This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to the end of our first week of looking at the book of Isaiah, day
five. As we start our look today, I want to ask you a question. What part of the
book of Isaiah would you say, if you're like a Bible scholar, is the best known
in our day?

People that have looked into this, some might say Isaiah 53, which is the
prophecy of Jesus. Some might say, well, maybe it's Isaiah chapter 40, "Rise up
on wings like eagles. " In Jesus' day, the most familiar portion of the book of
Isaiah was probably neither of those.

It was probably these verses we're going to look at today. Isaiah chapter five,
the song of the vineyard. And so although it's a little long, I'd like to read
the first seven verses all together because they give us this song that was so
famous in Jesus' day, so significant in his day, and is so significant for our
lives still today.

Isaiah five, one to seven. I will sing, for the one that I love, a song about
his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.

He dug it up, and he cleared it of stones, and he planted it with the choicest
vines. He built a watchtower in it, and he cut a winepress as well. Then he
looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.

Now, you dwellers in Jerusalem and you people of Judah, judge between me and my
vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for
it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?

Now I will tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I will take away its
hedge, and it will be destroyed. I will break down its wall, and it will be
trampled.

I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briars and thorns
will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it. The vineyard of
the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines
he delighted in.

And he looked for justice, but he saw bloodshed, for righteousness, and he heard
cries of distress. As we've talked about this week, the first half of Isaiah is
about God's vision for change in your life. If you're going to understand God's
vision for change in your life, you have to understand what God thinks about
you.

You have to understand His heart of love towards you. That's what this song is
about, this song of the vineyard. It's a love song.

It's a song about His love for Israel. And as you look at this song, it's a song
about God's plans for this vineyard. God's plans for a pleasing vineyard, a
vineyard that pleases the Master.

God's plans for a producing vineyard that produces much fruit. These are
reflected in our lives too. God plans for us to be a vineyard.

We'll look at some verses at the end of today that Jesus talked about this. God
has plans for your life. He wants you to live a life that's pleasing to the
Master, that is producing God's fruit in your life.

So let's walk through this song together. See the pictures about what God's
plans are for your life. As he begins this song, he sings about a fertile
hillside, and that's a picture of potential.

God pictures potential, fertile. There's potential here. God created us with the
most wonderful potential.

I know you look at a teenager eating Doritos on a couch watching reruns of
Gilligan's Island. You don't think so, but really God created us with this
incredible potential for our lives. And you see it everywhere.

Where do you see this potential? You see it when a mom hugs her new baby. It's
the potential of our ability to love, to give, to sacrifice of ourselves.

You see it when a doctor performs surgery or a craftsman makes fine wood
furniture or a tech genius develops some breakthrough chip. You see it in the
potential that God has given us to work, to make things, to create things. You
see it in great orchestras or great books or great art.

The potential of our creativity. You started to see it in the Garden of Eden
from the very beginning. The potential of being created to rule the world.

Responsible before God to rule this world. Responsible for this world. So God
has created us with this potential.

He created us with incredible potential. And then the second picture is he dug
and he cleaned and he planted. And that's the picture of opportunity.

To this potential is added opportunity. Care and skill are required over a very
long period of time to build up a successful vineyard. And that's what happened
with this vineyard.

It was cared for. It was with skill prepared to produce fruit. And God brings
this picture to mind of the care and skill for preparing a vineyard as he talks
about the way that he tends our lives.

The potential is given opportunity by the way that God tends our lives. The
things that he gives into our lives. So at the beginning God placed Adam and Eve
in a garden of perfection.

Potential and opportunity met. I know they denied their potential. I know they
wasted their opportunity.

But that doesn't change the fact that God placed that opportunity into their
lives. And he's been placing opportunity into our lives ever since. The way he
made you, the energy that he gave you, the abilities, the thoughts that he gives
us.

God digs and he cleans and he plants. But that's not all. For you and I, as we
look back on the cross and the resurrection, that's a place where spiritually
God dug and he cleaned and he planted.

Jesus coming to this earth, dying on a cross, is the way that God offers the
renewed opportunity for faith, for following him, for seeing the full use of our
gifts in our lives. He's built this into our lives. Third picture you see in
this song is he built a watchtower and he built a wine press.

And now we're starting to get down to it. Because this is the picture of
expectation. Why would you build a watchtower?

The watchtower is there to protect the fruit. You don't need a watchtower if
there's no fruit. People don't come and steal vines.

They come and steal the fruit off of the vines. Why would you build a wine
press? To use the fruit to make the wine.

So the watchtower, the wine press said that the grower expected the garden to
produce fruit. How about us? Does God expect anything of us?

Or did he just create us and love us and it's all okay? Certainly he expects us
to follow his plan. He expects us to use the potential that he's given us to
take advantage of the opportunities that he presents us.

And these verses reveal for Israel, but it's also true for us. It disappoints
God. It disappoints God when we don't fulfill the purpose for which we were
created.

And I'm not talking about some schoolmaster disappointment who doesn't love you
or know you. I'm talking about the disappointment of a parent who's hurting for
their child, who could see what they could be, could become, and sees that
they're wasting their life. Deeply and personally, it disappoints God.

The point of the song is that we can disappoint God. And so God has questions
for you. When it comes to change in our lives, he's got honest questions.

He says, judge between me and my vineyard. Two questions, straightforward,
challenging questions. One, what more could I have done?

What more could I have done? This question deals with the blame that often keeps
us from change. The grower did everything that was necessary for producing a
good crop, but there's bad fruit.

What more could have been done? Could the grower be faulted? Can I blame God for
what I'm going through?

The fault was in the vines. What this is saying in all honesty is, God gives us
a vineyard that will bear great fruit. We treat the vineyard in a way that it
bears no fruit, and then we blame God for the lack of fruit.

God says, what more could I have done? What more could God do for us? He created
us in perfection in the beginning.

He placed us in a garden of Eden, and we rejected his love. He didn't have to do
any more than that, but he did. He did.

He flooded the earth because of the evil that we couldn't even imagine that was
on the earth at that time. He could have drowned us all, and yet he saved Noah
and his family. But mankind sank back into sin.

He could have just let us go, but he didn't. He chose a nation to represent him.
The nation of Israel.

But they rejected him. They let their hearts turn cold toward him. That's what
he's talking about in these verses, like a wife cheating on her husband, like a
vineyard that does not produce fruit.

And God could have said, that's it. I gave him every chance. But he didn't stop
there.

He sent his only Son to show us his love, to die on a cruel cross so that we can
live in the light of that love. What more could God do for us? And yet, in spite
of all that God has done, there are hundreds of thousands, there are millions,
who hold God at arm's length waiting for him to do something more, to prove
himself, to prove his love, to prove that he cares.

Make my world perfect. Do a miracle. Show yourself in some spectacular way.

It doesn't get any more perfect or miraculous or spectacular than Jesus Christ.
What more could he do? God says, what more could I do?

Stop the blame and turn to me. His second question is, when I looked for good,
why bad? This question deals with the doubt that often keeps us from change.

When he created us for good, why bad? This is a question that a lot of us feel
that we need to ask ourselves right alongside of God. A lot of people are asking
this question, when God created this world for good, why is there bad in this
world?

And we don't have enough time to deal with it here, but I want to touch on it at
least. And I want to touch on it in a specific way. This is a question that we
love to apply to everyone else and everything else but us.

Why bad there? Why bad there? Why bad there?

Instead of saying, why bad in my life? When the truth is, the only way to find
an answer to this question is by saying that we're a part of the question. Why
does God allow death?

Why is there the threat of war? Why do people attack and mistreat others? You
bring yourself honestly into that question when you're willing to ask, why did I
do exactly the opposite of what God wanted me to do?

Why did I explode in anger? Why did I steal from a friend? Why did I refuse to
forgive?

The fact that we all do the opposite of God's intention for us, that's what
creates the evil in this world. And you say, well, I'm not as evil as they were.
Well, you didn't have the circumstances that they did.

If you had their circumstances, you'd probably do the same evil they did. We
can't say that just because we had better circumstances, we're better people.
That's just a luck of the draw.

When you step inside this question, you realize it's only the awesome patience
and love of God that allows evil in this world. He endures sin and suffering
that he could wipe out in a moment in order to give us the opportunity to
present our lives to his leadership, his Lordship. That's why he waits.

That's why he continues to allow this world to go on. In this song, we're told
that they're going to face the consequences of their evil actions. God says, I'm
going to take away the hedge.

I'm going to break down the wall. That's life without protection. God says, I'm
going to make it a white wasteland.

That's life without usefulness. He says, I'm going to command the clouds not to
rain. That's life without any opportunity for growth.

The good news is Jesus came to change all of this. As we talk about this
vineyard, we have to end with John 15 because Jesus gives us the next stanza to
this song of the vineyard. Just a few verses, John 15, 5 and then verses 7 and
8.

Jesus said, I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in
you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it
will be done for you. This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit,
showing yourselves to be my disciples. So don't try to be part of God's vineyard
without attaching yourself to the vine.

And the vine is Jesus Christ. I'm a branch. You're a branch.

The vine, the place that all the nutrients, all the power, all the strength
comes from, that's from Jesus Christ. The song in the vineyard actually ends in
the New Testament with what Jesus Christ wants to do for us. So let's trust him
with it right now.

Jesus, we trust you. Forgive us for those times when we try to be the vine, when
we rely on ourselves. We trust you.

You're the vine, we're the branches. So we want to remain in you. We want to
connect to you, draw our strength from you, draw our hope from you.

And out of that, we know that you're going to bear the fruit that you want to
bear in our lives. We trust you with that too. We don't have to try to bear
fruit.

We trust you. And then the fruit just comes naturally. So today, with the
struggles that we're facing, today with the hurts that we have, today with the
opportunities that are in front of us, today, help us to see the potential
you've given us, the opportunities you put into our lives, meet at this place of
trusting you, Jesus Christ.

That's what we want. That's what we ask for. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, join us next week. We're going to head next week towards the most
important moment of change in Isaiah's life, this powerful, this personal
encounter that he has with the Lord in the temple. We'll talk about it next
week.