Isaiah 5
So let’s give our attention to
God’s word, Isaiah 5, 1-7, and then we’ll walk our way through
8-30 along our way through. God’s word says, let me sing
for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had
a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it
of stones and planted it with a choice vine, with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the
midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked for
it to yield wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more
was there for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I
look for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will
remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down
its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste.
It shall not be pruned or hoed and briars and thorns shall grow
up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel
and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. He looked
for justice, but behold, bloodshed for righteousness, but behold,
an outcry. This is the word of the living
God. So on Tuesday of this week, I
think I’m correct. Might be wrong, but sometime
this week, there’s going to be a solar eclipse. It’s tomorrow,
Monday. Okay. So, uh, the sun will be
hidden. That’ll be a pretty big phenomenon,
won’t it? Uh, last Friday, There was an earthquake, and in New
Jersey, of all places. You don’t think of New Jersey
and earthquakes, but yes, there was one. Two weeks ago, a bridge
was struck by a ship and collapsed into the harbor of Baltimore.
A couple of days ago, if you saw pictures online or maybe
on the news, Lady Liberty, the Statue of Liberty’s torch was
lighted by lightning from the sky. After 9-11, September 11,
2001 attacks, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, oh boy we’ve entered
into dangerous waters here, said God was judging us for several
social ills. Billy Graham once remarked that
when he was working on a book manuscript about the downward
spiral of American culture and morality. His wife, Ruth, was
reading the book for him, proofreading it, and she said, boy, if God
doesn’t judge America, he better apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. We all know from scripture that
God has appointed a day of judgment. We all know from scripture that
at the second coming, the dead in Christ will rise and the dead
not in Christ will rise each to either their reward for those
in Christ or the judgment for those who are apart from Christ. Those in Christ will be welcoming
into God’s presence and enjoy everlasting pleasures, the presence
and fellowship of God, but those not in Christ will be cast into
eternal darkness. We know and understand that at
the last day, the new heavens and the new earth will be ushered
in. The old order will pass away by fire. God will make all things
new. There will be a new Jerusalem.
It will be a place of holiness and perfection and beauty. No more sin, no more sorrow,
no more death, darkness, dying and crying, but only fellowship
and joy. But what about local or temporal
judgments? Judgments that pop up from time
to time in human history. I think of Sodom and Gomorrah,
how God destroyed that city, those people, they were self-seeking,
self-absorbed, they were inhospitable and all the rest. Or how about
Ananias and Sapphira? When the early church was living
together, worshiping together, fellowshipping together and holding
all things in common and helping the poor, they came and said,
we sold a piece of land for this and so, and here’s the whole
thing for the church. They wanted their name on a plaque
or something. But they lied to the Holy Spirit.
And each of them, as they came and made their report to the
church, were carried away in death by those who took care
of those such things. How about Nadab and Abihu? They offered strange or unauthorized
fire before the Lord and he struck them dead. They were dead and
gone for disobedience. Or how about Eglon? He’s the
old fat king of Moab who harassed and ruled over Israel. And he
ended up with a sword in his belly and he was so fat, the
sword could not come out. It was lost. Or perhaps you remember
Jesus cursing the fig tree. And as the disciples walked by
it a bit later, it was dead. It produced nothing. Or how about
Miriam and all her buddies who thought they could do it better
than Moses, stricken with leprosy. Or the people in the wilderness
complaining against God and serpents, fiery serpents arose and bit
them. And the bronze serpent was raised
up. And if they looked on that serpent
in faith, they lived. Or how about sicknesses? How
about taste of the curses of this world? C.S. Lewis calls these things, or
calls pain at least, God’s megaphone. Sometimes I like to say God taps
the brakes. He lets us know, he lets us remember
that we live in a fallen world, a broken world, and he does deal
with sin. And these things come upon us
in the fallen world. They come upon us as fallen creatures. But I think we’re quick to forget.
And we’re quick even to write it off because Pat Robertson
said it. or Jerry Falwell said it, that there are covenant curses. God promises blessing if obedient,
curses if disobedient. We think about David and his
adultery. The child died. We think about
Adam. He was forbidden to eat the forbidden
fruit, but he ate it and God spared him. And he lived for
a time clothed with the clothing of animals, the skins of animals,
but he was banished from the garden. He was exiled from the
presence of God. He had pain and hardship and
sorrow and futility and strife and all the rest. Moses dishonored
God before the people by striking the rock. And he did not enter
the promised land. And he had to deal with that.
He only saw it from afar. Or how about you? Life under
covenant curses, perhaps poor choices, perhaps things that
have have lingered with you. Merciful, yes, because God is
merciful, but they’re reminders of what life apart from God is
like. And thanks be to God, these things
are paid for in Jesus. These things will all go away
in the new heavens and the new earth, but we still deal with
the aches and pains and the burdens sometimes of these losses and
crosses and hardships. And then there’s Job. Job, found
comfort in God’s sovereignty. The book of James says that God’s
purposes were fulfilled in the life of Job. And so as we look
at Isaiah 5 tonight, as we think about the struggles and hardships
in our own lives, I want us to remember that a couple of things. Yes, we are saved in Jesus. Yes,
our sins past, present, future paid for. And yes, there’s going
to come a day of a new heavens and a new earth, but we undergo
the ongoing hardships and curses from Adam’s first sin. And yes,
we, we do endure hardships and curses for the things we’ve done
against God. Not ultimately Jesus has paid
for them, but we, we make bad choices, bad decisions, and we
have to live with those consequences. Sometimes short term and In some
cases, long term, sin has arms and legs and it pays dividends. But God is always working his
purposes. And tonight, we think in the
book of Isaiah about God and how he planted a vineyard and
he gave them every single thing they could have needed. They
should have grown and flourished and been a wonderful place, just
like Adam and Eve in the garden, Israel in the promised land.
But they didn’t live for God. They went after their own ways. And so tonight we get to the
the woes, the six woes pronounced against these rotten grapes,
the stinking fruit after all God gave them. Now we hear the
oracles or the woes and we hear the crime and we hear the punishment. The structure of Isaiah is very
interesting in chapter five. The first couple woes, I believe
there are two of them, come in verses eight and following, go
all the way to verse 17. If you look in your Bibles at
verse eight, there’s woe to those who join house to house. And
then if you look down at verse 11, woe to those who rise early
in the morning and run after strong drink. And then there’s
a couple therefores in verse 13, therefore, my people go into
exile and verse 14, therefore, for a shield or the grave has
enlarged its appetite. And so you’ve got in this first
section, a couple of woes. And the woes go with the things
they are doing that displeased God. And then a couple therefores,
what’s God going to do about it? And the first woe in verse
eight deals with their possessions. Now remember, and I’m sure you
do 18 months ago, when we went through the book of Joshua, Israel,
when they went into the promised land, each tribe was to go in
and take their possession. They were supposed to take their
possession and be stewards of the piece of the land that God
had given them. They were to make it grow sort
of like Adam in the garden, make it prosper. And they were to
live there for the glory of God. Each of them had a piece of dirt.
And, you know, from reading the rest of the Old Testament that,
you know, if they had to borrow money and give up the land as
maybe collateral for a note in the year of Jubilee and all that,
the land would come back to them. God’s land entrusted to the people. And so if you read in verse eight,
woe to those who join house to house, woe to those who add field
to field, woe to those who do this until there is no more room
and you are made to dwell in the midst of the land. These
people, They’ve been taking land, they’ve been coveting it, and
they’ve been buying it up. They’ve been building, instead
of the farm that God intended for them, they’ve been building
these plantations. And so you got this big old house in the midst
of this big old path of land, which means you’ve taken from
other people. And you get the idea here, they’ve been dreaming
bigger and bigger and more and more. And God says, woe to those
who covet and do this sort of thing. It’s not just that they
want houses. They’ve disrupted the allotment
of the land that God has given to all Israel. So it says in
verse nine, the Lord of hosts is sworn in my hearing. Surely
many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses without
inhabitant for 10 acres of vineyard shall yield, but one bath. and
a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah. All right, you’re going
to collect fields, you’re going to build houses, you’re going
to grow grapes, and you’re going to raise up seed. Well, your houses are going to
crumble and your vineyards are going to produce minimal crop
and the same with your seed. Well, he goes on and speaks not
only of possessions, but in the second woe, he speaks of pleasures.
Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may run
after a strong drink. They tarry late into the evening
as wine inflames them. They have lyre and they have
harp. They have tambourine and flute at their feast, but they
do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of his hands. Can’t you picture that scene? Is it in the book of Daniel where
Belshazzar, is partying like for a year. Is that the story?
I mean, they’ve got wine to end. No wine. I mean, Jesus making
water into wine and fulfilling the party was a small little
wedding party. Belshazzar, he has wine and feasting
that lasts for a whole year. In a sense, he’s worshiping his
own opulence. And God comes and visits. And
these are the ones who in the same manner, the same heart are
seeking pleasure, music and wine and feasting and drinks and merriment. What does Paul say? Let us eat,
drink and be merry for tomorrow we die is the worldview of many. But notice at the end of verse
12, the real crime, they do not regard. the deeds of the Lord. They never noticed. They never
remember. They never reflect on. Remember, these are God’s
people. We’re not talking pagans here. This isn’t Romans one and
two, where we’re talking about people who disregard God because
they know him not. This is the covenant people.
These are church going people, as it were. They do not regard
the deeds of the Lord. They’ve stopped reading their
Bibles. They’ve stopped telling their kids about all that God
is and all that God has done. And it says they do not see the
work of his hands. They fail to acknowledge him.
Can you imagine not reading your Bible? And I guess it’s tomorrow,
not Tuesday as I thought, but not thinking on a solar eclipse
and thinking about who is behind it. It’s part of the reason we
sang God all nature sings that glory tonight. It’s it’s springtime
and glory is popping out by the day and the pollen is here. But
we need to think on all that God is, all that God has done
and all that is God is doing. And we need to see him in the
day to day beauty of the earth. But they did not regard the deeds
of the Lord or the work of his hands. And so the crime deserves
punishment. And so we got a couple of therefores.
The first therefore in verse 13 says, therefore, my people
go into exile. There it is. Just like Adam and Eve were kicked
out of the garden, Israel, Judah, will be kicked out of the promised
land. In the first instance, the Assyrians will come, and
then in the next form, the Babylonians will come and haul Judah away.
Therefore, my people go into exile for lack of knowledge.
Their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched
with thirst. Okay, you wanna party? You wanna
eat and drink? I’ll make you thirst, and I’ll
make you hungry. You love the land too much, so
much so that you’re buying it up and you’re living it up. I’ll take the land from you.
You’ll go into exile and your land will be lived in by others. And then in verse 14, there’s
another therefore. So you got a woe and a therefore and another
woe and a therefore. Therefore Sheol or the grave
has enlarged its appetite. Death is hungry and God is happy
to feed death. with his wicked people, with
his disobedient people. It’s enlarged its appetite and
opened its mouth beyond measure. And the nobility of Jerusalem
and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exalts
in her. This is a universal declaration,
isn’t it? Everybody, young and old, rich
and poor, leaders, priests, the whole lot. of Jerusalem and her
multitude will go down. All will suffer. And verse 15
says, man is humbled and each one is brought low. The eyes
of the haughty are brought low. So they were exalting themselves. God brings them down. Don’t you
hear echoes of this when you hear Mary’s song? God comes to
Mary through the angel and says, you’re gonna have a baby, it’s
Messiah. He’s gonna save people. And what does she say? You’ve
taken the lowly and you’ve exalted. And what does God do with the
exalted? He lays them in the dust. And that’s exactly what
he’s doing here. Man is humbled. Man is brought
low, but the Lord of hosts is exalted in his justice. Oh, you
can’t talk about that. Old Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson,
you know, they weren’t, they weren’t wrong. Just bad timing
and probably not respected maybe by many. But man is humbled. Man is brought low. The eyes
of the haughty are brought low, but the Lord is exalted in his
justice. The Lord of hosts is exalted
in his justice. The holy God shows himself righteous. He shows himself holy. And there
shall the lambs graze as in their pasture. You know, these people,
if they built these houses and joined all this land together,
they probably put up fences, right? And they probably kept
the wild beast off of it. And notice what happens in the
end. people come and squat. You know, we’re hearing a lot
about that in the news. That’s kind of humiliating, isn’t it?
To own a house and to take care of a house, only to have squatters,
only to have people living in it and making it a wasteland. Then shall the lambs graze. Excuse me. Then shall the lambs
graze as in their pasture and the nomads shall eat among the
ruins of the rich. So what was once a wonderful
piece of land is now for the squatters. So that’s the first
set of woes and the therefores. Now we’re gonna have four woes
and some more therefores. So pick up, if you will, in verse
four. 18, we’ve looked at the people desiring possessions and
pleasures. Now we’re going to see what happens
when you don’t have a God-centered worldview. What happens when
culture, or actually let’s say the church, the people of God,
what happens when the people of God come unglued? They come
untethered from the Judeo-Christian values. They live by evil principles. They’re wrong about God, they’re
wrong about all things. They deny that there are absolutes.
Even the church is doing that today. I suppose it’s not the
church, is it? The false church. But look at
the first woe, verse 18. Woe to those who draw iniquity
with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes,
who say, let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may
see it. Let the counsel of the Holy One
draw near, and let it come that we may know it. These are people
who reject Yahweh, they’re loaded with guilt. And yet they speak,
let’s just call it Christianese, you know, people do God talk. And these are people who live
under falsehoods. These are people who live under
the burden of false things. But they say godly things, you
know, come Lord Jesus, you know, Speed the work. We want to see
it. We want to witness it. Yet they reject it. Yet they
do not follow it. They’re insincere. Woe to those
who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood. And then verse
20, another woe. Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil. who put darkness for light, light
for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. These are folks who deny absolutes. These are folks, as verse 21
says, they are wise in their own eyes. These are folks who
are heroes at drinking wine, verse 22 says. These are folks
who proclaim things quite loudly in the world, but they’re wrong.
Their wisdom is their own wisdom, not the wisdom of God. It’s exaltation
of self. They’re wise in their own eyes,
shrewd in their own sight. These are folks who are full
of frivolity. Verse 22, they’re heroes at drinking
wine and valiant men at strong drinks. It’s almost like they’re
war heroes. They got medals. I’m really good at drinking.
I’m really good at partying. And doesn’t that echo what we
hear? In Romans chapter one, the people who are wicked and
do evil deeds, they’re not only good at wickedness and doing
evil deeds, they cheer others on at being wicked and doing
evil deeds. And that’s the picture here.
We get a medal that says, I’m really good at sinning. I’m really
good at breaking commandments. I’m really good at denying God
and denying his glory. But it’s worse. They acquit the
guilty for a bribe. They deprive the innocent of
his right. And so these people are wrong
about God. They’re self-exalting, they’re frivolous in their lifestyle,
and they do not give justice to whom it is due. Doesn’t that
very quickly, all this describe our nation? Some say, you know,
read the history, the rise and fall of Rome. We’ve got the rise
and perhaps soon the fall of America. Well, here was the rise
and the fall of Israel or Judah. Uh, these people love themselves. They love money. Uh, they loved
things that they ought not to love. And it says in verse 24,
the first, therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,
And as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will
be as rottenness and their blossoms go up like the dust. For they’ve
rejected the law of the Lord of hosts. They’ve rejected the
law of Moses. They’ve despised the words of
the Holy One of Israel. This 24, this 24 verse, verse
24 is a real poetic way of saying, look, you wicked judges, you
drink all day. You’re self-seeking, you’re all
these things. You’re not giving justice. You’ve
rejected the law of Moses, the law of the Lord, the law of Yahweh,
of host. And when the anger of the Lord
comes, his righteous tongue, his tongue that is not forked
or a lying tongue, his tongue that will speak justice, and
you’re going to get burned up. In fact, you’re so rotten, you’re
like dry grass. You’re so rotten, you’re like
a plant with rotted roots. That stuff burns quickly, doesn’t
it? Wildfire comes, judgment comes. He’s easing in here on
the Assyrian invasion. You begin to see more and more
as you make your way through these verses, the Assyrians are
coming. And if you know anything about
the Assyrians, they were wicked people. When they come in your
land, they lay it to waste. When they come in your land,
they tear everything up. They leave nothing standing.
We are now six months past this horrible event in Israel where
the Hamas came in and just did atrocious things. Think about
that with a 200,000 strong army. Maybe, maybe not explosive things
because they didn’t have it back then, but the same wicked hearts.
The same destructive behaviors. That’s what’s coming into the
people of God and into the promised land. Well, there’s another therefore
in verse 25, we’ve had four woes and now a second, therefore the
anger of the Lord, it says. Therefore the anger of the Lord
was kindled against his people. He stretched out his hand against
them and he struck them. You know, we were mentioning
earlier about things quaking and in New Jersey. Somebody tweeted,
a politician I think, because there’s lots of things in New
Jersey, I suppose, but never earthquakes. And so they tweeted,
this is just a sign of global warming. And they got panned
and trolled and whatever on the internet and said, no, there’s
a fault under New Jersey. It just never does much. But we know more, don’t we? God
shakes from time to time the things that are shakable because
he’s impressing upon us the unshakable kingdom. And he’s reminding us,
I’m here. I see what you’re up to. This rumbling, this small
shaking is a harbinger of things to come. There’s going to be
a bigger shaking, a shaking which you will not survive unless you’re
hidden in Jesus Christ. And are we paying attention to
these judgments? Well, 25 gives the other, therefore,
therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people.
He stretched out his hand against them. He struck them. The mountains
quaked. Why did the mountains quake?
Because God showed up in judgment. Even the mountains had the sense,
if you will, to fear God. Their corpses were as refuse
in the midst of the streets. His anger has not turned away. His hand is stretched out still.
And it gets really bad here. Look at verse 26. He raised a
signal for nations far away. Can you imagine standing on the
front porch of your house and saying, criminals, I’m going
to leave the windows open, the doors open. You come on in tonight.
I got a big TV. The money is in this drawer.
The safe is in this closet. Here’s the combination. In fact,
no, I’ll just leave it open for you. The silver is in the pantry. or under the dishwasher. I think
that’s where some people keep it. And oh, the jewelry’s here.
Would you do that? No, you wouldn’t. And God does
this for his treasured possession. He sends out a signal for nations
far away. He whistles. for them from the
ends of the earth. Behold, they quickly and they
speedily come to execute judgment. God is going to use Assyria.
He’s later going to use Babylon to judge his people. And notice
in verse 27, how he speaks of this army. None is weary, none
stumbles. They’ve got on brand new boots.
They’re laced up tight. Their canteens are full of water.
Their marching is in step. None slumbers or sleeps, not
a waistband is loose, not a sandal strap is broken. Their arrows
are sharp, their bows are bent. You could say their morale is
high, they’re hungry for war. And they’re like a lion whose
teeth are dripping and salivating, for there is an easy prey. Their
bows are bent, their horses hooves seem like flint. Their wheels
are like the whirlwind. Their roaring is like the lion,
like young lions. They roar, they growl, and they
seize their prey and they carry it off and none can rescue. It’s not just that the Assyrians
are big, bad and dirty soldiers. God is speeding them on their
way. You get a little glimpse of this, don’t you, when you
read the end of Revelation. The end times are war. The end
times are tumultuous. The end times are They’re desperate
times. Lord, let the mountains fall
on me. I’d rather the mountains fall on me than to see your face
and to receive your wrath. They will growl over their prey,
verse 30 says, like the growling of the sea. And if one looks
to the land, behold, they see darkness, they see distress,
and the light is darkened by the clouds. Think of Peter. Peter, who saw all the death
and darkness at Calvary, he saw all the judgments of God and
the warrings with Satan there in that great week of our Savior’s
passion and suffering and death and resurrection. And as he’s
preaching to exiles scattered throughout the early church,
and now he is preaching to us exiles scattered throughout the
2000 year old church. He reminds us in second Peter
three of the predictions of the holy prophets. He reminds us
of the commandments of the Lord, of our commandments of our Lord
and savior that he gave through the holy apostles. We hold to
the apostolic teaching and in it we’re told there will be scoffers
just as there were in Noah’s day. What are you building an
ark for? You think it’s going to rain? There’s scoffers today. What
do you believe in this Jesus guy for? He’s just a crutch.
He’s just the opiate of the masses. Why do you believe in him? That’s
foolish. We’re more developed these days. We’re the crown of
creation. We’re all there is. Why believe
in some man who lived and died a couple thousand years ago? And so these scoffers will come
and they’ll say, where is the promise? God said he was coming.
He’s not here. Is he asleep? Time’s marching
on. And Peter reminds Christians,
God made the world and everything in it. I love how John Calvin
says it’s a theater for God’s glory. So God made this world
and everything in it. He made this theater for his
own glory and he flooded it once and destroyed it. But now he’s
keeping it. He’s storing it up for a day
of fire. And Peter says, the Lord is not
slow, as we count slowness. A day with the Lord is like a
thousand years. A thousand years with the Lord
are like a day. And God is being patient. He’s
holding back his wrath in order that all may repent. He’s holding
back his wrath, but the day will come, Peter says, like a thief
in the night. And Peter knows what that suddenness
is like. Peter knows what that dread is
like. He saw the darkness of Jerusalem,
the darkness of Calvary. He saw the darkness of his own
heart when he betrayed our Lord, when he denied Him. The heavens
will pass with a great roar and the heavenly bodies, perhaps
like tomorrow’s eclipse, but bigger. More dramatic, these
heavenly bodies will pass away. They will be dissolved. The earth
and the work done on it will be burned up. And so Peter says
something that we ought to listen to in light of God and Christ
having given us all things. He’s given us his vineyard, us
his church, more than he gave his Old Testament people. They
saw it from afar. We have seen it in full. Since
then, these things are thus. Since then, these things are
true, Peter says, what sort of people ought you be in lives
of holiness and in lives of godliness? And he says this, be diligent
to be found without spot or blemish. Good grapes, fruitful, and for
God’s kingdom and glory. Let’s do pray. Lord, we thank
you for the chance to think on judgment. And we pray that it
would sober us. It would call us to take stock
in what we are, what we do, and that you’re to come. And if you
were to come now, what would you find us doing? Would we be
faithful and diligent and found without spot or blemish? Or would
we be fooling around and adding to our estate and eating and
drinking and being merry and living lives, especially thinking
and worldview apart from you. Lord, help it not to be so. We
pray for your grace, your help and strength and blessing. We
ask for it now in Christ’s holy name. Amen.