of the features we see: this is a very poetic book, a lot of imagery, a lot of visions and storytelling, where sometimes if you took it literally it would be really strange. So we always want to be aware, when we're opening scripture, of what the literary style is, what we're actually talking about. There's a lot of symbolism in the book of Isaiah, and a lot of courtroom language, which was very familiar at that time with the laws, everyone would have known that kind of courtroom language. So you'll hear a lot of exchanging, a lot of different penalties, judgment, things like that. There are also a lot of songs that are messianic prophecies, pointing to the Messiah who was coming, and now, because we're reading this with the New Testament, we know that Jesus came, that he died, he rose again, he ascended to heaven, and left with us his Holy Spirit. At this moment in the text, we know who the Messiah is. So we know it's pointing to Jesus, which is incredible to think, that at some point people were reading this and still waiting for the Messiah, but we know the Messiah has come, and we're going to see those prophecies proclaiming he's coming.

Then a little more historical context. We're in the midst of the rise of the Assyrian Empire. The northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed in 722 BC, and these threats keep coming. So this is what the people are in the midst of when they're hearing from Isaiah. He's speaking to several different groups, which I think is really interesting for us to know. Isaiah is speaking to his own people, his own generation, the current cultural climate. But he's also speaking to future exiles, those who were going to go through similar things later, and to all the people about the future restoration that's going to come. We're going to hear that in some of the language as we read together.

Some other things to note as he references the more religious culture, the social issues, and the theological themes: at this time there's still a lot of temple worship happening, but the people were coming and performing all of these religious things while their hearts were far from God. He addresses that several times throughout the book, using poems and imagery and visions to tell people, that's great that you're coming to the temple and doing these things, but where's your heart? There's a huge emphasis on the heart, because they were mixing their worship of Yahweh with other idols, missing so much of the point. There's this huge question of what are we actually doing, is this the purity of what God wants. There was a lot of ritual happening, but at the same time they were doing a lot of really oppressive, unjust things to the people around them.

So this is who Isaiah is speaking to. The social issues were economic injustice, oppression of the poor, corrupt leadership, political alliances instead of trusting God. This is what's happening as Isaiah enters the scene. So here are some of the themes we're going to see him highlight: the holiness of God, making sure people know we need to center everything on who God is, his purity, that he is the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. There's a theme of not just judgment, but judgment and mercy coming together, and we're reminded that even though the judgment is spoken so harshly, that's not the end result, there is hope coming. There's a remnant, God is saving his people, God is faithful to his people. And we continue to see this vision for new creation, how God intends us to live in his kingdom.

So now that you're all experts on Isaiah, you can go teach a class. I love this book so much. What does it look like for us to be open to hearing from God, no matter what our circumstance, because Isaiah was speaking to so many people who were in stressful situations, and it is both this judgment and this hope that's coming. When we get into the beginning it can be easy to read it and think, this is really depressing, this is really defeating, is God just angry at his people? But the thing for us to recognize is that it doesn't stay here, and we're going to see this movement. What's happening throughout the whole book is that Isaiah isn't just predicting the future, though he's known as a prophet, this is a prophetic book. He's forming the people he's speaking to along the way, forming them into recognizing the holiness of God, into being the people God has created them, and now created us, to be: like Jesus, the Messiah. We're going to see that formation come to play.

From complaining to compassion

So today, the title of this message is From Complaining to Compassion. I want you to think, even now, when is the last time you complained? We tried fasting from complaining this week, and I say tried because I really did try, and I was awful at it. I realized just how much I complain. Even this morning I was complaining about things. I've always been the type of person who gets really passionate about things, and many of you aren't shocked by that at all. I think back to when I was fifteen or sixteen, having one of these passionate moments where I'd start complaining about crazy things, things where I'd think, does anybody else see this, does no one else recognize it?

One of these happened at a Fourth of July party with some friends, a very common thing to do here in the States. What do you do? Fireworks. I was having a moment where all I could think about was how much money we were wasting. Everyone's enjoying their hot dogs and sitting around the fire, and I'm literally sobbing, thinking of all the people who are hungry, everyone who needs things, and we're just blowing up money. I was so angry, so passionate, thinking, does anyone see this? Now, not all of my complaining is holy. I don't even know what happened there. There were probably other ways I could have addressed the situations and the passions and the things I saw.

So many moments when we're complaining, what's the root of it? A lot of times we want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want empathy for what we're going through, we really are struggling. As we talk today about how we move from complaining to conviction, to calling, to compassion, I do want to pause, because I don't think all complaining is necessarily bad and something we should never do. Even in the text we're going to read, God complains, he recognizes things, but he doesn't stay there. That's the difference I want us to focus on, not how do we never complain, because if we look at the Psalms, most of them are psalms of lament. The structure of a psalm of lament is you come before God and acknowledge him, then bring your complaint and have this honest conversation, then you move to calling and asking God to intervene, and you end in a place of trusting God and surrendering it to him and his holiness again. There is a piece of being honest enough with God to ask, do you see me here, do you see this? I believe God wants that honesty from us. He doesn't want us to hide our feelings. But how do we move beyond complaint into people who are stepping into the call and invitation to be like Jesus and move to compassion?

If we're honest, for most of us the complaints are probably about traffic, or what we didn't like about our food at a restaurant, or fill in the blank. Complaining is such a part of our life, but how do we become people who don't just notice what's wrong, but know how to do something about it instead?

Isaiah goes beyond complaining

So we're going to read first just a few verses in Isaiah chapter 10, right at the beginning.

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives or fall among the slain. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

Isaiah 10:1-4

As you continue through Isaiah 10, we're going to see that God gives this whole section of judgment to Assyria, who was oppressing people, invading, going hard. He's saying, here's all the things that are happening. What I want us to see here is that God is not silent about injustice. God sees it. God names it. He confronts it. And he invites his people to be part of the strategy in how we see his kingdom of justice and righteousness come. We see here that he's acknowledging that systems were set up to crush and destroy people, that the powerful were exploiting the weak, that the wealthy were ignoring the suffering around them. God is not just ignoring this, he's naming it. He's saying, woe to you who are doing these things, which is a heart check for us, of how often we just complain about inconvenience when there's all this injustice happening around us.

God's not just complaining about minor inconveniences, he's coming and speaking out against injustice. But he does not stop at complaining, he moves to confronting the issue and naming it. So our so-what today is that Isaiah goes beyond complaining and moves to confrontation, compassion, and calling, walking in his calling of preparing the way for Jesus to come. And our now-what for today is, how do we move from complaining to compassion? This is our goal, how do we move from people who complain to compassionate followers of Jesus, walking in our calling of living this out every single day.

When I was thinking about the difference between complaining and compassion, complaining and stepping into calling, all I could think about was tiny apartments in Madison and the horrible placement of smoke detectors. Has anyone else lived in a kitchen where the smoke alarm is almost on top of the stove? I see some hands. You're like, who did this? The last apartment I lived in before where I live now was like that, the smoke alarm almost on top of my stove. Every time I'd even turn on the oven, and it could be spotless, clean, at a low setting, it would go off. Then I'm scrambling, jumping on a chair to shut it off, while trying to make sure nothing is actually burning.

Here's the thing about a smoke alarm: it serves the purpose of letting you know something is burning, but it doesn't actually put out the fire. That's the difference between complaining and moving into calling and compassion. Our complaining and noticing can serve a purpose, saying, hey, does someone see the injustice happening over here, someone needs to do something about this. But at some point we need more than just a smoke alarm to tell us a house is burning. We need someone to come and put the fire out, to step into that. This is what the book of Isaiah is inviting us into today, moving from just saying, hey, look at these things, God, to also saying, okay, now what are we doing about it, how do we get in and start doing something, walking in the calling God has for us?

A shoot from the stump of Jesse

Then we move into Isaiah 11, zooming in on God confronting these things and moving to this place of compassion. I'm going to read a lot of it here.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath, and from the islands of the Mediterranean. He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. Ephraim's jealousy will vanish, and Judah's enemies will be destroyed; Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim. They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east. They will subdue Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them. The Lord will dry up the gulf of the Egyptian sea; with a scorching wind he will sweep his hand over the Euphrates River. He will break it up into seven streams so that anyone can cross over in sandals. There will be a highway for the remnant of his people that is left from Assyria, as there was for Israel when they came up from Egypt.

Isaiah 11:1-16

Can you imagine a world with no more jealousy? You read these things and think, this is a miracle when it happens. Right in the middle of these super harsh warnings and judgments of corrupt leaders and unjust systems, Isaiah gives us this vision, speaking out in this beautiful, poetic language.

The first thing he names is that a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse. This is a loaded line. A stump, a shoot, what does that mean? Jesse was King David's father, so this was the prophesied line the Messiah was going to come from. But this royal line, at the moment, looked like a dead stump. He's saying, it might look like just a dead stump, nothing can come from this, but a shoot is going to come from it. At this moment for Israel, their kings had failed them completely, their leaders had been corrupted with injustice, their systems looked broken. God is saying that even now, from these dead stumps, I still have new life that's going to come. New kings, new images. I'm not finished. It also shows us that the kingdom of God is happening in ways that, if we're not careful, we could overlook, because it might look done, dead, like there's no life that can come from it. Isaiah is describing where a ruler is going to come from: something small, hidden, often overlooked.

So what does this mean? He's saying that God is not going to be fooled by appearances, not going to be manipulated by power, not impressed by people's status or wealth, even as people bring their offerings and their worship. He's saying, I know that it's from these small things that my kingdom is going to come. He's going to judge the poor with righteousness, defend the oppressed. This is who we're talking about here, Jesus coming. Justice is not a side issue for God. Justice for all people is not a small piece in this story, but this is what God is after: justice for his people, justice, his kingdom to come.

He says the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. I love that right there in verse two of this vision, this prophetic poem, it starts by saying it's going to come from this stump, this hidden thing you won't be expecting, and then wisdom, understanding, counsel, might. We cannot see justice, we cannot be carriers and vessels of justice, without the Spirit of the Lord resting on us. Thank you, Jesus, that we have full access to his Holy Spirit, to rest on us, to provide that wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge of the Lord. This is another reminder that we are the vessels, and he is the source, so we don't have to be stressed or worried or anxious about how this is going to happen. We just say, okay, Spirit of wisdom, will you rest on us, will you flow through us, because we are your willing vessels, we need the wisdom, we need the counsel, we need the knowledge, we need the Spirit of the Lord.

Jesus moves toward the pain

Then we move into this confrontation: he's going to judge the needy with justice, give decisions for the poor of the earth, and so on. What I love here is that Jesus, the one Isaiah is prophesying and giving this vision of, does all of this and so much more. In our readings this week in the Gospel of Mark, we see the story of the man with the withered hand. Isaiah is prophesying about the Messiah who's going to come and usher in this kingdom of justice, who isn't going to run away from the needy but walk toward them, and we read Jesus doing just that. They're in a place of worship, and this man is there. Other people criticize Jesus for healing him in a place of worship. They come to him: which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? Why are you doing this in the house of the Lord? But Jesus, in this moment, is not swayed by impressive people and their fine-sounding arguments, he moves with compassion and heals this man, continuing to walk toward people, not just yelling from a distance, but going and touching the sick, being with people.

I think of it like a lifeguard. What good is it to see someone drowning and yell from afar? A lifeguard is trained and equipped to go into the water and bring that person out with them, to save them. Jesus was not afraid of the sick, not afraid of the hurting, not afraid of the broken. He is equipping and training us to be the same, saying, you don't have to fear that you won't have enough, you don't have to fear that you don't have the words or the things to do, but trust that when my Spirit is upon you, there is going to be healing that flows through you, new life that flows through you, justice that flows through you.

So the questions we need to ask today, as we sit with these texts, are: where are the places we're still sitting and shouting from a distance? What are the things that keep you up at night, that you look at and think, if I think about it too much I just get overwhelmed? Where are we just standing from a distance and shouting, rather than walking with the authority of the Spirit of the Lord upon us, saying, we're not just going to sit back and shout, someone's drowning, someone's hurting, but we are willing to go and get into the messiness, the unknown, sometimes the darkness of the deep end, and lift people up out of where they're at, and carry them safely away. This is what we're called to do.

We also read this week in Mark, in the story of the leper. If you had leprosy, you were so sick that no one would want to touch you, because it was known as contagious and vile. Jesus is seen going and touching this man so close that he himself could have been contaminated. Everyone else is backing away, and Jesus moves toward him. I love the line in this story that says Jesus was moved with compassion, overcome with passion to the point that he could no longer stay back. It's one thing for us to see something and name it, to complain about it. It's another to start confronting it, to use our voice to advocate. But it's another thing still to step into our calling and be moved with passion to go and touch people no one else is willing to be around. That is the calling we have as followers of Jesus.

Called to praise, and to step into it

And then we shift into Isaiah chapter 12, the calling and invitation we have.

In that day you will say: I will praise you, Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me. Surely God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. In that day you will say: Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name, make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things. Let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.

Isaiah 12:1-6

We have a call to step in, to receive that salvation, and to be the ones shouting it, and also stepping in to help people experience it fully.

This week, part of our fasting from complaining was to replace it with intercession, prayer, and gratitude. Here's why. Think of a camera, most of us probably have smartphones now with a zoom lens and a wide lens. What complaining does is zoom in, narrow in on a specific thing, so all of a sudden that's all we can see. But when we step back and widen the lens, practicing gratitude, we're not ignoring that the thing still exists, but we're choosing to see God at work on a greater, wider scale. We're allowing ourselves to see, and name, and trust that he is working far beyond what we can see when we zoom in on one specific thing. So we're not denying it's still there, we're still naming it, still saying, God, do you see this? And he does. He sees it. He sees the injustice happening. He sees the oppression. He knows the things keeping us up at night. But we step back and say, God, we praise you, because we know hope has come and hope is coming again. This is what gratitude does for us: it widens our lens. Grateful people can be some of the most dangerous people when it comes to what the enemy is trying to do, because we refuse to get stuck in the complaining and negativity, and continue to move forward saying, God, we lament and we grieve these things, but then we move toward gratitude, because we know you're working, and we're going to keep praising instead of staying stuck in defeat.

Isaiah is reminding us that judgment does not have the final word, that what's happening to these people does not have the final word. It goes beyond complaining, moving into the conviction we need to step into our calling and be compassionate people.

Closing: opportunities to serve

I'm going to invite Matthew up as we get ready to close today. Today's response is a little different, because as I was praying about this, I felt the first invitation for us this week is to continue moving from complaining to gratitude, offering our lament to the Lord, but catching the complaint when it's happening and turning it into a prayer of lament. Turn it into saying, God, here's what I see, this is what I'm worried about, this is what I'm anxious about, these are the people I see hurting and oppressed that I am desperate for you to come and intervene for. Then call on Jesus to come and do that. Call on the name of the Lord. Then turn to praising and trusting God, worshiping again, saying, God, I trust this is not the end. Just as, if you were the people hearing this, you'd think it's the end, there's just a dead stump sitting here, and Isaiah says, but don't you see it, this line that looks like it's over is a shoot coming from the stump of Jesse, and it's going to be glorious. That's what we look to when we choose gratitude and praise, we widen that lens.

I want to invite you to stand as we close in prayer today, and I have some practical things I want to invite us into, and then we'll give a moment to pray and ask the Spirit to show us what he wants to speak to us today.

Practically: we've centered this season of Lent on fasting, prayer, and giving. Part of our giving that we continue to share about is that we're encouraging everyone to not just fast from food on Tuesdays, but to give what you would normally spend on a meal to our Feed Our Neighbors initiative, which you can find on our giving page. We want to feed people. We don't want to just fast, we don't want to just pray, but we want to be people who get our hands a little dirty, going to the people who need it most, not afraid to step into uncomfortable situations. We don't want to just shout from a distance, we want to step into it with people.

So I'm going to invite each of us to pray about what we can do during this Lent season. Kayla, our community outreach coordinator, is at the back welcome tables with some sign-ups. One of the things we do as a church, that Kayla heads up, is our Care Portal team, an opportunity to serve families in our community who are in need of basic things, families who can't buy a backpack for their kids for school, or who are moving into their first apartment after being in shelters and need bedding and things like that. A huge piece of this is keeping kids with their families and out of the foster care system. We have a team, and we're in some desperate need of more people to sign up and go through Care Portal training, learning to respond in a trauma-informed way to these needs in the community. The commitment varies. Essentially, once you're trained, you'll be in a group where if Kayla sees a need, and we as a church set aside money every month for this, she'll reach out and say, I need someone to come with me Saturday at 10 a.m. to deliver sheets to this family, or something like that. So that's the commitment, but we need people trained to respond. There's a training at the end of March, and we need more people to get trained to respond to needs in our community.

We're also going to be doing more meals in November at Enzo Living Community, which Emily here works at, if you want more information. We've served meals there, and did a food pantry at one of their other spaces for Tellurian Mental Health. We're looking to add a couple more dates, signed up for Monday evenings. The commitment would be having some people cook ahead of time, whether you buy the food and cook, or we buy you the food and you cook, we can talk about that, and get it to Enzo on Mondays. Then we need people to show up from about 4:30 to 6:30 to prep, serve the meal, and help clean up. These are residents who have been previously chronically homeless, and for many of them this is the first space they've had on their own, so there's a lot they're desperate for, community, like we all are. We want to not only give them food, but offer that gift of community and hospitality. If you're a student in the room with Monday evenings free, I know work schedules can be crazy to get there by 4:30, we'd love to have you serve there.

The last one is Laundry Love. Once a month our church goes and provides laundry for people in the downtown neighborhoods. Cole and Lynn up front have served on that team often, so you can talk with them about what it's like. It's on Mound Street, close to campus for students in the room. We go in, put quarters in the machines, and get to build community with our neighbors. We want to be people who continue to step in and ask, what does it look like to lift up those around us who could use a little more support, a little more community?

I want to invite you, after church, to go see Kayla and sign up for one of those opportunities. As we close, I want to give a moment for us to invite the Holy Spirit to speak and show us where we've been stuck complaining, and where the Spirit is inviting us into that calling to be moved into compassion. Would you take a moment, close your eyes across this room, and invite the Holy Spirit to speak in your own way. Often for me it's holding out my hands in a posture of surrender, saying, Holy Spirit, would you speak to me, would you show me the things I've been stuck complaining about, would you widen my lens, would you show me where I need to move and step into my calling to be like Jesus, to follow and be formed into his likeness, to be moved with compassion. Holy Spirit, would you speak in this moment. And I want to invite you to end in gratitude this morning, to begin thanking God for the ways he's moving in the things you're complaining about.

God, we do that today. I thank you, Lord, that the things on our hearts, that you see, you do not ignore. You do not ignore pain, you do not ignore injustice, but you grieve with us, and I thank you that you welcome us to come and bring that to you. I thank you, God, that when we read this prophetic voice from Isaiah today, we know that the Messiah did come, we know that your Holy Spirit is with us, resting on us, giving us the wisdom, the might, the power, the strength. So God, today we stand here as your willing vessels, and we invite your Spirit to flow through us. Would you help us move from people who not only bring you our complaints and pray and intercede, but are willing to step into that calling and move in compassionate ways toward the people you have called us to. God, I pray even now over Laundry Love, over Care Portal. God, we thank you for Kayla, for Cole and Lynn, and all the people who serve in these ministries, day after day, week after week, for the people going and responding to families for Care Portal. God, we pray that you would continue to give us a heart for the people in our community, and show us the ways you are inviting us into that, whether it's giving of our finances, our time, or simply encouraging the people who are the hands and feet in our serving. God, would you help us in these moments not to be overwhelmed with complaints, but overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing that hope continues to come, that your light continues to break into the darkness, and that your kingdom is coming here in Madison as it is in heaven. Lord, we love you, we thank you for this, and it's in your holy name we pray. Amen.