This morning comes from the book of Isaiah chapter 5. 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 and hewed out a windad in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, oh inhabitants of Jerusalem and man of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there for me 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. I shall not be pruned or hoed and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they reign no reign 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 looked for justice, but behold bloodshed. The righteousness, but behold an outcry, the word of the Lord. If you have your bibles, you may want to turn to Isaiah 5. We are going to start there and look at that and then switch over to John 15, and look at that a little bit as well. Also, let me just give you a heads up if you are one who takes notes. I will probably be giving most of point 1 before I give you the words to point 1, and most of point 2, maybe half of point 2 before I give you the words to point 2. I don't know. You may be able to guess them. They are not real difficult, but that is how that will go. So when Sir and I were newly wedged, I don't think we have been married much more than a year. We moved to Arizona. One of the things I really like about living in Arizona where the citrus trees, you could go out and pick a fresh orange or grapefruit, lime or lemon, and it is incredible. Eating a fresh orange on the vine or on the tree until the time it is to eat it is just incredible. On the grapefruit, you get a grapefruit in the store. It may be tarter before it sees, pick before it sees and it is stuff and tolerable only if you put enough sugar on it. But in Arizona, when we lived there, you could pick one, and you could just peel it and eat it. It was sweet. It was delicious. I had to learn the hard way that they have what you call ornamental fruit trees. I thought, how cool, orange tree is right in the middle of the boulevard. You know, the pork can grab some fruit and take care of their hunger, it would be great. So I picked one one day and tried it. It was no good for food. It was bad fruit. Isaiah tells a bit of a love song. At least that is what he calls it. It includes fruit this morning and we will look at that. All fruit that looks good isn't necessarily good. Isaiah starts a song. Let me sing of my beloved. My love song concerning his vineyard. It sounds romantic. It sounds like one of those tender love songs, maybe a ballad or something or at least that story aspect is there. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. Sounds good, doesn't it? It starts off nice. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared its stones. That sounds good. That's what a vineyard would do. You know, imagine on this fertile hill he chose the right area so it would get the maximum amount of sunlight and he took out all the rocks and made sure that everything would go well. It sounds great. He dug it and cleared away its stones. He planted it with choice vines. No cheap wine coming out of this vineyard. He's picked the vines. Choice vines. Sounds like a beautiful song so far. A love song. He built a watchtower in the midst of it. He hewed out a wine vat in it. Here's a vineyard, a vine dresser, an owner of the vineyard who plans on staying around. He's faithful. He's committed. He's not just a little shack or something in absentee, but he's there. He's present. It's a beautiful beginning to a wonderful ballot tells it goes on. He looked for it to produce fruit and it's like, oh, here's where the love song gets lovely. Right? It's going to be great. Only it continues, but it yielded wild grapes and you go, oh, this is starting to sound like a country in western song. You know, it's a love spurned song. All of a sudden things don't go so well. And as he continues to sing his song, it's not as good as we would want. He talks about these wild grapes. Wild grapes could be bad fruit or the literal I'm told would be stink fruit is the typical or the right term. It's bad fruit. In the Bible times, you only had two kinds of fruit, you know, good fruit, which was edible, useful, and bad fruit, which was good for nothing, needed to be thrown out. And the prophet Isaiah goes from singing about his beloved, the songs of the song to, it's the voice of the beloved in verses three and following and now owe inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there for me to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I look for it to produce yield grapes, why did it yield bad grapes? And the vineyard owner continues, and now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard, I will remove its edge. And it shall be devoured, I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down, I will make it a waste and it shall not be pruned or hoed and priors and thorns will grow up in it. And I will also command the clouds that they do not rain upon it. And then in the verse seven, the last verse, we've read so far, everything's kind of explained to us when it tells us for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, that's the owner of the vineyard, the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. And the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. He looked for justice but behold bloodshed, for righteousness but behold an outcry and perhaps he's still in song, even though we've gone from the voice of one singing about his beloved, the owner of the vineyard, the vine dresser to the vine dresser himself speaking and in verse seven, a bit of interpretation of the song, it's as though he's still in it though. And I say that because of the words he uses, when he says, I look for justice but behold bloodshed and for righteousness and behold an outcry, there's such, there's such asinance in the words. And he's using a form of speech where there's plays on words, the word for justice mishpoth is there in the word for, let me find it here, bloodshed is the word instead of mishpoth it's just mishpoth and so they sound, there's that asinance they sound similar in the same with justice, Zadika and the outcry, Zadika, it's the very similar sounding words and there's the poetry still going on. And basically he's saying, I'm looking for justice and I'm finding injustice, I'm looking for righteousness, that's the fruit and I'm finding unrighteousness, justice and righteousness are the fruit. And that's kind of what we're supposed to learn from this little song so far. He sings this song and it's the, God is the vine dresser, the owner of the vineyard and he planted a vineyard and it's a beautiful vineyard, it's well situated, everything that could be done has been done, he's built a wall of protection, you know, if we take it out of the metaphor, the vineyard imagery, God saying, I redeemed the people out of Egypt and I brought them into the promised land and they have their temple on Mount Zion and it's like a vineyard in that everything has been taken care of, there's a wall around the vineyard, it's a walled city around Jerusalem, I've cared for my people, I've been there protection, I've watched over them and I expected them to bear good fruit. In fact when I redeemed them and I brought them into this land, before I even brought them in, I spoke to them and I gave them the ten words and I expressed what worship would be like and I taught them what justice is and what righteousness is, I explained it very clearly in the law and I have a right to expect them to produce good fruit and he says they didn't produce good fruit, they produced stink fruit, they produced bad fruit, there was instead of justice and justice or bloodshed instead of righteousness, there was unrighteousness. There is in the continuation of chapter 5, whether he was ever singing or whether we should see it as a song, I don't know, but if it is the song, it would be, I would take it after the little ditty, row, row, row your boat and say it's woe, woe, woe, woe, you loud, that's as close as I can come to the asinance and such, but there are six woes in that passage, E.J. Young in his commentary outlines it this way, these would be the bad fruit, the injustice and unrighteousness, verses eight through ten, a covetous people, verses eleven through seventeen, a debatching people, eighteen to nineteen, an unbelieving people, verse twenty, a truth for perverting people, twenty-one, a people wise in its own eyes and verses twenty-two and three, a justice perverting people, I would say the second half of verse twenty-four kind of sums up what the root of their problem is, I say it tells us for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel, it's in the law that the Lord of hosts has defined what is justice and righteousness, it's in the word of the Holy One of Israel that we have how we ought to live, what good fruit looks like and so I would sum it up in these words, and here's number one, without a heart for God, we will only bear bad fruit, God may have loved and cared for Israel well, but Israel's words and actions showed that she did not have a heart for God, that the root problem was a heart that turned away from God, that disregarded the things of God, that did not love God or seek God or pursue God, without a heart for God you will bear bad fruit, and God is looking for good fruit, he's opposed to bad fruit, he speaks his woes against it, it's an amazing thing how Jesus takes this story and turns it around, he uses the same vineyard issue motif metaphor as he sings a new song from it, in a sense gives us a fuller commentary on it, Jesus has used the vineyard motif before to talk about God and his judgments, there's three other three parables other than even this passage in John 15 where he speaks about God being the vine dresser and Israel being the sheep, there's some similarities in this passage, John 15 to Isaiah 5, God is the vine dresser, slight difference, Isaiah says, calls him my beloved, Jesus calls him my father, both speaking with affection and love and intensity of love there, another similarity is that God is expecting fruit, he is a God looking for fruit, a fruit inspector, but as the vineyard has the owner, the vine dresser, as the owner of the vineyard, he is looking for fruit, that's clear in both passages, the dissimilarities in John's gospel is what strikes me and I say dissimilarities hesitantly because I think it's more fulfillment, he's changed this song for sure and it's certainly more palatable to us, but there's still some similarities, let me just mention one more similarity before we go on to the things that I think are a little bit different and we should pay attention to, one another similarity is the wrath of God, that may be manifest and on the surface easy to see in Isaiah because that seems to be the focus with the woes and I'm going to tear apart my garden and such, but think about what Jesus is saying, 15 verse 2, every branch of mine that does not bear fruit, he takes away, verse 6, if anyone does not abide in me, he has thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gallored and thrown into the fire and burned, these are similar ideas, but here's one of the differences, in Isaiah chapter 7 we are told the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting, Jesus says, I am the true vine, this is stunning, this is stunning, I am the vine, you are the branches, verse 5, I am the vine, you are the branches, there's a big difference so when he says I am the true vine, incredibly significant, what is Jesus saying? Well, he's saying he is the true Israel of God, he is Israel's firstborn, as Israel was called, this is my son, my firstborn, let my people go, Jesus is the Israel of God, that's what he's really claiming to be and this is significant, as the Israel of God, the first thing he's saying is I will take the hit for the people of God, God's wrath on the branches that are not bearing good fruit or that are bearing bad fruit, I'll take the hit, remember the context in which Jesus says, I am the true vine, from John chapter 13 to John chapter 18, we have that period of time where Jesus is having the Lord's supper with his disciples, John 13 it starts with the washing of the disciples feet and they're eating the meal, the end of 13 through 17, we have Jesus teaching his disciples, we have him telling about his death and we see this, for example, John 13, 33 little children, I am with you a little while longer, you will seek me and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you where I'm going, you cannot come, chapter 14, do not let your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me and my father's house, many dwelling places, if it were not so, I would have told you, for now I go to prepare a place for you, do you see he's setting the context for his death, he's been telling him I'm going and now he's setting the context, 14, 18, I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you again, and again in chapter 16, the next chapter from John 15, Jesus knew that they wished to question him and he said to them, are you deliberating together about this, that I said a little while and you will not see me, and again a little while you will see me, truly, truly I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice, you will grieve, but your grief will be turned to joy. So the context of John's gospel where Jesus is saying, I am the true vine, he is explaining how he is going to take the hit, and this is consistent with Isaiah, think about just a few verses from Isaiah, remember if you were here last week, chapter 4, in that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, I am the true vine, I am that branch, I am the one that produces the good fruit. Isaiah 11, 14, as it tells us more about that branch, tells us about the good fruit too, verse 1, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. In Isaiah's gospel if you will, he calls the people of God Jacob and Israel over and over, and he calls Jacob my servant on more than one occasion in his riding, and it is Isaiah who speaks about the suffering servant, the Messiah that he would be the suffering servant, and as the suffering servant, guess what he is called? Jacob, my servant Jacob, he is the Israel of God and Jesus is saying, I am the true vine, I am the Israel of God, I will take the hit for the people of God. That is profound. He is also the Israel of God in that when God looks for good fruit, Jesus produces perfect justice and righteousness. He as the Israel of God produces perfect fruit on our behalf. Listen again to Isaiah, this is just beautiful to me. Isaiah 11, 1 through 4, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Listen to this, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eye see or decide by disputes, but by what his ears hear. That is justice, is it not? He is deciding disputes. Here it is verse 4, but with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth and on it goes. He is the one who produces good fruit, or as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 5, 21, he that is God made him who knew no sin, that would be Jesus, to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. There it is, the Israel of God who takes the hit for the people of God and bearing the sin of the people of God and earns for them the good fruit of justice and righteousness. I should move us to worship brothers and sisters. This is the one who redeems us.
This idea of justice and righteousness, just a word on that, it's so important that we should know what it is from our understanding of what God said in the books of Moses. If you can't think through what justice and righteousness are as it's defined in the law of Moses, I really encourage you to read through those first five books again because the laws, the 10 commandments are a summation of what justice and righteousness are, or the great commands that Jesus pulled out of the law for us, the first being to love the Lord, our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. And the second to love our neighbor, he said on these all the law and the prophets saying, this is justice and righteousness. This shows us what love looks like and Jesus will certainly go into that in John 15. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. There is a consistency there. Talk more about that in a minute. Let me just encourage you to look at and to love our Lord Jesus who is perfectly just and righteous. He never deferred to one who is great or to one who is poor. He with justice and righteousness loved the widow and the orphan and the wealthy. Everyone, he would heal the slave of the Centurion and the daughter of the synagogue and he would heal the widow who had the hemorrhage. He would feed the 5,000 without regard to their wealth. His idea of justice and righteousness or God's idea of justice and righteousness was fully fulfilled in him. He never acted in justly. He never took a bribe. He never deferred because of fear of man, but he always did what was good and right and just. When there was a believer struggling without he would gently chide. When there was a professor acting in self-righteousness and arrogant pride, his rebuke would take on a harshness as he spoke to the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and deride them for their sin. He was always just and righteous and all that he did. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory and praise of God. Well, how does Jesus apply his song to his disciples? Well, I think it can be summed up in this. Abide in Christ and you will bear good fruit. It's really that simple. Abide in Christ and you will bear good fruit. Did you notice how many times the word abide appeared in just those first seven verses? Starting at verse three, you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I and you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me and on it goes abide abide abide abide abide in me. That's the big point. Eleven times in this one chapter, abide is used. It's translated in some of our translations remain. It's the same idea. It would be the word that's used of a sojourner who stops to stay with someone. He would abide with them. He would remain with them. That's really that simple of an idea. I think our call to worship gives us somewhat of an idea of what it means to abide. He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. This is absolutely a matter of faith that's incredibly important because what we have in both Isaiah and in the words of Jesus in John 15 is the fact that you can be in the vineyard. You can be a branch in the vineyard and not be connected to Christ. You can be a member of the church. You can be involved in the ministries of the church. You can think that maybe you are a believer because you are in the vineyard and there's fruit. There's good fruit in the vineyard and you say, I'm saying, but no it's not. It's not you. Do you abide in Christ? Does Christ word abide in you? This is a matter of faith and it's a matter of utter importance because every branch that does not abide in Christ is taken out of the vineyard and burned. Abide in me. Abide in me. Let me give just a very, a very earthy illustration of this. I'll use something that we probably heard before, right? A man's watching TV and his wife comes in to talk to him, right? You know where the illustration is going? You've probably heard it a million times. How's the story go, right? The husband keeps his eyes glued on the TV and the wife says, what's something? It's kind of half listening and all. You know the story, right? Let's work it out. By the way, you can modernize it. It can be the mom coming. It could be the wife coming to her husband who's playing World of War or whatever. One of the video games has changed it as fits you, if you will.
We could say that the husband's abiding in the game and the voice of the wife is calling and he loves the wife, but who's he abiding in? He's not abiding with the wife. He's abiding in the game. Now, if he turns off or if he pushes pause, he's communicating something, isn't it? If the husband pushes pause or mute, if you will, and turns his face away from that little box there and puts his gaze on his wife, well, there's some abiding going on, isn't there? He's giving his wife his attention for a moment, isn't he? He's listening, but he's also given the subtle message, listen, I'm abiding in my game, so get to the point because I want to give back to the aim, right? But if he turns it off, if he gives his attention to his wife, he looks at his wife and says, now what were you saying? He's giving every external evidence that he wants to abide with what his wife is saying, right? Now, if his mind's saying, oh, man, what's going on in the game or so on and so forth, he can be outwardly abiding in one and inwardly not abiding at all. He has to give his heart to his wife. When he does, he's abiding in his wife, isn't he? And as long as he's listening, as long as he's hearing what he says and thinking about it and interacting and responding and saying what he thinks and how he feels and stuff, they are abiding in one another, aren't they? I think there's the picture. How do we come to Christ? How do we abide in Christ? It's not enough to just put the pause button or the mute button on our life and say, okay, God, go ahead, tell me what you want to say as I think about my dance and so on and so forth. We give him our lives, we give him our hearts. We abide in him. We listen to him. We think about what he is saying. We interact with it. When we talk to him and we tell him how we feel about it, whether we like it or not is only a matter of honesty, when we pray about it, but that's prayer, isn't it? It's very easy. In fact, I was tempted to start by saying, look, this is what abiding is. It's spending time with God in word and prayer. And that's absolutely true. Those are the forms of communication where his word is conveyed to us and our words are conveyed to him, but we can do that without abiding. Now, we are not abiding if we're not receiving his word and responding to him. We are not abiding without word and prayer. But unless we give him our heart, we're not abiding. It says we abide in him. That we bear much fruit. He tells us about this. He says, even verse seven, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it shall be done for you. I could do a sermon on prayer just from that and how a heart abiding in Christ, what it asks for and how satisfied it is with what God gives. That's not the time. I could also preach on further down where it says if, verse 10, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandment and abide in his love. He's not telling us you will earn your salvation if you keep my commandments. If you will abide, you will be saved. It's not a works righteousness. It's not a salvation by abiding. It's the exact opposite because I am life for you because I am the true vine because I died for you because of that and you have life now abide. That's how he's speaking to his disciples. There are those who are cut off, but in this particular passage, remember Judas has left. He's one who is an example of one who doesn't abide, who doesn't remain, who goes his own way. As we come to the table of the Lord today, we're mindful
that God planted a vineyard. It's his work. He does all the groundwork. He does all the groundwork,
and we who have been connected to Christ, we merely abide. We merely abide. Let me end with this thought, though. We should love Jesus for what he has done. There's no doubt about it. We should love Jesus because he is the Israel of God. He is glorious and beautiful. He is just and righteous in all his ways. And the more we look at him, the more we see him, the more we should be in love with him because of his own value and worth. And then when you add on to that, that he has redeemed us and we are indebted to him for our very life, all the more we should love him for the rescue and the salvation. I want to encourage that fully, but I also want to encourage that same love, that same reverence, that same sense of holy awe toward the Father because who sent the Son? It was the Father. He can speak in Isaiah of his terrible wrath, the warden justice and unrighteousness, all the unrighteousness of men who suppressed the truth in their unrighteousness. He is angry and hates that and will judge it as the holy and righteous judge, but he is also the one who sent the Son because of his love for you. Dear saints, as we come to this table today, let's come with that holy reverence in awe, that this eternal God who created all things, who is majestic and splendor and holiness, who is consumed with zeal for the holiness of his name,
rescues us by sending his Son, that the cost of our redemption, the cost of true love was great. Let's pray. We come to this table, O Lord Jesus Christ, which you have instituted,
and we are mindful that apart from you, we can do nothing. Apart from you, we have no righteousness, we are holy and completely unworthy even to gather the crumbs from the table. But apart from you, we are only worthy of wrath and judgment. And so, Father, as we come to this, table at your bidding where you promise the forgiveness of sins which you have already purchased,
grant us those that eye of faith to be in your presence, to abide in you, to find security in you and in you alone, to find shelter under your wing, to find our soul's satisfaction in you. Oh, God, work in us even this day to know the height and depth and length and breadth of your love for us and to be filled up with that love so that abiding in Christ we can produce the fruit that is exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think according to your power at work within us. And as we come to the table, let the bread represent your body and the cup your blood, that we may feed upon you by faith with thanksgiving to the nourishment of our souls to pray in Jesus' name. Amen.