Meals for Hell (Part B)

Sometimes I feel like I'm putting on my best for people too, and I don't mean to be an apostate, I love the Lord. Well, the difference is the Pharisees weren't even fighting and checking it in their hearts. They just, this is who they were, they accepted it. Whereas a Christian is fighting inside, I mean, I know that's wrong. And so there's that, there's that conviction.

But they were, you know, dead men's bones, they were not alive in their heart, and that is the grand difference. 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. 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.

Meals for Hell is the title of Pastor Rick's message, and today he'll be teaching in the book of Isaiah chapter five. Verse three, 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 one, 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've 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 then therefore they are lost, and he's saying to them, come on, let's just 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, when 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. A refresher 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.

It's 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 that nobody's going to be in hell blaming God.

Well, I didn't have a chance. God will, he will filter that out. And so Jeremiah says, 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? In 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 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. 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 it 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, you know, he's trying to just reach them. And so, you know, we lose some of this 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 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 10, it's explicitly stated and that here it is prophetically said by Isaiah 100 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 church is 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 17 verse 16, and the 10 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 Christodom has the wealth that is described, this woman that rides the beast who is the harlot, who is bedecked with jewels, no other.

The Mormons don't come close to what is owned there in the Vatican. Anyway, you may say, I don't like that. Well, you can have your opinion. And I don't, you know, it sounds snarky when I say that, and I don't mean to, but it has, sometimes, you know, you just can't walk around just apologizing for everything. Let me take the next 20 minutes to apologize for what I believe.

Not going to happen. Verse six, I will lay at waste. It shall be, it shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it. And so now it's getting divine because in the metaphor, the vineyard owner has no power over the elements.

And here it is, you know, God is part of this. Briars and thorns, very emblems of stunted growth due to sin. The twisted thorns on the head of Christ as his crown. The emblem of sin. Every thorn we're told by botanists that this should have been a flower.

Something went wrong. And you can probably fact check me on that, but okay. I mean, I don't discourage that. Just don't get carried away and be chasing me down the road.

Hey, you were wrong with that. All right, anyway, back to this. Verse seven, for the vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. And so here's the verse where he explains the song, which allows us to have the allegory, the metaphor, which takes, okay, this justifies how we've been approaching this. The outcry of injustice is the problem. And when there's injustice towards God, there's going to be injustice towards men.

That is a law of this life under the curse. Wherever God is disrespected, injustice against people occurs. The prophet will continue to develop this.

In fact, he's going to ramp it up. He's going to be done with the metaphor and he's going to take the direct approach right out to them. I should also point out when he says the vineyard of Yahweh, the house of Israel, well, elsewhere, Isaiah sometimes uses Israel for a synonym of Judah. And this is, a new Bible student might get kind of mixed up here, but I mentioned digging into the word. Well, of course, we knew the northern kingdom is Israel and the southern kingdom is Judah, but sometimes they merge because they truly are both Israel. And the distinction arises because of the split of the kingdom. We don't know exactly what point Isaiah is writing this because he lived before the northern kingdom was taken away by Assyria and he was alive and prophesying after that event. But we know that he uses, when he speaks to Judah, he also refers to Judah as Israel.

So, that's no violation. Nehemiah does the same thing in chapter 1 and chapter 13. And there was no longer a northern kingdom. The southern kingdom was just getting her sea legs back when Nehemiah comes along. Also, in Judah, there were many refugees from the northern kingdom from the very beginning, from the minute Jeroboam went goofy and he was the first king of the northern kingdom and started with the altar in Bethel and the different places he started his idolatry. Many of the northern kingdom Jews from various tribes began to come into Judah to get away from him. So, there were always members of the 12 tribes in Judah the whole time. Anyway, they they carried on many of these apostates as though they were righteous but they were not.

Other practices outed them. Matthew 23, Jesus does this with the Pharisees. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. You may say, well, wait a minute, sometimes I feel like I'm putting on my best for people too and I don't mean to be an apostate.

I love the Lord. Well, the difference is the Pharisees weren't even fighting and checking it in their hearts. This is who they were.

They accepted it. Whereas a Christian is fighting inside. I mean, I know that's wrong and so there's that conviction but they were, you know, dead men's bones. They were not alive in their heart and that is the grand difference. The next time a unbeliever says, well, you Christians are hypocrites, you know, let me define that for you.

There's a difference. A hypocrite is purposely presenting a false heart to you. Whereas someone who may be struggling out of weakness is trying to survive and they're in the fight and so there's a little bit more to it. Anyway, when he says he looked for justice but behold oppression here in verse seven for righteousness but behold a cry. There's a wordplay here that cannot be duplicated in English and, you know, it's idiomatic and is a rhyme of almost homonyms in the Hebrew and so it comes down to this how he used Isaiah, how he uses the words. He says he looked for justice but behold oppression. So he's saying, I didn't get right, I got riot. I didn't get decency, I got despair. That's the best we could do but it's kind of if you were reading in the Hebrew, I'm told by those who do read the Hebrew and then write about it in English, that is actually quite ingenious of Isaiah.

Well, we talked about how well educated he was. Verse eight, woe to those who join house to house and field to field till there is no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land. I love this verse, I've memorized it for years and in New York City living there, this verse was like, yes Lord, get me out of here. The house to house and field to field and I got here, I carried it a little bit too far because I'd see developers buying farmland and putting up these houses two inches apart from each other. Look at the greedy guys, they can't even give you a little space in the backyard just like back in Long Island and New York and other places and then God says, yeah, but I'm calling you to minister to people who will live in these houses.

Oh, all right. I just had this this morning where my daughter was sitting in the car and said, what are they building this? She said, it looks like an apartment building. Man, they're crowding them in again but I remember what God said, so I blamed her.

Anyway, and this is the problem here. Now, this is not outlawing row houses or apartments, it certainly isn't giving them a plus either. It is a reflection of God saying ideally people need some space to live and when I've got that, I can't throw a rock and hit my neighbor from my front porch.

I've tried so many times. I'm working on it but I have space now and you know if he wants to play his music loud, well not too loud, he could do things. It's just nicer to have space but and that's not a rebuke to those of you who may, you know, just not have that privilege so I just kind of a personal touch to this but it's not a rebuke to those who may live in a project, for example, project building. Anyway, there are ideals, there are lesser ideals such as life with all of us in different areas.

Anyhow, coming back to this, this is the first woe. Woe to those who join house to house. The greedy developers, now they happen to be realtors but that doesn't mean all realtors are this way. Not at all but these what made them a covet and greedy is that they went out of bounds and they created congestion, man-made congestion in Jerusalem because they're stealing the land from the people and the people had to go somewhere once their land was gone. They couldn't live out in the woods so they would enter and end up in Jerusalem paying rent and this was an oppression on the people. The well-to-do were systematically taking land from others. Now, I don't know that this is the motive but we know a lot of big store chains have put out of business mom-and-pop stores.

If you want to open, you know, a little breakfast shop, you're going to have to compete with some some big guys and it's going to be hard to survive unless you have a large population where there's enough to go around. My point is, I don't know that somebody said, hey let's, you know, it's too bad we're putting them out of business and had a calloused heart. I don't know that but in this case that is what was going on. They were coming up with ways to grab the land of the people, violating property laws of the mosaic law. Micah, who is a prophet at the same time, he writes about this and this little verse that I'm quoting is not capturing the whole spirit. Amos slams it. He was writing to the north.

He's gone. Anyway, Micah says, they covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them. So they oppress a man in his house, a man and his inheritance. And so there's a witness to what Isaiah is saying that, yeah, they're stealing the land and they're jamming them in the cities and, you know, woe to those.

This is trouble, not to the people who are stuck in the houses but to those who are causing this condition. So I have the list of the seven woes here that he's going to go out but instead of reading them to save time, we'll just cover them as we go. So the first one is, woe to those who join house to house and field to field till there's no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land. And verse, Isaiah has 22 woes throughout his prophecy. Here's just seven of them. Anyway, verse nine, in my hearing, Yahweh of hosts said, truly many houses shall be desolate, great and beautiful ones without inhabitant, for 10 acres of vineyard shall yield one bath and a homer of seed shall yield one ephah.

So what's going on here is, first, you got to love. Isaiah says, oh, the Lord spoke to me on this very clearly and it was him. And he's saying that those who have grabbed the land and built these beautiful houses, it's all going to backfire.

God is expressing his outrage. They think they're going to steal this land and produce, you know, these crops and sell them for the outrageous gains. Well, they're going to be meager gains. They're not going to be large gains and thus the language, 10 acres will yield one bath and the percentage is like 10 percent is all they're going to get out of this, 90 percent loss. Habakkuk had a similar prophecy and in his day, the Jews were coming back from the Babylonian captivity and he and Zechariah were exhorting the people saying, listen, you got to build your house of worship.

You started it and then you abandoned it. When the little pressure came, you got to build this temple. You're living in pretty nice houses right now. But look at the house of the Lord.

It's just a slab. And so he writes, you have sown much and bring in little. You eat but do not have enough. You drink and you are not filled with drink.

You clothe yourselves but no one is warm and he earns wages to be put in a bag with holes. And so he's saying, yeah, you're not satisfied. You have these gains but they're really not gains, are they? They're testimony that you can't find satisfaction without a right relationship to your God. And he and Zechariah were successful. Verse 11, here's the second, well, woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may follow intoxicating drink to continue until night, till wine inflames them. So self-indulgence, we move from greedy covetedness.

There are different types of covetedness but the first one was greed based. This is self-indulgence of these drinkers. And they just were consumed by alcohol.

It's a twist, right? Consuming alcohol until it consumes you. And the vineyard owner came to his vineyard looking for devout disciples. Instead, he gets devoted drunks. They are devoted to this. They rise up early and through the rest of the day. Their whole purpose in life now is to be under the influence of alcohol. A very real tragedy down through the ages.

Verse 12, the harp and the strings and the tambourine, the flute, the wine are in their feast but they do not regard the work of Yahweh nor consider the operation of his hands. And so not only were they just being consumed by the alcohol they were consuming, they were what we would say party animals. They loved the social events.

They loved to go where there was the alcohol and the people. The party days, not the Lord's ways, that's their life. We know people like this. We've met people like this and if you haven't, you will. Psalm 10, the wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God.

God is in none of his thoughts and that's these folks. Overindulgence dulls sensitivity to the spirit and that's why there's such thing called fasting. And there are different ways. There are facets of fasting. You can just abstain from, you know, maybe you love your morning tea.

And when they say, I'm going to drink it this morning. I'm just going to fast from it and just draw close to the Lord. You don't have to just like starve yourself near death. A lot of people have health conditions.

They can't take those kind of fast anyway. Anyway, Amos writes about this also and this to the northern kingdom. He talks about them who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments and invent for themselves musical instruments like David.

But that whole section, I have it here, but I'm not going to read it. Anyway, he talks about, he's saying, you guys are into music and you dig into the old festivities, but look what you're doing to other people and look what you've done to Yahweh and look at the result. The Assyrians came and took them all away. Verse 13, therefore, my people have gone into captivity and because they have no knowledge, their honorable men are famished and their multitude dried up with thirst and say, well, where's the timeline here?

Well, it could be all over the place. He could be referring to the northern kingdom. He could be referring to Judah because the Assyrians were making raids into Judah and taking cities.

Or he could be all of them and prophetically saying, this is where this is going to end up because these people thought there were no consequences. 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.