“The Unholy Fall”
[Isaiah 5:1-7]
April 29, 2018, Second Reformed
Church
Let’s think for a moment: let’s consider our lives – is there any way
in which we can say that God has not held up His end of the bargain? Has God neglected to do all that He is
obligated to do for you or me? Can we
say that God really blew it about this or that?
Our text begins with Isaiah singing
a song to God:
“Let me sing for my beloved my love song
concerning his vineyard:”
We see, first, God chose and blessed
Israel with His grace.
“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 he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.”
Isaiah’s Beloved, the Lord God of Israel,
had a vineyard. And this vineyard was
planted on a rich and exceedingly fertile hill.
He found this hill and He dug it up and He removed all the stones from
the soil – Israel is a very rocky land, so this would have been long and
intense work. Then He planted the best
vines He could find in this stone-free, rich and exceedingly fertile soil.
God built a watchtower out of the stones
that He had removed from the soil, so a watchman could guard over the vineyard
day and night and keep anyone from robbing or destroying the vineyard and its
crop. With this tower, we will soon
hear, God also built a stone hedge around the vineyard and planted thorny
plants along side of it to also help decrease predators and thieves.
God also hewed a wine vat out of a single immerse
rock, so that when the vines bore their fruit, the fruit could be used to make
the most luscious of wines.
God waited, expecting the vines to produce
a great crop, based on the fact that grape vines in Israel tended to produce
large and luscious grapes, and given that God had provided the best, most fertile,
stone-free soil, as well as the best protection for the vineyard.
But, instead, the vines produced wild grapes
– small, woody, bitter grapes.
The song is ended.
Jeremiah writes, “Yet I planted you a
choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and
become a wild vine?” (Jeremiah 2:21, ESV).
God spoke to Israel in the days of Moses,
saying, “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has
chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples
who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number
than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you
were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is
keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you
out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the
hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God,
the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him
and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face
those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates
him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the
commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today” (Deuteronomy
7:6-11, ESV).
God chose Israel to be His and blessed her
with His grace.
The point of the song is to bring shame
and self-loathing and repentance among the people of Judah for their refusal to
be faithful and obey.
What about us? What about the questions we began with? Does this song have anything to do with
us? We are not ancient theocratic
Israel. And yet…
Peter writes of all who believe in Jesus
savingly, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him
who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a
people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now
you have received mercy.” (I Peter 2:9-10, ESV).
And Paul writes, “Husbands, love your
wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might
sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so
that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or
wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians
5:25-27, ESV).
The ancient nation of Israel was chosen
and blessed with God’s grace, but the Church has been chosen and blessed with
God’s grace and eternally saved by the work of the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ!
Second, we see, God’s grace is despised.
“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and
men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for
my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why
did it yield wild grapes?
God now speaks and calls on the men of
Judah and all those of the capital city of Jerusalem to pass judgement on God
and themselves.
God chose precious vines. God prepared rich and exceedingly fertile
soil for the vines and planted them in it.
God set up a hedge and a watchman to protect the vineyard. God prepared the means to use the fruit of
the vineyard. But the vineyard did not
produce giant, luscious grapes, it produced small, woody, sour grapes.
Did God fail the vines? Did God not do all that He was obliged to do
to cause the vines to bear well? Or did
the vines reject – despise – the gifts of God?
Ancient Israel was chosen by God to be His
people – the people He worked salvation through for the whole world. They were given a land filled with milk and
honey. They were given the prophets and
the Law and the incarnation of God according to the flesh.
As Paul writes, “They are Israelites, and
to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law,
the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their
race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed
forever. Amen” (Romans 9:4-5, ESV).
And God asks Judah, “What didn’t I do that
I should have done? How did I neglect
you? After choosing you and loving you
and giving you everything you needed to bear good fruit, what did I do wrong
that you bore wild grapes? Is there a
way that you can blame Me for your rejecting My grace?”
The devil, the world, and the flesh
tempt us to sin – and we give in to sin!
Rather than bearing the good fruit of rebuking the temptation and
turning away from it – rather than being faithful and obedient to all that God
has given us – rather than being thankful for God’s choice of us, His gift of
His only begotten Son – Who died the most horrific death ever, after living a
sinless and holy life – for our sake – what did God forget to give us? What has God withheld? How has God failed us?
What should Judah’s judgment be?
What is our judgment?
Finally, God judges Judah, and the
unholy fall.
“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 briers 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; and he
looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an
outcry!”
God never owes Judah – or any of us
– anything – and, yet, God gave Judah blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace
– God’s greatest Gift, indeed! And Judah
said, “Meh. Not enough. We’ll do it our way.”
So God removes the hedge from the
vineyard – He owns them both and can do as He wishes with them. And He allows the animals to eat the vines
and their wild fruit. He breaks down the
wall, so the larger animals can walk the land and trample it down, leaving
hard, unusable soil. He makes it a
wasteland, sending briers and thorns to grow up.
Does this remind us of anything?
God cursed our first father saying,
“And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and
have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed
is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your
life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the
plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you
return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to
dust you shall return’” (Genesis 3:17-19, ESV).
Ezekiel similarly records God
comparing Judah to wood used for building, saying, “Son of man, how does the
wood of the vine surpass any wood, the vine branch that is among the trees of
the forest? Is wood taken from it to make anything? Do people take a peg from
it to hang any vessel on it? Behold, it is given to the fire for fuel. When the
fire has consumed both ends of it, and the middle of it is charred, is it
useful for anything? Behold, when it was whole, it was used for nothing. How
much less, when the fire has consumed it and it is charred, can it ever be used
for anything! Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Like the wood of the vine among
the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so have I
given up the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
And I will set my face against them. Though they escape from the fire,
the fire shall yet consume them, and you will know that I am the LORD, when I
set my face against them. And I will make the land desolate, because they have
acted faithlessly, declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 15:2-8, ESV).
The people of Judah chose their sin
over the grace of God, and God judged them and promised to destroy them – to
allow Babylon to come and slaughter them and take them into captivity – which
they did about 200 years later.
And we must be careful not to think
or say, “Stupid Judah! How could you
turn away from such gifts from God?” As
Paul warns all those who have been grafted into Israel – those of us who have
believed savingly in Jesus who are not of biological Israel:
“But if some of the branches were broken
off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and
now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward
the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the
root that supports you. Then you will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I
might be grafted in.’ That is true. They were broken off because of their
unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.
For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note
then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have
fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise
you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their
unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For
if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary
to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural
branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree” (Romans 11:17-24, ESV).
And let us not forget what we saw last
week: “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” (Isaiah 4:2, ESV).
In God’s punishment of Judah, He did not
obliterate them, but disciplined them so they would repent of their sin and
turn back to Him. God did not abandon Israel
– God brought back a remnant out of captivity, and the Savior was born out of
that line – according to the flesh, and in these days, God is bringing more and
more people of biological Israel to faith in the promised Messiah, Jesus of
Nazareth.
We have been blessed with the gift of the
Gospel – as God promised Abraham – all the nations will be blessed through his
Seed – still God is faithful to Israel – both to the biological believers – and
to the spiritual believers – the whole of Israel.
Beloved, God has lavished us with
His grace – with all the various gifts and blessings of His hand, and He has
given His Son to each one who will ever believe.
Let us learn from the history of
Judah what can happen to a people who despise the grace of God and follow after
sin. And let us not be like them –
rather, let us recognize what God has done for us – the gifts and blessings He
has given us, and let us be truly thankful, both with our mouths and in
following after God in faith and obedience.
Let us be a people who strive to be holy, as we have been called to be
holy. Let us be known as a people who
are thankful for God’s unmerited favor and blessing.
And may this prayer of Paul’s, be
our prayer this morning:
Let us pray:
“For this reason I bow my knees before the
Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according
to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power
through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to
comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and
depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be
filled with all the fullness of God.
“Now to him who is able to do far
more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work
within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all
generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:14-21, ESV).
