Why Do You Complain?

Why Do You Complain?

Isaiah 40:27-31

February 3, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Have you ever sent a message to someone, only to find yourself frustrated that they don’t respond? Maybe you’ve left a voicemail and they never return your call. Or you’ve sent an email and you hear nothing in response. Or, in the modern world of technology, you can often see that the other person has received your text or your Facebook message, and you know then that they are choosing not to respond. Or you see these three dots that is supposed to indicate they’re typing something and a message never comes through. If you Google “Who don’t people respond,” you’ll get lots and lots of hits from frustrated message senders who have never heard back from the people they were waiting on. I was going to reply to some of those postings, but you know, I just didn’t get around to it.

According to Psychology Today, there are at least three reasons why we have become so bad at responding to messages. You might want to write these down so you can use these excuses the next time someone asks you, “Did you get my message?” Here they are, in no particular order. (1) We get too many different kinds of messages and are paralyzed in how to respond, (2) We are too busy, and (3) We are lazy and find ways to avoid the hard stuff (cf. Larsen & Larsen, Questions God Asks, pg. 28). I’m not going to ask if any of those apply to you or your message-responding habits, but I’ll be honest enough to say that all of those have applied to me from time to time. I do my best to respond to every message, but sometimes it’s just overwhelming. However, let me go on record as saying I’m sorry if I have ever made you feel like I was ignoring you!

Even worse than being ignored by your friends or your pastor is feeling like you’re being ignored by God. The passage we’re looking at this morning, from the prophet Isaiah, finds God’s people in exactly that situation. We’re continuing our series this morning called “Role Reversal,” looking at questions God asks us through the Scriptures. We usually take the role of questioner. We send God messages and wait for him to respond. And we expect (sometimes even demand) that he will. But what happens when it seems like the skies are silent? God’s people, the Hebrews, are in the midst of exile. They are crying out to God, asking for help, but it seems like God has forgotten them.

To fully appreciate their situation, we need to back up in time a bit and look at the context in which Isaiah is writing. No one doubted that the “glory days” of the Jewish kingdom had come during the days of David and Solomon. That’s when the kingdom was growing and when, honestly, the kingdom was wealthy and powerful. When Solomon died, the kingdom divided into two: Israel in the north (based in Samaria) and Judah in the south (based in Jerusalem). The Northern Kingdom, Israel, was conquered and destroyed in 722 BC; at that point, they pretty much disappeared from history. To this day, no one is really sure what happened to them. The Southern Kingdom, Judah, survived until 586 BC, when they were conquered and taken into exile. What that means is that all of the important people were gathered up and taken to live in Babylon, far away from Jerusalem, far from home. At the same time, in their homeland, the temple was destroyed, the city was looted, and the only people left there were the poorest of the poor (cf. Larsen & Larsen 29). It’s a desperate situation, but it is one that Isaiah and the other prophets had warned Judah was coming. The first part of the book of Isaiah, chapters 1-39, are warnings, pre-exile. Then, in chapter 40, Isaiah begins to speak to those who, in his own time, were yet to be born, those who would be taken away into exile. He knows they will be discouraged and he wants them to have a word that would help them when they find themselves living in a foreign land.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how our memory can be tricky, and very selective at times. Judah was good at remembering all the promises of God. They remembered how they were God’s chosen people who would one day rule the world. They remembered God had promised to bless and preserve them. They remembered that Jerusalem was one day destined to be the center of the world. The problem with all that was it wasn’t quite right. Their memory was a little faulty. God had not promised they would rule the world, but that they would be a “kingdom of priests,” people who helped the rest of the world find and see God. (By the way, that’s the same calling Peter says we have as Christians [1 Peter 2:9].) And they had also forgotten a small little world in the midst of those promises. Two letters in English: “i-f.” If. God had promised and Isaiah had reminded them in all the years leading up to the exile that they would be protected and cared for by God IF they obeyed his commands. IF they kept his covenant. IF they lived the way God called them to. They believed they still deserved God’s protection and provision even as they broke every single part of the covenant they had made with God (cf. Oswalt, OneBook: The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-55, pgs. 10-11). Now, before we are too hard on them, let’s take a step back. Today, we have this idea floating around that if we are a church member, if we’ve made a profession of faith, if we have the right theological ideas and have been (relatively) faithful in church attendance (remember that average “regular” church attendance today is considered to be once every six weeks), then God owes us something. God owes us protection and provision—so we think—even as we are bitter toward others, stingy toward those in need, mean to those who work under us, and hypercritical. As one of my professors, Dr. John Oswalt, puts it, “God owes us something, we think. Yes, he does, but it may not be what we think” (11).

Meanwhile, in exile, Judah is complaining that God has forgotten them. Never mind how they forgot and ignored God before exile. Now it’s crunch time. Now they need God! Why isn’t he answering? Why hasn’t he showed up to rescue them? Maybe you’ve known what that feels like, when it seems like God is silent. I remember a time in my life when I was going through some stuff; the details aren’t all that important now. But when it seemed to be so hard, I remember laying on my bed in the morning, mentally yelling at God to do something, to fix it, to make it better, right now. Hadn’t I given my life to him? Wasn’t I serving him as best as I could? Why couldn’t he just make it all go away? I went back through my journal for some of those days and I was a little amazed at the intensity of the feelings I put there during those days. Incidentally, I noticed I only tended to journal stuff when I was having bad days, so someday, my kids will find that and wonder if I ever had any good days! But it was nearly two years of that before God finally did do something. Nearly two years of feeling like God was silent. I know a little of what the Hebrews felt in this situation, and I’m betting you do, too.

We get that way when we, like these Hebrews, forget who God is. And that’s where God’s question comes in. God asks them this question because they have forgotten who God is. “Why do you complain, Jacob?” (40:27). Why are you saying I’ve forgotten you, Judah? Why do you complain? And then he reminds them who he is. That's important because there were many gods competing for worship in their world, especially in the world of their exile. The Hebrews needed to remember that their God stood (and stands) above them all. What do we hear God saying through Isaiah? First of all, he is the eternal God. He has no beginning and no ending. He is everlasting. As a pastor, I’ve been asked in every place by at least one smart kid, “Who created God? If God created everything, who created God?” That’s a good question, because if someone or something created God, then that creator is really who we should worship. But God was not created. God is and always has been. And when I try to explain that to that smart kid, I get a look that says, “I don’t understand that.” And you know what? I don’t understand it either. But that is the way it is. God is not conditioned by time; he stands outside of time. That’s why, as Peter says, a thousand years are like a day and a day is like a thousand years to him (2 Peter 3:8). God is eternal—and that means he will keep his promise at just the right moment. He’s never too early and never too late.

Second, as I’ve already alluded to, God is the creator. Everything we see and experience, he made. It also means he can do new things; just a couple of chapters over, Isaiah will affirm this: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (43:19). God has power and ability that those little-g gods never dreamed of. Third, God never gets tired. The other gods, who were just humans imagined on a grand scale, would get tired and irritated by their human subjects. You and I get tired. There are evenings where I just go home and crash. When I go to cardiac rehab and work out, I find myself breathing heavily. I get tired; you get tired. God does not get tired. God does not grow weary, and so he is never unable to take action because he’s napping.

Fourth, God understands everything. Isaiah puts it this way: “His understanding no one can fathom” (40:28). We cannot accuse God of not understanding what we’re going through, certainly not on this side of the incarnation and the cross. The New Testament tells us Jesus went through everything and every temptation we face (cf. Hebrews 4:15; 1 Corinthians 10:13). More than that, God understands it. He knows what you’re feeling and he is not, as some philosophers like to say, the “unmoved mover.” He knows what you feel; he understands it all, to a depth we cannot begin to comprehend. As a tangent, this has something to say about the way we pray. If you listen to a lot of our contemporary American prayers, we seem to think we have to explain things to God. It’s like we picture God as an old man who may have forgotten the situation we’re in or we’re praying about. So we remind God of the details, and to help out even further, we tell God how he ought to solve it, just in case he can’t figure that out either. Sometimes I wonder who we are actually praying to. Do we pray to the God revealed in the Bible, whose understand is far and above our own, or are we praying to a weak god who can’t seem to remember what is going on in the world he created or what happened yesterday? Or, worse yet, are we praying for the benefit of the people around us? God understands everything. That’s why Jesus tells us we don’t need to pile up a lot of words when we pray (cf. Matthew 6:7-8).

And fifth, God loves to help the helpless. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak” (40:29). It’s not a secret: God shows preferential treatment toward those who are most in need. Jesus lived that out when he was on earth; he favored the least, the last and the lost. And what’s more is he called his followers to do the same. Those of us who are self-made or think we have all the intelligence, strength, good looks and skill to do it ourselves don’t need God. So God will leave them alone. He loves to help those who realize they need him. In fact, he has promised to come to those who know they need him, who recognize and admit their need (cf. Oswalt 11-12).

So the question to Judah makes sense now. If this is the God you claim to serve, why do you complain? This God is so very able to help in your circumstances; the issue is not that he doesn’t hear you. The issue is that you don’t trust him. And very often, neither do we any more than those exiled Hebrews did. In our hurry-up, text me back right now world, we struggle with the frequently repeated Biblical command: wait. In our complaining that God doesn’t get it done now world, God reminds us that part of the fruit of the spirit is patience (cf. Galatians 5:22-23). Wait. And to those who are in exile—both the Hebrews in the 6th century BC and the believers in the 21st century—God reminds us that those who find hope are those who are truly faithful to him. “Those who hope in the Lord,” God says through Isaiah, “will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (40:31). Everything they think they have lost, everything we think we have lost, will be put into perspective when we put our trust and our hope in God rather than in ourselves. Why do you complain? The answer and your hope is as close as your next breath.

In the midst of my nearly two years of exile, God taught me a lot about patience, about trusting his timing, about how to rely on others to be strong when I could not. Now, do I wish I could have learned those things in another, less painful way? Absolutely. But do I think I could have learned those things (and others) in a less painful way? Probably not. None of us pray for difficult times, for exile. But, as Pastor Rick reminded us last week, difficult times come, that’s the way life is, and it is in those times when our character is shaped in ways it cannot be otherwise. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (5:4). Hope. Remember how Isaiah put it? “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” God has not forgotten you. In fact, in the most difficult of times, he is closest to you and waiting to hold you and walk with you if you will let him. In the very next chapter, God through Isaiah reminds us of just that: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (41:10).

On the night before the high and holy day of Passover, in an upper room on Mount Zion in the city of Jerusalem, a group and thirteen men and some of their hangers-on gathered around a table for dinner. They were celebrating the Passover meal, even though the actual celebration was the following evening. But one of their number would not be there that evening, so they had to celebrate early. Jesus, their leader, friend, rabbi and master, looked at the others gathered around the table. Their feet were still wet from his radical action of washing (John 13), and silence had taken over for the time being. Every man at the table knew the Passover liturgy by heart. Any one of them could have served as host and guided the meal, but Jesus was their rabbi. They always deferred to him. On that night, Jesus the host flipped the script. He changed the words, and he changed the meaning of the meal. The bread, he said, would represent his body and the wine would represent his blood. In the next twenty-four hours, Jesus would be arrested, beaten, murdered and placed in a borrowed tomb, dead. Everything these disciples had known would change, and they would be lost. Their master, their rabbi would be gone. And it would seem as if God had gone silent. In this meal, Jesus was preparing these men for what was to come, helping them to see that in what seems to be silence, God was doing his mightiest work. And though they wouldn’t realize it right away, though they didn’t understand perfectly, they took the bread and they took the cup and they looked for him in those simple signs.

The bread and the cup still remind us today that in the darkest of times, in the most silent of times, God is doing his best work. Will you pray with me as we come to the table?