Thank you, Stefan, for a great introduction and summary of my sermon. I almost felt like we could just say amen and get on with the Lord's Supper. But we'll get into a little bit more detail here. We in Reformed circles like to preach expositionally through entire books. And there's good reasons for that. And for the person who brings the word of the Lord for the preacher, It has some advantages and, I won't say disadvantages, but some challenges. The advantage is once you've picked your book, you're good to go for a long time. And if you're like me and you pick Isaiah, you've got it for the rest of your life. But the challenge is you come across chapters or sections and you say, how am I going to preach this? What does this mean to me? And you have to really struggle with it to come up with its meaning for today. But that's good, because we should struggle with the text. And that's a good habit, even in our own Bible reading, is not to come to a chapter and say, ooh, I don't understand that. Let me go to the next one. But to struggle with it and say, what does this mean to me? And so we come to Isaiah chapter 5. Not a chapter with a lot of life in it, but the word of the Lord to us. It's the final chapter in Isaiah's preface. The preface to the book of Isaiah is chapters one through five. As you know, in chapter six is the, chapter six, a very popular chapter for preaching in Isaiah. And that's his commissioning. And then the book of Isaiah proper begins. The preface itself contains the themes of the book of Isaiah. And this chapter itself is a statement of God's coming judgment and the reasons for it. It's easily broken into two sections, the Song of the Vineyard, verses 1 through 7, and then Woes and Judgments, verses 8 through 30. We start with the Song of the Vineyard. Now, that's a common theme. In fact, we sang a hymn. About a vineyard, this is the first time we see vineyard mentioned in the scriptures. We'll see it later, or you see it later in Isaiah 27, the Psalm we sang, Psalm 80, Jeremiah 2, 21, Ezekiel 17. In the New Testament, we have Matthew 20 and 21, a vineyard and its tenants. And of course that well-known passage in John 15, I am the vine and you are the branches, where our Lord uses the image of taking care of a vineyard as how he takes care of his church. And then the book of Revelation in Revelation 14, the great harvest of God's wrath at the end of the time. Vineyards were common in Israel. You look at the, go through the Old Testament, the word vineyard is used 102 times. Israel is really an ideal place for vineyards. The climate's ideal, it's warm and sunny, the soil is alkaline and excellent. And even today, grapes and wine are one of the agricultural exports for Israel. But beyond that, vineyards are also a sign of permanence and prosperity. We've seen here in this text how much work it is to prepare one. And it takes grapes about three years between their planting and when they produce quality fruit. So if you're not in a stable situation, if you're not sure you're going to be around for a number of years, you don't bother to plant the vineyard. And of course, with the amount of work that it requires, you need to be a bit prosperous. So the existence of the vineyard is a sign of permanence and prosperity. As we read in Ezekiel 28, 26, and they shall dwell securely in it, and they shall build houses and plant vineyards. Vineyards as a sign of security. So not only is there a lot of preparation as we see in the text here, but they also require continuous care, weeding and pruning and so forth. Vineyards are not like a cereal crop where you plant the seeds and you do a little bit of weeding and then you wait for the harvest, but you've got to continually tend to a vineyard. Looking at some of the details in the text, I have here a little handout. Those of you who know me know I love Hebrew poetry and the structure of it. So what we have in the Song of the Vineyard is a classic chiastic pattern, A, B, B, A. In this case it goes down to C's, A, B, C's, and then B and A. And we're very beautifully balanced out. The A's, the vineyard depicted, is four lines. At the end, the vineyard explained his four lines. The B section, the vineyard cared for, five active verbs, balanced out with the vineyard neglected. Again, five verbs. And then the middle section of conclusions. Very, very beautiful poem. Isaiah begins it with what seems like a wedding song or a love song. Let me sing for my beloved, my love song concerning his vineyard. Appropriate way to begin it because his beloved is Jehovah, who loves his vineyard. In fact, in verse seven, he refers to Israel or the people of Judah as his pleasant planting. So it is indeed a love song. But Isaiah moves on quickly to say that the real subject of this is a vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And you can see there, there's your five active verbs, he dug, he cleared, he planted, he built, he hewed out. So Jehovah's done everything for his vineyard that you could possibly do. In fact, as we read in verse five, he even included a hedge and a wall. Everything that you could possibly do was done for that vineyard. He even built a vat so when he had a good harvest, he could begin producing wine. It's like you and I, if we plant a garden, you go out and you dig up the soil, you hoe it or you rototill it, and you put some lime in it if you need it, and some fertilizer, and you plant the seeds, and you've done everything. And maybe you put a fence around it, and if you're in some areas, you put a high deer fence around it to protect it. You say, oh, I'm really looking forward to those nice ripe tomatoes or juicy melons or whatever. And so Jehovah God is ready for a good harvest. But instead, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. The Hebrew literally there is stink fruit, which is a great description. I think when we have lunch, someone passes around, they're not gonna say, oh, would you like to share some stink fruit with me? But I think wild grapes is probably a good translation. When my wife and I were first married and didn't have any money, we were in an area with a lot of wild grapes. We thought, wow, we can really feast out on those. Nope. And we said, well, we'll make grape jam out of them. Well, you could not add enough sugar to make these things palatable. Yes, so much for wild grapes. So Jehovah's taking care of his vineyard, everything that's necessary, what possibly could go wrong? Well, what did happen? How could it happen? So he switches over and it's now Jehovah himself speaking. He says, now, he talks to the people, he says, but now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard? And what have I not done in it? When I look for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? It's like after your garden and you grow and the tomatoes taste horrible, the melons are impalatable, you might go to your neighbor who's a good gardener and say, what have I done wrong? I mean, I did everything. And your neighbor would say, well yeah, it's just, you have a lousy garden. There's nothing you can do with it. And it's obvious from the text here that it's not the owner of the vineyard that it's at fault. It's the vineyard itself, the vines itself. It's a worthless vineyard producing only stink fruit. And there's a little trick here in that what Isaiah is doing is drawing the people in to judge themselves and admit, oh yeah, God has done everything he can for us and we're stink fruit. So the vineyard is worthless, it's unfruitful, so God gives it up and withdraws his protection and care from it. 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. I will make it a waste, and it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds, and they will rain, and they rain, no rain upon it. The five active verbs that we saw earlier are balanced by five verbs, neglect or destruction, in this section here. This also looks back to earlier in Isaiah chapter three, verse one, where God says, and I will remove, I will take away supply and support, and lists out a whole group of men that he's gonna take away, the captains of 50 and so forth. And so here also, God will remove. So it's no longer protected and it falls into decay and ruin. He gives it up to be plundered by wild animals and weeds. I saw that very graphically this summer, helping out a family with a very large garden, very well laid out, good garden, and then they went away on vacation for a month. filled with weeds. And then somebody left the gate open, and the rabbits came in and had a good time. And so did the deer. They enjoyed the garden, but it was a wreck. There wasn't much left of the garden. And Isaiah goes on to explain the parable. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed. For righteousness, but behold, an outcry. That's God's standard. God demands justice and righteousness. That's the good fruit that he expected out of his garden. Two words, by the way, which we'll talk about later, but you see throughout the book of Isaiah. But instead of justice and righteousness, there was only bloodshed and cries. A couple notes on this section. First, this is a parable, it's not an allegory. In other words, there's no one-to-one correspondence and say, well, the bat stands for this and the hedge stands for that and the watchtower stands for something else. No, all of the details are pulled simply from how you plant a vineyard and it's got one meaning behind it as a parable. Verse 5, when he talks about, I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured, it came literally true beginning in the time of Isaiah and in the years that followed it. God had put Israel from the time of the Exodus on into some, you could say, a protective bubble. Egypt was no longer a power. Kingdoms to the north were busy with their own business up there, and all that you had for Israel was, I'll say, local annoyances and oppressors, not existential threats, but people like the Philistines and the Midianites, Moab, the Edomites, that God would use to punish Israel, so to speak, thorns, but not existential threats. But just before Isaiah began his ministry in the reign of Uzziah, there was a man called Tiglath-Pileser II, who became king of Assyria. And he was a strong king. who organized Assyria and began to take an interest in the events to the south. So you had the rise of, so to speak, a local superpower, an empire that was indeed a threat to Israel and, as you know from your history, eventually conquered Israel, the Assyrians and then later the Babylonians from the same area. So God removed the protection and Israel and Judah were trampled upon. It's as if God said, okay, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar have had it. And they did, without God's protection. Calvin writes, in this song, the prophet mentions first the benefits which the Lord had bestowed on the Jewish people. Secondly, he explains how great was the ingratitude of the people. Thirdly, the punishment which must follow. Fourthly, he enumerates the vices of the people. A couple observations or things to note here. One is, note God's care for his people, Israel, and by extension, of course, the church. Everything is done by God. God has given the church everything that the church needs to flourish, just as he gave to Israel everything that Israel needed to flourish. But notice, in contrast to that, man's total culpability. The vineyard was stink fruit. I'll let you judge the church itself or yourself. And so this text stands as a warning to us against ingratitude towards God's blessings for taking them for granted, a warning against straying away from God. And we need to remember that that Paul in Romans reminds us that we're really the wild fruit, or in this case, the wild, in his case, wild olive branches that were grafted in, and God can just as easily take them out. As Calvin states, the Lord has cultivated and adorned us with unceasing care. But what kind of fruits do we bring forth? Assuredly, they are not only useless, but even bitter. So much the greater is the ingratitude for which we ought to be condemned, for the blessings which he has bestowed and heaped on us are far more abundant. And justly does this expositation apply to us, for violence and injustice abound everywhere. It speaks, first of all, to us as a society. Never has there been a society that's had it so good, but is yet so dissatisfied and ungrateful. And if you think about our society, we've got everything, don't we? But yet, people are very dissatisfied and they grumble. And they ignore God, they live their life as if he doesn't exist without being thankful for the abundant goodness that he's given to him. And we as Christians need to be careful that this doesn't flow into our thoughts and lives, that we not become people who also grumble and are not gracious for what God has given to us. Life is difficult, we all know that. But we can be thankful for many, many things. Let us not fall into the ungratitude ingratitude that the people of Israel did, but instead be people that are always giving thanks to God and remembering his blessings. So we move into woes and judgments, a description of the stink fruit which the vineyard has produced. You can see also in your handout just the structure of this. There's two woes that talk about the abuses of material benefits, followed by two therefores, four woes about moral and spiritual failures, followed by two more therefores. In each of the therefores, the first one explains how the judgment is suited to the sin, and the second one describes an act of God in total judgment. The first woe, the sin of greed or insatiable avarice and covetousness. Words taken from Calvin, not myself. Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field until there is no more room and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land. We have a picture here of people that are acquiring more and more land. And instead of small plots, you have giant farms and estates who build bigger and bigger mansions for themselves. The land itself was a gift, a loan, actually a gifted loan from God, as really is our land, for all things do belong to God and are given to us. And one of the rules that we see from Leviticus is that the allocated holdings were to remain within a family. So you have this structure, these rules in Levitical law, where if somebody came upon hard times and needed to sell their land for money, they could do so. But they or their family always had the right to buy it back. And when it came to the year of jubilee, after 7 times 7 or 49 years, it reverted back to that family. So the land could never leave a family permanently. not an ability to build up large estates and large houses. But what we see here is in violation of that. People building up large houses, big mansions and fields they'd acquired, such that they sort of lived alone. You know, you picture a big mansion and can't see the neighbors from the mansion. And Calvin condemns this, condemns the living in houses that are larger than necessary. Again, the words of Calvin. But when men swollen with ambition make superfluous additions to their houses, only that they may live in greater luxury. And when one person alone occupies a building which might serve for the habitation of many families, this undoubtedly is empty ambition and ought to be justly blamed." Calvin doesn't mince any words. No. So he condemns greed or, in C-tuple, avarice or covetousness. But isn't this the quintessential American way? Really, isn't it? We have corporations that swallow up smaller corporations and they get larger and larger. They become enormous and immensely powerful. I know that's happened in the vet industry and it's happened in a lot of industries where what you end up with is huge corporations that really don't care about the little guy. And then a little bit closer to home, you have people that buy bigger and bigger houses. You know, we sometimes laughingly call them McMansions with large, unused lawns. They pay some Mexicans to go out and mow their lawn for them because they're so huge. Space that they don't need while the poor middle class can't afford housing. We all know what the price of housing is here. And we can see this in what economists call the growing Gini coefficient. That's the ratio of the earnings of the top 20% to the bottom 20%. And that's growing quite a bit in the U.S. and actually in other countries. And it's a measure of inequality. There's been a couple of articles in the Seattle Times in recent months about the huge and growing gap between the rich and the poor and the east side. So it's a sin to think about and think about Calvin's word. The issue in the Bible is not wealth. The Bible is not against wealth, but the issue is the disparity between the rich and the poor. and it is indeed a blight and sin in our society, and one for which we need to examine ourselves so that we're not infected. You know, we're people in the world, which means we're influenced by the world. So when you see sins in your own society, those attitudes, those sins, influence you, and it's worth thinking, how much have they influenced me? And guarding yourself against it. And so the temptations of large houses, large estates, the expense of the poor is something we need to think about ourselves. And we move on. The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing, literally as in the King James, in mine ears, said the Lord of hosts. Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses without habitation. So as much as these people built large mansions, had large estates, they won't enjoy them. Wealth without justice has no tenure, for ultimately, wealth comes from God, Deuteronomy 8, 18. Or in Jeremiah 17, 11, like the partridge that gathers a brood that she did not hatch, so is he who gets rich, but not by justice. In the midst of his days, they will leave him. And at his end, he will be a fool. For 10 acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield an ephah. Now, 10 acres is a big vineyard. Even in eastern Washington, that's a commercial vineyard. For the time of Israel, it was very much a commercial vineyard. But a bath is six gallons. If you do a little bit of arithmetic, an acre of vines should produce three to five tons of grapes. and each ton of grape should produce 150 gallons of wine. So you don't need to get out your smartphone and do some arithmetic. The 10 acres that Isaiah describes should produce 6,000 gallons of wine, but instead it produces only 6 gallons of wine, one one-thousandth of what it should produce. And a homer is 10 ephahs, so the yield is only one-tenth of the amount of seed put in. So they put in a homer and they got one-tenth of it back. Some of you may have had businesses that feel like that. In the business world, this would be considered a sinkhole or a bottomless money pit. So much for their greed. It got them nothing but futility. And this is in contrast to the messianic fruitfulness in chapter four, verse two. In that day, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel. So contrast the frustration of an unyielding estate, the richness of the messianic blessings. The outcome is futility. We all know the saying that you can't take it with us, but sometimes you don't even get to enjoy it. I think we all know people who've saved up for their retirement, and then they haven't been able to enjoy it. Not necessarily out of sin, but just the uncertainty of riches, the uncertainty of wealth. You're never sure if you're going to enjoy it, but if that's what your trust, your hope is, you're dealing with uncertainty. It's an issue of contentment versus covetousness. Move on to a second woe. Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them. They have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute, and wine at their feasts. but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or see the work of His hands. The second woe, pleasure-seeking, or the pursuit of, the soul pursuit of intoxication or pleasure. These are people who, their life is drink, or pleasure-seeking. Now I say that because this is, You know, we're talking about intoxication here, but the Singh goes deeper than that. That's just an example. He's not condemning only party goers. He's condemning those who seek after pleasure as the sole pursuit of their life. And as a result, they have no regard for the deeds of the Lord, that is his moral government, and they're oblivious to the work of his hands, his creation, and his providence. So we have the sin of drunkenness condemned, but beyond that, the singular pursuit of pleasure to the exclusion of all else, a life focused on pleasure. And that's an issue that, of course, obviously youth face, but it's also an issue that we face in retirement. Sometimes you see people and they work hard and they get to retirement and, Like, now I can get out and enjoy life. You never see them on Sundays anymore because they're out enjoying life. And that's a danger that retirement becomes simply a focus on, let me get in the good times while I can still do it. The issue isn't with pleasure itself, but an imbalanced life. God has made us sensuous people. Not sensual, but sensuous. Sensuous was a word, by the way, invented by John Milton to talk about enjoying senses, but not in the carnality sense of sensual. So we're sensuous people, aren't we? We're gonna have, well, I won't be here, but you guys are gonna have a good meal after. And you're going to enjoy it and enjoy good drink and good food. And you go home and you'll enjoy good food and good drink. You go outside and say, ah, it's a beautiful day. And you'll enjoy the beauty of creation. God's given us pleasures and given us the ability to enjoy pleasures. But when that's the focus of your life, that's not right. There's a good example of this in C.S. Lewis's The space trilogy, Paralandra, Ransom finds himself there and he's going about his business and he bumps into this globe and it showers him with fluid and just, oh, what a great feeling. And he thinks, well, I'm going to just run around and I'm going to find these globes and I'm just going to keep bumping into them. And he says, no, that's not right. That's not the way to live here on this planet. Instead, I'll just go about my business and, hey, when I bump into a globe, that's great. I'll enjoy it. But I've got other things to do than just running around hitting globe after globe. So, those who live for pleasure, the next party, or high, or sexual encounter, or adventure, or vacation, that's who we're describing. Their life is focused on pleasure. They live for it. Again, that's the American way, isn't it? People focus their lives around pleasure. Why can't I save up enough money for a boat, or for a vacation, or whatever it is, a trip? And again, that's something that we can be tempted into ourselves. And the end result for them is that they're oblivious to the things of God, living as if God did not matter. So we need to ask ourselves as we expend our resources, our time, and our money, are they exclusively for pleasure rather than for the things of the Lord? Again, it's an issue of finding that balance. And out of that sin comes the sin of living for oneself, solely for oneself. You read here, they're just interested in having a good time, not interested in helping others. And we see, too, a link between sensual, that is, carnal indulgence and the loss of spiritual perception. And again, a sin of greed and ingratitude. In the first group, God had given them sufficient land, but they wanted more. In this case, God gave them pleasures, but they wanted more. And the first, therefore, are consequence. Therefore, my people go into exile for lack of knowledge. Their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst." Again, futility. Large estates, as we saw in the first woe, but they were empty estates. Here, they go after strong drink, but there's just thirst and hunger. The judgment matches the sin. They have no regard for the Lord, and now they go into exile for lack of knowledge. You know, they had the scriptures, they had the law, but they ignored it. As the saying goes, if you don't study for an exam, you reap the consequences. A second, therefore, the party is over in verse 14. Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude go down, her revelers and he who exalts in her." So there's a little bit of irony here. These people, they live for their appetites, but the only appetite that's satisfied is that of Sheol. Kidner writes, the judgment of the centralists, like that of the fashion-crazed women of 316 and following, will be to lose the one thing they had lived for and to find themselves the object of an even more insatiable appetite than their own. Moving on. Man is humbled, and each one is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are brought low. But the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the holy God shows himself holy in righteousness. This is really hearkening back to chapter 2, verses 9 and 11, which reads, so man is humbled, and each one is brought low. Do not forgive them. The haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day." Talking about the day, the coming day of the Lord. Verse 17, then shall lambs graze in its pasture and nomads shall eat among the ruins of the rich. Literally it reads, tramps eat in the ruins of the well fed. So picture here in our area, big giant houses, but picture a house that's boarded up, it's empty, maybe some of the windows are broken, What used to be manicured lawns are overgrown and there's shepherds bringing flocks of sheep to come through and doing what sheep do on those nice lawns. And on the front porch or maybe in the hallway, there's a bunch of nomads with a little campfire burning, eating their meals. That's the estates of the rich when God's judgment comes. Again, we see futility. I want to talk for a minute about righteousness and justice, which we see in verse 16. We also saw in verse 7. As I mentioned, two very favorite words of Isaiah, because those are God's standards, what God demands of his people. Righteousness being the holiness expressed in moral principles, and justice as the application of that righteousness. So God's demands are for righteousness and justice, and those should be our standards, standards by which we judge our nation, our candidates, our business, and even ourselves. So in a few days, Tuesday, we have an election day. And hopefully, we'll all vote on resolutions and candidates. And a question to ask is, are these people, these resolutions, are these candidates righteous? Are they just? Is this a man who will bring justice to our nation, or our county, or town, or whatever? And insofar as we can influence our own businesses, You know, is this business, this company I belong to, is this a just company? Does this company treat its employees with justice? Does it treat its customers in a just fashion or not? And then even ourselves. Am I a just, a righteous person? Well, we know that no man is righteous, but that doesn't really get us off the hook, does it? The question that's really before us is, is righteousness my own personal value? Is that something that's important to me? Do I seek after righteousness and attempt to be a righteous man? It's certainly not a value in our culture, but it must be a value in our own lives. In verse 18, the third woe, blatant sin and arrogance. Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes. So here we have the picture of a beast hauling a cart, the bondage of sin. And the cords, which we find in the first line, are woven together in the second line like a twisted rope, an unbreakable bondage. But a bondage that people have put themselves in, just as an ox is put into the yoke and is bondage to the sled or the plow that is drawing. So these men have put themselves in a drawing sleds of sin. And the sin progresses, and they arrogantly state, who say, let them be quick. Let him speed his work that we may see it. Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come that we may know it. A lot of irony in this verse. That's one of those statements you never want to say. and you don't ever want answered. I'm reminded of Pharaoh who said, who is Jehovah that I should hear, listen to him? Who's Jehovah that I should obey him? Well, Pharaoh, you're about to find out and you're not gonna like the answer. And so here, oh, let him come quickly. Oh yes, he will. And you'll be very sorry that you said, let him come quickly. And isn't that what we find today? A culture that mocks God and mocks the things of God. Mind you that there was a group this summer that was honored by one of our Major League Baseball teams, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. And they were as bad as the name implies. The fourth woe, the reversal of the moral code in verse 20. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. So morality is reversed and it becomes a matter of personal preference. What we see here is what we see in Romans 1. Where things in society that used to be considered an unspeakable sin are now a thing of pride that people boast in. Where things are just backwards. You know, someone picks up a cube of sugar and says, oh, that's very bitter. Oh no, sugar is sweet. But no, it's all a matter of personal interpretation. So we hear words like, or phrases like, oh that's fine for you, but don't impose your morality on me. As if there's no basis of morality. And that's what we find in verse 21. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight. unaided human wisdom with no moorings, no solid metaphysical foundation. What I mean by that is, so we have moral views. What's the basis of them? It's the scriptures. But what does the world have? If you ask somebody what they think is right and wrong, what basis do they have? They have no basis other than what they feel internally, what's right and wrong. It's just a matter of internal feelings. I think today I feel like I'm a woman. Oh, OK, so I'm a woman today. Really? And this is not just a recent invention, a 21st modern thing. Read sometime, if you wish, Carl Truman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, It starts with some of the Enlightenment thinkers, such as Rousseau, goes through the Romantic poets, and Freud, and Marx, and brings us up to today. You see, this is something that's been building over the centuries, and now we find ourselves in our current position. Men who refuse to accept censure or correction, because there's no basis on which to do that. And the sixth and final woe, which is the result of the fifth, woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of his right. So heroes and valiant men, those are military honors. But instead, they become honors of men who are strong, who are good partiers. Things have been turned upside down. Just look in our society at the modern heroes. They're ethical non-heroes or anti-heroes. Even one of our former presidents referring to people who had died for their country in the fields of France and in Arlington, referred to them as losers, really. things are turned upside down. So we see a progression of sin from bondage to calling sin good to no moral foundation and the making of antiheroes. Mortier again states, when life consists of the following of sin, denial of the living God, and rewriting the moral code, there is no stopping short of complete devotion to self-pleasing. Verse 24. 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 blossom go up like dust. For they have rejected the word or the law of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." Again, some mocking. They wanted quick judgment. They got it. Just like when you throw dry grass in a fire, and boom, it's gone. So will God's judgment be. And the product of what they produce, their blossoms, they will vanish. And they're rotten to the core. When the root of a tree is rotten, The tree is worthless. I've got a couple trees in my yard that have gotten rot. There's nothing to be done but cut them down and burn them. They cannot be saved. They had the law, and they rejected it. And now the council of judgment have come. They said, show us the council. You could have found out if you'd read the scriptures. Now they know the council, but it's too late. Notice though that what they're condemned for is not their indulgences, not their venality, but for their fundamental sin of rejecting the law of the Lord of hosts and despising the word of the Holy One of Israel. That's the root of their sin, and that's the thing for which they are condemned. And we get into some specifics in verses 25 through 30, which I won't read that entire section. One of the things that we do learn from that is that natural forces like, well, I'll get into that a little bit later, but what we have here, again, in structure, we have natural forces, the earthquake at the beginning, we have natural forces at the end, the lion and the sea, and sandwiched in between, bracketed, so to speak, is a description of an irresistible invader. All forces which were at God's command Now the earthquake we see in verse 25 is probably the earthquake that took place during the King of Uzziah. It's mentioned in Amos 1.1, Zechariah 14.5, and you'll notice that that's in the past tense, whereas the rest of it is in the future tense. And after the earthquake, we have a description of a terrifying, invincible army. An army which God signals and God commands, whistles for them to come. Verses 29 and 30, we have a double picture of helplessness. Their roaring is like a lion, like long lions they roar. They growl and seize their prey. They carry it off and none can rescue. They will growl over it in that day, like the growling of the sea. And if one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress, and the light is darkened by its clouds. A double picture of hopelessness. The person who encounters a lion, the sailor who's trapped out at sea, The roar in verse 29 is what they call the pouncing roar of a lion. You can see that in Judges 14. The roar a lion makes to cause its prey to freeze just before it pounces and takes its prey. And the young lions here, they're not talking about cubs, cute little lions. They're talking about lions in their prime. And then the growl. And yeah, at the end of verse 29, it's the growl that a lion makes when it's caught its prey and it's satisfied. It's a growl of happiness when it's about to drag its prey off. And then the picture of the sailor caught in the sea. A couple observations. Both the environment and the nations The forces of history are at God's command. Motier again, the created world in all of the complexity, splendor, and ferocity of its powers is a controlled tool in the hand of the creator, serving his righteous purposes. As much as we look around and we're overawed by the power, the destructiveness of creation, those are tools in God's hands. And as much as we can be intimidated by foreign powers and be horrified, again, tools in God's hands. And for us, that's a comfort. They're not out of control. They're in the control of our Lord. Close with a general reflection. Don't call this an observation. I call this a reflection as something to think about. Isaiah ends his preface on a very dark note. And if one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress, and the light is darkened by its clouds. Bang, that's the end of his preface. All hope is gone, and only darkness remains. Moshe, again, comments. This is a quote which I thought about quite a bit. Thus Isaiah ends his preface. The message of the first two sections, chapter one and two, is that human sin cannot ultimately frustrate God's purposes, and that in God, mercy triumphs over the wrath. But the third section, this chapter, poses a shattering question. When the Lord has done all, verse four, must the darkness of divine wrath close in and the light flicker and fade? This was the day of crisis in which Isaiah ministered. A crisis for mankind, for the day of wrath has come. And a crisis for God. Can mercy be exhausted and defeated? So think about that a few answers. Generally, or in the general, so to speak, meta picture, no. Mercy cannot be defeated. It cannot be exhausted. And we see that in Isaiah. Following this preface, he talks about the suffering servant in chapters 38 through 50, and the anointed conqueror in chapters 51 through 66. So God does even more to bring his people to himself. But yet, but yet, we can't just blithely skip over this chapter and go, whew, I'm glad that God's got more. Well, we are glad that God's got more. But this chapter has its own bite and its own statement in and of itself to us. When God has done everything in a person's life or an organization's life and there's no repentance, no seeking after righteousness and justice, what more can he do or what more will he do? Judgment must follow. This is his justice. If there's no righteousness or justice, If these are not strongly held values, judgment must follow. As Isaiah ends his preface, he leaves us with this severe warning. Just to add, my friends, that these are dark and dismal times, like the times in which Isaiah was writing. But to those of us who know Christ, These are times to hold on to Christ for dear life. Hold on to him for all it's worth, because he is merciful. Hold on to his mercy seat, for he will show mercy.