Isaiah 5

When someone goes to all the trouble to plant a vineyard, he expects that he will eventually yield fruit from his labor. The song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5 is a prophetic parable. Jesus told parables in his earthly ministry, but frequently he did not explain them to the crowds, but only to his closest disciples. Here in Isaiah we are told a parable about the Lord's vineyard, and we are left with no doubt concerning its meaning.

Verse seven says, "the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." As the chapter begins, Isaiah speaks of God's great care for his vineyard. He did everything that He could for it, but the vineyard would not yield the kind of fruit that it should have yielded. The fault is not God's, but the vineyard's. God calls his people to account for the lack of righteous fruit in the Lord's nation.

He then announces His determination to remove the hedge of protection around the vineyard, to break down its wall, and to trample down his land and to make it a waste. What kind of fruit was He seeking from His people? He looked for justice, but He found instead bloodshed. He sought righteousness, but found an outcry from the poor and powerless who were oppressed.

From this point on in the chapter the parable is left behind, and we have God's prophetic indictment presented more directly in His pronouncement of woe upon His people. They have joined "house to house" and "field to field" with no recognition of the fact the the Lord was the owner of the land. He had established laws that would enable the poor to have some stability over many generations. They were to have an inheritance of land granted to their clans and families from God Himself, but this blessing has been trampled upon. Men of renown have given themselves over to late night drinking and feasting, and have not attended to the "deeds of the Lord." They have been content with falsehood and darkness, and rejected the light of His Word. The have acquitted the guilty for a bribe and deprived the innocent of his right.

What will God do when the people who are supposed to be a testimony to the world of justice and righteousness simply attend to their own pleasures and ignore the weighty matters of life in a world of great suffering? If they will not display justice and righteousness, the Lord will display these things Himself by coming against them and judging them! The Lord of hosts will be exalted in justice. The Holy God will show himself holy in righteousness. He will be the Prime Mover in His acts of judgment, but the means of affliction will be other nations that are far off. He will whistle for them, and they will come with horrific might and act as His agents of destruction. Like a lion they will growl and seize their prey, and no one will be able to rescue. The judgment of God against His beloved land will be darkness and distress.

Our reaction to such a passage should be a fear of the Lord of heaven and earth. If He sets Himself up as our adversary, who can stand? If He would discipline His Old Testament nation with these terrors, what will await all of us who have so obviously violated His holy commandments? Yet if God only wanted to display His justice, He could have destroyed the world immediately after the sin of Adam. His plan is to also display His mercy, yet without sacrificing His great display of holiness and justice.

How can this be? Justice demands that the wicked be punished. Mercy insists that the targets of mercy be forgiven and blessed. If we are all lawbreakers in the sight of God, how can both of these demands be satisfied? How can God eternally punish the wicked and save them as well. There must be an eternal substitute provided for the targets of the Lord's abounding mercy. This is precisely what the Christian faith is about. The wrath of God has come upon a sacrificial lamb for our sake. A frightening and holy adversary has condemned one great righteous servant from the vineyard of Israel. This Messiah has taken away - not our earthly discipline, but the eternal wrath of God toward us. The discipline of trial remains as part of the mysterious providence of God who orders all things according to His plan for both justice and mercy. But a punishment far worse than the Assyrians and Babylonians has been placed upon the Son of God, and so we have been delivered.

We should still quake at the discipline of the Lord in this world of sorrow. Nonetheless, our eternal security is assured because of the blood of the Lamb.