In Peter Allison's sermon 'God's Tender Care of His Vineyard,' the speaker delves into Isaiah chapter 5, focusing on the metaphor of God's vineyard, representing the house of Israel and the people of Judah. The sermon explores how God, as the tender caretaker, has provided everything necessary for the vineyard to thrive, yet it produces wild grapes, symbolizing Israel's failure to live up to God's expectations. Allison highlights the use of parables as a method to convey difficult messages, drawing parallels with Nathan's confrontation of King David and Jesus's teachings. The sermon also examines various biblical metaphors for the church, including a flock, a house, a bride, a body, and a city, each illustrating different aspects of the church's relationship with Christ. Emphasis is placed on the blessings and responsibilities of being part of God's covenant, including the privilege of having the Scriptures, being adopted as God's children, and being recipients of God's law and protection. The sermon concludes with a call to bear good fruit, reflecting the grace and care God has invested in His people.

Please turn in your scriptures to Isaiah chapter 5. I'd like to read the first seven verses of this song. Here are the words of the Lord. Now let me sing to my well-beloved, a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.

He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge please between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it?

Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? And now please Let me tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge and it shall be burned, and break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste, it shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they know rain on it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold oppression, for righteousness, but behold a cry for help." May the Lord be our teacher that we might not depart from His judgments. Heavenly Father, Please give us a spirit of illumination this morning. Please transform our thinking, renew it. Please grant us ears to hear with faith your word to us this morning.

May it come not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the power of your spirit. And I ask that you would cleanse my lips, that from a vessel of clay, your glory and your gospel might be brought to us in Jesus name. Amen. Well, have you ever had to bring a hard or unfavorable message to someone? Maybe even to a group of people.

You know the message is hard because it's not very complimentary. The risk of being booed, shut out, tuned out completely, maybe, is very real and very high. Or there's even maybe the risk of the wrath of the audience being poured out on the messenger, just bringing the message. Even if that messenger is totally uninvolved and not a part of the problem, but simply communicating the news, the bad news. That, of course, is the origin of the phrase, don't shoot the messenger, Just the messenger.

So what do you do in that kind of situation? Well, one tactic in that situation is to give the message indirectly, in a story or a parable, so as to get the target audience angry with the unjust party and sympathetic to the innocent party. And then only after arousing that anger toward the guilty party in the audience and arousing their sympathy for the victim are they informed that they are actually the guilty party? You see, the reason this works, of course, is tactic, is because we often see other people's sins and mistakes far more quickly and clearly than we can see our own sins and mistakes. This is the exact tactic that Nathan used some 250 years before Isaiah.

When he needed, you remember to confront King David about a sin issue in his life that he knew David would not be wanting to hear about. And of course, David was the king. He held the power of life and death. And so, you know, remember, Nathan recounted this hypothetical situation in where a rich man oppressed a poor man and he got David as the king to instinctively render a judgment in favor of the oppressed man and against the oppressor. And then Nathan simply said, thou art the man.

You're the oppressor. Jesus often also used a similar approach in confronting the sins of the Jewish leaders in his day. And many other people, of course, throughout history of leaders have been skillful in this approach. But this is the approach that Isaiah employs here in chapter 5 to confront the people of Israel, or Judah, and the men of Jerusalem with their guilt, with their sins. Sins that they have not been willing to face or acknowledge.

He uses a parable, a little parable, because he wants to get the message to them before they realize that it's them that he's condemning, and before they can shut him down or ignore his message. And he puts his message, which includes this little parable in the beginning, he puts it in a song. Because as we all know, that gives the message stickiness. If you want to memorize something, you put it to a song. You want to memorize the alphabet, you put it to a song.

The states, you know, you can put it to a song. The countries of the world, you put it to a song because it makes it more sticky. It makes it easier to retain. Moses does the same thing in Deuteronomy 32. And of course, we just read Deborah's song in Judges.

So Isaiah then introduces the song with this first line. Now let me sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. It appears to be a very simple line in English. In other words, Isaiah is singing to God, who is his well-beloved, a song composed by God regarding God's vineyard. Isaiah says, I'm going to sing that song to him now.

Now let me sing. However, all the prepositions in the Hebrew there are a bit of a challenge to translate. And while that's certainly a very possible and good translation grammatically speaking, it begs this question. Why would Isaiah sing to God a song that God wrote about his own vineyard. And if he's singing to God, why would he refer to God in the third person?

It's possible, but it's a bit awkward. Notice now, let me sing to my well-beloved, a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. And then he goes on and talks about God in the third person. For those for that reason, those two reasons, I prefer J.A. Alexander's translation of this, which is just slightly different, but very different meaning.

His translation is, Please let me sing of my well-beloved, my beloved song of his vineyard. And that preposition of there is the same preposition and this translation makes them both the same. In other words, Isaiah is saying, please let me sing about my well-beloved, his song about his vineyard. Please let me sing about my well-beloved, my well-beloved song about his vineyard. You see, if Isaiah is singing the song of his beloved, It's a song that the beloved wrote, then it would make sense for it to be in the first person as it as this song is in verses 3 to 6.

I, me, my. It's a song that it's God's song. He wrote it. But if Isaiah is also singing about his beloved, it would make sense for the song to be in the third person in other places elsewhere in this chapter, which it is authors can often refer to themselves in. The third person, that's That's very common.

In fact, that's considered proper formal writing, if you're the author, to write in the third person. So I think then Isaiah is singing to Israel about God, his beloved, and the song he is singing is a song that God wrote about his vineyard. So this is God's message. Isaiah is God's messenger. He's a prophet bringing God's message to His people.

And in order to add a touch of mildness and courtesy to this address, he prefaces this statement with a please let me or if you please. So that now is not now let me do it, but rather if you please, please let me sing a song to my beloved. And so with that little introduction there, he begins with a little parable that utilizes a metaphor for the church. Now, the Bible has several metaphors for the church that are repeated in multiple places throughout the scriptures, and it has a few more minor ones that are only mentioned once or twice. But each of these metaphors highlight a different aspect, a different truth about God's people, about the church.

And if we only focus on one metaphor to understand the church, or if we try to assign a spiritual meaning to every little detail in the metaphor, then we probably end up with an unbalanced and probably improper, definitely an improper view. Not every little detail in every metaphor has a spiritual meaning. But if we take these all together and we can we can obtain many precious truths about the church and about our union to our savior Jesus Christ. So I'd just like to look at a couple of these metaphors before we get to the one that Isaiah uses because I think they together communicate a fuller picture of the church and how we are related to Christ. So one of the more frequent and precious metaphors for the church is that of a flock.

A flock because we're like a flock of sheep. We can't care for ourselves. We need a shepherd to care for us. And Jesus is our shepherd. We depend on Christ, the good shepherd, to lead us to food and water, to protect us from danger like bears or wolves, to watch over us and bring healing medicines when we are sick.

That's what that metaphor is teaching us, that we are dependent, utterly dependent upon Christ, just like sheep are basically helpless themselves, need a shepherd. People who depart from the church and from following Christ are like sheep that have left the fold and are wandering. They're lost and they are in danger. God calls those who care for his church shepherds or pastors, They serve as under shepherds of that great shepherd and overseer of our souls, Jesus Christ. And God frequently trained the shepherds of his church as shepherds of the four-legged sheep.

You remember Moses spent 40 years as a shepherd to four-legged sheep before he was a shepherd of God's flock. David was trained to be the protector of God's people by protecting his father Jesse's flock. The church is also called a house or a temple because it is where God dwells. When Jacob woke up from his dream when he was fleeing from Esau, he said, surely the Lord is in this place. And so he called it Bethel, which means House of God, saying that this is none other than the House of God.

The Lord manifested his presence in the wilderness with that pillar and a fire in the cloud, and that rested on the wilderness tabernacle and later in the temple. That was God's presence which departed that presence of that temple in the book of Revelation. And the New Testament picks this metaphor up as well And when Paul says to the Corinthians that you are God's building, we are God's building. And Ephesians, too, speaks of the church that is fitted or joined together as a temple for the Lord, as a building for the Lord, in whom we are being built together as a dwelling place of God. See, so the church is not just a collection of loose bricks.

It's not just a collection of loose cannonballs, but rather it's a body that's fitted together, that's joined together as one corporation, one corpus, one body. And the Holy Spirit then doesn't just dwell with us individually, but he dwells with the church corporately. It's his dwelling, it's his house. The church is also described under the metaphor of a bride, right, a wife. God said to his church in Isaiah 54, do not fear for you will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore for your maker is your husband.

God is our maker. He's got saying I'm your husband to the church. And that's why worshiping other gods is called whoring prostitution. The same word for unlawful sexual relations is used of the church that worships other gods. In Ezekiel 16 the church is compared to an unwanted baby girl that's abandoned and left to die by the side of the road that God takes up, that God nurtures, that God raises to adulthood and then marries.

As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, God says he rejoices over his church And he quiets her with his love and Zephaniah. And of course, in the New Testament, Paul applies the one flesh relationship that God established between Adam and Eve to the church's relationship to Christ, saying that we are one. And in John 17, that's what he prays, that we may be one with the Father in Christ. And so Christ only has one bride. There's only one church.

There's only one people of God, not two. So this metaphor then conveys the love that God lavishes on his church, the affection that he has for her. The church is also likened to a body, like our body. Has many different parts with different functions, but they're all interdependent on each other, aren't they? The eye can't function apart from the protection of the head.

It doesn't work all by itself. Just an eye sitting here doesn't work. It's useless. It's very, very fragile. It needs the brain.

It needs all the muscles to make it work. The foot cannot function without the eye to tell it where to go. A foot with no eyes, no ears is very useless. It would run the body into all signs of obstacles. And so the body then is the church is compared to this body.

Many different members all have different functions according to the graces, the different graces that are given to each of us. And we're called to exercise those functions according to the measure of grace that is given to us. The church is also one body because we're united to Christ. It's not a incarnational or hypostatic union. There's not two natures joined in one person, but rather.

It is two distinct bodies that share one spirit. Paul said to the Corinthians, he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Two different bodies. One spirit. We're not in any way partaking in the nature of God or getting mixed.

There's no mixture there. We're not in some as some say, the continuing bodily presence of Christ on the earth. That's not what That's not true. God's incarnate body has ascended into heaven and that's where it is until he returns again. But we are in this spiritual sense united to Christ, one spirit with him, Paul says.

And so this metaphor of the body speaks of the connectedness of the church and how each one, you know, each of us, each of us members affects the rest of the body, just like when the foot is hurt, it's the whole body it hurts. And so the body is a metaphor for how we're all connected together and how our lives impact the lives of others in the body for good or for bad, for evil. And the Church of Jesus Christ is also represented as a city in the Scriptures. Zion or Jerusalem are a symbol of the faithful, redeemed people of God who enjoy God's presence in their midst and who are an example and a light to the surrounding world, the city of God, Zion. It's used as a metaphor for the glory of the church, A glory she has because her king dwells in her.

The entirety of Psalm 48 elaborates on this metaphor. To just sample a few verses, it speaks of Zion, right? Beautiful in elevation. The joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north. The city of the great king.

God is in her palaces. He is known as her refuge. This is the church being pictured as a city. In the New Testament, believers are pictured as pilgrims who are looking for a city whose builder and maker is God, a heavenly city. And in Revelation 21, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, is pictured coming down out of heaven, a picture of the glory of the church and the presence of her savior.

So the city conveys the glory. Of the church to the surrounding to the surrounding world. And so there's a whole nother class of metaphors, agricultural metaphors for the church that appear in many places in the scriptures. A garden, a vine, a field, or a tree are all examples of these agricultural metaphors. Psalm 1, for example, speaks of Those who meditate on the law of God day and night and don't walk in the way of the wicked is being like a tree that's planted by a river, a continual source of water, and is regular in bringing forth its fruit.

Every year, It's reliable. Jesus, remember, gave a parable of the vineyard in which the tenants mistreat the representatives of the owner. And that parable speaks to who the church belongs to and the responsibility of church leaders, elders, and deacons to take care of the church for Christ's sake. It's not their church. It's Christ's church.

And they're held responsible for their care of God's vineyard. And so all these agricultural metaphors speak to the Lord's care for the church, His blessing on the church. They also speak to the multi-generational connectedness of the church. If you think about that, every successive generation is part of the same vine, the same tree, the same field, just living in a different time and producing a different crop of fruit. But there's a connectedness there.

A tree produces a new crop of fruit every year, but it's the same tree year after year. And so there's an intergenerational connectedness. And thirdly, though, these metaphors also speak to the necessity of the church to bear fruit. On one of his trips into Jerusalem on the week that he was crucified, Jesus cursed a fig tree that had no fruit signifying his judgment on unfruitfulness. And in that upper room discourse on the night of his betrayal, it would be a day or two later, he told the disciples in another agricultural metaphor, I'm the vine and you are the branches And every branch that doesn't bear fruit is cut off and thrown into the fire.

And so this is the metaphor that Isaiah uses here in chapter five. The church is compared to a vineyard. And once again, the emphasis in this metaphor will be on their failure to bear good fruit. That's Isaiah's message to the church in his day. You haven't borne any good fruit.

So in Isaiah's parable that we pick up in the second part of verse 1, God plants this vineyard on the slope of a hill with good exposure to the sun, infertile soil that has been carefully terraced and cleared by the removal of rocks terracing, you know, sort of forms the soil to make it ideal for the plants to grow. A tower and a hedge have been built for protection of the vineyard, and a wine press has been installed for maximizing the profitability, the cash flow and future profitability of this vineyard. So it can produce wine and not just table grapes. Now as I mentioned earlier, the point isn't to find a different spiritual meaning behind each one of these actions. Rather, these are the actions that a good vine dresser would perform in his vineyard, and They speak of the many blessings that Isaiah says God's people have that we as a church have, which set us apart from those that are not in covenant relation to God and are not his peculiar people.

There are many blessings, there are many favors that God gives to all people. He sends rain on the just and the unjust, doesn't He? God the Father provides them with food and water and air. The just and the unjust can marry and have children, descendants. These are all these things are called God's common grace, common to all people.

But God sets His church apart from the world. And God extends grace to His people that are in covenant relation to Him that is not given to those outside His covenant, to those outside his body. So what are these spiritual blessings then that Isaiah describes in these agricultural terms as being planted on a hill in fertile soil that has been prepared, terraced, cleared of stones, protected by a hedge and equipped to be fruitful with this wine press. What are the spiritual blessings, the grace that God gives specially to his people in covenant, in his covenant? Well, the first one is that Israel, the church in the Old Testament, had the advantage of having Abraham as their father.

And that was a privilege because God had promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 that he would make Abraham a great nation that he would bless him and make his name great and God told him I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you that is a peculiar blessing to Abraham and to those who are heirs of the promises to Abraham. And when the Jews claim that they were descendants of Abraham, Jesus didn't say, well, that doesn't mean anything. You know, God has no grandchildren. No. He said, well, if you were Abraham's children, then you would bring forth the fruit that Abraham brought forth.

You would bring forth the works of Abraham. There's emphasis on the fruit there. Another blessing of being Abraham's seed is that they were heirs to the covenant promises that God gave to Abraham, that God would be God to him and to God to his children. And so these people that Isaiah is speaking to are children of the covenant. Nearly being born into the covenant doesn't directly save anyone.

By itself. Doesn't. But it is a great advantage. Paul asked this question in Romans three. Does everyone that is Jew and Gentile, those in the covenant and those not in the covenant, covenant children and those that are outside the church, if everyone is under God's wrath and condemnation And Paul's answer is much in every way.

And their big advantage is that they have the scriptures for their own. And so, the question is, what is the advantage of being in the covenant? What is the advantage of being in the covenant? And Paul's answer is much in every way. And their big advantage is that they have the scriptures from their infancy.

The scriptures are the Word of God that reveal our true condition. And they reveal God's plan of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. They are, as Paul says, able to make us wise for salvation. And Paul says it is a huge advantage to have the Scriptures. The people outside the covenant, the children outside that don't have that.

Thirdly, another advantage is that these are adopted children of the Lord. God told Moses to tell Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my first born adopted son. God's word to Israel through Jeremiah. And we actually I think we We read from the similar place where he says in Jeremiah 31, I will cause them to walk by the rivers of water in a straight way, which they shall not stumble for. I am a father to Israel and Ephraim is my first born.

God is saying we're part of his part of his family. We've been adopted and those that are in the family received many blessings and privileges that are not given to those that are not in the family. Also, God dwelt with his people. In the Old Testament, that glory was over the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. It was seen in the cloud by day and the pillar by night.

But they also had another big advantage. They had God's law. That's a blessing and advantage. When Moses gave the law to Israel, he exhorted them to obey it because he said, This was their why their wisdom and their understanding in the sight of the people who will hear these statutes and say, Surely, this is a great nation that Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. They say that because of the laws that Israel had.

And Moses then rhetorically asked, what other nation has such righteous statutes and judgments? Clearly, this was a national treasure that God gave to His people. Now, someone who is not in Christ and is not united to Christ won't think of God's law as any kind of advantage, will they? They may actually despise the laws and think that they're terrible, that they're in bondage because of them, that their freedom is restricted because of them. And so they turn away from them.

But in that, in doing that, they are fools. They are fools. A few years ago, and maybe you've seen this because it's been around a few years, a man by the name of Mark Scholdeis stood on the corner of E Street and Highway 101 in the middle of downtown Encinitas, California. It's near the coast. Highway 101 is a road that runs all the way through California, up north to south, but it runs through this city, it's just a city street here.

He's standing on the intersection of these two roads. And as he has in his hands a 10 ounce silver bar and about 10 king size Hershey chocolate bars. And as people walk by, he offers them a choice. He tells them, you're a winner today. You can take a 10, I think it's a two or three ounce Hershey chocolate bar, cold, right out of the refrigerator, or you can have this 10 ounce bar of silver.

Which do you want? It's yours. You know, and people have a natural skepticism of anything that's offered to them free. What do you think people did on being presented with that offer? Well everyone, young and old, men and women, took the chocolate with comments like, I don't really have any use for a silver bar.

Is the chocolate real? I can't eat silver, I'll take the chocolate. I'm a girl, I'll take the chocolate. One young lady said. Now that bar of silver, which is, if you went by weight, that's 10 ounces, the chocolate was only three ounces.

But if you went by value in dollars, that silver is worth 800 to $1, 000 today. It was over 1, 000 a few weeks ago. That chocolate bar, you can get it at any store that has any edible food for sale for about $2.50. In other words, anybody could have taken that bar of silver and walked 50 feet to the Encinitas coin shop and traded it in for 320 chocolate bars. See, people who think God's law is a restrictive burden and not a precious advantage are just like that foolish people that took the chocolate and despised the silver as something they couldn't use.

They didn't know. They were fools. God's law is a great privilege to live under. It's a law of liberty. It brings freedom.

God's people also have his special protection. And this is expressed so beautifully in so many places throughout the scriptures. And God protects his people. Psalm 91 is one example. The whole Psalm talks about God's protection of His people.

Just a couple examples. Verse 9, because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the most high, your dwelling place, No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling. For He will give His angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread on the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will tread under foot.

Though this is God's grace, his privilege, his blessing to his people, those who are in his covenant. But having given all of these blessings, God expects fruit. He comes looking for it. He didn't expect the fruit in order to be gracious to us. No, he was gracious to us.

He saves us, giving us a new heart, forgiving our sins, cleansing us from unrighteousness, imputing his righteousness to us, adopting us as his children, and having given us all of these graces, he then expects us to bear fruit. And so God says. He expected to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. Small, bitter, useless grapes. And so God appeals to the men of Judah and Jerusalem.

He says, what do I do? You judge. Just like Nathan appealed to David for David's judgment in that little hypothetical situation he presented to David, God appeals to these people he's talking to, to Judah and Jerusalem, for their judgment regarding the vineyard. Judge, he says, between me. What more could I have done?

It's a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious. God has done everything He could possibly do. The vines are bad. And so when God proceeds to explain what he will do to his vineyard, he has the sympathy of the audience.

He's the just party in this matter. And what's he going to do? He's going to remove his favor. He'll take down the wall. So it's unprotected.

Now they're not treated any differently than anyone else. It won't be pruned or weeded, just like the stuff outside the vineyard isn't. The New King James uses The same word dug in verse two as in verse six, but they're actually two different Hebrew words and they refer to slightly different things. The word in verse two means to dig about, to surround, to enclose, or to furrow the earth with an implement, sort of to terrace, I summarized it as. The verb in verse six is closer to hoeing or helping, weeding, you might say.

So God says he's not going to take care of it. He's not going to extend these favors. In other words, these people will be removed from the covenant. They will be cut off. That's what it means to be cut off.

It means to be excluded from the covenant, to no longer be a member of that family, to no longer receive the privileges that go with membership in the covenant. That's what God's saying here through this metaphor. He will cut them out of his covenant. Their names will be in the New Testament language, removed from the Lamb's Book of Life. And it is only then.

That God brings the punch line in verse seven. And he says, for the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. These people that he these vineyard that he's been talking about saying you you are that vineyard. You haven't produced any good fruit. You will be cut off.

These people, you see, have received the grace of God in vain. Paul said to the Corinthians, we then as fellow workers together with him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. If you're here this morning, you've been given the gospel. You've been given these privileges that Isaiah describes, that God and God's care of His vineyard. If you've been blessed to grow up in a home where God's Word is read and explained, where God is worshiped in spirit and in truth, then you've been given much.

You are the vineyard that has been carefully and lovingly planted, protected, tended. And God comes expecting fruit. In Luke 12, Jesus tells the story about two different people, two different servants. One who knew his will and didn't do it, And the other one who didn't know. But this is the moral of that story is everyone to whom much is given from him, much will be required and to whom much has been committed of him, they will ask the more.

The question, the question for us this morning is, are you bearing, Are you bearing good fruit consistent with the beauty and the grace that has been given to you? Are we yielding an abundant harvest, commensurate with the abundance of grace that God has invested in us. God said he comes. He's seeking. He's seeking that fruit.

By his grace, we are enabled to to bear it. I pray that it so. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word to us it is a word that we need to hear. It is your word of life. And Father, we thank you that your word is powerful.

It's living, it's active, and able to divide asunder soul and spirit and of joints and marrow and it discerns the thoughts and intents of our heart and we ask Lord that you would search us this morning and try us if there is any evil way in us may you show that to us that we may be vessels that are sanctified set apart vessels in that are fruitful Vessels that are like a tree planted by a river of water that regularly and faithfully bring forth bring forth fruit. We ask Lord so grateful for all of the blessings that you've given to us in the land that we live in, in the heritage that we've been given and have so faithlessly squandered in the church that you have preserved in this land, in which you've made us a part, and even in the homes in which we have been born into none of these things father have we had a choice in but they are your grace to us your mercy we ask that we may take good make good use of them by your grace, by your power. And we ask in Jesus' name.