He did everything right for people who insisted on doing everything wrong.
None of this is hard to believe because we live it too. Jesus with his life, that virtuous life, the death, the resurrection, everything was done right. You couldn't say, well you know Jesus if you just had done this, those Pharisees would have believed you.
There was nothing more he could do. And so Isaiah calls it out 700 years before Christ comes. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Isaiah chapter 5 as he begins his message, Meals for Hell. Isaiah chapter 5, it takes hard work to properly mature in Christianity, in Christ, and of course going through the Old Testament.
It's hard work. New Testament is too. Meals for Hell, that's the title of this evening's verse-by-verse consideration. I've always been fond of this chapter, this fifth chapter, and I like how Isaiah sees through the spiritual dishonesty of the people and how he makes his points. And he tells these types of people that Hell is going to make a meal out of them. You would like to think that that would be alarming to those who hear such a message from such a man as Isaiah.
So he's straightforward with these things. He starts out with a poetic song, which is really a parable. And of course in this poetic song, just about six verses, and then an explanation in verse seven, he calls them out and says that they won't get away with evil forever. And accountability is the very thing the world resents about Christianity. There are other things too, but it all comes down to they are accountable to God.
And the Bible is, of course, very clear about this, but it is also as clear about the grace of God that is available. So we look now at verse one. Now let me sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard.
My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. So he wastes no time in catching his audience attention, and he's telling them here's a song. But it is a parable with serious rebukes in this parable. And what I also like is three times he mentions my beloved. And it's almost like a Christian saying, I love the Lord, to an unbeliever. I love the Lord Jesus Christ.
You may not. I love him. And it's this emphatic presentation of the prophet's love for Yahweh right out the starting gate. Let me sing to my well-beloved.
And it's just very attractive to me and I think to all believers. And the well-beloved here in Isaiah, of course, is Yahweh. That's who he's addressing this song to. Yahweh is the owner of the vineyard and he is the owner of Israel. He is the owner of all things. This is another way of saying he is sovereign over everything.
The song of my beloved. And what the apostates feel about Yahweh, Isaiah does not. And he's just, you know, not being rude, telling it like we're not being rude yet. We're not going to be rude at all. To tell the truth when it needs to be told is it's not being rude. Although there are times when kindness has to come before truth in the presentation, in the heart of the one that's making the presentation. Otherwise, just raw truth can be brutal.
So we have to work at that. Anyway, a song of my beloved and whatever the world thinks about Christ, he is our beloved. And what the prophet is saying here is what was already put in print by Solomon in the Song of Songs chapter 2.
My beloved is mine and I am his. It is a declaration of unabashed faith. And we all have felt the pressure from the world to be a little skittish about our confession of faith. And when that happens, just understand it's natural.
And that's the problem. It's not spiritual. It's a natural sensation.
And it has to be met head on in our hearts. Years ago, we used to working on a skyscraper in New York, and we'd come down for lunch. And after lunch, we'd have a Bible study right there on the sidewalk pretty much. And I was fine with that. I didn't care what everybody felt. But I was uncomfortable with the prayer time. And the reason why is because I knew unbelievers were looking at us, not understanding what they were looking at.
And to leave it just there, to me, made it feel like we weren't doing justice. We were sort of indirectly casting prayer before swine. Because the carnal man, the natural man, cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. For they have foolishness to him. But that wasn't because I was embarrassed about my faith. I just didn't care for that presentation of my faith. And so, my good friend, my dear friend, he didn't share that opinion.
He's been wrong many times since. But, you know, we still love him. So just, you could do with that whatever you want. But hopefully it helps when we want to say to the world, my beloved is mine and I am his. And I want him to be your beloved too.
And if you reject that, I'm not going to stop loving him. And so this poem calls itself a love poem right at the beginning. And he uses the metaphor of the vineyard to describe God's care for Israel. And the metaphor sticks with us.
Word pictures or just all around a metaphor. And he will explicitly make that statement when he gets to verse seven. Even the Lord drew from this image in Matthew 21. Anyway, he continues, my well beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.
Now this is critical to the psalm. Because he's saying the problem is not with the soil. This is a fruitful hill. It has a history of producing fruit. So if no fruit comes, whose fault is it? And that's where he's, so he's setting that up. Now we have the whole song already read and known. But his audience just hearing this is a fruitful hill.
They're playing along. This vineyard has potential to bear fruit. And fruit in the sense of being faithful to God and the blessings that come from it. That's what the fruit is. It's a blessing.
It produces life. And so the prophet is saying early on, there's not going to be an excuse for lack of growth with Yahweh, with God or Jehovah, the old version of the theologians translation or understanding of the covenant name. Romans chapter one, Paul pretty much says this same thing. He says, for since creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse. And that's part of our Christian message, that you don't have an excuse to say you do not believe in God. And then going from there, which God do you believe in and why? And most religions of the world simply either lie, such as Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons. I mean, the guy had little glasses. He could see spiritually.
Come on. It's easier to trust the word of God with all of its prophecies than to sell me these things that are just too sensational and have no basis for me to trust them. Whereas the scripture has a basis. The prophecies are astounding. And again, in our lifetime, one of the greatest testaments to the veracity and trustworthiness of scripture is the nation Israel.
I mean, it's just so laid out for us. Israel has become a parable. Well, verse two, the prophet continues with his song, though we have not the notes, he dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst and also made a wine pressed in it. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. There's so much here and metaphorically speaking that connects, which makes the metaphor a metaphor, which connects with the history of the Jews. It says he dug it up.
Hard work. God is saying he's invested in Israel. Israel is the vineyard. And he dug out the stones, making a fence around the vineyard with that's what they would have done if the stones were large enough. And the law of the Jews, the rabbis came to call it the fence of the law. And they got this from Deuteronomy 28. When you build a new house, then you shall make a parapet for your roof that you may not bring guilt or bloodshed on your household if anyone falls from it.
And so in the flat rooftops of the ancient peoples in that part of the world, you had to put a fence around it so nobody would accidentally fall off. That negligence would not be accepted. Well, the law served that purpose morally and spiritually in its relationship to God.
You wouldn't fall off by believing some fake God. Just read Deuteronomy 13. It puts the kibosh on any of that. But it also, for moral purposes, you know, thou shall not steal. Thou shall not lie.
It baked into the law. So here he says he dug it up and cleared out its stones and he would put a fence. And he did put a fence around Israel, which is the law. Yahweh gave Israel their law and no other nation can make that claim. Not as codified as the Old Testament is. He says, and at this time when Isaiah is written, as much of the Old Testament as we know it has not yet been published.
Nehemiah is not even born yet, for example. Anyway, it cleared out its stones. Metaphorically removing the Canaanites, the obstacles to bearing fruit in this vineyard, this land of the Lord. This is allegory, but it is solid allegory. You can go off the deep end with allegory, but here it is just right there on the surface. Here the Lord is making the land ready for sowing and harvesting. And the prophet is saying, God invested in you, put all this into you, did all this work, got the Canaanites, gave you the law. And of course the punchline will come. And look what you did with it.
You have no excuse. The soil was just right. He says, planted it with the choicest vine. Well, he had Joshua and Caleb and that generation, when they entered into that promised land, they had everything they needed in the form of people to be God's people. And in Judges it makes it clear that once that generation died off, things fell apart very quickly.
He says, he built a tower in the midst and also made a winepress in it. You say to yourself, did the people listening to this song catch all these metaphor? If they meditated on it, I think they would. But most of them, many of them, would not.
But they would discuss it if they were interested. And just like we do today, just as we extract exposition from the scriptures, this is what Jesus did. And he expounded on them on that road to Emmaus.
He drew from the scriptures and made his points. Anyway, coming back to this, about the tower. Well, the central, the tower would be outstanding, of course.
It would be the structure that would, you couldn't miss it. But that's Jerusalem, where he placed his name. And from that tower, his priests and his prophets together could watch against spiritual foes. And Israel had all of this. God gave them all of this. So he said, so he expected it to bring forth good grapes, obviously. God put all this work into Israel.
He expected fruit. How about a church? You take a church and you invest in a solid Bible teaching and you expect fruit. The church at Ephesus was that kind of church.
As we go through Acts, we'll find out how many solid Bible teachers Ephesus enjoyed. And yet, what happened? The Lord gets to them and says, look, I know you're doing a lot of good things for people, but you left your first love and this is a big deal. That's what he says. He tells them, he warns them, I'll take your light from you. This is so critical. So God expects fruit. He expects it from the Christian life. This is an attribute of God.
We're not foggy on this. And fruit can be in many ways. Yeah, there are some that can lead people to Christ or others that can just simply serve. There are others that can pray. I mean, who takes the washcloths from the cafe here and takes them home and washes them and brings them back?
How much work goes into preparing the communion articles on a Sunday morning? There are a lot of ways to bear fruit for Christ. And so we are without excuse if we say this was nothing I can do. That may not be the whole story. Anyway, if you were reading the book of Exodus for the first time, knew not the story, and you read about the Jews coming out of Egypt and how God miraculously brought them out, wouldn't you expect that there would be some incredible, wonderful things that would happen spiritually after that? Well, we all do.
That's why we're so surprised and disappointed when it does not happen. And God is too. But it brought forth wild grapes. There's a malfunction. It's because of the apostasy, the audience of Isaiah.
It had gotten so bad. He's writing this poetic, parabolic song to try to reach them from this angle. Wild grapes. The Hebrew tells us it's foul-smelling grapes, grapes of stench, the opposite of a blessing, something that is odious.
The difference between the wild grape and the domestic grape basically is care. And God gave it care. What more could God do when His total work of grace had been poured out upon them, yet they remained as if grace never touched them. They lived as though they were untouched by grace. That goes all the way back to God saying to Abraham, I will make you a blessing to all the peoples of the world.
And it was supposed to be catapulted into existence through the nation Israel. Anyway, this is how it will be when Christ comes. He will face the same rejection. Verse 3, and now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge please between me and my vineyard. And so here's another plea to reason as we got in chapter 1, come let us reason.
And it's passionate here. He says, O inhabitants, that's a passionate insertion. He says, judge, please come look into this. Don't dismiss it.
Apply yourself. That's what we try to get unbelievers to do. Have you ever read the Bible? I read it. Some of them will say they have.
Some of them have. Just because you read it doesn't mean you're going to be a believer. There's more to everything than just one thing here on earth under the sun. Anyway, he's saying this to lost souls. He's not speaking to the righteous Jews. There are believers. He's speaking to the apostate Jews. And therefore, they are lost. And he's saying to them, come on, let's work this through.
You got to make a choice. Not the first time they would have heard this. Their version of Sunday school classes. When they went to Yeshiva, to the Jewish schools to learn how to read and write, the law of the Lord would be what they would learn from.
That was their textbook. They would have heard this from Joshua 24. Joshua says, if it seems evil to you to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.
And he goes, as for me and my house, we've made our choice. Well, that's what they're getting here. Refresh, of course, verse 4. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it? And why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? Why the malfunction?
I did everything right. Of course, this is anthropomorphism. God sort of behaving as though he's just a mere man for the sake of reasoning.
He's coming off as though he's identifying with us. Because we understand this. And God is not really asking the question. He doesn't ask questions that he doesn't know the answer to already. When he asks a question, it's so that he can extract a confession or denial, whatever the case may be. He did everything right for people who insisted on doing everything wrong.
None of this is hard to believe because we live it too. And Jesus with his life, that virtuous life, the death, the resurrection, everything was done right. You couldn't say, well, you know, Jesus, if you just had done this, those Pharisees would have believed you.
There was nothing more he could do. And so Isaiah calls it out 700 years before Christ comes. He is despised and rejected by men. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. All the Pharisees knew that verse. The Sadducees and the Herodian, all of them knew this. The parable, it brings home, as nothing else could, the sheer unreason and indefensibility of sin.
It just brings it right to the front. You're not being honest. This is original sin, which produces then subsequent sins. We were born sinners. And so Jeremiah said, the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked.
It is, but it has such potential. It just needs to be touched by grace. And all the prophets were, Abraham was, Enoch was, Seth was. There's a history. There's no excuse. Nobody's going to be in hell blaming God.
Well, I didn't have a chance. God will filter that out. And the ones that we might look at and say, well, God didn't give that poor person a chance.
Well, that's not the whole story. God's got moves you know nothing about. Otherwise, he can't be God. Anyway, why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? God is asking, what just happened here?
Can anyone explain to me this unnatural failure? Verse five, and now please, let me tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge and it shall be burned and break down its wall and it shall be trampled upon.
All that work that he put into it, it's already a waste because of the people. The people give that definition to the things that God has done in that sense. Now, the new King James uses the word, now please, let me tell you, the Hebrew uses really connection of beseech and that's why the translators would have taken that step. I don't think it's wrong and I only pointed out because maybe you're using a different translation. I'm using the new King James, which I've had for years, so really isn't that new.
All right, that's the break. Anyway, I think it is consistent with the emotional plea back in verse three when he appeals to them emotionally. Oh, inhabitants, he's trying to just reach them. And so, we lose some of this to feel in the Hebrew, but it's made up for through the spirit and so many other things that we're sensitive to. And the proof of that is you have people who read this in the Hebrew and they don't know God. And you have people who don't know the Hebrew and they come to verses and like this and they're just totally into it.
Yes, Lord. Anyway, the vineyard's owner responds to this situation. He says, I will take away its hedge and it shall be burned and break down its wall. So, protection withdrawn, animals will then freely enter and destroy, you know, little foxes that spoil the vine from Song of Solomon. Babylon's armies would breach the walls of Jerusalem. We read that in 2 Kings chapter 25 where in verses four and ten it's explicitly stated and here it is prophetically said by Isaiah a hundred years before it happened. And it shall be trampled down, which is exactly what happened to Jerusalem. The Gentiles would be the instrument of judgment because God couldn't find enough Jews to be the instrument of judgment on his own people. There were righteous Jews, no question, but not enough of them. And when there were enough of them, well then they would rally and we read about this in the book of Judges when they rallied against the immorality in the land.
They had these flashes of righteousness, but by this stage it's all gone. And I think when the church reaches the point where she is so ineffective because of the gross global apostasy of Christodom, then comes the rapture because the churches are now marginalized to the point where there's no need for it here. And then you will have the tribulation conversions, but there'll be no true church, just the apostate church and the coming of the great apostate church under Antichrist. Well Antichrist will have his fingers in it, but he will hate it too. Revelation chapter 17 verse 16, and the ten horns which you saw on the beast, that's Antichrist, these will hate the harlot, the unfaithful one. Make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire.
And if you were napping you're not now, because when we read these kind of things I'm like, man that's pretty heavy duty stuff. It's so insensitive of God to speak like that. He doesn't care that he's offending me. He'd rather offend you with truth than judge you with eternal damnation, so be grateful. Anyway, Antichrist will cause dissension within Roman Catholicism is my take on it, and the apostate church will be under their umbrella. No other entity in Christendom has the wealth that is described.
This woman that rides the beast who is the harlot who is bedecked with jewels, no other of the Mormon's own club come close to what is owned there in the Vatican. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.
You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
