Let's hear God's word from the book of Isaiah, beginning with verse one. Now let me sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst and also made a wine press in it. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge please between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? And now please let me tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned, and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste. It shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. And the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression. For righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. Woe to those who join house to house. They add field to field till there is no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land. In my hearing, the Lord of hosts said, truly many houses shall be desolate, great and beautiful ones without inhabitant. For 10 acres of vineyard shall yield one bath and a homer of seed shall yield one ephah. Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may follow intoxicating drink, who continue until night, till wine inflames them. The harp and the strings, the tambourine and flute and wine are in their feasts, but they do not regard the work of the Lord, nor consider the operation of his hands. Therefore, my people have gone into captivity because they have no knowledge. Their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore, Sheol has enlarged itself and opened its mouth beyond measure. Their glory and their multitude and their pomp and he who is jubilant shall descend into it. People shall be brought down, each man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness. Then the lambs shall feed in their pasture, and the waste places of the fat ones strangers shall eat. Amen. We'll end our reading there in verse 17 of Isaiah chapter 5. Let's once again ask for God's help in a word of prayer. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, in this portion of your word, we find much that is figurative, we find much that is denunciatory, and we pray that you would help us to come then with open minds and hearts to receive But you will say, we acknowledge, Lord, that we too often stand in need of correction and rebuke. We acknowledge with sorrow that in spite of many advantages, there is a tendency to bring forth wild grapes instead of good fruit. We recognize that there is much that we build that is wood and hay and stubble instead of silver and gold and precious stones. There's much in our lives that will not stand in the fire of judgment. But Lord, we pray that today your word would work preemptively within us, that we might be called back to Christ, that we might be rendered fruitful in him, and that the fruit that we bring forth to him would be good, acceptable fruit. Forgive us, Lord, for the wild grapes, and help us to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit instead. In Jesus' name, amen. Chapter 5 is the end of Isaiah's long preface to his long book. In these opening chapters, he is setting the table, so to speak, for the meal that is to follow. Chapter one is like an overture. It introduces the main themes that will characterize the rest of the prophecy of Isaiah. Chapters two through four form a united section, a sermon, if you will, where Isaiah goes in a circle from the Lord's salvation through judgment back to salvation. And then in chapter five, the Lord lays out the case. Why is judgment coming? Why is the day of the Lord approaching? And he does that in two ways. He does that first of all through this song of the vineyard in the first seven verses. And then he does that through a series of woes. There are six or seven woes in the remainder of the chapter, depending on how you want to count verse 22, where you have woe to men mighty at drinking wine, woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink. Obviously those are very similar. So some people will say six, but the last woe is double-barreled. Or some people will say that there are seven woes. I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference on that score. And there's a structure to that. Isaiah will give you some woes. For instance, verse eight, he says, woe to those who join house to house. Yeah, excuse me, verse 11, woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may follow intoxicating drink. He expands on that a little bit, and then he'll have two therefores. Verse 13, therefore, my people have gone into captivity. And then verse 14, therefore, Sheol has enlarged itself. There's a short explanation. And there's a long explanation. Well, in verses 18 and following, you have a similar approach. Verse 18, woe to those who draw iniquity. Verse 20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Verse 21, woe to those who are wise in their own eyes. Verse 22, we've already mentioned. And then in verse 24, you have therefore, and there's a short explanation. And then in verses 25 and following, there's another therefore with a longer explanation. So you see this pattern, woe, woe, therefore, therefore. And Isaiah goes through that twice. Now there's a lot of material in there, and that's why we've had to break it up, but I wanted to show you the overview here so you could see how it all fits together. What's the bottom line? What is God driving at with all of this? Well, the basic question is, who is to blame for the judgment? Who is to blame for the affliction, the suffering, the difficulties that are approaching? Why is the day of the Lord darkness and not light for so many, if you want to put it that way? And the answer is very clear. We are to blame. It is the fault of God's people. Now, I'm not saying it's the fault of God's people in contrast to everybody else who is blameless. I'm saying it is the fault of human beings in contrast to God. And that is spelled out very clearly in the Song of the Vineyard. The well-beloved is God. And that becomes very clear in verse six. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it. This is not your regular vineyard owner. Only God can command the clouds in that way. And so this is a sort of a parable. It's an illustration or a metaphor. God's people are like a vineyard. God prepared the ground. He took away the stones. He built a watchtower. He made a wine press. He did everything necessary and he planted good quality grapes. So he was expecting nice grapes, grapes that were suitable for making wine. And what he got instead was something too sour, too nasty to be usable. That shouldn't have happened. Obviously, many of you can identify with what that would feel like. You put in all the work, you invest all the money to get a good crop, and then lo and behold, it's completely unusable. I don't know if you've ever gotten mad at a plant, but that would be the situation. That would be the kind of thing that makes you mad at that plant. Well, Of course, Israel was an agricultural country. Many of them would have been able to just look around and see vineyards on very fruitful hills. They would have been able to see where the work, the backbreaking work of digging it up and clearing out the stones and all of that had been done. And their expectation was, then we're gonna get good grapes. They could identify with the frustration here. And so God asks them, Judge, did the vineyard have what it needed in order to produce good fruit? Well, then what is the explanation for the sour grapes, for the wild grapes? And what would you do if you owned a vineyard and you did everything for it to produce properly, and instead it was a disaster, it was a nightmare, what would you do? You continue sending good money after bad? Do you continue trying? Do you say, you know what? I give up. I'm tearing out all these grapes. I'm putting in something different. I'm selling this field. Sheep are going to graze there. At least that way you'll get something from the sheep, right? You can relate to that frustration. You can relate to the frustration of working and working and something doesn't work out. You can relate to the frustration of investing and investing with no return. The message of all of that is that the reason there were sour or wild grapes is not some deficiency on the part of God, something he overlooked in caring for his people. He brought them out of Egypt. He gave them the law. He brought them into the promised land. He gave them the temple. He gave them the sacrifices. He gave them the monarchy. And he looked for good fruit. He looked for justice. He looked for righteousness. But what he got instead was oppression, was people screaming out for help because of their mistreatment. Now there's an application there to us as well. Has God done enough for us that we should be bearing good fruit? Where do you live? Have you ever gone hungry? Have you been able to pay your bills? I'm not saying with zero stress or zero anxiety, but have you been able to pay your bills? What abundance have you received? I was thinking yesterday about the funerals that I've conducted since being here. You know, the Bible says that the average lifespan is 70 years, three score years and 10, right? That's three score is three times 20, that's 60 plus 10, that's 70. And it says, and if by reason of strength, you make it to 80, those extra days are toil and trouble. Since being here, I don't think I've conducted one funeral for somebody who was under the age of 80. Has God blessed us? Has God been good to us? Has God given us freely all things to enjoy? Have we received countless mercies? Well, if you doubt that, just start counting. You're not gonna make it to the end of that. So then who is to blame if we bring forth sour grapes instead of the fruit of the Spirit? Is that God's fault? Can we say, well, Lord, you put me in such a tough spot. I had no choice but to lose my temper. You made my life so difficult. Of course I became bitter. Is that gonna be your defense? Are you going to come before the Lord and say, I would have been a better person if you had treated me right. I hope you know the answer to that. That's not a good argument. You do not have a leg to stand on with that one. We cannot blame God for the sin in our lives. We cannot blame God for the way that Wickedness bubbles up from within us. We cannot blame God for the disappointing crop of spiritual fruit in our lives. Why does Isaiah say this? And why does Isaiah join it with an announcement of judgment that the vineyard's hedge will be taken away, burned, the wall broken down, the whole vineyard laid waste, and no rain to fall, where there was supposed to be an abundant vineyard. Instead, you'll have sheep grazing and strangers taking whatever little is there. Why does God announce all of that? Because there's such a danger. There's such a tendency to complacency among the people of God. We can lapse into this mindset. We can say, well, we're the people of God. Everything will be okay. Will everything be okay when there's oppression instead of justice, when there's people screaming out because of their mistreatment instead of righteousness? Will everything be okay when the people of God bring forth sour grapes, when our lives are characterized by rotten fruit? No, it won't be. But the prophets... and the apostles and the Lord Jesus return to this kind of theme so often because there is such a tendency to complacency. Because we are so likely to say, you know what? We know we're not perfect, but we're the people of God, everything will be okay. We need to leave that mindset behind. We need to stop thinking that way. We need to not be presumptuous about it. God put all this work into his vineyard, and then God tore it down because it did not bring forth good fruit. How do we do this? Well, there's a variety of ways. Sometimes we compare ourselves to other people. We say, you know, I know I'm not perfect, but I'm not as bad as so-and-so. Everything will be okay, as though God graded on a curve. A lot of people in the world kind of have this idea, right? Those who are hell deserving are those who are on the extreme end of behavior. Once you start getting into your tyrannical dictators, once you start getting into your serial killers, okay, those are the bad people. I'm nothing like that. So I'm a good person. Okay, well, comparatively speaking, in civil and social terms, sure, I'll grant you that. But what did we hear even from the catechism this morning? My conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have never kept any of them. Oh, so I'm a bad person. Yeah, by the standard of God's law, I really am. I have sinned, not once or twice, not a little bit, not here and there, not in small ways that basically nobody could notice. I have sinned grievously against all the commandments of God, not just some, against all of them. We pat ourselves on the back, right? Well, I've always been honest. I've never stolen anything. You've grievously sinned against the eighth commandment. I've never killed anybody. You've grievously sinned against the sixth commandment. Pick the one you want. You have grievously sinned against it. And those things are not a matter of the past. Well, that was before I was saved. Yeah, it was before you were saved. But it's also now. It's also true today. There is a sinful nature that clings to you, and you continue to sin. The Lord looks that we should bring forth good grapes, and instead, what do we bring forth? How often do we give way to self-pity? How often are we grumbling and complaining and murmuring? How often are we bitter and resentful? How often do we lack forgiveness towards those who have injured us? Where's the fruit? Why are there all these wild grapes? Well, it's not God's fault. It's our fault. There's nobody else to blame. You can't blame your parents. You can't blame your siblings. You can't blame your spouse. You can't blame your kids. You can't blame the government. You can't blame your workers. You can't blame your job. It's you. You're the problem. I'm the problem. But you can't blame me, I can't blame you, but you can't blame me. You're the problem, we all are. And we need to be aware of that so that we are not complacent, so that we are not presumptuous. We think it's no big deal to be selfish. But what does Isaiah say? Woe to those who join house to house They add field to field till there is no place. In other words, they're pricing everybody else out of the real estate market. Nobody else can own anything because some big concern has monopolized everything. The answer to that, many houses shall be desolate, great and beautiful ones without inhabitants. 10 acres of vineyard shall yield one bath. A homer of seed shall yield one ephah. A homer is 10 times the size of an ephah. So imagine that you go out and you plant a gallon's worth of seed. You've got a gallon bucket. You plant all of that. And then what you harvest from that is a cup. Well, that's a losing proposition, clearly, right? You're not even getting back your initial investment. You're not breaking even. That's the judgment that God announces on this selfishness of monopolizing the land. Or, then again, woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may follow intoxicating drink, who continue until night, till wine inflames them. The harp and the strings, the tambourine and flute and wine are in their feasts. Think it's no big deal, we're just having fun. We just want to blow off some steam. We just want to relax. But what? What are they doing? Well, they're pursuing entertainment. They're pursuing pleasure. They're pursuing the indulgence of wine and music to the point of forgetting. They do not regard the work of the Lord. They don't consider the operation of his hands. It's no big deal to be a little bit selfish. It's no big deal to be a little bit self-indulgent. That's how the complacent think. We're not as bad as other people. We're God's people, it will be okay. We even take that wonderful, glorious truth of justification from our catechism and we turn that into a reason not to be worried that we're bringing forth bad fruit. What a perversion of the truth of God. What a ridiculous thing to take something that God gives for our comfort and strength and say, see, this means everything's okay, even though I'm not pleasing the Lord. That's complacency. That's presumption, and that is very clearly condemned by the Word of God. I hope you would agree. The Word of God is not pulling its punches here. The people go into captivity. He speaks of Sheol or of the grave as enlarging itself. They'd open their mouth wide to drink wine. Now death opens its mouth wide to swallow them up. Everything they trusted in, everything they gloried in, Every reason for self-congratulation goes down into the tomb, and the Lord is exalted. Judgment was inevitable. It was God's purpose to bring about salvation through judgment. We've seen that before. But here the Lord makes the case, why is judgment inevitable? And the answer is, because of the unfruitfulness of the people. Now, we have better advantages. We have more mercies. Our vineyard has been tended to a degree even beyond what could have been said of Old Testament Israel. What excuse do we have if we're barren or unfruitful or bringing forth wild sour grapes instead of something somebody would actually want to use? How presumptuous, how arrogant can we be to say, we're the people of God, it doesn't matter if there's justice and righteousness among us or not? If that has been our thinking, We're in for a rude awakening. And it would be much better to be rudely awakened by the word than to be rudely awakened by the circumstances, to be rudely awakened by the judgment falling and us experiencing it. That's why God speaks to us through the prophet, so that we'll repent of our presumption, so that we'll repent of our complacency, so that we'll earnestly seek the Lord to make us fruitful boughs in his vineyard. Now there's a lot more that could still be said, but we are running very low on time. So as we've been challenging throughout, let me now offer a word or two of comfort here. First of all, do notice how our well-beloved cares for his vineyard. He doesn't stint. He doesn't spare. He isn't stingy about what he gives us. He gives us the conditions for flourishing and being fruitful. And one of those conditions is the prophet coming along and telling us all of these things. The Lord considers us, so to speak, as His garden, and He cultivates us. He works with us so that we'll be beautiful, so that we'll bring forth something worth accomplishing. If that doesn't happen in our case, that's our fault, not His fault. But there's no reason it shouldn't happen. The Lord is at work. The Lord does bring about the fruit of repentance, the fruit of faith, the fruit of renewed obedience, the fruit of love, joy, peace, gentleness, meekness, temperance, and all the rest. The Lord does work those things in us. We can see what would happen to us if left to ourselves, where the death and the grave would swallow us up for our sins and where we would richly deserve it. But then there's also something we can do that's the opposite of that. when people, because of their parties, their drunken parties, are not regarding the work of the Lord nor considering the operation of his hands. Well, what does that call on us to do? That calls on us to do the opposite. That calls upon us to take time, to set time aside for regarding, for meditating on what God has done, for understanding, paying attention to the operation of his hands. because of a lack of knowledge, we go into captivity. But there's no reason for us to lack knowledge when we have the Word of God, when we have the ministry of the church. There's no reason we have to bring forth wild grapes. We can bring forth grapes of a different kind if we will just pay attention to the means that God has put within our grasp. And we can take comfort because Sheol, the grave, enlarges itself, opens its mouth beyond measure. But there was somebody who got stuck in its throat. Sheol, the grave, could not swallow our Lord Jesus Christ. Tried, but he came out again. He was victorious. He was triumphant. And that's our real hope. I'm not saying to you, if you squeeze really hard, you can get a good grape to grow out of yourself. You don't have the resources for that. But God has tended us, God has cared for us, God has given us means, and most of all, God has given us Christ, and so we're not trying to get grapes to grow from dead wood. We're turning to Christ so that he will be fruitful in us, so that the proof of his life and power in us will emerge in those fruits. As he said, I'm the vine, you're the branches. If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit. Now that's not a command, that's a promise. Abide and be fruitful with the kind of fruit that is pleasing to God. And so, from our own barrenness, from our own desperation, from the accusations of our own conscience, where do we turn? We turn to Christ and we hold him to the beautiful promise he makes in the book of Hosea, from me is your fruit found. Who makes us fruitful? It's the Lord Jesus. It's called the fruit of the Spirit because it's something the Spirit of Christ works in us. Oh brethren, don't be complacent. but don't be discouraged either. Look to Christ to make you fruitful in every good word and work. Amen.