Isaiah 5:1-7 · Isaiah 1:16-17 · Isaiah 1:21-23 · John 15 — Isaiah
Grace Forsaken
God's grace transforms us through Jesus, the true vine. This sermon challenges listeners to recognize how forsaking grace—through pursuit of wealth, pleasure, self-confidence, and rationalized sin—produces worthless spiritual fruit, and calls them to bear fruit worthy of repentance.
Introduction
Can you point to some events and transitions in life where afterwards you were not the same person? You don’t have to live life very long to be able to reflect on changes. As a teenager, you can look back and see that you are not the same person you were in elementary school. You may not be able to pinpoint an event, but you recognize some things have changed. Graduations. Marriage. Jobs. Birth of children and grandchildren. Retirement. All are signposts for changes developmentally or into a new season of life.
What about after your baptism? Have there been signposts and markers of spiritual growth in your life? Have there been signposts and markers that forced you to reevaluate your walk of faith? Times when you realized my faith is not as strong as I thought it was? Maybe caught in a sin. Or loss of a job, relationship, or health. Or division between brothers and sisters in a congregation and you struggled to understand how to respond appropriately in that mess. So here is the point of today’s lesson — Grace transforms. That seems obvious, but there are times that we engage life and forget that truth. Grace transforms. Our study of Isaiah 5 reveals that truth and will challenge us to pay attention to the signposts and markers that help us acknowledge when that truth is not followed.
The Vineyard
God amazingly uses all kinds of images to reveal his love and grace. In this case, it is Isaiah in verse 1 who uses an image to describe God’s relationship with Judah. Isaiah sings a song about God and his grace. God is the one who decides to plant and cultivate a vineyard. God roots out a previous vineyard and prepares the ground for a new vineyard. He gets all the stones out of it. With those stones two things would have been done. First, he would have built a wall (verse 5) and then second built a watchtower (v. 2). Both of these would have provided protection against wild animals or others who wanted to come and steal the choice fruit. He plants only the choicest of vines. The winepress would be both the place where the grapes were pressed for their juice and the place where the juices would be preserved.
The image is that God has done everything he could to provide Judah with the best opportunity to grow good grapes. The land was the best. The protection was ideal. Only the best had been given to Judah. God provided; however, Judah’s fruit was “bad.” The word for “bad” is “stinkberries.” Stinky berries. Sour. Unsweet. Not smelling bad, but worthless fruit. Stinky grapes. Not sweet. Their juice is not fit to drink. According to verse 7, what Judah produced from that vineyard was injustice and unrighteousness. Stinky grapes. What had Judah done with God’s grace? God in verse 4 asks the haunting question “what more could I have done?” The soil was right. Protection was there. The best of vines were planted. Everything had been provided for good spiritual growth. What happened?
Before we get into answering that question, surely we see the parallel in our own spiritual and faith journey? God’s grace transforms us. Think about what God has already done for us. He prepared the soil. God in his grace gave us opportunity after opportunity for his word to be sown into our hearts. God provided protection. He has surrounded us with a hedge of care and a fortress to defend. He planted the best vines. Jesus came. Showed us how to live. Showed us the heart of God. Died as the one for all lamb; sacrificing so that we would no longer need to continue a practice that only reminds us of the sin continually. God has promised to never leave us or forsake us. He has promised to always be at work in our lives. He has promised to mold us into the image of Jesus. He has promised to give us what we really desire — contentment and satisfaction and joy and peace and love and patience because we belong to him. Do you see God’s grace? All of that is from God. We did not buy any of it. We did not request any of it. We did not deserve any of it. All of this because God’s heart is on full display. The depth of his love and mercy go beyond anything we could ever imagine. So what did we do with God’s grace?
Grace Forsaken
What did Judah do with God’s grace? There are six “woe” statements that reveal what Judah did with God’s grace. These six perversions are repeated throughout the writing. We will return to them periodically as we go through this study. Pay attention. These reveal forsaking God’s grace and by forsaking God’s grace, Judah produced stinky fruit.
Vss. 8-10 — running after wealth and the implication was that they ignored the poor. This is specifically mentioned back in 1:16-17 and 1:21-23. God’s grace did not transform the heart of Judah. The seeking of wealth was to insulate against outsiders and those who might steal. Gaining more and more didn’t transform their hearts. It made their hearts hard so that they ignored those who could benefit best from their wealth. Wealth became the means to gain something for self rather than to share with those who were without.
Vss. 11-18 — they pursued entertainment and pleasure so that they no longer thought about God. Instead of being transformed by God’s grace so that every good thing was attributed to him and every enjoyable thing resulted in praise to him, they pursued pleasure because they could and they reveled in it so that they ended up separated from God. In many ways, their pursuit left them devoid of God’s influence and while they thought they were having a good time, God in his infinite justice (v. 16 & 17) was planning to give someone else a chance to enjoy such things and praise him for it so that they could see his holiness. Grace transforms so that every good thing is surrendered to God for his glory and praise. Your house becomes God’s house. Your entertainment is chosen to honor God. Eat good food with thanksgiving and gratitude.
Vss. 18-19 — assume God has failed. People have pursued wealth and pleasure so much that any little discomfort is presumed to be God’s failing. These draw sin through self-deception. God is required to do something for me. If indeed he is Holy (v. 19) then let him reveal himself in ways that please me. When we have been transformed by grace, we understand that the discomfort of life is not God’s failure but our opportunity to reveal our trust in God.
Vs. 20 — they rationalized sin. Everyone else is doing it so it must be okay for me to do. We will pursue what is right even if it costs us financially, relationally, or positionally. Never easy but grace transforms. We see the sin and we do not diminish the sin. We understand that because something is common doesn’t make it right.
V. 21 — confident in self. There is a lack of understanding of sin and its place in life. There is a displacement of what God thinks with confidence in what I think. Grace transforms. We understand our lostness and sin and only because of God’s grace are we saved. Such a realization drives us toward him; to identify more fully with him; to seek his wisdom and not our own.
V. 22 — overindulgence leads to injustice. With no recognition of God’s grace all that is left is what you want. To right an injustice without God is to use power to dispose of the injustice only to set up new power that will bring about more injustice. Justice without God is only about power. Grace transforms.
Result. The result of all of this is Judah’s punishment. Do you think it will be any different for us? If Grace transforms then let us live lives that result in sweet fruit. Let us live lives that aren’t about pursuing wealth or pleasure. Let us live lives that aren’t about lying to ourselves about what God is supposed to do but to live a life that trusts him. Let’s not rationalize sin or be confident in ourselves or use power to right a wrong only to inflict another wrong. Grace transforms. Here’s the very practical. People went about with their lives — still went to the temple, still offered sacrifices, still engaged in the holy days, and never saw how stinky their lives were. All the while, when things are good, Assyria is waiting. Look at verse 26. God whistles for them and Assyria will come to destroy Judah.
The remedy is found in John 15. Jesus is the vine. Get connected to him and bear fruit that is in keeping with repentance and grace. Invitation.
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