How Will You Treat God’s Grace?

Isaiah 5:1-30

Grace, I love grace. I love that our church is called Grace Bible Fellowship. I love that we talk in short hand and call this church “grace.” I want us to be characterized by grace. God is characterized by grace. Think of how God described himself to Moses after passing by him in the cleft of the rock. “Gracious and compassionate.”

If someone asks me how I would describe God, I say he is gracious and compassionate. He’s been so gracious to us, hasn’t he? Perhaps that’s something to consider today “How has God shown his grace to you today?”

Think of all the grace we have received. Not just common graces. We have cars, sunshine, books, coffee, family… on and on. Oh but believers we’ve received grace beyond measure in Christ, haven’t we? God has determined to do good toward us, sinners. That’s grace.

Our text this morning is Isaiah’s fifth chapter, in it he sings a song. Its a sad song. He pictures God’s people like a vineyard and God as the farmer. And he asks a question essentially, “Did I not give you everything?” The gracious and compassionate God has shown us an incredible amount of grace, hasn’t he?

The question the text really places before us is this, “How will you treat God’s grace?” Will you take it and grow and change and worship, or will you trample and scorn.

So Isaiah sings this song. I don’t know if it would be a number one hit, but it certainly gets the point across. Isaiah uses a lot of different tactics to teach these people in this book. This particular one is akin to Nathan and David after his sin with Bathsheba. Remember Nathan told him a story and asked him what should happen. David was happy to answer when he didn’t know he was in the story!

Isaiah does the same thing. This farmer planted a vineyard. He was the best farmer. He chose a hill with the perfect amount of sunlight. He carefully went through the whole field and took out all of the rocks. Difficult work. He built a watch tower. He dug a large wine vat in preparation for the grapes that would grow. If you’re a seed and you have a choice of where to be planted and what farmer to have, this is prime.

The farmer waits for his beloved field to yield grapes, and what do you know, it yields wild grapes. The Hebrew may even be better as rancid grapes. So he asks his people, what else should I have done? Did I miss something? And they have no answer.

What’s a farmer to do? Rip it all up and burn it. He says he will remove the hedges around it, allow the wild animals to devour it and trample it. He’s talking about his people. They should be full of justice, but instead bloodshed, righteousness but instead an outcry.

Believer, isn’t it true that God has greatly blessed us? Forget the spiritual aspect of things for a second, even socially, nationally, economically, we are a greatly blessed people.

But spiritually as well. God has been gracious to you, he’s made you alive. I have bible software on my computer that contains 4000 books. You have a bible in your hand, access to so many good resources. More than that he’s planted you in a church that preaches the word. A fellowship of saints who love each other. Young people to pour your lives into, older people to learn wisdom from. What will he find when he comes? People growing in the grace of God? Or people trampling the grace of God?

Well the rest of this chapter is taken up with these 6 woes and their consequences. Picture Isaiah grabbing and holding up a cluster of rancid grapes and telling us about it.

8-10 a covetous people

11-12 a debauching people

18-19 an self-deceived people

20 a truth perverting people

21 a people wise in their own eyes

22-23 a justice perverting people

These are six ways God’s people were resisting his grace. The word Woe means beware coming judgment. But the Hebrew word is essentially an exhale. This is not heartless judgment, this is a farmer with a painful sigh responding to his field.

We may not fully identify with all of these categories, but I think if we look inside a little, we will see at least hints of them in our hearts, sins which lead us to fall away from the living God. Heed these as warnings of the dangers of turning our faces away from the grace of God in Christ.

Covetous

God had designed the apportioning of the land in such a way that the poor would always have a place to live. The rich had decided to buy up all the land though, had filled it up so much that houses were touching each other. Only the rich could live there.

Well these giant houses would be empty. We can easily lose perspective of things like money can’t we? Even the finest gold won’t last in the fires of judgment. God calls us to be a generous people.

Debauching

Isaiah often uses the image of drunkenness to describe this people. These people are so dead set on pursuing their own pleasures that they’re happy to wake up early to go drink and to go to a concert. See they fill themselves with drink but they will be thirsty in the judgment.

Paul tells us that there are two type of people, those who set their minds on the flesh and those who set their minds on the spirit. Those interested in the pursuit of their own pleasures and those interesting in the pursuit of God. The irony of this is that those set on their own pleasures end up destitute and those set on God end up satisfied.

Sometimes Isaiah cannot help himself but reach a conclusion before he’s finished making his point. He inserts right in the middle here these therefores.

There is an intense irony to sin, isn’t there? In sin we think we pursue life but we’re actually pursuing death. In sin we think we are pursuing our own exaltation and bringing God low, but in the end we are the ones humbled as he is exalted. Sin always gets it backwards and leads us to destruction.

Self-deception

I always wondered if this is where Dickens got his picture for Jacob Marley. The dead friend of Scrooge who visits him on Christmas Eve, chained with the sins of his life, dragging them along.

That’s the picture here. The picture is ridiculous. You can see the person struggling to pull his sins along as if he’s carrying precious cargo… and then has the audacity to wonder why they don’t see God working.

Perhaps this is some of you. You won’t deal with those sins that seek to enslave you, you won’t repent of them, you won’t cast them off. You preciously carry the weights along like children, and then you wonder why you struggle to see God working in your life. Your eyes are focused on the love of those precious cords. And instead of running to God, we blame God for the difficulty of the weight we bear.

Truth Perverting

Even a few years ago these verses would have seemed strange. But they aren’t anymore are they? The world has been calling evil good for a long time now. But we’ve done so much listening to the world that some of their language has started to sound correct.

Wise in our own eyes

Justice perverting

These two concepts that Isaiah puts together in 22-23 seem strange together and yet the go together perfectly. Greed in the elite of society results in a breakdown of justice.

Now he gives us another therefore. These people will be destroyed. But why? We can’t miss this because we can easily end up in the same place people have ended up so many times throughout history. All of this stemmed from a particular issue. They rejected the law of the Lord of Hosts. They despised the word of the Holy one of Israel.

Isn’t this at the heart of every sin? Maybe this is a difficult thing to consider, but sin is a despising of God and his word. The farmer who loved his vineyard is despised by his vineyard.

Sin is vicious, and it will destroy you. Believer if you find yourself this morning dancing with any of these six woes understand that they stem from a heart that has taken eyes off of the savior. Those cords you pull aren’t your master. Your master paid for them. You can turn from them.

This people was headed toward destruction because of the way they had responded to God’s grace. Not only was it manifested in their private lives, but their nation was being corrupted. The anger of the Lord kindled against them, ready to judge.

26-30 he describes the coming army, the assyrians to whom God was whistling with a dog call. They would come quickly and do their work.

If you are not a believer in the room today you need to understand that the day of judgment is approaching, and that God is going to judge the living and the dead.

But this very same God was lifted up in judgment on our behalf. He took the judgments of this book on himself. Turn from your sin and trust him.

Jesus uses the language of vine and vineyard in the new testament. He doesn’t leave us to be the perfect vineyard, instead in John 15 he tells us that he is the true vine. Jesus came to be everything we failed to be. And he tells us that if we are in him, connected to the true vine that we will bear much fruit.