Community Bible Study -- Isaiah

Text of Presentation, Lesson 3, Isa 5:1-30

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A Harvest of Wild Grapes
"A Song of Injustice"

Tonight's focal passage is Isaiah 5 . . . but we also read Isaiah 3-4. And since Messianic prophesy - ie, prophesy of Jesus the Messiah - interests me, we'll at least mention most such examples . . . and that includes one in chapter 4.

Isaiah is just as brutal condemning his people for their sins in chapter 3 as he was in chapters 1 & 2; and chapter 4 opens with a poignant image in of 7 women pleading with one available man to marry them to "take away (their) "disgrace"; surely a great disaster has happened. Then Isaiah suddenly talks again about the Messiah . . . about abundance in place of desolation and cleansing in place of blood and filth:

In that day the Branch of the LORD will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. (4:2-3)

"The Branch of the LORD" refers to the Messiah, as we'll discuss in detail in chapter 11. Hence the term "in that day" in 4:2 refers to the Messianic Era. Again Isaiah makes clear the promised good things will follow God's judgment. The "survivors" (4:2) are the remnant left after the "fire" of judgment (4:4) has done its work; only then will the people be "holy" . . . cleansed of the "filth" and "bloodstains" of their accumulated sins (4:4). Only then will they again experience the presence of God as blessing rather than as judgment (4:5). The "cloud . . . by day" and "fire by night" are reminiscent of God's presence during the Exodus (cf Ex 40:38); after God's people are "refined" by fire, the Messiah will bring about what the Exodus was meant to produce, and God's presence will again provide security for His people. This reflects the Messiah's principle purpose: to restore man's relationship to God, which man messed up.

Here again, Isaiah emphasizes that God can take us through the consequences of our sins and bring us out cleansed . . . not destroyed. The only question is whether we allow God's judgment to do its cleansing work.

In contrast to the "name-it-and-claim-it" theology popular among many Christians today, Isaiah warns of God's judgment if we pursue comfort, pleasure, or security more than Him. But when difficulties come, we can be sure God hasn't abandoned us; He may be testing us . . . lovingly trying to make our character more like His, so He can live in us.

In chapter 5, Isaiah brings his introduction to a close, preparatory to the story of his call and the beginning of his ministry in chapter 6. The prophet reiterates his basic theme: apart from a radical change of behavior, the Jews are destined to be refined by fire. Isaiah sums up everything he has said thus far with his image of an unfruitful vineyard.

The chapter divides into three sections. First a graphic illustration of a vineyard which produces only bitter grapes, despite the farmer's careful work (5:1-6). Next the explanation: Isaiah declares Israel is the vineyard, God the farmer, and the bitter grapes are Israel's sinful behavior (5:7-24). Then the conclusion (5:25-30): enemy nations are being called in to destroy Israel, just as wild animals destroy the useless vineyard.

The image of a vineyard has special meaning for Isaiah's audience: grapes grow well in Judah, but grapes demand a great deal of preparation and care. The land must first be cleared of other plants and the abundant rocks (5:2). This takes a year! Then the vines are carefully set out . . . and for the second year the cleared rocks are built into fences and watchtowers to keep out thieves and wild animals. Only in the third year does this labor produce any fruit. The farmer in Isaiah's story has spared no effort or expense in developing his vineyard - but it produces only bitter grapes. The Judean farmers understand this image . . . but what does it mean?

A friend who is an OT professor says Isaiah is tricking the Jews into self-condemnation, just as Nathan the prophet did with King David after he took Bathsheba, another man's wife (cf 2 Sam 12). The key is 5:1 and 5:3. It's nonsense to ask to "judge" between a man and his vineyard (5:3) . . . the "men of Judah" know the prophet means something else. So when Isaiah refers to the vineyard of "the one I love" (5:1), the Jews assume he is talking about his wife, since Solomon's wife refers to herself as Solomon's "vineyard" (cf Song 8:11-12). We can imagine the Jews are in sync with Isaiah as long as they think he's talking about an unfruitful wife; they cheer him on when he announces he's going to tear down the wall and let the wild animals destroy the vineyard (5:5-6)! But then Isaiah springs the trap: they are the vineyard! A vineyard is also a metaphor for the nation of Israel! The Jews realize Isaiah has tricked them, just as Nathan tricked David!

Isaiah then explains that the bitter grapes are sins detailed in 5:8-24, each introduced with the word "woe." These sins include greed (5:8-10), self-indulgence (5:11-17), cynicism (5:18-19), moral perversion (5:20, 21), and social injustice (5:22-24). Isaiah says the Jews are being foolish if they think they can escape the consequences of these sins because they are God's people; just as the vineyard of bitter grapes will be destroyed because of it's fruit, so will Israel.

Isaiah's example of greed is for land (5:8). The rich man buys more and more land and dispossesses its owners one by one . . . until he lives on a vast estate, with the former owners his serfs. This was forbidden in God's covenant with the Israelites. Land was a grant from God, to be retained by the same family for all time . . . and if sold for any reason, returned to the original owners every 50th year (cf Lev 25). We know the economic strength of modern western democracies comes from a strong middle class - but the strong middle class was part of God's plan over 3000 years ago! But the Jews of Isaiah's day apparently ignored this command . . . just as they ignored God's command to give the land a "Sabbath rest" by letting it lie fallow one year out of seven.

In 5:9-10 God announces a punishment that fits the crime. Isaiah prophesies the rich man who has dispossessed others will himself be dispossessed . . . in the exile to Babylon, around 600 BC. In 5:10 - and also 5:17 - Isaiah prophesies that after the exile, the land will receive its long-overdue "Sabbath rests" - as was confirmed in 2 Chr 36:21.

The next "bitter grape" is self-indulgence: drunkenness and gluttony (5:11-17). Isaiah is not condemning good food and good wine . . . it's an issue of priorities. By focusing on physical pleasures rather than God and his "work" (5: 12), the Jews are pursuing transitory things rather than eternal things.

Again the punishment fits the crime. These wealthy and noble people will die of hunger when the exile comes (5:13). They will no longer open their mouths for more food; instead, death will open its mouth wider still and suck them down. As in 2:6-22, Isaiah speaks of humiliation of the arrogant, so the greatness and holiness of God may be manifested in justice and righteousness (5:15-16).

Isaiah next condemns cynicism (5:18-19). The guilty delight in sinning. They challenge God, insisting if what they are doing is bad, the great "Holy One of Israel" will take action against it. And since He hasn't . . . they intend to keep right on doing it!

The fourth woe (5:20-21) condemns people who reject God outright and make up their own morality . . . claiming what God declared wrong is really right and what God declared right is really wrong. This attitude is a revolt against any moral authority . . . it's contraversion of right and wrong.

The final woe (5:22-24) condemns those who are great in small things like mixing drinks, yet small in great things like justice. In a sense, this sin links everything together: when the goal of one's life is pleasure and self-fulfillment, the concept of justice for the less fortunate just isn't a factor; why should we be surprised if justice is perverted?

The bottom line is the people have rejected the covenant of their all-powerful Creator-God (5:24b). But the only permanence humans have is in relation to God, so it's logical that if humans reject Him, they'll be swept away like dry grass in a brush fire (5:24a).

Isaiah closes chapter 5 by bringing everything together and directly prophesying the exile in 5:25-30. The vineyard that is Israel has produced bitter grapes of sinfulness; the only option left is destroy it. But destruction is not coming because Assyria and Babylon are so great; they too will pass away. It's the coming to punish the Jews for their sin.

Isaiah underlines this point with a refrain he will repeat several times in 9:8-10:4: "For all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised" (5:25b). Assyria and Babylon are merely God's instruments to punish the Jews; they come like obedient dogs in response to his "whistle" (5:26).

In 5:27-29 Isaiah uses terse couplets to create a sense of urgency and impulsion. A great army comes on with unstoppable speed - the best trained and equipped of their time - ready to attack God's people . . . who have become God's enemies (1:24). They claimed the right to say what was light and what was darkness; but they will find the folly of such claims when genuine light becomes genuine darkness.

Isaiah's fundamental point is that we do not belong to ourselves. We were created by someone else, who had a purpose in mind when He made us. If in fact there is a God who created mankind, He has the right to expect us to live in accord with His purposes and character, revealed in a mutual covenant . . . and if not, He has the right to do whatever he chooses with his creation (cf Rom 9:20-21).

The Jews agreed with this officially, but in practice many of them acted otherwise. The sins identified in chapter 5 all reflect a failure to admit there is someone outside ourselves with the right to establish the parameters of our existence, and Isaiah is trying to explain the untenable position this creates.

Another truth Isaiah underlines in this passage - a theme that runs especially through Isaiah 1-39 - is that we humans have difficulty recognizing a cause-and-effect relationship. We want the relationship to be ironclad when it works in our favor . . . but we think it unfair when it works against us. If we are obedient, we expect to be blessed, but if we are disobedient, we expect to be excused.

Isaiah goes to great effort to disabuse the Israelites of this idea. We can't break the laws of physics and avoid the consequences . . . and we can't avoid the consequences of breaking God's moral laws. There is mercy upon repentance . . . but if a person consistently repeats the same sins, has he genuinely repented? The Israelites expected to live lives of continual disobedience, then perform certain rituals and receive mercy. Isaiah says that is not the way it works!

The final truth in this passage is God's lordship of history. The Assyrians and Babylonians worshiped pagan gods . . . but Isaiah and God's prophets asserted the one true God was already the Lord of those empires, because God was using them to discipline His people. This was important, because when the predicted destruction came, true believers survived with their faith intact, knowing God was not defeated, but was in fact the force behind their calamity.

Our world today faces a crisis of major proportions . . . the same one faced by the people of Isaiah's time: "Is there meaning to life outside myself?" Our culture says "No"! Our society is filled with greed, self-indulgence, cynicism, moral perversion, and social injustice. The Christian ethic that once dominated America is gone. For hundreds of years Americans obeyed the laws even when no one was looking because we owed allegiance to something outside ourselves. But as we have lost the belief there is a God to whom we owe obedience, we have become increasingly lawless - obeying only those laws that benefit us and those we are forced to obey . . . yet there is not enough force in the world to make a nation of people obey if they do not want to. John Adams once said the US Constitution could not function except with citizens bound by Christian ethics . . . and we're testing that idea now. We fail to see we are enjoy the benefits of our ancestors' choices, and our choices are destroying those very benefits. We think we can gain more comfort, pleasure, and security by serving ourselves, when in fact the comfort, pleasure, and security we now enjoy are the result of persons who voluntarily limited their self-interests in the interest of others, in obedience to God.

5:20, 23 really speak to me about the problem with the world today:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. . . . "Woe to those . . . acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.

The United Nations Oil-for-Food program in Iraq is a classic example of what passes for world morality today. UN officials and European leaders accepted huge bribes from Saddam Hussein, and allowed him to keep most of the proceeds of his oil sales, rather than use it to feed hungry Iraquis. And these same UN officials and European leaders are the ones who called "evil good and good evil" in the run-up to war.

The Christian church must witness to the world about good and evil . . . who else can do it? Yet at the same time, the Christian church faces our own crisis, because this kind of secular thinking is creeping in among us. Rather than transforming society, we allow society to transform us. Christian teenagers are almost as likely to cheat as are non-Christians . . . and more than half of them reject the idea of absolute moral standards. Christian divorces exceed the national norm.

The church as we know it locked in a do-or-die struggle. We are not the witnesses to the world we should be, because we are losing the idea of the authority of the Bible. The only reason the church exists is to "show and tell" the world about God's law and the authority of the Bible. And the only moral authority for claiming greed, self-indulgence, cynicism, moral perversion, and social injustice are sins is God's law in the bible. If we reject the authority of the bible, we lose our foundation for right and wrong.

Without an authority beyond ourselves for moral behavior, wrong will become right in our society, and right will become wrong - just as it was at the time of Isaiah. The church must reaffirm and strengthen our commitment to the authority of the bible. If we compromise on this issue, we will have lost our reason to exist; the salt will have lost its saltiness (Matt. 5: 13), and we will deserve to be thrown out, as Jesus declared. God's church will survive . . . the question is whether our church will survive!

Lastly, we must be careful not to fall into the trap of the people quoted in 5:18-19, who claimed there must be no consequences to sin, if no one was being punished. The consequences to sin are administered in God's time, not ours. Although the exile of Israel occurred within Isaiah's lifetime, the exile of Judah did not occur for another 120 years. Thus, we must not only surrender our needs to God as we choose to live within his will, we must also surrender the outcomes to God, secure in the knowledge that although those outcomes are certain, they will be in His time.