Stable in the Shaking.

Happy Sunday, everyone. I was laughing, you would think that at 11 a.m. we wouldn't get hit with the daylight savings.

Did anyone else come in a little sleepy today still? Even though we're an 11 a.m. church, I'm still tired, and I don't know why. But glad that you all made it out on this beautiful Sunday morning.

We are going to be picking up in Isaiah 25, referencing 26, and then 27 today. If you're picking up with us this morning, we have been going through the book of Isaiah as we lead up to Easter, and we're going to continue in that today. We also have some Lent resources.

We have a whole Lent guide available. You can find that on our website. It's guiding you through Lent. We are praying, fasting, and giving. Every week we continue to ask what it looks like for us to be like Jesus, to become like Jesus, and to do what he did.

We want to follow in his footsteps. We're fasting every Tuesday for the non-college students, since we meet in our community groups to break the fast on Tuesday nights. So we invite you to join us in abstaining from food sunup to sundown. If you're a college student, Wednesday is your day to fast, and then you can break that fast together.

We also have specific Bible reading plans through the book of Isaiah and the gospel of Mark this Lent season, if you want to follow along. And one more thing: we don't want to be people who only say we want to pray for people. We also want to do the things Jesus did, and feed our neighbors. So we're inviting everyone, if you are fasting, to give toward our Feed Our Neighbors initiative, whether it's ten dollars for the meal you're giving up, whatever that looks like. And we have opportunities to go and feed people in our community. It's been a good Lent season so far, and we're excited to keep going.

Isaiah 25

So turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 25. I have it noted here to read the whole chapter, so I'm going to read the whole chapter for us today. It says this:

Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago. You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigners' stronghold a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will honor you. Cities of ruthless nations will revere you. You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall. And like the heat of the desert, you silence the uproar of foreigners. As heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled. On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove his people's disgrace from the earth. The Lord has spoken. In that day they will say, surely this is our God. We trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him. Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. The hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain, but Moab will be trampled in their land as straw is trampled down in the manure. They will stretch out their hands in it as swimmers stretch out their hands to swim. God will bring down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands. He will bring down their high fortified walls and lay them low. He will bring them down to the ground, to the very dust.

Isaiah 25:1-12

Let's pray again. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word, that is alive, that is active. We thank you for the presence of your Holy Spirit, that is with us to help this text come to life today. God, I pray for every single one of us in this room.

God, would you give us not only ears to hear you clearly through this text today, but hearts to receive it? Even now, I invite you in your own way. Would you invite the Lord to speak to you as we dive into his word today? Holy Spirit, we thank you that you are with us, and we say you have permission.

So would you come? Would you speak? Would you move? Would you transform our hearts? It's in your name we pray.

Jesus is our stability

Amen. So today we're picking up in Isaiah. Last week we talked about how we move from a place of complaining to compassion. How do we move from naming the things we see to a place where we're following Jesus to move with compassion and care for the people and things around us?

What does it look like for us not to be so narrow and zoomed in on the negative things we see, but to practice gratitude and widen our lens to see what God is doing all around us? That's part of what we're continuing to see here in Isaiah. Isaiah is using a lot of poetry and imagery to paint this picture of what is happening. He's speaking to a place that's in ruins, and not only to the people there, but to the future people and nations who are going to come, reminding them of this promised hope. And so today our so-what is looking to see, as Isaiah is pointing us to Jesus over and over again, that Jesus is our stability when everything else around us is shaking.

That Jesus is our stability when everything around us is shaking. There is so much in our life that is unpredictable. You could probably name a list of things right now. We have plans that unravel. We have things that can change within our health, within our finances.

At the snap of a finger, our best-made plans can be completely unraveled. When life feels unstable, we often find ourselves searching for something to hold on to. This is where Isaiah is speaking to these people, in the middle of these ruins, in the middle of this unraveling, and he comes in with a song of praise. He says, Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you.

I'm going to praise your name. This can seem a little off for a moment. How are you praising in the midst of all of these things happening? But he's speaking to who God is. I want to start by explaining a couple of the different visions, the imagery we see happening here. The first is this: in the midst of poverty, in the midst of oppression happening to the people, he's speaking of a feast in the midst of famine.

He says, on this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all people. If you were hearing this in that moment, you would be a little struck by it. A feast? We're in the midst of this famine.

We're in the midst of this oppression. How can we talk about fine dining and a banquet? But he goes even further, pointing to how God has something else promised for us even when things appear unstable. He says, I will swallow up death forever. So he's pointing again to Jesus, who is going to come, die on the cross, pay the price for our sins, and now death will no longer have any power over us.

As we read the Old Testament, we always have to acknowledge and be grateful that we get to read it on this side of Jesus's death and resurrection, knowing that Jesus came and did defeat death. This is good news for us today. So what we want to focus on today is how we continue to look to Jesus in the midst of any storm, in the midst of any circumstance we find ourselves facing.

Where we look for stability instead

As we move next to what it looks like to stabilize ourselves, this idea of a feast can be confusing, especially in the midst of famine. One of the things we try to do when we look to stabilize ourselves is take things into our own hands and our own control. Most of us naturally do this when we feel unstable. We think, if I just succeed enough, if I earn enough, if I build enough, if I fill in the blank enough, then it will be enough.

Control is something we look to for stability, but even control in itself is never going to provide what only Jesus can. Sometimes this plays out in our lives when we find ourselves scheduling every single hour, trying to fill all the voids and all our time, until we realize even that won't do it. Then we move to success or achievement as identity. We look for the degrees, the promotions, the recognition, and all these things.

And if that is our foundation, then anytime a storm comes, we're going to feel the shaking again. Another thing we often look to for stability in the shaking is this idea of constant information. We feel like if I research enough about it, if I know enough about it, at some point I'll have it figured out. We also move to distraction or comparison, all these different ways we try to stabilize ourselves that just aren't going to fulfill us. At the end of the day, our control is going to fail us. Our achievements are going to fade. At my house, I have a wall of all those random certificates you get.

Some of them are my degrees, which I worked hard for, but some are random certificates, and you wonder what to do with them now, where to put all of these things. I have this achievement wall, this little shelf with all the random things you get. But someday you look at it, and nobody knows what it is, and nobody actually cares.

That sounds bad. People do care. My mom cares. My dad cares. They're proud.

But at some point all of these things become collections and frames that sit on a wall, and eventually they end up in storage that somebody else throws out. It's never going to fulfill us. It's never going to provide the stability we're looking for in Jesus. Information can make us feel something in a moment, gives us a little dopamine hit, but information does not equal wisdom in itself, so it's never going to fulfill us. Distraction, though it might numb our anxiety and fears for a moment, never actually heals or addresses what we're afraid of. And what I find is that so often we try to control our fear and our anxiety, hoping that will stabilize us. I want to talk about that for a moment, because what's happening in Isaiah could cause a lot of anxiety.

When you're talking about uproars, about all of these things shaking, we might not physically be experiencing that here, but there are probably things in our lives that feel unstable and uncertain right now. How do we continue to remind ourselves and fix ourselves on who Jesus is in the midst of this? Here's what happens when we are faced with anxiety. Our stress increases. Our anxious thoughts trigger something in our brain that sends us into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

And we become completely destabilized. But what I love is that Isaiah, in the midst of naming and acknowledging what is happening, moves to praise and gratitude and talks about who God is in the middle of it. He's moving to a place of faith and trust. So what do we do when we are faced with anxiety, when we find ourselves triggered and spiraling? We move to a place of faith and trust, and we remind ourselves that we're not alone.

We remind ourselves that Jesus sees us, that Jesus is steady, and that our present outcome is not our promised hope and our promised future. This is so important to remember, because we could each name something we've seen on social media, or on the news in the past week, that has heightened our anxiety, that has triggered our amygdala into all of these things. And now we're panicked, and we don't know how to regulate. We can all probably name those things. So what do we do in the midst of that?

We have to practice faith and trust, and see Jesus right in the midst, because Jesus is steady. We have to remember that on this side of eternity there is more to come, that this is not yet our promised reality, but Jesus is coming to usher in his kingdom, and he has given us the power to do that as his willing vessels.

Isaiah 27: the vineyard

We're going to move into Isaiah 27. And I love what we see here: a new imagery of vineyards comes into play. He says in verse two:

Sing about a fruitful vineyard. I, the Lord, watch over it. I water it continually. I guard it day and night so that no one may harm it. I am not angry. If only there were briers and thorns confronting me, I would march against them in battle. I would set them all on fire, or else let them come to me for refuge. Let them make peace with me. Yes, let them make peace with me. In days to come, Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill the world with fruit.

Isaiah 27:2-6

We see this beautiful imagery of a vineyard now. And don't worry, if you keep reading your Bible it gets dark again quickly, and then he brings it all back together.

I want us to talk about vineyards for a moment. If you were to go look at a vineyard right now, we're in the midst of winter in Wisconsin. We know it's not over. This is our fake spring, where the sun comes out for a moment, and then we get sad again for another couple of weeks.

Then it's Easter, and hopefully the sun stays out. But this is not the best time in Wisconsin to see a vineyard. You'll see the branches trimmed back. You'll see no grapes. You'll see a bunch of bare, empty vines.

Walking through it, we would look and think it's dead. There's nothing there. You would think this if you don't understand vineyards and the process it takes to grow fruit. If you are a gardener who tends to vineyards, you understand the importance of the season of winter.

You understand the importance of the time it takes to establish deep roots. It's in the winter months, when everything is pruned back, that the root system grows strong. You should all be saying, amen. Thank you, God, for winter right now. That's the only response.

But he says, Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom. He's talking to the present and giving hope for the future in this language and imagery. It looks dead right now, but this season of rest for the plants gives time for the soil, for the roots to grow deep. I love this intentional language we also see, God continuing to say, I am caring, I am caring, I am caring. Isaiah is reminding us that God is our gardener, tending to us. He is tending to our hearts. He is watching over us day and night.

And then you keep reading, and this is the pruning we're going to talk about, the necessity of pruning. It gets dark. In verse eight it says:

By warfare and exile you contend with her, with his fierce blast he drives her out as on a day the east winds blow. By this then will Jacob's guilt be atoned for, and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin, when he makes all the altar stones to be like limestone crushed in pieces.

Isaiah 27:8-9

It goes on. Verse 11 says, when its twigs are dry they are broken off and women come and make fires with them. Isaiah is dramatic in his language and imagery, and this is why we have to read the Bible in context, not just one verse.

If you read verse 11 of Isaiah 27, you might ask, who is God, what are we talking about, what's happening? But it's this imagery of saying there are things that need to be cut off. Cutting off things is a necessary part of our growth.

I say this because some of us might be in these seasons of winter, looking around and asking, God, where are you, what are you doing? Nothing appears to be growing. Could it be that he's saying it's time to tend and care for your root system in this moment? Some of us might be in a spot where we ask, God, why are all these things being removed?

And you're feeling the pain of it. Don't run, because not all pain is bad. Sometimes we grieve the pain of the cutting off, and as we grieve it, we're going to grow new fruit that's stronger and better than we could have if we had let it remain hanging there, not serving us, not doing what God wanted it to do. There are seasons for us, but in it all, God is the stability.

All of this imagery is pointing to Jesus, who comes to be that stability for us, who leaves with us his Holy Spirit to continue to convict us and challenge us and tell us the things we need to cut off, to give us space to rest, to lay back. It's time to sabbath. It's time to delight in him and trust that he's doing his work, even when we can't see it. In verse 12 it says:

In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered up one by one. And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord at the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

Isaiah 27:12-13

I want to pause here, because a couple of things are happening.

In Isaiah's time, as we've been walking through this whole series, Israel and Judah are facing a great threat in this exile. This idea of exile language would have been very familiar to the people at that time. The Northern Kingdom has already been taken over by the Neo-Assyrian empire. The people are being scattered all around. They're being exiled.

They're being scattered. All of their people are being scattered. So Isaiah is speaking hope into their current reality. He's reminding them there is hope coming. God is going to come, and he's going to gather.

He's going to gather. And even if right now it seems like you are so scattered across distant lands that it seems impossible, that it's not going to happen, he's speaking to that hope. And then this idea of these rivers.

He's talking about two boundaries that would encompass the entire land, speaking to them in a way they would understand, given the geography of their land. It's like saying, for our whole country, coast to coast, I am going to scatter all of your people. That was the reminder.

Isaiah is speaking to a people who are being hit with panic, with all of these hard things happening. Oppression, exile, famine. And he's pointing to a feast. God is like a gardener, pruning them, and there are seasons of rest.

Can you imagine hearing that? Think of the most severe thing you've been through, and hearing, it's winter, but I'm pruning you, this is good. This is what's happening in this moment.

What it looks like to sow and steward stability

I want to talk today about our invitation from this text. As we read this beautiful, somewhat strange imagery and language, and we may not understand all the words or the geography the same way, how do we read this today and ask, God, what are you speaking to me through your text? Holy Spirit, what do you have to say? Here are some things I want us to think about practically: what does it look like for us to sow and steward stability in our lives?

How do we continue to be people who do this? This is why we have a whole rule of life as a church, a set of spiritual practices we commit to. We don't want to be people who only say, yes God, we believe in who you are and we love you. We want to walk closely with Jesus and become like Jesus. We believe God is tending to us, that God is speaking to us, that he is moving in our lives. So how do we receive that? How do we become a non-anxious presence, stable even when everything else around us is shaking? The first thing: think about intentional input in our lives. If the first thing we look at in the morning is our phones, the news, something that causes anxiety or fear, that's what's going to grow. One of my favorite lines is, we have to go to the throne before we go to the phone.

That's what they say: the throne before the phone. So if you need a tagline, there it is. What is our first gaze? When we wake up in the morning, for some of you it's your kids right in your face, that's a nice gaze, but what is that first gaze in the morning?

How can you be intentional about that input? Even if it's just five minutes to pray or say a scripture, to start with the Lord's Prayer, whatever that looks like, what is the first thing that deepens that trust and sows into the seeds God is planting? The next thing is intentional rhythms of rest. Just like vineyards need seasons, we need seasons too. We need times when we are not just producing, producing, producing, or else what's going to happen?

It's going to crash. I learned that the hard way when I tried to transfer to a new phone in September. I realized I had about twenty thousand photos and more, and when you go to transfer, it's slow.

The process is long. It took days to sort everything out, because I overworked the system, and the system eventually crashes. We need seasons of rest. We need seasons of pruning, of removing things. I should have been deleting photos all along, instead of waiting for that moment.

This is another reminder for us, as we lean into seasons of rest, that we are not the source, but we are simply stewards of what God is doing. We have to remind ourselves of that, because when fear and anxiety come in, we try to control. In a way we start to play God, trying to take care of everything ourselves.

We have to constantly remind ourselves we are not the source, because when we live as if we are the source, carrying things we weren't meant to carry, that's when we crash and burn out. When we walk in the lightness and ease of who Jesus is and who he created us to be, we can see that fruit coming in a beautiful, effortless way. But with that, there are still seasons of intentionally pruning, intentionally pruning the things that overstimulate you. What are those things that overstimulate you? What constantly activates anxiety in you? This is a question to ask and think about this week. What are the things inside of you that, the moment you see them or hear them, activate and overstimulate you? And the final thing is being intentional about community.

Community as a form of cultivation. Stability is communal. If you look at any root system, you'll see the roots are intertwined. Sometimes it's the deep things happening beneath the surface that you can't always see, and that's what strengthens you for the fruit to grow above the surface.

We need community. This is why we have small group community groups. This is why we have forum groups, two or three people gathering to practice their rule of life together. So another plug: if you're new here, come to Next class, so you can get involved in all of this. We want to be intentional about cultivating this in community, reminding ourselves that we are not alone.

Isaiah gives us these two images that can feel very different, but we see Jesus come and be the fullness of both. First a feast, then a vineyard. But both of these things belong together. Where does the wine of the cup come from? The grapes and the fruit of the vineyard.

We need both. The fruit of the vine eventually becomes the wine of the feast. God is so intentional, from Old Testament to New, pointing us to who Jesus is and what he wants to cultivate in our lives. The same God who is preparing the feast is the same God who is cultivating the vineyard, and in order for us to get to the place where we are delighting in the feast, we have to continue to steward and sow what God is doing in our lives. As we've been reading in the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus continue to represent all of these things, to come and be the one who sustains, the source of all of that. There are so many stories we've been talking about, and the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand is one of them, where in the midst of the crowds, in a place of lack, he has compassion and cares and tends for the people, and doesn't just see the lack but has vision, and empowers the disciples to bring the abundance. In the same way that God, as the gardener, is coming to tend and care and gather every last one.

A closing prayer

Jesus saw people in that moment and cared, and fed, and sustained every last one, letting that continue to flow with compassion. So today, here is what I want us to do. I want us to take a moment for an imaginative prayer, a time to have a conversation with the Lord. In just a moment, if you're comfortable, close your eyes, settle your heart, and invite the Lord to show you: what is your vineyard right now?

What are you walking through? Where do you see God caring for you and tending to you? As we talk about this, it's a reminder, in the same way Isaiah is reminding the people, to be encouraged and to look for hope. I want to remind you of that. That Jesus sees you, and Jesus is walking alongside you, caring for the things you see.

He's tending to your every single need, and sometimes it takes us stepping back and saying, God, will you show me. So I'm going to invite you now to take a moment, close your eyes, and invite the Holy Spirit, in your own way, to say, God, will you come, will you show me where I'm at in the midst of what feels uncertain in my life, what feels like it's shaking, what feels like a storm. God, will you come and show me? As you do that, invite the Holy Spirit to show you. Imagine that you're waking up, walking through a vineyard, in this moment. If you've been through a vineyard, picture that in your mind, the quiet, the steady. Picture Jesus walking alongside you, in the same way a gardener might lift up every individual leaf to check it. Invite the Holy Spirit: God, will you come, will you check every last piece, tend to the deep things in my heart today. Invite God to show you where he has been a steady presence. Holy Spirit, would you come? Would you show us your steadfastness? Would you show us your unwavering, intentional love?

God, I thank you today, even in the midst of all the different things that came to mind when we think of the uncertain situations we're walking through, maybe the diagnosis we don't have answers to, the job hunts that seem never-ending, the questions that surround us. I thank you that, in the same way a gardener tends to the vineyard, you tend to our hearts, to our lives, that you see us, that you have not left us, that you continue to pursue us and gather us and draw us closer to you. God, I pray for every person here today that you would help us turn to you, Jesus, as our source of stability. Would we be intentional, when anxious thoughts come in, to fix our gaze back on you, Jesus, to see you standing on the other side of the storm, as we read in the Gospel of Mark. In the midst of the storm, Jesus, you are walking on the water and you invite Peter to come.

Storms are dark and scary and unknown, but trusting that you're on the other side, would you help us turn to trust today, that you're on the other side, that your hope continues to come, that your hope continues to break into the darkness. God, I pray that we would continue to fix our eyes and our gaze on you, Jesus, as our source, as our stability. We love you, Lord, and we ask this in your name. Amen.