Isaiah 5

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0:00 So, if you got a copy, you know, on your phone or in your hand, Isaiah 5, and as I read this first section, what's really cool is that the first few verses that we'll look at is actually written, it's written like a poem, it's written kind of like half like a poem and half like a song. And so, this is Isaiah speaking in the first person in the beginning. He says, I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard.

0:32 My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a wine press as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. The voice switches here to actually become more like God speaking. And it says, now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judged between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?

1:03 When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge and it will be destroyed. I will break down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither prune or cultivated. Briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it. And then he explains the whole parable right here. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw blood shed.

1:36 He looked for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. So there are a few things in this. As Isaiah is saying this, right? And for our context, we will come back to this in a minute, but for our context, in the Old Testament, God's people embodied in the nation of Israel. And we will see how that plays out for us later. But that's who Isaiah is speaking to and then that's who God is speaking to, where this vineyard that the Lord has built.

2:09 The vineyard is actually the venue of the nation of Israel. So next week, and the weeks after, as Ben walks through the values that they look at this, the values that they look at for us as the people of God were very much the same as the values that God said the nation of Israel was meant to embody. And so he gives it this image of a vineyard that he has cultivated the vineyard on a fertile hillside. And so there's a few things in this that I think are really cool and really important.

2:40 So if you look at the first part, I just said, my loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. I dug it up and cleared it of stones, planted it with the choicest vines. What God's saying is a couple things. Like I built this vineyard, I created this body of people, and I actually placed it and built it and cultivated it and created it in a way that was fertile. I created it in a way that it was going to bear fruit. I dug up all the crap, I got rid of all the stones, I did the things that I'd like to think I did for my sweet potato garden, but probably didn't.

3:11 That he actually created and cultivated the land around it so that it was made to flourish. Not only did he choose a fertile spot on a hillside, he just kind of chose the choicest place, the most beautiful place, the most place that it was likely to thrive. But then he actually dug out all the rocks and all the stuff and everything that would kind of go against it and mess it up. And then in that, he actually planted what they call the choicest vines. So everything he's doing is like the best of the best of the best.

3:43 Right? And then he built a watchtower in it, which actually would have been typical kind of for vineyards at that time. Right? The watchtower does a couple things. One, it helps me actually see what's growing and what's not, helps me see, like if some sets on fire and something's not. It also helps me actually see if it's in danger. So God says, hey, I created this nation of Israel as this vineyard and I've cultivated it with all these beautiful things and all these things that are set up for it to grow and for it to thrive.

4:14 And I'm also, I also built a watchtower in the middle so that I could protect you. I built a watchtower in the middle so that I can see what could harm you, what could attack you, and so I can see how you can thrive. So watchtower in it and he cut out a wine press as well. The wine press, meaning that there's a couple, obviously that's where I'm going to take the grapes, the good grapes that are going to be grown and we're going to be able to press them and we're going to be able to actually create wine that signifies a couple

4:47 of things. One, it signifies that it's actually being really good and fruitful because you're not going to make wine out of bad grapes. You're going to make wine out of good grapes. And wine from the wine press is not only going to be drank that day, it's going to be stored. So not only is God saying, hey, I do all these things to make this good, I'm going to do all these things to make this good and I'm going to protect it to keep it good. And it's actually not just going to bear fruit for today, it's going to bear fruit that you could actually store up for a long time.

5:20 And then God looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. So like I said, I can kind of go down a rabbit hole probably because I spent too many years in seminary and they trained my brain that way. But as I went down the rabbit hole of that, this idea of it yielding only bad fruit, that the actual, the Hebrew word for that actually says that it was like stinking fruit. So it doesn't say that it yielded like grapes that didn't taste good. It basically says that it yielded fruit that actually was rotten and smelled terrible.

5:56 So this place that everything was set up for it to actually yield really good, not only good fruit because of my language doesn't do it justice, but everything that God did to cultivate this vineyard was set up for it to be the best of the best. And not only did it not yield like good fruit, it didn't yield okay fruit, it didn't yield like hey, wait, those grapes are good to eat, but they don't make good wine, it yielded fruit that was rotten. Make it inside out.

6:28 Makes sense. Maybe you are like me, where you are like, thanks for this passage Ben, you built a mission off this, this sounds wonderful. And like we read the next chapter, you know the next chapter actually, I mean the next section of the chapter reads like a legal argument where God is going hey, okay Israel, in this parable, in this story because you imagine the prophet kind of writing this or speaking this to people and Israel probably is hearing this and not realizing that he

6:58 is talking about them yet, right? I mean if Israel realized that Isaiah was speaking about them, he probably wouldn't have explained it specifically in the following verses, but God kind of gives a legal argument, it's like well what else could I have done? What more possibly could I have done for the vineyard than I did for it to bear good fruit? So you know what, I'm going to let the hedge come down and I'm going to let it be destroyed,

7:30 I'm going to let the walls break down and I'm going to let the briars and the thorns take it over. Kind of ultimately implying they're already there. The fruit is already rotten, the fruit is already stinks. What was meant to be a garden and obviously like if we spent any time kind of around the whole scripture, like the theme of the garden literally starts at the beginning and goes all the way through the end. And Isaiah we get this image that somehow in what was meant to be a life-giving garden,

8:04 it is now much more like the dump. It is much more like a place of kind of stinking death. The crux of this little section, you know, and to me it's kind of like the point that it hinges on, right? And it makes me think that like one of the things I've learned from rock climbing with

8:35 some of these kids in here, you know, if you didn't know there's a bunch of rock climbing kids in our church, they're very good. And I learned when I started rock climbing with them, I learned what a crux was on a rock climbing route. And the crux was actually like the hardest point. It would be the hardest point on the route, but it was also two other things in my mind as they kind of explained it to me because they would say that's the crux. And I'm like, I don't know what that means at all. That just looks like a really tall wall. And they would say, well the crux, it's kind of like the hardest move, but it's kind of

9:05 two other things. It's kind of like the defining point. And it's kind of the point that the whole route hinges on. So the crux is right here in verse seven. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel. The men of Judah are the garden of his delight. The people of Israel, in this, the people of Israel were literally the garden that God created and He cultivated.

9:39 And He didn't just create them and cultivate them and then be like, hey, I created you, I cultivated you. And what it doesn't say is it doesn't say, hey, God created a vineyard and then said as told as people they could have it. He actually says that the vineyard and the garden are actually the people that God created them and He didn't say, hey, I created you and then sent you just to go do stuff. He said, actually created you and also cultivated you in such a way that set you up for all

10:09 of these beautiful, good things. And in that, not only did I set you up for all of those beautiful, good things, I actually provided like continual sustenance and protection for those good things. And I also believed that those good things were going to bear fruit and wine and good things going on into the future. He says, the men of Judah are the garden of his delight and he looked for justice but

10:43 saw bloodshed for righteousness but heard cries of distress. And the parable obviously, and Jesus gives us another virgin as parable, Matthew 21 and the parable of the tenants and then we're going to look at John in a second where it shows up some similarity shows up there too. But if we're saying that the Israel and we know that, well, we'll get there a second,

11:17 that if Israel was the actual garden in the vineyard that was meant to produce good fruit and all they got was stinking rotten fruit, it does beg the question of what the heck is the good fruit? And this is the good fruit. The good fruit is what God came and God looked for. He looked for justice and he looked for righteousness but he saw bloodshed. He looked for righteousness and heard cries of distress.

11:49 The fruit that the garden was created, cultivated, protected, sustained, all of it was meant to do was actually meant to create more righteousness and justice. Come back down the rabbit hole for a second. So what's really cool about that sentence, he says, and he looked for justice but saw bloodshed for righteousness but heard cries of distress, is that that's actually like a poem that rhymes. The word for justice and the word for bloodshed look alike and sound alike.

12:23 That the word for righteousness and the cries of distress, the words look alike and they sound alike. What does that mean for us? It means that somehow when Israel was set up beautifully and wonderfully to be a people of God that created and lived out justice and righteousness, that they actually ended

12:53 up with something that might have looked alike and it might have sounded alike but was the exact opposite. We're not going to go super into it but the rest of the chapter, if you want to go into it later, the author goes down and he goes through, I think it's six different woes. Which when you read the Old Testament anytime you're like woe to you, you're like, oh man,

13:24 that's going to be heavy and it is heavy. But if you want to know what the example of cries of distress and bloodshed, if you want to know the examples because what happens as God is speaking through Isaiah to the people of Israel, is he says, I look for justice but saw bloodshed, I look for righteousness but heard cries of distress. And if you don't believe me, here's what I found. As for example, in the next one he says woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.

13:56 What does that sound like? Sounds a lot like greed, right? Sounds a lot like coveting actually. You can kind of go on, it seems to be the other ones. And verse 11 and 12, it goes down and talks about those who pursue drink and alcohol and neglect and disregard the ways of the Lord.

14:27 Verse 18 and 19 kind of talks about those who follow lies and corruption. Verse 20, which if you want to look at verse 20 real quick, says woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness. Bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Verse 21 woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. When I was thinking through those, y'all, it's interesting because it kind of left me

15:01 going okay, well then how do we understand what God means by righteousness and justice. And how do we understand what God means by righteousness and justice, especially as it pertains to what he's describing about this garden. And so when we see this stuff where God kind of elaborates and says hey, you actually became really greedy and you took your land and then you kept building and taking more land. And then you became kind of wise in your own eyes, which really kind of speaks to this

15:31 idea that you kind of really became kind of arrogant and believed that you knew better than the ways that I taught you, which sounds a lot like the original garden. And so much of that for me is kind of summed up in you called evil good and good evil. I looked for justice and I found bloodshed that this thing that I looked for to be good I actually ended up living out the opposite.

16:04 So if you want a different lens to think about it, what it is real have y'all. It's real had an incredible amount of blessing, incredible amount of blessing. If we want to get a little bit more current with it and maybe a little bit more thought provoking language we could say Israel had a ton of privilege. We were had an amazing amount of blessing and privilege that they were given and being

16:35 the people of God and how they were created, what they were given and how that was cultivated, that they had an incredible amount of blessing. So if we think about that as it pertains to righteousness, it's just a couple of things to think through. Righteousness, you know, through the whole of scripture righteousness doesn't just speak to, it never ever speaks to just my right behavior. It always speaks to my right relationship with God. You know, some people would say right standing with God but I actually think it's relationship involves a few things. Relationship doesn't just involve my right standing in front of you.

17:06 My right relationship with God is truly kind of what righteousness refers to, which Israel kind of chosen and related to you as this vineyard, as this people of God. But then if we go through the New Testament, we know where Jesus comes through and gives us kind of the forerighteousness so that we know we have this righteousness, that we know we're in right relationship with God. But also the relationship with God doesn't stop there. But the whole point of the vineyard wasn't just that God created this space for Israel

17:37 or that He created Israel as a space. It was that Israel became this venue, that them being in right relationship with God became this venue to then do what righteousness typically does because if righteousness in our right relationship with God, and this is kind of the hope for all of us, I think, being the people of God. And me being in a right relationship with God, what do I long for? I long for the things that that brings to become more evident in my relationship with other people and in the ways that we live and move in God's world.

18:12 And so in Isaiah 5 and it's been all kind of walk out through some of the things over the next few weeks is that the outflow of righteousness is actually justice. That the outflow of us being God's people in right relationship with God is that then we long for that which has been given to us and that which we've experienced to get to work its way out in the world around us, even through us.

18:47 And so it flows out like these places of justice because if we get to be in right relationship with God, we get to long for all of us to be in right relationship with God and we get to think about what it looks like that we get to cultivate that kind of world. That was the whole point of Israel. It was the whole meaning of what Israel was meant to be brought into doing and creating in the world. If you're looking at Scripture, one of the most famous verses of all time that many

19:21 of us are probably familiar with is Micah 6.8. Micah 6.8 says, he has showed you a man what is good and what does the Lord require of you. I still, when I read that verse, I reread it this morning and it's funny because I still feel in myself sometimes like when I read the first part of that verse, what does the Lord require of you? There's still this little part in me that's like, okay, what's the answer? Please make it simple because sometimes it doesn't feel that simple. And I felt that again this morning.

19:52 I was like, what does the Lord require you? I'm like, okay, cool. Maybe it can be simple. This is to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. So Israel did. God created all this space in them and not like, not have vineyard for them. He created them. They were the vineyard that was meant to actually be the one that was created, cultivated, protected, sustained and out of them, the righteous and the justice was actually meant to begin to

20:27 create that in the rest of the world. And what they missed out on was they missed out on what it looked like to stay in that reality. I would suggest they began to live in a reality that functioned way more like none of that happened because they began to do things like hoard land and keep land from others.

20:59 They began to do things that began to distort evil for good and good for evil. They began to live as though God had not done it. And they continued to live as though God would not continue to do it for them. So they began to live as though God did not exist. They began to live as though the God who had created and sustained and protected was not going to keep doing that.

21:29 So they had to get theirs and protect theirs. And out of that, it became death. Right? And we can know, I mean, obviously living like we don't need God leads to some type of death. Living like we don't need God, living like we don't know God is kind of the essence of sin, right? Living leads to death, thankfully, thankfully because God is God, death never has the last word, right? And the cool thing that happened in the story of Scripture is that God said, okay, I'm going

22:01 to let the head should get burned down. I'm going to let the walls fall. But if you kind of go through the whole of Isaiah, you get this darkness at the end of chapter 5 is like dark and like you're like, that sounds terrible because it feels hopeless. But true to the nature of who God is, God never fully abandons and God comes back in chapters later and is like, hey, you know what? Actually where grace was really abundant, now it's going to be way more so.

22:33 And where Israel was kind of created to be this vineyard and they blew it, they actually could still have a place. But now with the hedge that's burned down, now everybody else gets to actually be a part of the vineyard as well. So if you got, if you want to be along, jump to John 15 for a minute for the last couple minutes here. It is a, I know it's like the old joke of like what's like the Sunday school answered

23:16 every question is like Jesus. And in my like good, in my good like solid southern Baptist hellfire damnation roots, that was true. Like the answer to every question was Jesus, the subject of every sermon was Revelation 13. But the cool thing that happens and really kind of, I mean it was cool to read it again this week in light of Isaiah 5.

23:49 Because where God says, hey, I created this, I cultivated this so that you Israel get to be a people that embody who I am on the world, in the world. Not just, not just so people see it, but you actually, the creating and the cultivating that I do in you, you actually get to do. You actually get to be a part of it. You actually get to be like me in some ways in the creating and the cultivating and bringing of these things.

24:22 You blew it this time, but we're actually going to go bigger and we're going to go better and we're going to go grander and we're going to do it in a way that actually you get to be tied into who I am. And Jesus picks that back up in John 15 as Jesus speaking, he says, I am the true vine, my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. Already clean because the word I've spoken to you remain in me and I will remain in

24:53 you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. And it's given down, first, now I says, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you, remain in my love. If you have made my commands, you remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my father's commands and remain in his love. And then really, because I like the word crux, the crux is verse 16, you did not choose

25:23 me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. Then the father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command, love each other. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will last. God did what God does. And the cool thing, there's a couple cool things in there for me.

25:54 And some of you all have heard me say, like the Ben and I's priest that discipled us through college, he always had this phrase that was very pivotal for me as a college student, because I was always freaking out about one thing or another. And he would always be like, it's okay, man, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And I'm like, Ron, how is it okay? I don't know if this is going to be okay. He said, it's okay. I mean, it's not really about you, it's more about God. And I was like, it doesn't even make any sense to me, man, but somehow when you say it,

26:24 it feels comforting. So it kept saying it to me for years. It kept saying it to me for years. And the part of me was like, okay, I don't fully get it, but then I think I've started to kind of understand a little bit of what he meant. And he seemed really old to me back then, but I think he was probably like 32. But there was a space where it shows up in John 15, is that God's like, hey, okay, it's okay, it's not fully up to you. Number one, it's not fully up to you.

26:57 Because you know what, I'm going to do it anyway. Like Jesus is going to be the vine, whatever you and I choose to do. Because God's God, whether I, whatever the heck I decide, God's still God and Jesus is still Jesus and Jesus is still about bringing righteousness and justice into the world. And there's something really beautiful in that it is not dependent on us to make it all happen. It's beautiful because God didn't give us the world and then be like, hey, don't screw

27:29 it up. Good luck. And then bail. I was like, no, man, I'm going to have grace embedded in so many different avenues more than you can ever even see. But if you get to walk with me in it, you're going to see it in ways that you won't see otherwise. And Israel fell into living as though God was not going to be faithful, that God was not faithful. They fell into forgetting that God created, they fell into forgetting that God cultivated,

28:00 they fell into forgetting that God had built a watchtower and would protect and that God was sustained. And that was where the fruit went rotten. But Jesus invites us into you, it's gone, man, we get to trust that Jesus is the vine and we get to graft into that and be a part of that. That can be incredibly freeing for us, y'all. Because we don't have to fully understand it. We don't have to fully make it all happen. But when we get to do that, we get to be a part of cultivating a more heavenly world,

28:34 where the world begins to reflect more and more the kingdom of God. And that's like some of the most beautiful things, I think, and incredibly hard, but incredibly beautiful that we get invited to and to be in God's people. Let's pray. Hi, Lord, thank you. Thank you that you invite us to be with you. Thank you that you provide us ways and strength and energy and encouragement and peace and

29:14 courage to walk through those things with you. That we would see ways that we get to be a part of the cultivating, of the righteous system justice in our own hearts and where that gets to flow over into your world. Amen.