02/15/2021
Isaiah 5
This morning I was spending time in the word and in prayer and the Lord was leading me to Isaiah chapter 5. This is a very powerful passage that contrasts God’s work to plant a fruitful vineyard and His expectation of the vineyard producing good fruit only to find the vineyard has produced worthless grapes.
As I was reading I couldn’t help but think of today’s society and particularly the Church in the United States. Isaiah chapter five was written to the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people, the descendants of the promise to Abraham. Can I apply this passage to the Church in America? The answer is yes.
Paul makes the argument in Romans 2:28-29 and Galatians 3 that the descendants of Abraham and those who are of the promise to Abraham are not the blood line of Abraham, but rather those who believe in Jesus by faith. Be it Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, we are Abraham’s descendants, if we have put our faith in Christ, and we are heirs of the promise. So I make no pardons for applying this passage to our once Christian nation of America.
Let us look at the passage.
Isaiah 5:1 Let me sing now for my well-beloved
A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.
My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.
2 He dug it all around, removed its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
And He built a tower in the middle of it
And also hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.
In the first two verses, we see that God has done His part. He found fertile soil. He removed the rocks from the ground, He built a tower. He planted the choicest of vines. We will see verse 5-6 that He built a wall and hedge to protect the vineyard and the ground was dug and hoed.
What does that mean? God did everything that He was supposed to do to expect a good and fruitful vineyard to grow. He did His part to grow choice vines and what did He get? He got worthless grapes.
Isaiah 5:3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge between Me and My vineyard.
4 “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?
Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?
The Lord ask a couple of very valid questions. He asks, “What else could I have done”? He says to Israel and to the church today, “You be the judge, what else could I have done?”
God has given us everything that we need to flourish and be fruitful laborers in the kingdom of God and we have become a vineyard full of worthless fruit. And because of our failure to be fruitful God pronounces His judgement on Israel and upon us.
Israel 5:5 “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed;
I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground.
6 “I will lay it waste;
It will not be pruned or hoed,
But briars and thorns will come up.
I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.”
God says that He will remove His protection from the vineyard. He will shut up the rains and the land will become briars and thorns. In the next verse He states clearly that the vineyard is Israel and by extrapolation we can say it is the Church of America. We are His delightful, choicest vine. What did He look for? What does He consider the good fruit that should come out of the vineyard.
Isaiah5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel
And the men of Judah His delightful plant.
Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed;
For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.
The Lord is looking for righteousness and justice. He wants to see what is right, what is as it should be, and what is just. The Lord looks for the fruit of men and women who love Him and treat their neighbor with righteousness and with justice. What does He find instead violence and distress?
Then the Lord begins to explain how we have come to produce such rotten fruit and He pronounces judgment on His vineyard through a series of six woes”. This is what really caught my attention. God is explaining how or why we went from the expectation of producing good fruit to and abandoned vineyard.
He uses the term “woe” which is a passionate cry of grief or despair. When Isaiah writes woe to those who….. He is saying that because of what follows you will suffer deep grief or despair.
Isaiah 5:8 Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field,
Until there is no more room,
So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!
Woe to those whose life is consumed with adding wealth upon wealth. You don’t provide for your neighbors, you cheat them out of their property so that you can have more. The church in American has become wealthy and for so many our fixation is on wealth and comfort not on developing our lives to imitate Christ.
In Revelations chapter three the Lord says the Church of Laodicea has become rich and wealthy and does not need anything. But Jesus tells them, “You are really wretched, poor, miserable, bind, and naked.” I question are we the Church in America the Church of Laodicea? Woe to those who add house to house….
Isaiah 5:11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may pursue strong drink,
Who stay up late in the evening that wine may inflame them!
12 Their banquets are accompanied by lyre and harp, by tambourine and flute, and by wine;
But they do not pay attention to the deeds of the LORD,
Nor do they consider the work of His hands.
Woe number two. Party, party. We look for the good times, we are consumed with drinking and partying and we do not see what God wants us to do. We spend our lives being entertained not helping the helpless, the poor, the downtrodden. And what will be our reward? Verse 13 says therefore. The reason what is going to happen happens is because we spend our lives seeking pleasure and entertainment not righteousness and justice. Therefore…
Isaiah5:13 Therefore My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge;
And their honorable men are famished,
And their multitude is parched with thirst.
14 Therefore Sheol has enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure;
And Jerusalem’s splendor, her multitude, her din of revelry and the jubilant within her, descend into it.
Therefore Sheol, the grave, hell will open its mouth wide and those who should produce good grapes, but instead their lives produce worthless grapes, will be swallowed up by Sheol and be separated from their God.
Isaiah5:15 So the common man will be humbled and the man of importance abased,
The eyes of the proud also will be abased.
Both the common man and the proud man will both be abased, humbled, brought low.
Isaiah 5:16 But the LORD of hosts will be exalted in judgment,
And the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.
Verse 16 introduces a contrast, it begins with the word but. The common man and the proud, ie all men will be humbled. But the world will see the judgement of God and will understand that His judgement is right.
We ignore the work of God and seek pleasure and when God brings judgement we will know that He is just and right. If you read Isaiah chapter six you will see that the “Holy Man” Isaiah, God’s prophet sees God and proclaims that he is being torn apart at his foundation just because of the wickedness of his lips. When we are confronted with God we see our wickedness and His contrasting Holiness and we will know that God’s judgment is right. At the final judgment every one regardless of how wicked we were, or how proud, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.
Verse 18 brings us another woe. What else do we do that is wicked?
Isaiah518 Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood,
And sin as if with cart ropes;
This is a little hard to understand, but what God is telling us here is woe to those whose sin is like long ropes. We lie and lie and lie, we drag our lies with long cords. There is just lie after lie. I think of this and think of our politicians and the lies that they perpetuate. They don’t seek justice and righteousness, they seek to have power and control. They pile sin upon sin upon sin. Their lives are long cords of lies and sins and the lies and sin are compounded. And it gets worse. Next they mock God.
Isaiah5:19 (Woe to those) Who say, “Let Him make speed, let Him hasten His work, that we may see it; And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near
And come to pass, that we may know it!”
Our leaders and celebrities mock God. By their actions and words they say, “If there is a God, let’s see what He can do.” They are not really looking to see God work. What they are really saying is that there is no God.
Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
Oh how this grabbed me this morning. We abort children, little babies, human beings and instead of calling it evil we call it good and call those who oppose it evil. We deny the biological fact that you are either a boy or a girl, you don’t get to choose. We say you can choose your gender. Let me say in love, that if you want to live as something that you aren’t that is your choice and you are free to live that way. But how you chose to live does not alter the fact that you were born either a male or female. We substitute light for darkness, we say what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right. I can spend hours on this topic but I will move on.
Isaiah 521 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
And clever in their own sight!
I think this is the root of all of our sins. We are focused on self and what we want for self. We think that our way is better than God’s way. But it is not because our way is selfish. God’s way exalts others over ourselves, agape love, and is self-less. Man’s way puts me first and I don’t take care of your needs unless they are the same as mine.
Isaiah 522 Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine
And valiant men in mixing strong drink,
23 Who justify the wicked for a bribe,
And take away the [p]rights of the ones who are in the right!
Again, party animals and self-center not focusing on loving our brother but instead exalting ourselves above others to the point that we flat our bribe others so that we can fulfil our desires.
24 Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble
And dry grass collapses into the flame,
So their root will become like rot and their blossom [q]blow away as dust;
For they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts
And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25 On this account the anger of the LORD has burned against His people,
And He has stretched out His hand against them and struck them down.
And the mountains quaked, and their corpses lay like refuse in the middle of the street.
But God will have His vengeance and the vineyard will be destroyed. But there is hope. We don’t have to face the woes.
In Isaiah 1:15 Your hands are covered with blood. 16 “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. 18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool. 19 “If you consent and obey, You will eat the best of the land;
