This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week two of our look at the
book of Isaiah. Day one, we're going to look at Isaiah chapter five starting
today. But I do want to say that since Isaiah is such a long book, I'd like to
start each week with a sort of a where we are section, like a you are here on a
map or maybe a previously on in a TV series.

So previously on our look at Isaiah, last week, we began to look at God's vision
for your life, the fact that that's what the book of Isaiah is all about. And
there's two major simple sections, God's vision for change in your life and
God's vision for comfort in your life. We started last week to look at God's
vision for change, and we looked at the fact that we need to be honest about our
rebellion and we need to follow God's prescription for coming out of that
rebellion, things like starting to bring meaningful offerings and don't do
meaningless things for the Lord.

Things like settling your accounts with God on a regular basis. We talked last
week about that in order to change, we need to look at the mountain of the Lord,
a place of hope, the day of the Lord, a place of judgment and the branch of the
Lord, a place of promise, a person of promise. And then we ended last week
looking at the song of the vineyard.

The fact that change means I need to see myself as God sees me. I need to see
how deeply God loves me and desires a relationship with me. That's how I'm going
to desire a relationship with Him.

So this week, as we begin in Isaiah chapter 5, we're going to start in this
chapter that tells us that to change, you have to clearly understand what
doesn't work. Until I understand that something doesn't work, I often won't
change off of it. I'll keep doing the thing that doesn't work.

In the Bible, what does work is expressed by the word blessings, God's blessings
in our lives. The things that He blesses are the things that work. What doesn't
work is expressed by the woes that you see in the Bible.

John the Baptist used woes, "Woe are you if you do this. " Jesus used woes, "Woe
to the Pharisees if you do this. " Woe means trouble or sadness or distress are
in store if you keep going in that direction.

Blessed are you if you do this. Woeful are you if you do this. God made you.

He knows what's going to make you happy. If anybody knows what's going to make
you happy, He does. If anyone knows what's going to hurt you, He does.

So He's able to tell us what's going to bless us and what will bring woe into
our lives. So I'd say if the blessings of Jesus are the be attitudes, these are
the don't attitudes. The woes are the don't attitudes.

They clearly reveal some things to avoid. Things that are going to cause hurt to
your heart, lacks in your life, strain to your soul. And we're going to look at
them these first couple of days of this week.

Six different woes that Isaiah talks to us about. Number one, he tells us, "Woe
to those," chapter 5 verse 8, "who add house to house. " Now, in this woe, he's
talking about increasing what I have without really needing it.

He's talking about gathering without giving. In one word, he's talking about the
woe of materialism. So in chapter 5, verses 8 to 10, "Woe to you who add house
to house and join field to field till no space is left, and you live alone in
the land.

The Lord Almighty has declared in my hearing, 'Surely the great houses will
become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants. A ten-acre vineyard
will produce only a bath of wine, a homer of seed will yield only an ephah of
grain. '" Now, remember, as we read this, that land in Israel was owned by
ancestral right.

So when he talks about adding house to house, joining field to field, they had
found a way to rent and then buy and then keep someone else's inheritance. And
joining field to field, there was another advantage to them in that. In that
day, you had to allow people to, around the edges of your field, come in and
glean of the crops.

Well, if you were able to join four fields together, there were less edges.
There was less gleaning that could be done. You were saving yourself a lot of
crops.

He's talking about people who already have more than enough, and they're gaining
more just to increase their statue instead of to meet other people's needs. In
fact, they're choosing to not meet other people's needs to increase their statue
by material things. And it's the danger of materialism.

And Isaiah's very clear about where materialism leads us. We've all seen this in
our friends. Some of us have seen this in our own lives.

The danger of it is it leads to loneliness and frustration. He talks about the
frustration of it. He says what you have, it starts not producing what it should
because it doesn't have the blessing of God on it.

You're just doing it to increase what you have. So he talks about a whole 10
acres of vineyard is going to only produce five gallons of bath or five gallons.
It should produce well over a thousand gallons of wine.

It's only going to produce five. He talks about 10 bushels of seed. They're
going to give back only a half a bushel of grain, less than what you started
with.

Many, many times you find yourself struggling to get ahead and you wonder, why
am I not getting ahead? It may be that you're caught up in materialism, trying
to get more and more and more without looking at what God has to say about the
things that he's given to us. And then he talks about a deeper hurt to
materialism.

He says you live alone in the land. When you get forgetting's sake, when you
gather without needing, you find that in the end all those things, they just
produce emptiness. All you have is the things.

For you and I as followers of Jesus, every woe in one sense needs to be followed
by a go. If the woe is what I'm not supposed to do, then the go is the different
direction that God calls me to go towards. I walk away from the woes by heading
towards God's goes.

So with each of these woes, we're going to look at a go, if that doesn't sound
too poetic or rhyming. The go in this one is giving. You fight materialism not
by how little or how much you have.

You fight by giving out of whatever you have. Giving is the antidote to
materialism. And they weren't giving.

And so because of that, they were living in woe, even though they had more and
more. In verse 11, he talks about a second woe. He says woe to those who live
for parties.

He's talking about people who live for pleasure instead of living to please God.
It's the woe in one word of hedonism in verses 11 and 12. Woe to those who rise
early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till
they're inflamed with wine.

They have harps and lyres at their banquets, pipes and timbrels and wine, but
they have no regard for the deeds of the Lord, no respect for the work of his
hands. So the woe here is a group of people who have become very successful in
finding great pleasure, but they're not living to please God. They don't have
any regard for the deeds of the Lord, no respect for the work of his hands.

Many people, they chase after pleasure all their lives. They want to get to a
place where they feel like they're living the good life that they see other
people living. Isaiah here is talking not about those people, not the people who
are chasing after pleasure, but those who have gained it.

They've gained all that they want. They have all that they want to drink. They
have all that they want in their parties, and they found out when they gained
all that they wanted, it's not what they wanted at all.

Because they have no regard for what God is doing. All that pleasure is
desensitizing them to what's most important. If you have no regard for what
God's doing, all the pleasure you can get into your life is going to desensitize
you to what's most important, to what's most significant.

You're not going to be able to see beyond your next drink or hit or whatever.
The goal in this, in this woe, is to live to please God, instead of living to
please yourself. When you live for pleasure, you're never pleased.

When you live to please God, then you enjoy God's pleasure in your life. The
truth is, we're talking about people who drink too much, maybe get involved in
drugs. Let's take this to every one of us.

You can easily become too self-focused, even in your faith, starting to look to
faith primarily as a way to please yourself, as a way that you can be happier.
Your faith is going to make you happier. But if that's all you're looking for,
the kind of faith that just makes me happier, then it becomes self-defeating
because you're just focused on you.

You need something more than just being happy. You live to please God because
that's the source of ultimate fulfillment, and it's bigger than you. It's bigger
than your happiness.

It's about God's purpose and God's plan for your life. So that's the goal in
that one, you live to please God. A third woe, final woe we're going to look at
today, woe to those who say, "Let God hurry.

" And this is the woe of cynicism in one word, verses 18 to 19 in chapter 5.
"Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit and wickedness as with
cart ropes, to those who say, 'Let God hurry, let him hasten his work so that we
may see it. The plan of the Holy One of Israel, let it approach, let it come
into view so that we may know it.

'" You can tell they're sort of mocking God here. We don't see God anywhere, so
we're going to do what we want. These are people who continually doubted God's
word because they couldn't see God in the way that they wanted to see God.

If they couldn't see it, they wouldn't believe it. They sort of reduced faith to
a spectator sport. They were watching to see what God might do.

And Isaiah declares very clearly the danger of this attitude. "They draw sin
along with cords of deceit, wickedness as with cart ropes. " He's saying here
that their cynicism has caused them to be tied to the burden of their sin.

They don't know what they've done. They've tied themselves so strongly to the
burden of that sin, and they're weighed down all of the time. The goat of this
one is obvious.

The goat to cynicism, the opposite of that woe, is faith. It's trusting in what
you don't see. If all you trust is what you see, you're going to live a very
cynical life.

You'll always be looking for God and others to prove themselves. Prove that you
love me. Prove that you care about me.

Prove that you have a plan for me. When you begin to trust in what you cannot
see, when you start to take God at his word, someone who can be trusted, your
life begins to open up in ways you just can't possibly imagine. That's what God
wants to do in our lives.

In light of what God wants to do, let's take a moment to pray together. And in
prayer, just simply say, "Lord, I want to live for the good that you have in my
life. I don't want to live a selfish life.

I don't want to live a self-focused life. I don't want to live a life that's all
about the pleasures of this world or all about what I might want or what I might
need or material things I can gain. So God, give me a giving heart.

Give me a heart of faith. Give me a heart that cares about other people. Help me
not to get caught up in the values of the world around me.

It's so easy to do. Instead, help me to get caught up in your love for me today.
I ask this in your name, amen.

" Join us tomorrow. We're going to look at three more woes, but also three more
goes, good things that God tells us we can do.