The Lord’s Vineyard

The Lord’s Vineyard

Isaiah 5:1-30

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” ~ A.W. Tozer

Main Idea: We rightly worship the exalted Lord by receiving his grace with the fruit of repentance & faith

I. The Lord’s Vineyard (5:1-7)

The Lord communicates to Israel through a parable about an owner & a vineyard. The owner does all of the work required to plant this vineyard and yield a crop, investing years of attention, care, and hard work (5:1-2). However, when it was time to yield grapes, he only found “wild grapes” (lit. “stink-fruit”). 

Since the owner could not have done anything more to yield a successful harvest (5:4), the vineyard must be destroyed; all of its sources of protection & nutrients will be cut off, briers & thorns (cf. Gen. 3:18) will take over, and he curses the clouds so that it would not rain. 

The chilling conclusion to the parable (5:7) reveals that the owner is the Lord & the vineyard is Israel & Judah, his chosen people. He expected a flourishing vineyard marked by “justice” & “righteousness” but instead only found “bloodshed” and “outcry” (screams from the oppressed). 

“What can now be done for the people of God when a total work of grace has been lavished on them and yet they remain as if grace had never touched them?” ~ Alec Motyer

Like Israel, we must carefully consider if we have rightly received God’s grace, leading to the fruit of a transformed life (Mt. 7:16-20), or if we have received the grace of God in vain (2 Cor. 6:1)

Romans 2:4: “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

II. The Lord’s Judgment (5:8-14, 18-30)

Rather than being receptive to God’s grace & ownership, the people of Israel were resistant in at least 6 ways: 

  • Woe #1 (5:8-10): Aggressive Greed

​​“The righteous (just) are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.” ~ Bruce Waltke

  • Woe #2 (5:11-12): Sinful Excess & Self-Indulgence

  • Woe #3 (5:18-19): Self-Deception & Mockery

  • Woe #4 (5:20): Rationalizing Sin

  • Woe #5 (5:21): Blind Arrogance

  • Woe #6 (5:22-23): Corruption & Injustice

The bookends of woes related to injustice are the very reason the Lord has rejected their worship (cf. 1:11-17). How we treat others is a significant indicator of the health of our relationship with God. The affluence & seeming flourishing of Judah numbed & blinded them to the Lord. 

Because of Israel’s resistance to God’s grace & their sin against both his love & his law, there are consequences coming: 

  1. Exile (5:13-14)

  2. Destruction (5:24-25)

  3. Military Defeat (5:26-30)

III. The Lord’s Exaltation (5:15-17)

All those who are proud & “haughty” (lit. ‘high’) will be brought low, while the Lord of hosts reigns “exalted” (lit. ‘high’). This is an expression of God’s holiness, seen through justice & righteousness. God, in his justice, will bring to nothing the proud & the haughty, so that he might be rightly worshipped & esteemed.

John the Baptist, in the Spirit of the message of Isaiah (Lk. 3:3-6), urges the crowds who have received God’s grace in vain to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Lk. 3:7-8). We do this by abiding in the “true vine” (John 15:1) which causes us to bear fruit to the glory of God. 

Isaiah often speaks of a remnant (“lambs”) that rightly acknowledges God for who he is & humble themselves before him. The invitation before us is to acknowledge God as the ‘owner’ & to receive his grace with the fruit of repentance & faith.

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