Bad Wine from Isaiah 5
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
(Isaiah 5:1-4 ESV)
I have read most of the Bible... but am only now tackling some of the Old Testament books I have never read front to back - Jeremiah, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezekiel, and Isaiah to name a few. Presently, I am going through Isaiah.
I used to try and find passages and verses that had special life application and draw wisdom from those texts. But now I know... the Bible isn't about ME. The Bible has a historical context in and of itself. It is about God first and foremost - God and how he worked out his plan of redemption of a people for his (God's) own glory. Because of this, many passages may seem lost on the contemporary consumerist "Christian" in America. After all, if I can't make the verse about ME, it must not be very relevant, right?
Isaiah has a context and a point outside of Ryan.The.Calvinist. That context and subject is God's judgement to his disobedient children in exile. Portions of the book are pre-exile looking forward, while others were written at the time of the exile. In either case, Isaiah boldly proclaims God's judgement against those disobedient covenant members.
The specific passage in Isaiah 5 cited above is concerning the bad fruit of God's vineyard - covenant Israel. Yahweh had planted Israel is a vineyard, took great care of it, yet it continued to yield a great deal of bad fruit. We later learn this bad fruit included greed, drunkenness, mockery of God, moral corruption, pride, and perverted justice. What is God to do with this bad vineyard he planted? He removes his grace and allows it to come to destruction. (Isaiah 5:5-6)
All hope is not lost, however.
R.C. Sproul's Reformation Study Bible notes point out something I took note of in the text... the Isaiah 5 passage is echoed again from the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ, as recorded in Matthew 21:33-44. God plants a vineyard, and finds that its tenants are corrupt, unwilling to give God his rightful fruit from his vineyard. The vineyard owner of the parable sends many to the tenants... even his own son (ie: Jesus Christ) ... whom the tenants delight in killing.
The result? God turns the vineyard over to new tenants.
"Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits." (Matthew 21:43 ESV)
God sovereignly used the means of the vineyard of bad fruit / the wicked tenants to bring about the gifting of the kingdom to the Gentiles - all non-Jewish Christians. We are, as Paul writes in Romans 11, grafted into the vine after some other branches were broken off.
Such a recognition should lead us not to boast or prideful arrogance that we are better than national Israel, who produced bad fruit in the days of Isaiah, who killed the messengers of God to the keepers of the vineyard, who God cut off of the vine, but instead it should lead to humility and thankfulness to our sovereign Lord, that he should be willing to graft us in at all.
I in NO way deserve to be in the vine of Christ. I of no higher caliber than the branches removed from the vine and tossed away by God. I did nothing to earn it. It was all of the work of Christ. As a result, let us remember that our being part of the vine is entirely apart from anything we have done, and yet let us pursue the good fruits of the vineyard that Christ would have us produce. Let us look to Christ and live in a way that is reflective of our identity as grapes in the vineyard of the kingdom... producing not bitter wine, but sweet and luscious wine.
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