What percentage of songs on the radio is about love? 50%? 75%? 90%? I don’t know the exact percentage but whether it’s rock, pop, or country, I’d say that most songs are about love and relationships. Does this mean that songwriters understand love because they write about it so much? No. Not when you consider how most love songs are about people trying to figure out love. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear a love song by someone who knows what love is? That’s what our sermon text is this morning - it’s a love song written and sung by God himself and it’s meant for us. As we listen to this genuine love song we’re going to learn how much God has done for us, and also how much God expects from us.
When people write love songs they use nicknames like “Honey-pie”, “Pumpkin”, or “Sunshine” to describe their loved ones. In his song God calls his loved ones: “Vineyard.” God calls us this because he wants us to learn how much he has done for us. Just think about how much work it is to plant a vineyard. If you were to do this atop a hillside in the Okanagan Valley, you would first have to clear the trees, till the ground, remove the stones, plant good vines, and then build a fence around it all to keep out the bears and other critters. God says he’s done all that for us and more (Isaiah 5:1b, 2a).
But what does God mean that he has cleared stones from us, planted us, and put a fence around us? First and foremost God is describing what he has done for us spiritually. Contrary to what many people think, when it comes to spiritual encounters, God makes the initial contact. We don’t go looking for God any more than a patch of ground looks for a farmer to work its soil. It can’t! The farmer must seek out and work the soil if it’s to be productive. Wasn’t that how things worked in the Garden of Eden? After Adam and Eve ate from the tree they weren’t supposed to eat from, they ran and hid from God because they were afraid. Adam and Eve would have remained in hiding had God not come looking for them and promised to send them a savior from their sin.
God continues to pursue sinners today. In fact he’s doing that right now through the words of this sermon. He wants you and me to know that he loves us. He’s doing more than just telling us he loves us, he’s actually creating or strengthening faith in that promise of love. Just as a farmer must remove stones before he can plant his vineyard, so God must work over our stony hearts removing our doubts and skepticism before he plants faith. This happens whenever we hear or meditate on words from the Bible. Through those words God the Holy Spirit enters our hearts and goes to work to create faith. Even after faith has been created, the Holy Spirit stays on to protect that faith and to nurture it just as a farmer stays on to prune his vines once they’ve been planted.
So why has God done all this for us? Well why does a farmer go through the hassle of planting a vineyard? He plants a vineyard so he can enjoy the fruit it produces. In the same way, God has created faith in our hearts so that we will produce fruit, that is, do things that bring God joy. What is it that brings God joy? The Apostle Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22b, 23a). When God sees us doing these things it brings him joy.
But is that what God sees us produce? It’s not what he saw in the Israelites of the prophet Isaiah’s day. God expected his people to produce choice grapes because he had done so much for them but instead he found only sour ones. Sure on the outside the Israelites may have looked good but on the inside they were rotten. God brings out that point with a word play in the last verse of our text. God said he looked for justice but found bloodshed. He sought righteousness but heard only cries of distress (Isaiah 5:7). It doesn’t sound like much a word play in English but it is in Hebrew. In Hebrew, God said he looked for mishpat but found only mispach. He hoped for zedekah but heard only zaakah. The Israelites may have thought that the way they were living was good enough for the Lord, close enough to the righteousness and justice he demanded, but it wasn’t. They were way off target. In fact they were doing the opposite of what God expected from them.
Are we guilty of the same thing? Have we tricked ourselves into thinking that we’re doing what God wants when in reality we’re doing the opposite? Have you ever said: “I’ve never committed an act of road-rage. God must be happy with me.” God is certainly happy that we haven’t cut anyone off on the highway on purpose and put their life in danger but he expects more from his Vineyard. He wants us to show the fruit of patience, peace, and gentleness in the words that we speak and in the thoughts that we entertain about other drivers. Failure to do this, failure to think nothing but kind thoughts about others on the road is the same as plowing into their car so they careen into the median (1 John 3:15).
Because the Israelites hadn’t produced the fruit God wanted, he said to them: “Now I will tell you what I am 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. 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it” (Isaiah 5:5, 6). Since his vineyard had not produced the grapes he wanted, God was going to let the vineyard be destroyed.
Wait a minute! I thought this was supposed to be a love song. It still is. The fact that God told the Israelites what lay in store for them because they had failed to produce fruit, was loving. He warned them about the dire consequences of their sins because he didn’t want them to have to suffer those consequences. Isn’t that why parents tell their children what will happen if they touch a hot stove? They’ll describe the blisters that would form and the throbbing pain of a burn because they don’t want their children to have to experience it first hand. God speaks to us in the same way this morning. He warns us that if we continue to ignore his Word and do things our way, that if we keep producing bloodshed when he calls for justice, we will have to suffer the dire consequences of having God’s loving attention taken away from us forever.
So what should we do? Should we try harder to produce the fruit God wants? No. Start by looking back to the first part of our sermon text and be reminded of how much God has done for us. We heard how hard God worked to create faith in our hearts, but faith in what? Not just faith that there is a God, faith in God’s Son, Jesus. Jesus came to this earth to remove our sins. Like a farmer clearing stones from his field, Jesus cleared the sins from our lives and bore their weight on the cross. This backbreaking work, no, this life-breaking work Jesus did saves us from God’s punishment.
A good love song will give you goose bumps, especially if that song is sung to you by someone who loves you. You won’t find any songs like that on the radio but you will find them in the Bible. In fact through our text this morning the God of the universe has professed his love for you. He’s not only professed it, he’s demonstrated it through Jesus. May that love for us produce the fruit God seeks. May we be patient, gentle, loving, and kind because we are God’s Vineyard. Amen.
