Wednesday, January 22, 2025

The Vineyard Song in Isaiah 5

We're talking about what hope is there for a rotten vineyard. The metaphor here in Isaiah 5 is different than in chapter 1, but it has a similar ring to it. Isaiah chapter 1, it's about children who are so rebellious they don't even remember that they have a father.

And in Isaiah 5, it's about a vineyard so bad you can't find anything worth eating in it. So with these two metaphors, we have the first five chapters of Isaiah bracketed to help us understand the lay of the land to which Isaiah is commissioned in Isaiah 6, which makes the promises of the child in Isaiah 7 through 12 all the more bright and meaningful.

So here in Isaiah 5, it begins with a song. It is a song about a vineyard. Now I promised I was going to sing it a week ago, but my voice was terrible. You may think my voice is still terrible, but it is, I believe, the Lord's will to sometimes we have to endure various trials.

So I'm going to try to sing Isaiah's song here in verses 1 and 2. This will help us review as well. Oh let me sing a song to my well beloved, a song to my beloved and his vineyard. My beloved has a vineyard on a fruitful hill.

He put it on a fruitful hill, a very fruitful hill. Well he dug it up and cleared its stones and planted it with the choices fine. He built a tower in its midst and put his wine press there and put his wine press there.

Now let me sing a song to my well beloved, a song to my beloved and his vineyard. He thought it would bring good grapes, good grapes, good grapes, but it only brought forth wild. It only brought forth wild.

That's the song. The song's been rolling around my head for a few weeks now. Now I can't read the, I can't hear it read or read it without the song going through my head. Isaiah sings a song obviously as a priest.

He would be a trained singer. As a prophet with the Holy Spirit leading him to sing the song to his fellow countrymen. Perhaps it was at a feast day when the vintage was brought in and it was time to think about things pertaining to vineyards and how the Lord is the Lord of the harvest and so on.

But he comes to this point where he tells them, he sings them the song and the song tells a story about how the Lord did everything right. He did everything right. Nobody could have done more for the vineyard than this vineyard owner.

And because there's only wild grapes, there's only terrible grapes, the owner of the vineyard will completely destroy it, burn it. But in the agrarian background, to burn a field or to burn a vineyard is not to say I'm never returning here, but it is to prepare for something new.

It is to prepare for new growth. So when you read Isaiah 5 and you think of a fire, think of it from the perspective of the farmer, the gardener, the one tending the vineyard, the vine dresser, because the fire is, yes, it is an end to something, but it is also getting ready for something else.

The Seven Woes of Isaiah 5

And when we look at verses 8 through 23, that's our next section, we've looked at verses 1 through 7, and Isaiah has clarified the parable that he's saying in verses 1 and 2. He said who all the folks are.

He said the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel, the tribes of Israel, the people of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant that only bring forth wild grapes and the Lord judges them.

And then we have a series of seven woes in verses 8 through 23. And you see them there. Verse 8, woe to those who join house to house. We have verse 11, woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may chase intoxicating drink.

And then you have the first two woes and then a description of what the woes are all about, what's entailed in all of the woes in verses 13 through 17. And then back to the woes in verse 18, woe to those who drink iniquity with cords of vanity.

Verse 20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. That's a famous one. Verse 21, woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, prudent in their own sight. Verse 22, woe to men mighty at drinking wine, woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink.

So we just have, in a short amount of space, a litany of woes, an identifier of the transgressions against the covenant that are important to God, and then also a description of the terror that he's going to bring against them, especially there in the middle section of this passage where he describes what's going to happen.

What Woe Means in Scripture

But given all of that, it would help us to know what woe means. And so tonight, just looking at the term, the term woe. I think it's challenging sometimes to read the scriptures, especially portions that are so filled with judgments and condemnations.

I remember preaching through Jeremiah and Micah and Nahum, and sometimes, you know, from week to week, oh, here's another declaration of judgment. And we're going to get some of that in Isaiah, for sure.

Passage after passage, judgment laid upon judgment. You know, there just seems to be a whole lot of that kind of content in the scriptures. Now, what good are these passages? How are they profitable? All scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction.

So how are these profitable to us? Well, part of it is that we need to understand the term woe, the intention of it, the purpose of it. The term woe, of course, is an interjection. It's one that it means what it sounds.

It's onomatopoetic. It means what it sounds. In the Hebrew, it sounds like hoy, from which we get the Yiddish oy vey, which means woe is me. Right? Woe is me. Oy vey. Hoy. That is what it sounds like in the Hebrew.

It's translated in the scriptures as ah, A-H, alas, ha, ho, or oh. All these different sounds in English, but it's the same thing every time in the Hebrew. And even though it has different sounds when we translate it, the word always has the same room silencing effect.

What is the purpose of the word? This word hoy is the verbal slap to the comatose soul. It's meant to wake somebody up. It comes into play in the prophecies when it's time to wake somebody up. When this word occurs, it's designed to get your attention.

It's what happens when you're driving in the car and you get distracted and you're paying attention to something over here and the person riding next to you, in fear for their life, yells. They've got your attention and your eyes go to where they're supposed to be.

Adrenaline's pumping. That's what this word is meant to do. It's meant to swivel heads, cause the conversations to falter. When this word sounds out in the middle of the room, cell phones start recording.

Let's watch what happens. Now, this is not the first time this word has shown up in Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 1, we have it in verse 4 and verse 24. Now, it's not translated the same way, but it's there.

Isaiah chapter 1 verse 4, it's translated, alas, alas, sinful nation of people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel.

They have turned away backward. So, verse 4, alas, chapter 5, verse 8, and following, woe. Same Hebrew word. Verse 24 of Isaiah chapter 1, we find the word again. Therefore, the Lord says, the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, ah, there it is, ah, I will rid myself of my adversaries and take vengeance on my enemies.

And in this context, the word shows up and it serves a dual purpose. It's all at once lament and threat. Alas is a lament and a threat. God is lamenting, but he's also threatening. When he says, ah, and he gives over his, ah, his enemies, which are his people to their adversaries, it is a relief that he finally may expend his wrath.

And so it's relief and wrath at the same time. The righteous emotional release of the Holy God in response to his covenant breaking people expressed as hoy in the Hebrew. And so the term is the, is both harbinger, something's coming, and it's undertaker.

It's as good as done. It, ah, it functions as both the scout and the scavenger in battle. You could call, woe, the alpha and omega of doom. When you find it in the scriptures, don't rush past it. It is a very serious word.

It is meant to, to, to drive away all the distractions, the things of lesser importance to get our attention. Now, what business does a word like woe have doing in the Bible? Ah, if we value scripture according to the moral framework of our own age, and we wouldn't give quarter to woe upon encounter, still less will we ever surrender to the word when we find it.

Our culture's moral framework is conceived in therapeutic terms. The cardinal sin of our age is calling sin, sin. Everything has to be couched in pathologies. We're not sinners. We're just sick. How many times does the sin occur on a daily basis, and we label it with some sort of therapeutic term, rather than calling it what the Bible calls it?

And yelling, woe, or even, woe, to a sick man doesn't make any sense to our culture. But yelling, woe, or hoi in the Hebrew, or ui in the Greek, they went with the same idea. That's actually a mercy from God.

Christ's Woes Against the Pharisees and the Woe He Bore for Us

Now, there's a sevenfold woe in Isaiah chapter five, but there is an eightfold woe pronounced by Christ in Matthew 23. In Matthew 23, Jesus is addressing, in a sense, the same crowd that Isaiah was. In fact, Jesus connects them intentionally with the same kinds of folks that Isaiah addressed.

Now, how he puts it in Matthew 23, verse 13, he says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Why? Because you keep people from coming into the kingdom. Verse 14, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, why?

Because you devour widows' houses and make yourselves look holy. Verse 15, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, why? Because you travel far and wide to find proselytes and make them twice as hell as you ever were.

Woe to you, he says, blind guides who use religious language to make yourselves look good, but you're full of profanity. Verse 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, why? Because you're tithing your herbs, but you ignore the weightier matters of the law.

I like his illustration there, blind guide, you strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. And they'd have those little cloths that they would put in their cups, and they'd pour the wine in, and then they would bring the cloth up slowly so that all the gnats would be taken out of the wines that they could drink and be pure and clean.

And Jesus said, you're willing to do that, but you are also willing to swallow a camel. You know how many gnats are on a camel? I think it's one of his funniest pictures. And so he just, woe, woe, woe.

Now, after this fullness of woe, he says, in verse 31, you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Okay, so fill up then the measure of your father's guilt.

And he promises them that the judgment of God will come upon their generation. And then what kind of judgment is that? He says it in verse 37, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. What is Isaiah doing but saying, woe, and woe upon Jerusalem?

What is Jesus doing but saying, woe, woe upon Jerusalem? Why? Because the fundamental issues have remained the same from the days of Isaiah to the day of Jesus is that these members of the old covenant are still unfaithful.

The basic issue has not been resolved. When the term woe is being used by Isaiah and by Christ, when the word woe shows up, the term assumes that there is a holy God whose authority and righteousness stand in objective opposition to the lies and the wickedness and the sins of his rebellious creatures.

And not only that there's a holy God who stands in opposition to sinful creatures, but that God mercifully deigns to say something at all. He doesn't have to say anything at all. He's well within his rights to say nothing and judge, but he says something.

That there would be a warning and such a warning, this warning expresses the inherent care and concern that God has for his own glory and the good for his own creation. And this is a care and a concern that is worn ragged by all of our betrayals committed against God.

And this is the power of the term woe when it's used by the prophets to speak of God's perspective on the sins of his creatures and those with whom he is in covenant. So as an interjection, it is supposed to grab our attention to lay hold of our hearts.

The Woe of Adam's Fall and the Curse-Bearing of Christ

Now the consternation of the covenants, how there's always these problems with Israel or problems with the lineage of David, the Kings and all of this. The consternation of the covenants echo God's confrontation of Adam and Eve in the garden.

Do you remember that when God spoke to Adam, he said, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. You hear that? Surely. That has the same power of woe.

You get the seriousness of, I'm going to get your attention here with a word, you will surely die. It's not just you're going to die, you're going to surely die. It's an interjection, a description, an adverb that is trying to grab Adam's attention.

The woe is inherent in the word. Now, when Eve explains to the serpent what God said, she says, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.

What word is missing? Surely. The woe was not in her heart. The woe wasn't there anymore. In fact, even though Eve had not used the term surely, the serpent took pains to deny it anyway. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

She hadn't even used the term, but he did to make sure that she would agree with him in denying it. And then when God questions Adam and Eve, he asks questions that he already knows the answers to. When he confronts them and he says to Adam, where are you?

He knows where he is, but he's exposing Adam. And when he says to Eve, what is this that you have done? He knows what she has done, but he asks it in order to expose her. You sense the woe upon them in these moments.

Woe belongs in the scriptures is to grab our attention as the creatures of God. The power and the threat of God's woe is enhanced and clarified by his covenant relations with Israel, as we see in Isaiah and we see in Matthew 23.

But the woe upon the creature because of our sin, the woe upon the covenant breakers coalesce in the woe of Christ. For all the woes that we hear from Genesis on, they coalesce and we find none greater than in Matthew 27 verses 45 and 46, where we read now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was a darkness over all the land.

And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now that is the culmination of all woe laid upon Christ in our place and for our sake. Christ bears our sin.

He bears our guilt. He bears our curse. He bears our offense. He bears our penalty. He bears our woe, which of course is after so much woe in the book of Isaiah, when he comes to talk about the better servant, the true servant, he says in Isaiah 53 verse 4, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. So it is indeed the kindness of God that leads us to repentance, and it is well within the kindness of God when he utters his woe.

It is worth remembering his woe, because it is the woe that Christ has borne for us. It is worth meditating on the holiness of God that funds and fuels the power of the woe that we find in scripture, and it's worth telling others of God's kindness in this woe, that they would be well advised to pay attention to.

Pay attention to the road they're on. Are you paying attention to where you're driving? Hey, hoy, pay attention. Woe. And the will of God, having been met and answered by our Savior, I think, quiets our hearts and puts into perspective any temptation that we would ever have to say, woe is me, or woe is they, given what Christ has borne for us.

We don't have to say, woe is me. Next time, we're going to survey the woes in Isaiah 5 and take a look at the transgressions that God deems very important to highlight and bring to the attention of the people of Judah.

For now, we're going to turn our attention to our prayer requests.