Isaiah 5:1-7 *
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
Mention the word “garden” and the word “Bible” in the same sentence and one of two things probably comes to mind. On the sixth day of creation God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden. This garden was a perfect place, a place where Adam and Eve could live and work, a place they could call their own.
Or maybe you would think of another garden. After Jesus and his disciples celebrated the
Passover in
Isaiah lived at a time when Gods’ people were outwardly successful, but spiritually struggling. The Lord sent Isaiah to tell them that he was not happy. Actually, God was very, very angry. And his patience was about to run out.
It was Isaiah’s job to warn the people that God’s judgment was coming and coming soon. It was Isaiah’s job to call God’s people to repent of their sin and return to the Lord. It was the unenviable task of the prophet Isaiah to tell sinful people what they didn’t want to hear.
To get God’s message across, Isaiah told them a story about a man and his vineyard. He even put that story to music. And since Isaiah didn’t give his story a title, I have come up with one of my own…
GOD DESIRES GROWTH IN HIS GARDEN
II. Chapter 2 - He looks for a good crop
III.
Chapter 3 - He judges by the fruit
Even though Isaiah’s song was a sad one, you wouldn’t know
it based on the opening verse. It sounds
more like a love ballad than a funeral dirge. “I will sing for the one I
love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile
hillside” (1).
The “loved one” Isaiah refers to is none other than the Lord himself. Isaiah loved God because God loved him first. Isaiah loved God because of his faithfulness in the present and his promises for the future.
Looking ahead to the end of the song, Isaiah also reveals
what the vineyard represents: “The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the
house of
Judging by the way he take cares of it, it is obvious how this gardener feels about his garden. “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 winepress as well” (2).
In a single verse, Isaiah lists five different things the gardener does for his garden. #1 He digs up the soil to create ideal conditions for growth. #2 He clears away all the stones (which was no small task on that rocky Middle Eastern terrain) so that the plants can push their roots deep down into the ground. #3 He chooses only the best vines to produce the best grapes. #4 He builds a watchtower to guard against men and animals who might threaten to destroy the fields. #5 And because of all the other things he has done for his vineyard, he carves out a winepress in anticipation of a bountiful harvest.
If you have ever worked in a garden, you know that it takes a lot of time and energy: the planting, the watering, weeding, the picking, the cleaning (maybe even the canning). It would much easier to just go out and buy all your fruits and vegetables at the store. Most people garden because they enjoy it, not because they need the food. It is really a labor of love.
Love is the perfect word to describe the way God felt about
his people. For centuries, the Lord
lovingly cared for them. He brought
Abraham to
Isaiah’s list of what God does for his garden ends at five, but there is no end to what the Lord does for his people. In fact, that list extends up to the present day. Because God loves us, he works through his Word to change stubborn, sinful hearts. Simply because God loves us, he has given us the sacrament of Holy Baptism to plant the seed of faith in little hardened hearts. Simply because God loves us, he has given us the sacrament of Holy Communion to bring personal forgiveness to hurting human hearts. The same unadulterated, unexplainable love led God to sentence his Son to death so that we might have eternal life.
When a person works in a garden, he doesn’t go to all that trouble for nothing. When it is harvest time, he expects that there will be something to harvest. If he has taken all the necessary steps along the way, it is not unreasonable for him to look for a good crop.
Unfortunately this is where Isaiah’s song changes keys. The gardener did everything he was supposed
to do. He even did some things he didn’t
have to do. But when the time for
harvest came, he was disappointed. “He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad
fruit” (2).
Some plant lovers believe that if you talk to your plants it
will help them grow. God the gardener
had some words to say to the plants in his vineyard, but they were not words of
encouragement. “Now you dwellers in
God’s people gave no answers to his questions. Maybe he didn’t allow any response. Or maybe they said nothing because there was nothing they could say. The Lord cared for his people. He loved them. He protected them. He fed them. He clothed them. And how did they respond?
For hundreds of years, God’s people produced bad fruit. Abraham tried to pass off his wife Sarah as his sister because he didn’t trust in God. Jacob deceived his father Isaac to get the blessing because he couldn’t wait for God. Moses took matters into his own hands and killed an Egyptian and took the place of God. The Israelites worshiped a golden calf in the wilderness and made their own god. Even King David committed adultery and murder and showed no regard for the holy will of God.
And you could say that the sour grapes had not fallen far from the vine. After Isaiah’s song, the chapter continues with a series of “Woes.” To understand how bad things were in Isaiah’s day, to get an idea of what Isaiah was up against, listen to a couple examples: “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” (8). Greed. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (20). Apostasy. “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent” (22,23). Debauchery and corruption.
Now ask yourself if anything has really changed. What kind of fruit God would find if the harvest were today? If God carefully inspected our nation, would he find honest leaders and good citizens or would he taste the sour fruit of corruption? If he wanted to gather all the fruit produced in our homes, would he find more love and support than he could carry or would he uncover the rotten fruit of hatred and anger? If God the gardener came down to harvest the good fruit stored in your heart, would he find any or would it be overflowing with lust and greed?
A key to good gardening is pruning. Branches that don’t produce need to be cut off so that they don’t take valuable nutrients away from the branches that do. And if a whole plant doesn’t produce for a number of years, eventually the gardener will cut it down.
After years of patience and pleading, God the gardener had
finally come to that difficult decision with his people. “Now I
will tell you what I am 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 pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns
will grow there. I will command the
clouds not to rain on it” (5,6).
Do you think the people of
So how could he do it? How was Isaiah able to say things that were sure to make him unpopular? He was motivated by love. He loved God who had called him to preach that message and he loved his countrymen who needed to hear it.
The circumstances may be somewhat different today, but the message is the same. Judgment may not be the most popular sermon topic. Preachers might even be tempted to avoid a text like this one because it makes people feel uncomfortable.
We don’t like to hear about judgment, but we need to. We need the law to show us our sin. We need the law to back us into a corner so that there is no way to escape. We need to understand that God is pointing his accusing finger at us (and not just at all the bad people in the world). We need to understand that we are the ones who deserve eternal death.
This is how Isaiah’s story ends, not exactly what you would call a happy ending. But we are not without hope. We can take comfort in the fact that Isaiah’s preaching doesn’t stop where his story does. Isaiah is sixty-six chapters long. His book contains some of the harshest condemnations in the whole Bible, but there are also beautiful predictions of divine deliverance.
The same God who vowed to destroy his vineyard also caused
Isaiah to write: “Comfort, comfort my
people, says your God. Speak tenderly to
The same God who predicted the destruction of
What Isaiah could only see through the eyes of faith, we see fulfilled in the pages of Scripture. Jesus made every one of Isaiah’s prophecies come true. He HAS paid for our sins. He HAS given us peace. By his wounds we ARE healed.
This good news brings us all the way back to where we started. God wants all people to be saved, but he also wants believers to grow. God desires growth in his garden. He gives us the ability to grow. His love motivates us to produce good fruit.
And through those powerful means of grace we do. Through the gospel packed into the Word and the sacraments, we grow. We grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.