The Pleasant Vineyard

Amen. Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 71. We'll be looking at Isaiah 71 today.

I'd like to talk to you today about the deep, deep love of Jesus. Please stand when you have

Isaiah 27. We'll begin reading in verse 2. Isaiah 27, beginning in verse 2.

In that day, a pleasant vineyard, sing of it. I, the Lord, am its keeper.

Every moment, I water it, lest anyone punish it. I keep it night and day. I have no wrath.

Would that I had thorns and briars to battle. I would march against them. I would burn them up together, or let them lay hold of my protection.

Let them make peace with me. Let them make peace with me. In days to come,

Jacob shall take root. Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots to fill the whole world with fruit.

These are the words of the Lord. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless our time this afternoon in prayer and hearing what your word says about the deep love of Christ.

In Jesus' name, amen. So we've been in Isaiah, and particularly in this section from 24 through 27, it's talking about all these apocalyptic things that will happen to the world, describing what

God will accomplish in the earth. And there have been many statements of judgment, and here we have a surprising statement of God's love for his people.

And so as we look at this, we should consider in what sense it is that God loves us, how deeply he loves us.

It is not a mere toleration. I think that's how a lot of people think of God's love. Because Christ died for them, because they have been forgiven, no longer

God has wrath, but it's kind of the end of it. His love is a lack of being angry.

But no, Christ has a deep, deep love for his people. And there's a lot of things in this passage that really clue us in on how profound and deep that love is.

So let us consider this passage. It begins, speaking in that day, in that day.

What day is this? Well, that is a phrase that has been used frequently throughout this whole section from beginning in 24, speaking of in that day.

And so just to look at the most recent in that day that we've seen, consider verse 1.

In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent,

Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. Leviathan being a sea monster,

God describing being defeated by his great and strong and mighty sword. And what is that sword other than the word of the

Lord and Jesus Christ wielding that word? And we see this judgment in Revelation 19.

That's what many people think of when they think of this. They think of that final destruction of Satan.

And no doubt this does refer to this final destruction of Satan. However, when was Satan defeated?

He was defeated already in the ministry of Christ at his first coming.

So as I've been consistently interpreting the phrase in that day throughout this whole section,

I believe this primarily refers to Christ's first coming and then additionally refers to his second coming.

This is something that has already been accomplished but yet has to be fully manifested.

Satan has already been defeated and yet he still roams, yet he still is like a roaring lion.

And so that defeat of him has yet to be fully manifested. So I think we're right to see applications here both for our time and also something to anticipate that hasn't yet been accomplished.

I believe both of those are appropriate for us as we see that this love that is singing of is not just a love that we will have in the future.

It is a love that God's people have now. Although we don't always fully experience that love, that love isn't always fully manifested to us.

It will be on that great day. However, we can know about it, we can read about it and as we have a greater understanding, as we have a greater fellowship with Christ and walk with him, we can experience that love of his more and more.

This is not something that's just for then, it is something that is for us now and to grow in until it is fully manifested on that last day.

And he begins, a pleasant vineyard, sing of it. Now, what is this vineyard?

What is the vineyard? There is a very simple interpretation for us in verse six.

In days to come, Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit.

This is speaking of Jacob. Jacob being another name for Israel, the people of God and we've seen elsewhere in Isaiah that vineyards have represented

God's people. In the New Testament, Jesus occasionally speaks of vineyards as referring to God's people and even that he is the vine and we are the branches.

This is a frequent theme throughout scripture, a frequent motif to describe God's people, that we are a vineyard.

Now, as it speaks of Israel, a lot of people would think that it only speaks of Israel, however, it speaks of all of God's people.

It speaks of God's church. In the New Testament, we have the phrase in Galatians, the

Israel of God. The church is the Israel of God. God's people are more than just the physical nation of Israel, it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham, as it says in Galatians 3, 7.

If you believe in Jesus Christ, you are a son of Abraham, you are a branch in that vine, you are a part of the vineyard.

So this is a passage for us as a church. Sings a pleasant vineyard, sing of it.

Now, it is not absolutely clear whether or not this is a command to the people of God to sing of the vineyard or if it is

Isaiah heralding the fact that God will be singing of his vineyard, but as we see in the next few verses, who is it that sings of the vineyard?

Who is it that sings a song? It is God Almighty who is singing this song to the vineyard.

And if you remember in chapter 26, just to kind of give you a feel of the flow of what's going on here, there was another song.

In that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. He sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks, open the gates, et cetera.

And now we have another song. In that day, a pleasant vineyard, sing of it. And God sings of his vineyard.

God sings of his people. This is really quite a wonderful thing. You know,

God, it's very surprising to think of the ways that God has desired to be worshiped, that God desires people to engage with the faith.

Prayer is an element of natural worship. That means that apart from God commanding it, it would still be right for us to call out to him and pray.

However, all the other elements of worship, all the other ways that we worship God are not things natural, not things just embedded in creation.

They are things where God has to tell us how to do it. And they're surprising. I still find it surprising that God chose the preaching of his word to be the means that it goes forward.

Why did he not just ordain the Bible itself, right? Why is that not the main way that the

Bible goes forward? Why is it not the written word that is inerrant? Why did he choose fallible men to explain it as being the primary way that it goes forward?

That is quite profound. In addition, he didn't just tell us to confess the truth of scripture.

He told us to sing the truths of scripture. That's also something really wonderful that God has designed creation in such a way that music is something that we can appreciate.

It really is wonderful that music can be appreciated. I've always wondered to what degree can animals appreciate music.

I'm sure they can in some sense, but it is really a wonderful thing that God made us this way and gave it to us to be a means that we worship him by in singing.

And so we should sing to the Lord. However, what's really profound about this passage, so as we see in the next few verses, it is

God that sings. Now, we sing hymns to God.

We have many hymns, we have a whole hymnal right here. We sing to God. Have you ever thought about the fact that God sings to us?

Now, that's pretty bizarre. You know, it is the creature that worships the creator. You know, when we sing to God, we are worshiping him, but yet he sings to us.

Now, we know that the creator does not worship the creature, and yet the

Bible speaks of God singing to his people, that it's not just us who sing to him, but he sings to us.

You know, God is a great God, and Jesus Christ is a perfect lover of his bride.

If you think about the relationship between a groom and a bride, often song is involved.

The groom writing poetry for his bride and singing to her, and that's what you have in the

Song of Solomon is a picture of that, and here you have that here, this picture of God singing to his vineyard.

You know, Christ sings a song for us here. That's a picture of God's love.

Picture of his love is one of a groom singing for a bride, this man singing for his vineyard.

And it says, additionally, I, the Lord, am its keeper. Every moment, I water it, lest anyone punish it.

So God, out of a love for his vineyard, protects it, he waters it, he nurtures it, he grows it.

You know, the church is subject to all kinds of assaults, all kinds of threats, false doctrine, wicked rulers that would seek to suppress the worship of God.

All kinds of threats are against the church, Satan himself, temptations, and yet God protects us.

We have no idea how often we have been protected by God. We have no idea how often he has, we have been directly in harm's way, and he has freed us from it, apart from us doing anything.

When we pray to him, we should pray not just thanksgiving for the prayers he's answered for, but the things we haven't prayed for that he's answered as well, because there are just so many, so many that we can't even be aware of them all.

I keep it night and day. Now, if you've been following along in Isaiah very carefully, or if you've familiarized yourself with Isaiah before, this might be a very surprising passage, because there's a song earlier in the book that says almost the exact opposite.

Please turn back to Isaiah 5, and I wanna show you the first song that's written to God's vineyard.

And this is interesting, this is a song written to the beloved, to Christ, concerning his vineyard.

So this is not a song to the vineyard, although the vineyard is addressed, but it's a song about the vineyard. Let me sing for my beloved, 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. He built, and hewed out a wine vat in it.

Excuse me, I think I missed, 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 has 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?

And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down.

I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up.

I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the

Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looks for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, an outcry.

You know, these phrases that are used are many of the same phrase. It talks about briars and thorns. It talks about God no longer keeping it, but having kept it, giving it over because the people had sinned against him.

Isaiah 5 describes the disobedience of the nation of Israel and how God has given them over to punishment.

And yet in Isaiah 27, it's prophesying a restoration of the people. And consider the context of Isaiah 24 to 27.

The people are eventually going to head off to Babylon. That's what we see at the end of Isaiah 39, that there's this prophecy that they will go off to Babylon.

But yet, there is anticipation of God eventually restoring the people from all these punishments that are coming upon it.

And when does that happen? It happens in that day. God's people are restored in that day when

Christ comes, dies on the cross, bearing the punishment for his people, buried and resurrected on the third day.

This is his great love for us. Greater love has no man for us, or greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend.

And so he keeps his garden night and day constantly. It's something he's constantly doing.

And this explains why it is that he can sing this song about this vineyard who has otherwise been so rebellious.

It is his work. He is the one who has restored it. He is the one who has put labor into this vineyard so that it no longer yields wild grapes, but instead, in building up his church and making a people for himself and restoring this people and fulfilling all these promises in the church, he has made this new people where that is his work, that is his building.

And so what he's praising is something that he himself has invested into. And we ought to consider that when we consider

God's love for us and we consider our own view of ourselves, because so often, Christians who rightly understand sin but do not rightly understand

God's love end up beating up themselves and not finding the forgiveness that is theirs because they do not realize what

Christ has done in them. Christ has done a wonderful work.

And so the one who does not recognize that forgiveness that he has received by trusting in Christ, who is he insulting?

He's not insulting himself for being so wicked and rebellious.

Ultimately, he is insulting Christ, the one who has done this work of restoration that he's refusing to appreciate.

If Christ is singing a song for his lovely vineyard and you go and you sing a song about how awful the vineyard is, you are besmirching the name of Christ's bride.

There's something wonderful that Christ has done in you if you have trusted in him. He has restored the vineyard.

So yes, recognize your sin, yes, be contrite and recognize how evil it is, but know how much worth you have in Jesus Christ and that he sings songs to you and that we should not sing a song contrary to that.

And also consider this when we think about the church at large, you know, sometimes it's appropriate in some degree or another, but I do not like hearing people bash

Christ's bride. So many people talk about the church today doesn't do this, the church today doesn't do that. There's a place for appropriately saying that, but for making criticisms of the church.

But when we are talking about Christ's true bride and not just talking about like church culture or things like that, we must make sure that we are not speaking evil of what

God is building, of what Christ is building. We must be careful about the way we even speak of the church at large when we're talking about the true church.

He continues on, I have no wrath. That's a surprising understatement here.

Would that I had thorns and briars to battle, I would march against them, I would burn them up together.

This is describing his zeal. He wants to display his love. It's not just a mere toleration of his people.

He hasn't decided, well, I'll forgive them and I'll tolerate them now. It is a love that he wants to display.

In fact, why is it that we live in this wild world that we do with all the difficulties that exist?

It's so that God can time after time again display his love to us. He has ordained all things, including the fall.

Why would he allow sin to come into the world if he is truly all powerful and sovereign over all things?

I believe the answer's quite simple. There's no doubt much more to it than this, but the answer is he wants to display his love for his people by showing us the mercy of him in Jesus Christ on the cross.

That wouldn't be there without the fall. God desires to have things to battle against to show his love for his people.

Some of the greatest love stories involve battles. Now, I don't know the details about Helen of Troy, but I know that that involved a battle over love and zeal and things like that.

This is of proportional scale, much greater, that he wishes to defeat enemies to show his love, and that is what he does and what he will do.

We saw in verse one, defeating Leviathan to show his love for his people, not just because he's angry at Leviathan, not just because he's angry at Satan, but to demonstrate his love for his people.

I don't know if any of you have ever dealt with briars and thorns, but they are quite annoying. I moved around a lot as a kid, and many of the properties

I was on had large briar patches. One of them had probably at least a quarter acre, if not more than that, of briars.

And I remember trying to help my dad get rid of these things. And if you're being aggressive about it, not being dainty, you get torn up by these things.

Even if you've got leather gloves on, you're pulling things. And just me as a kid, just moving the things that he was clipping away,

I got cut up quite a bit. This is describing willing to go to the, willing to shed blood, willing to shed blood to demonstrate his love.

Christ bearing a crown of thorns, demonstrating his love to his people. And if you think of other illustrations of such battling in the

Bible to demonstrate love, think about David, the ancestor of Christ, who, out of a love for his first bride, engaged in such battles.

He was challenged to defeat 100 Philistines. And what did he do?

He went above and beyond to defeat 200. That is a demonstration of David's love for his bride.

This is a demonstration of Christ's love for his church. He desires to engage in great warfare to demonstrate his love for you, for you, whom he has died for.

If you have trusted in him, this is for you. Or let them lay hold of my protection.

Let them make peace with me. Let them make peace with me. Now this is surprising too.

Every line of this is surprising. Let them make peace with me. So now he's saying that while he desires to defeat the briars, he also wishes to make peace with the briars, that there is still a hope for the nations.

This is a prophecy that the gospel's going to go out to the Gentiles, that not only does God desire to defeat the enemies of Israel, but he also desires that any of those who will lay hold of his strength, he wishes to welcome in.

He wishes to welcome them in. This is how kings often show their greatness. They make truces with other nations that they could simply destroy to just show their benevolence, to show how great their kingdom is, that they can welcome them into the kingdom, annex them, and increase that kingdom.

And this is what Christ has done. Not only does he defeat the enemies for God's people, but he even subdues some of them to make them part of his people.

And this is a love that should inspire us as well. It should give us a great zeal that we go and we share that love with our neighbor, with those of all the earth, all the world, to let them know of this love of Christ.

You know, they are briars and thorns out there. They will be burned up and destroyed apart from taking hold of the strength of God.

So we should tell them of that love of Christ and let them know that they can take hold of that strength of him, take hold of that strength and make peace with him.

You know, consider in your life what that looks like. We have a lot of opportunities here. We have a lot of opportunities at the food pantry, a lot of opportunities to meet people who are in the neighborhood, talk to them, find out what their background is, what their religious upbringing is, whether or not they know of Christ.

There are opportunities we have to go door -to -door and evangelize. Take these opportunities as you have them.

And then, of course, in your own life. Now, thankfully, our church is trying to provide a lot of these opportunities for you.

So take hold of those, but also take hold of the opportunities you have in your own life to share this love.

Because this is the love of Christ, not just that he defeat your enemies. You sit there and you watch him defeat your enemies, then you've only got verse four.

Verse five is important, too. He makes peace with some of those enemies. And then it says in verse six, in days to come,

Jacob shall take root. Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit.

This is a picture we see earlier in Isaiah. Once again, I'd like to read it.

This imagery comes up several times, but at least one of these is Isaiah 11. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, the fear of the

Lord. And skipping down to verse 10, in that day, the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples, of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

So interestingly, who is the root? Who is the root of this vineyard that grows and blossoms and bears fruit?

Isaiah 11 speaks of Jesus Christ as being that root. There's a prophecy of him that will come, and him that will be the one who the spirit rests upon, one who has counsel and might, wisdom and understanding.

Jesus Christ is that root, and from him, everyone who is found in that root will blossom and bear fruit.

So not only is this describing a love song for the vineyard, but Christ, who is above the vineyard, far above the vineyard, comes down and becomes part of the vineyard itself, becomes the root of that vineyard.

You know, I believe there's reason, given what I've just said, to see this as prophesying the incarnation, that not only is this speaking of God's people being firmly established, a sense of having root, but in speaking of the root, the way

Isaiah has already spoken of this root of the people of God, the root of Israel, this is prophesying this incarnation, that Christ becomes one with his people.

And because of that, because of the incarnation, because of his great sacrifice, because of the resurrection,

Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit. And that's what's happening today.

The gospel is going forth, it's bearing fruit. People are coming to Christ. Briars are laying hold of him and making peace with him.

And this is how his love is spreading throughout all the earth. So consider the deep, deep love of Jesus, that he has sung this song for you, that he has protected his people, that he wars against enemies for you.

Have great confidence when you pray to him. Not just that he's begrudgingly answering your prayers, but he desires that you pray large prayers, there be great battles for him to win on your behalf.

Demonstrating his love for you. Have great courage and confidence when you pray, knowing that this is the spirit of Christ, this is his desire.

Not every prayer is answered because not all our prayers are right. Not all our prayers are what is for our best. But in as much as they are,

Christ desires to conquer the greatest of enemies to demonstrate his love. Have great confidence.

Witness this love and know that it is continuing and will be fully manifested on that day. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, amen.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the deep, deep love of Christ.

Pray that you would help us to embrace this truth, that we would not think of his love as a toleration for us, a mere toleration, but that we would understand how deep and how great it is and it would fill our hearts with courage to pray great prayers, with a zeal for bold evangelism.

And Lord, may it give us also a great joy that our lives, as we wait for the return of your son, might be filled with hopeful expectation.