A Disgusted God
(Isaiah 5:1-30)
1. Mary received a parrot as a gift. The parrot was fully grown with a very bad attitude and worse vocabulary. Every other word was profanity.
Mary tried to change the bird's attitude by constantly saying polite words and playing soft music, anything she could think of. Nothing worked.
She yelled at the bird and the bird got worse. She shook the bird and the bird became even madder and ruder. Finally, in a moment of desperation, Mary put the parrot in the freezer to get a minute of peace.
For a few moments she heard the bird swearing, squawking, kicking and screaming. Then, suddenly, there was absolute quiet. Mary was frightened that she might have actually hurt the bird and quickly opened the freezer door.
The parrot calmly stepped out onto Mary's extended arm. Perfectly calm, the parrot said, "I am very sorry that I offended you with my language and my actions and I ask your forgiveness. I will endeavor to correct my behavior, and I am sure it will never happen again."
Mary was astounded at the changes in the bird's attitude and was about to ask what had changed him, when the parrot continued, "May I ask what the chicken did?"
2. Mary was aggravated to put her parrot in freezer. Did you know God gets aggravated?
Main Idea: God is patient, but His patience is limited. He can get to a point of disgust, disgust which is then followed by His wrath.
I. Overview: God Shares His Utter DISGUST with Israel Through An Allegory (1-7).
A. The disappointing nature of the VINEYARD (1-2)
B. The owner determines to desert and DESTROY it (3-6).
1. If He were merely disappointed, He would abandon the vineyard.
2. But He is disgusted, so He also destroys it.
C. The ALLEGORY explained (7)
1. The owner is Yahweh.
2. The vineyard is the land of Israel.
3. The plants are the people of Judah.
4. The grapes he expected were justice and righteousness.
5. The grapes that actually grew were bloodshed and unrighteousness.
6. There is an interesting play on words in verse 7. God looks for “justice” (mishpat) but finds “oppression / injustice” (mispach); He looks for “righteousness” (tzedakah) but hears “cries” (tzedkah) of wretchedness (The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge).
II. Israel’s DECADENCE Disgusted God and Brought Judgment (8-17).
A. “Woe” pronounced against rampant MATERIALISM (8-10).
1. Amassing property by cheating their rightful owners.
2. Society had turned into might mean right.
3. There are material aspects of life, and there are non-material; when we lose balance…materialism and overspending can be like drugs…
4. Disobeying the Year of Jubilee.
Leviticus 25:8-9a, 13, “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month…In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property.” [source: preventchildabuse.org]
B. “Woe” pronounced against drunkenness and PARTYING (11-12).
1. Heavy drinking and parties reduce inhibitions, allowing all sorts of sins to surface.
2. National Library of Medicine, “Forty-nine percent of the child molesters were drinking at the time of commission of the offense, and 34% were drinking heavily, defined as 10 or more beers or the equivalent.” [pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov].
3. Adultery, violence, and other forms of abuse that go along with drunkenness.
4. In our day, alcohol is just one type of drug problem.
C. Judgement: EXILE
III. Israel’s REVERSE Morality Disgusted God and Brought More Judgment (18-30).
A. LYING became the norm and sin a joke (18).
B. God was MOCKED instead of respected (19).
Smith’s Bible Commentary summarizes meaning: “They begin to challenge God and challenge the judgment of God, ‘If it's so, let God do something that we might see it…If He's really there’."
C. Good and evil CHANGED places (20).
1. This has certainly been true in our society. A few years ago, the Boy Scouts pledged to be morally straight. Nowadays, if we hold to being morally straight, we are immoral for our intolerance and narrow mindedness.
2. We see the exchange of right and wrong in the LGBTQ agenda, in Abortion rights, and in refusing to judge where God has already judged.
3. We cannot force lost people to act like Christians, but we have to believe what God says is true, whether others do or not.
4. Politically, both parties condemn wrong in opposite party while turning a blind eye to their own wrongs: right & wrong not longer exist as an objective standard, but a political weapon. Wrong doesn’t exist in our political party, just the other one.
D. MAN, not God, became the measure of all things (21).
1. What is true for you or me is what matters.
2. This is why fads and trends are so powerful, even among believers sometimes.
E. JUSTICE was a joke (22-23)
1. Have you ever had to do business with someone who didn’t take their job seriously?
Back in Chicago area, I remember an undertaker who was like that; terrible. He mocked the dead man, he mocked me for not embracing the ecumenical movement, he mocked religion in general.
F. Judgment: massive DEATH and destruction (24-30).
1. Vs. 24b summarizes: their crime: ”for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty
and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
2. Will the same happen in our nation and in western civilization? Will the choices we have made that fly in the face of what God has revealed bring down God’s wrath upon us in the form or subservience to another nation or empire?
3. Verse 25 summarizes the consequences: “Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets.”
4. The destruction of the Temple occurred on the 9th of AV, 586 B.C.
5. Even God’s children are putting Him to the test; like the serpent in Eden, I have heard many Christians say, “Where in the Bible does it say that?” when the Bible is clear.
6. Talking a Christian man who was shaking up with a woman, both divorced. He said, “I know it’s wrong, but it is what it is.” I respected him more than someone who would say, “Marriage was for back then. God understands we are in modern times.”
7. Both are wrong, but in the first case the man is honest with himself and the Word.
8. Better yet the man and woman who obey God.
Notes inserted into outline for later review...
Tisha B’Av (9th of Av) from Wikipedia:
According to the Mishnah (Taanit 4:6), five specific events occurred on the ninth of Av that warrant fasting:
The Twelve Spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, brought a positive report, while the others spoke disparagingly about the land. The majority report caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the "Promised Land". For this, they were punished by God that their generation would not enter the land…
The First Temple built by King Solomon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, and the population of the Kingdom of Judah was sent into the Babylonian exile….
The Second Temple built by Ezra and Nehemiah was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE…scattering the people of Judea and commencing the Jewish exile from the Holy Land.
The Romans subsequently crushed Bar Kokhba's revolt and destroyed the city of Betar, killing over 500,000 Jewish civilians (approximately 580,000) on 4 August 135 CE…
Over time, Tisha B'Av has come to be a Jewish day of mourning, not only for these events, but also for later tragedies which occurred on or near the 9th of Av.
…While the Holocaust spanned a number of years, most religious communities use Tisha B'Av to mourn its 6,000,000 Jewish victims, in addition to or instead of the secular Holocaust Memorial Days…
