Wednesday, February 26, 2025 PM

Everybody? Several families out, apparently there's some plague-afflicting little children, so Chris isn't here to lead the music tonight, so we're just going to skip past that little portion and get straight to our Bible study here in Isaiah.

Okay, so let me invite you to open your Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 5, Isaiah chapter 5, and we'll begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for the day. We thank you for your provision in our lives.

Thank you for the change in the weather and your steady faithfulness in all seasons. We pray for our families who are absent from our fellowship tonight, whose children and others in their family are sick, but Lord, we pray that you would bring healing to them and restore them and help them with all of their needs.

And I thank you for our opportunity tonight to read your word together, to think about its meaning, and to be blessed by it. And we pray that you would bless our time together as we pray and intercede for each other's needs.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, it's been a few weeks as we've been hunkered down in the cold, but we're back. If you've forgotten, we're studying Isaiah, and we are in chapter 5.

Isaiah’s Burden for Judah and the Rotten Vineyard of Chapter 5

A bit of a reminder of where we are here in the early part of Isaiah. The first big section of Isaiah are sermons for a difficult present, as Judah and Jerusalem face the harbinger of the Assyrians to their north.

They live in a time of political tumult, and Assyria is the big villain. Everyone's concerned about Assyria, and they should be more concerned about the Lord. They're fearing Assyria, but they should be fearing the Lord, thinking of Him first, thinking of Him most.

And this is their main problem, is that they are not being faithful to the covenant. They are breaking God's covenant all over the place, and they are, as chapter 1 says, like children who have forgotten they have a father.

Even the ox knows the master, even the donkey knows the master, but not these children. They don't even know they have a father anymore. That's how far gone they are. And so, Isaiah preaches these sermons for a difficult present, reminding them that the Lord is their true redeemer.

These are children of woe, and we're in that section right now, looking at how much woe is upon these children. And so, we might think, well, what hope is there? And they've been described as rebellious children, and yet two very clear visions of hope at the beginning of chapter 2, and all of chapter 4, show that God has plans in the new covenant for a new Jerusalem, and a new people, and blessings in the Messiah.

But now we come to chapter 5, which is just about as stark as chapter 1, in talking about how bad things are in Judah and Jerusalem. We move from the metaphor of rebellious children to a rotten vineyard.

So, Isaiah begins with this singing parable, where he says, let me sing to you a song of my well-beloved. Now, he has a vineyard, and how he planted it on a very fruitful hill, and he dug it up, he built a wall, he built a tower, he put his wine press there, did everything just right, and put the best kind of grape vines there, and all it brought forth was wild, sour, awful grapes.

And Isaiah says, so, sour grapes, why did it turn out that way? As he addresses the men of Judah, as he addresses the people of Judah, you are the sour grapes. God did everything right, why is everything so wrong?

And in chapter 5, verses 8 through 23, there's a series of seven woes, wherein God declares doom upon the people of Judah, centered there in the city of Jerusalem. And every woe is particular to some kind of covenant breaking on the part of Judah.

Remember, the eight woes that Christ levels at the Pharisees in Matthew 23. Isaiah levels seven woes at the people of Judah, there in Jerusalem, here in Isaiah 5. And we're going to look at the last set of woes in verses 20 through 23, and then also, if we have time, begin looking at the character of what this woe entails.

When God says woe, what does he mean? Well, there's going to be all manner of judgment inherent to this doom, and he explains that in verses 13 through 17. So, let's look and begin reading in verse 13 of Isaiah 5.

Therefore my people have gone into captivity because they have no knowledge. Their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore Sheol has enlarged itself and opened its mouth beyond measure.

Their glory and their multitude and their pomp, and he who is jubilant shall descend into it. People shall be brought down, each man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.

Then the lambs shall feed in their pasture, and in the waste places of the fat ones strangers shall eat. Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity and sin as if with a cart rope that say, let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come that we may know it.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.

Woe to men mighty at drinking wine. Woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink, who justify the wicked for a bribe and take away justice from the righteous man. Well, that's a lot of woes. So we've seen woe to the property stealers in verses 8 through 10, remembering that those who are part of the old covenant weren't supposed to grab property from other families and other tribes and hold it in perpetuity, but they were all to be co-heirs in that inheritance, and they weren't to move those ancient landmarks that their fathers had set down.

They were to return that land every year of jubilee, and they were not to retain slaves in perpetuity, but they were to go back to their homes and households every seven years. And there was a sense in which everybody who was a part of God's people were to have a full share in the inheritance that he promised them, and that's why they had several different laws in place to emphasize that.

A full co-inheritance, God's blessing to the people of Israel. If you're in Israel, you get a full share of the inheritance, and we talked about how the New Testament fulfillment of that shadow is that if you're in Christ, you are co-heirs, you get a full inheritance.

So there is a woe to the property stealers, a woe to the pleasure seekers. They put their personal preferences and pleasure first and foremost. Woe to the pretentious in verses 18 and 19. They say, well, where is God?

He's not keeping up his end of the bargain. When he shows up and does what he promises to do, maybe then I'll get around to doing what I'm supposed to do. That's that high-handed, arrogant sin. And now we're to verse 20, where Isaiah declares woe upon the perverts.

Now when you think of perverts, most people go immediately to sexual immorality, but let me show you where it starts. Look at there, verse 20. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

The woe is upon the people. Do you notice this is the woe upon those? It's not a woe upon the thing they do, which of course is wrong and bad. It's a woe upon those. Something that the Bible does that we are sometimes instructed not to do in our sensible, modern, effeminate society, is the Bible calls sinners, sinners, right?

It doesn't say people who lie, it says liars, right? It doesn't say people who murder, it says murderers. Isn't that interesting? And yet when we come to Christ, all of that is put in the rearview mirror, such were some of you, you were once known as these sinners.

That was your identity. You identified as these sins, but now in Christ, in his name, you're justified, you're sanctified, you have his name, right? New identity in Christ. Well, these folks are perverts.

Meaning what? They twist, they call evil good and good evil. They put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. So if there's anything that's objectively good and true and beautiful in God's creation, they call it bad and false and ugly.

And they take what is objectively bad and false and ugly in God's good creation, and they call that the good and the true and the beautiful. Have you noticed that? Have you observed that? Maybe you've had someone try to convince you of that.

But it is not a problem unique to our time. This is part of that sinful condition of man that is showing up throughout all time since Adam. And they had the same problem here in, of all places, Jerusalem and Judah among the covenant people of God in the Old Testament.

They were calling good bad, and they were calling bad good. This is a very sad stage of moral degradation when public morality and private morality are all twisted up. The public morality you see is there in the darkness and light, that which is obvious to all.

Earlier when I flipped the lights, everybody could see dark and light. Like, oh, it catches everyone's attention. But if you put something in your mouth, only you know whether it was sweet or bitter. You see where Isaiah is using his metaphors.

So they're saying that publicly, yes, but also privately. So from the outward and the inward, they're twisting up all of the standards of good and bad, of right and wrong, and so on. So how is this actually working?

Notice the scale upon which they're traveling. Having made personal profit and personal pleasure the main principle in their life, it really is not a surprise that these covenant transgressors also pervert the entire moral framework of their society and their selves.

They've already said, hey, where's God? I don't see him around. I don't see him doing anything for me. So in presuming God's absence, they nominate themselves to fill the role. If the arbiter of good and evil is absent in their minds, well, then I guess it's up to me.

That's a very grave error. Proverbs 17, 15 says, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. And likewise, those who use God's name to do so.

And this is something that I think feels very surprising and jarring, but it's not something that is new. Again, we have the examples in the scripture, the human experience that we see in the scriptures, that people will use God's name to try to justify this move, this kind of perversion.

For example, in Malachi 2, verse 17, the prophet says, you have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, in what way have we wearied him? In that you say, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them.

Or where is the God of justice? So perverting morality in this way, as C .S. Lewis would put it, puts God in the dock. We're going to judge God. We're going to put God on trial and we're going to determine whether or not God's declaration of good is really good.

If his declaration of bad is really bad. And it may be worse than that. It may just be demoting him to the bailiff. But the next woe exposes what kind of people play these kinds of games. And there's a woe to the proud in verse 21.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. Now, you would have to be that if you're going to be calling good evil and evil good. If you're going to be calling the bitter sweet and the sweet bitter, you would have to be that you are wise in your own eyes and prudent in your own sight.

My dad has a funny sign on his wall and it's completely tongue-in-cheek. But it says, of course I talk to myself. I need good advice. You know, but there are some people who keep their own counsel, who isolate themselves from all others, but they only seek their own end.

And so they're going to consult with themselves. You know, self, am I liking this? Am I in agreement with this? And ultimately, I want to affirm myself. And so if myself says this is true and good and beautiful, then it is.

Right? That's being wise in your own eyes. That's being prudent in your own sight. So these two things really are very closely aligned. So the fear of the Lord, we're told, is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge and understanding.

The fear of the Lord, of course, is where we think of God first and we think of him most. We're in orbit around him. In contrast, this mindset is maximum folly. This is maximum ignorance. This is maximum stupidity.

And when we reflect on the call upon the Israelites to keep the covenant in the Old Testament, this is why the wisdom books are so important. We call them the wisdom literature, Proverbs and Job and Ecclesiastes and all these different parts of wisdom we see in the Psalms, even amongst much of the prophets.

Wisdom is a big part of covenant keeping. How do you navigate this interesting, unique situation? How do I be faithful to God in this situation? Here, if you're wise in your own eyes, then you end up being completely against the wisdom of God.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 1 through 9 gives instructions to Israel. There we find the Shema, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, him only shall you serve. This basic confession of the covenant people of God was to be taught to their children and to their children's children.

They were to think about the law of God and the word of God when they got up, when they lay down, when they went out, when they came back in. The word of God was to be on their foreheads and their hands.

No matter where they looked, they thought about things according to God's word. Whatever they did, whatever they grabbed hold of, whatever work they did, it was to be in agreement with the word of God.

That's a very practical way to think about the fear of the Lord. When you read a chapter like Proverbs 3, read Proverbs 3 not simply in the application mode of parents instructing children to have profitable lives and good lives, fear God first.

When you read Proverbs 3 verses 1 through 12, remember that this is written as a father to his son in the context of the old covenant. Everything that was riding on being covenantally faithful. That's an important bit of the context to think about when you're reading that.

What happens when you're in your own eyes? What happens when you do not commit your way into the Lord? What happens when you don't trust in Him in all your ways? What happens? All sorts of disaster and disaster that doesn't just include you, but if you're a member of the old covenant and you break the covenant, that transgression is imputed to everybody else and they begin suffering consequences because of your unfaithfulness.

Remember in the old covenant, the fathers ate sour grapes and the children's teeth were set on edge. I will visit the iniquity upon the third and fourth generation. That's how it worked in the old covenant.

Very explicitly, not how it works in the new covenant because Jesus Christ was born our curse. So keep that in mind when we think about this woe upon the perverts and woe upon the proud. And then a way that it all kind of gets summed up in verses 22 and 23 are the are the princes.

Woe to the men mighty at drinking wine. Woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink who justify the wicked for a bribe and take away justice from the righteous man. So this is kind of the summary of all the other woes.

So they have a great deal of influence these are these are mighty valiant men in a position to twist justice. So they have a great deal of influence. They've got money and land. These are the princes and we've already seen them before in Isaiah 1 and 3.

They get a lot of focus and attention because they bear a lot of responsibility. And all this money and land reminds us of woe number one. They're all about getting drunk, which is woe number two. They appear to work very hard at sinning well.

That's number three. They call good evil and evil good, which is woe number four. I think we can imply that they are very prideful, which is woe five. So this is a this is kind of a culmination of all the woes in this group right here.

And in this, Isaiah is preaching to a large audience, but he reserves his finger pointing for the princes. Certainly he wants the the regular member of Judah, the regular citizen of Jerusalem, to hear what he's saying and to repent and and to do the right thing.

But as Isaiah is preaching, he's pointing the finger at the princes. Notice I'm not pointing a finger at any of you. I got to be careful doing that. You're not supposed to point, you're supposed to gesture with an open hand.

But anyway, I have no idea how the prophets actually did it. But certainly he's highlighting the responsibility of this group. The prince or the ruler or the king, the governor, the man responsible for other men, this is the one who is brought before God with higher accountability.

Because what he does has an amplified effect on all of the covenant members. Remember how David sinned and the whole city and the whole nation come under judgment. The one who has this higher responsibility and accountability, everybody is affected more greatly by what happens with him.

And so here in Isaiah, the squire, if you will, the prince, the lord, the governor, is addressed at the first and at the last. And of all the grapes that were sour, none were so rotten as these, is Isaiah's point.

So when we think about these woes, we are reminded of some things that are basic. They're not unique, shall we say, to the life of Israel in covenant with God. Because again, remember that the covenant that God made is in the shape of creation and is the shadow of Christ.

It's addressing the ruin of creation and sin while anticipating the reign of Christ in salvation. So what we're looking at here is an issue that affects all of us, not just old covenant members in Jerusalem.

This issue of redefining good and evil, that's a huge issue. That's a big problem. It began in Genesis 3. Where the temptation was, you know, why don't you define the knowledge of good and evil for yourself?

Why don't you get to say what is good? Why don't you get to say what is evil? In this way, you'll be truly like God because God is the arbiter of good and evil. Don't you want to be like God? Then you be the arbiter for good and evil yourself too.

And that was in this original temptation and original sin. We also see the degradation of this evil in Romans chapter 1 verses 18 through 32, where the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

Because what may be known of God is manifest to them. God has shown it to them. So God doesn't believe in atheists. Everybody knows God, but they suppress it somehow in unrighteousness. But as you see the degradation of man throughout that passage, their idolatry, which seems to make them wise, but actually makes them fools.

Their idolatry keeps on degrading themselves to the very end, where all manner of evil and wickedness is done. And even though they know that those practicing these things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but approve of those who practice them, meaning they have parades.

Parades celebrating sin is not unique to our time. There have always been parades celebrating sin. But this is a reminder that this is what happens when people call good evil and good good. Remember the temptation in Genesis 3?

Again, when Eve saw that the fruit was attractive to the eyes, it was good in the eyes, desirable to make one wise. In what way? Wise in your own eyes. I'll be wise on my own, without God. That was the temptation.

That's the problem being addressed here in Isaiah. You're trying to be wise, you're being wise in your own eyes. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes. And then we have the extra focus on the the prince or the leader.

And this is a good reminder that when we think about the way in which things worked in the Old Covenant, we see maybe a handful of leaders, sometimes just one king, do something, and then the whole nation is impacted catastrophically.

Ever take some time and wonder about that a little bit? Like, that doesn't seem right. That doesn't seem fair. Even the story of Ahab, where Ahab did so many evil things, and everyone got affected. Or Manasseh, who reigned for 52 years and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood from one gate to the next.

And even though good King Josiah came after him and was a more faithful king than even David was, God said, I'm still going to punish the people because of Manasseh. Right? Josiah's faithfulness could not stem the tide of the judgment that was owed to the people because of Manasseh generations later.

Like, man, what's that all about? Again, it's addressing the ruin of creation. It has the shape of creation these covenants do. And they're looking back and saying, you know, because of what Adam did, what happened to all of creation?

What happened to all of mankind because of what Adam did? Right? What's the explanation for why there's sin in the world? What happened in the garden? How does Paul put it in Romans 5? Right? What does God have to say about the condition of the heart of man in Genesis 6 and Genesis 8 after Adam?

Before Adam's sin, it was very good. After Adam's sin, it was every intent of the thought was only evil continually. So, when we're looking at how one man impacts catastrophically at times the whole of the nation and the Old Covenant, we are reminded of Adam's significant role.

And so, the chief servants in the Old Covenant are Adam in a formula, Adam formulaic Adam. Here's the formula of Adam again. Here's the formula of Adam again, until we come to the fulfillment of Adam in Jesus Christ, wherein his righteousness stands in for all of us.

He's the last Adam. He's the last Adam. He's the faithful one. His righteousness counts for us. If we're in Christ, not only do we have the full inheritance, we have the full standing of righteousness before God.

So, we should not be wise in our own eyes. We should look to Christ as our shepherd. He's the one in whom all the wisdom of God is treasured and stored up. By looking to him and being focused on him, we'll be led into all wisdom and into all good.

If we want to know what right from wrong, true from false, we'd look to where the glory of God is revealed most brightly. That is in Jesus Christ, as we read all the scriptures with unveiled face. And when we think of how good of a leader Jesus Christ is, we're reminded of the prophecy of Jacob concerning his son and his son Judah.

Judah's descendant Shiloh, the man of peace, the one to whom it all belongs, Messiah. Shiloh alone, Shiloh alone holds his wine. Noah couldn't hold his wine. Shiloh does. Noah may have been king of the earth, but it was just getting refreshed and restarted.

Shiloh is king, owns everything, and it's all in abundance. We think about how glorious our king is. He's always just, and he's always invariably gracious. It's a joy to serve him. His commandments are not burdensome.

His calling upon us isn't burdensome and tiresome and illegitimate. He's so worthy of our loyalty and our service, so we can rejoice in that. All right, well let's turn our attention to a prayer request.

I've asked Dwight to lead us in this portion.