The sermon titled 'The Calamitous Consequences of Contempt' by Peter Allison discusses Isaiah chapter 5, focusing on the parable of the vineyard and its application to Israel and Judah. The sermon outlines the sins of Israel, such as oppression, debauchery, and perversion of truth, and the corresponding judgments from God. These judgments are depicted as a form of covenant lawsuit where Israel has failed to uphold God's covenant of grace. The sermon explains the difference between the covenant of grace and the covenant of works, emphasizing that while obedience is not a condition for deliverance, it is expected of those delivered. The message highlights the role of Isaiah as a mediator bringing both condemnation and hope for redemption. The sermon further delves into the consequences of specific sins like greedy acquisition of land and indulgence in debauchery, illustrating how these lead to desolation and captivity. The speaker draws parallels between Israel and contemporary nations, stressing the immutable nature of God's law and the need for personal and national repentance. The sermon concludes by presenting Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of Israel's failed roles, as the ultimate priest, prophet, and king, able to redeem and restore humanity.

Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 5. I'd like to begin reading at verse 7. Begin reading at verse seven. The first seven verses presented a little parable that Isaiah spoke in the form of a song concerning Israel and Judah. We pick up in verse 7 with him identifying who the people in the parable are.

Hear God's word. 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. Woe to those who join house to house, they add field to field till there is no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land. In my hearing the Lord of hosts said, Truly many houses shall be desolate, Great and beautiful ones without inhabitant, For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, And a homer of seed shall yield one ephah.

Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may follow intoxicating drink, who continue until night till wine inflames them. The harp and the strings, the tambourine and the flute, and the wine and wine are in their feasts. But they do not regard the work of the Lord, nor consider the operation of His hands. Therefore, My people have gone into captivity because they have no knowledge. Their honorable men are famished.

Their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore, Sheol has enlarged itself and opened its mouth beyond measure. Their glory and their multitude and their pomp, and he who is jubilant shall descend into it. People shall be brought down, each man shall be humbled, and The eyes of the lofty shall be humbled, but the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment. And God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.

Then the lambs shall feed in their pasture, and the waste places of the fat ones strangers shall eat. Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity and sin as if with a cart rope, that say, Let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come that we may know it. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. Woe to men mighty at drinking wine, woe to valiant men for mixing intoxicating drink, woe who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away justice from the righteous man.

Therefore as fire devours the stubble, and flame consumes the chaff, so their root will be rottenness, and their blossom will ascend like dust, because they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the anger of the Lord is aroused against His people. He has stretched out His hand against them and stricken them, and the hills trembled. Their carcasses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is outstretched still.

He will lift up a banner to the nations from afar, and will whistle to them from the end of the earth. Surely they shall come with speed swiftly. No one will be weary or stumble among them. No one will slumber or sleep, nor will the belt on their loins be loosed, nor the strap of their sandals be broken, whose arrows are sharp and all their bows bent. Their horses' hooves will seem like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind.

Their roaring will be like a lion. They will roar like young lions. Yes, they will roar and lay hold of the prey. They will carry it away safely and no one will deliver. In that day they will roar against them like the roaring of the sea.

And if one looks to the land, behold, darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened by the clouds. May his precepts bring understanding that we may hate every false way. Father in heaven, you are righteous in all your judgments. Your word is true, though every man be a liar. Please open our eyes that we may see your Word and its application to us.

We ask that you would give us meekness to receive your Word. We ask also that you would sanctify my sinful lips, that your gospel of grace may come to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. In Jesus name, Amen. Well, if you've been with us these past weeks as we've been going through Isaiah, this section of Isaiah sounds a lot like Isaiah's previous sermons And you might ask, how does this chapter add to what Isaiah has already said in all these previous chapters?

Or is this chapter simply repeating what has already been said? Sometimes God's Word does that, because we need to hear it multiple times. But I think there is a progression over these five chapters. Isaiah is in effect bringing a lawsuit against Israel. They have broken God's covenant by failing to live up to the stipulations that God has established in His covenant.

It is a covenant of grace. That means that their obedience of the stipulations in the covenant is not the basis for their deliverance. That would be a covenant of works. But having been delivered, They are required to walk in obedience. But they haven't.

They haven't walked in obedience. And so chapter 1 provides us an overview of the whole entire case. It's like the opening argument of a prosecutor as he lays out a case at the beginning of the trial, providing background and providing context for the entire situation and then demonstrating what he will demonstrate in the evidence. Summarizing what he will demonstrate in the evidence. Summarizing what he will demonstrate in the evidence.

And so chapter 1 describes in broad terms, a sinful nation that has provoked God to anger. And the focus there was on their hypocritical worship with a summary of the sins. And then in chapter 2-4, which we saw as one second message or the first message following the summary, they pronounce the judgments that God would bring on the land for their sins. Their sins of oppression of the poor, their lusting to be lusted after, and it spells out in some detail the circumstances in which they would find themselves. And these are mostly circumstances within the country.

But chapter 5 is a more detailed delineation and condemnation of specific sins along with the judgments that would follow each of those sins. But it adds another judgment, that of these nations that are coming afar against them. We saw last week how chapter 5 presented this context of a parable to communicate an unwelcome message in a way that identifies the audience as the guilty party only after the parable has led that audience to condemn the guilty. We saw what Nathan did when he confronted David, how he told David a parable that got David to condemn the guilty party. And then only after David had himself condemned the guilty party, Did Nathan reveal that David was the guilty party?

And so we saw that in verse 7 that Isaiah identifies the people of Israel and Judah as the guilty people who produce no fruit, only wild grapes. God looked for justice, but behold, oppression or bloodshed. He looked for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. And in the Hebrew words there, there's a bit of alliteration and consonance between justice and oppression, between righteousness and a cry for help. So we missed that in English.

But alliteration is a repetition of the opening sounds of a word, and consonance is the repetition of sounds within those words. And so there's some literary devices that are being used here. But Isaiah's message is more than just a covenant lawsuit that proclaims God's wrath on covenant breakers. Isaiah's message is also the mediator of the covenant bringing a message of redemption, a message of hope that promulgates to the guilty the path of deliverance. And so scattered throughout the warnings and the condemnations are these exhortations to cease to do evil, learn to do good, to seek justice, to rebuke the oppressor, to defend the fatherless, to plead for the widow.

There are offers of grace. Come now, let us reason together. Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow There along with the promises that Zion would be redeemed with justice and God would teach her his ways And then and then we also saw that there are beautiful depictions of the glory and the blessing that would come upon the church in the latter days. But in this chapter five, this detailed delineation of sins and judgments, there is no direct offer of grace or redemption. I think this is the biggest difference with the previous chapters.

This is a pronouncement of woes on the wicked. And the first woe is against wealthy oppressors who add field to field and house to house, till there is no place where they dwell alone in the midst of the land. This is speaking here of wealthy people who are able to buy up all the land and houses around them so that there is nothing left or available to buy for those who are not so wealthy. And so the result is there's no place left for the less wealthy to live so that effectively they are pushed off their land. Now there is nothing specifically wrong with owning land, and even owning a lot of land, provided it's productively utilized.

But there is something wrong with buying up all the land to stop people from growing food on it or buying up all the houses so as to drive the price up so much that people on regular incomes can no longer find an affordable place to live and that's what was going on here. Another variation on this is when all the competitors in a particular industry are brought are bought out leaving one or two companies with a monopoly. And this was actually such a big problem in our country 100 years ago that there was federal legislation passed to attempt to stop this form of oppression. And I'll let you judge how successful that has been. But despite the legislation, it still happens today.

It's just done in more creative and indirect ways that are just as harmful in the end. But there's another sin that's being addressed here besides merely buying up all the land and houses in the nation. See the land of Israel was equitably apportioned to each tribe in Joshua's day and that inheritance was never to be permanently sold out of the family. And there were a number of provisions in the Mosaic law to ensure that the land did not leave that family inheritance. There was a lever at marriage so that if a man died without any heirs then his brother was to marry his wife, widow, And the first child would be his heir.

And the second child would be the brother's heir. And that was why Naboth refused to sell his vineyard to Ahab And was killed for it. There was also another law in Israel to preserve this inheritance was the year of Jubilee, when every 50 years all the land was returned to the family, to the tribe that had inherited it. And the land was based on the value on the number of years to the to the next Jubilee. If it was only a couple years then the land had less value.

If it was many years then it would worth more. So in other words the land the value of the land was based on what it would produce in the time that owner had it. This was also the case for slaves. Anytime an Israelite became too poor to support himself, he could sell himself as a servant to raise money. Effectively, he became an indentured servant.

But in the year of Jubilee, he was to be set free with his family. If someone sold their children into slavery because of poverty, They were to be released in the seventh year. But according to Jeremiah 34, this was not happening for servants. They weren't being released in the seventh year. And if it wasn't happening with servants, it probably wasn't happening with the land either.

And so the judgment that Isaiah pronounces is specifically customized to this sin. The land that had been obtained unjustly or in an oppressive way would cease to produce. A homer of seed would yield a harvest of one ifa. Now a homer is 10 ifas. So God is saying they would plant 10 ifas of seed and get one ifa of seed back in their harvest.

That's exactly opposite, isn't it, of what it should be. In units that maybe are more common, that we would more commonly use, he's saying they would plant about 60 gallons of seed and harvest 6 gallons of seed back. And that's of course exactly going the wrong direction. I checked Google and a good Nebraska cornfield would yield a harvest of five or six hundred times the amount of corn that was planted. Not one tenth of what was planted.

And the same with the vineyard. A ten acre vineyard. And that ten acres is an agricultural translation. And by that I mean the word that's translated acre is actually the word for a pear. And so in saying 10 pear, what it's saying there is it's what 10 yoke of oxen could plow in a day.

This is actually the only measure of area in the Old Testament. There's many measurements for length and so on, but this is the only one for area. And so God is saying a 10-acre vineyard, roughly what 10 yoke of oxen could plow in a day, would produce about six gallons from that vineyard, six gallons of wine. When a good vineyard should produce a thousand times that much. He's saying that these luxury mansions would be empty.

They would be be carried away from their homes into captivity, no longer able to enjoy them. So you see how the sin, the judgment is specifically tailored to this specific sin. But it's also the sanction for breaking the covenant that God gave in Deuteronomy 28 verses 38 and 39. God promised Israel that if they broke his covenant and disobeyed him, He said this, You shall carry much seed out to the field, but gather little in, for the locusts will consume it. And you shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather of the grapes, for the worms shall eat them." That's what Moses told the people.

That's what God told the people in His covenant that they confirmed before they came into the land of Canaan. And so the significance of a sin depends not only on what that sin is, but also who that sin is against and what our relationship is with the person against whom we sin. If a child shows, say for example, disrespect to their younger sibling, maybe hitting them, that's a sin. It's hate, which is the root of murder. But if that child disrespects their father or their mother by hitting them, see that's a much greater sin.

The exact same action. It's a much greater sin depending on the relationship between those people. For that child, the death penalty was prescribed for striking a father or mother in Exodus 21, the same as killing anyone else. A sin is also greater if it's against a close relationship. If you forget your appointment with a banker, that's regrettable.

Shouldn't do that, but it happens. But if you forget or miss your wedding anniversary, that's a much greater injury, isn't it? Because there's a much closer relationship there. There's a much higher obligation. And the earthly relationships that God uses to describe our relation to Him are those close relationships, that of a husband and a wife, a father and a son, not a banker and a client.

So we should see our sins as sins against a personal God, someone with whom we have a close personal relationship. Our Heavenly Father and our Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. You see, these sins that might seem minor are really not because our sins, as David said, are against God and him only. The second woe is to a debauched people in verses 11 to 17. And then debauchery describes the degradation of character through excessive indulgence in sensual and physical pleasures.

It's a lack of self-control and a complete abandonment to the flesh. That's the botchery. Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may follow intoxicating drink, who continue until night till wine inflames them, the harp and the strings, the tambourine and the flute, and wine are in their feasts, but they do not regard the work of the Lord nor consider the operation of his hands." This is an exact description of the entire entertainment industry that dominates the culture of our nation. You couldn't have written it better. The popular music industry, the concert scene, the Hollywood movies, the fashion culture, the spectator professional sports world.

Popular concerts, tours draw millions of people. They sell out large venues all over the nation, the same with professional sporting events. And just as Isaiah describes, intoxication and addiction is pervasive in this world. God says these people do not regard the work of the Lord nor consider the operation of his hands therefore they have gone into captivity. The direct consequence of this sin is enslavement.

Verse 13 adds, they have become enslaved because they have no knowledge. In the first woe, the connection between the sin of greedy acquisition of land and the consequence of a barren land is pretty straightforward. But we might ask why does pleasure in this debauched culture lead to not having any knowledge of the work of the Lord? What's the relationship there? How is this sin specific to the, or this judgment specific to this sin?

Well, the connection is made in Psalm 111 verse 2, which says that the works of the Lord are great and are studied by all those who take pleasure in them. See, the people Isaiah is describing here have substituted the presence of the world's the botched culture for the presence of the Lord. And you can't be in both places at once. It's one or the other. In the presence of the botched culture is only the pseudo pleasure that quickly fades away.

In the presence of the Lord there is true pleasure forevermore that doesn't fade away. And that pleasure in the presence of the Lord certainly includes the work of his hands, His creative and providential work as well as his redemptive work See because They have pleasure in his works. They study those works all of those works his creative Providential and redemptive work But those who find pleasure in debauched culture have no pleasure in the Lord and therefore no interest or little interest in studying his works. Romans 1 goes even farther and says that these people suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Not only no interest in learning it, but they suppress it.

So because they have no pleasure in the Lord, they don't study His creative and providential works. And because they don't study these works, they are ignorant and without true knowledge. They don't know the Lord. I think this is why government schools are doomed to failure and will continue to produce generation after generation of people who are not only ignorant of God's laws but ignorant of all of his works. They become ignorant of creation, ignorant of history, ignorant of his providence.

And I'm sure we've all seen many examples of that. They don't they become blind and insensitive to what the Lord is doing right in front of them. They don't praise him for his deliverance. They don't see. His judgment.

These are people who are ignorant of the signs of the times. They're ignorant of his initial chastening and all the little things that he sends, in the hurricanes, in the floods, in the economic reversals, and so forth. And they don't repent. And so they never see the judgment coming until they are swept away. And Isaiah goes on to describe how this the botched pomp and glory will be judged all this entertainment this whole wine women and song industry Isaiah says she will open its mouth wide and swallow it all it opened its mouth beyond measure their glory and their multitude and their pomp, and he who is jubilant will fall into it.

The picture here is just like God opening the ground under Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and them all just suddenly disappearing, falling away, falling into the ground, and it closes up over them. And all this massive people who were once there in one moment, the next are gone. But God will be exalted in his judgment in verse 16 and 17. The Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment and God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness. This God who is holy and that's an attribute of God, his holiness, that's his, that's his, the highest or the apex of his attributes, his holiness.

He was shown to be holy in the accomplishment of his judgment on on the land of Israel. But here's the thing we need to remember. This woe is not directed to pagans. Isaiah here is speaking to Judah. He's speaking to behavior and sins in the church.

See, God says, my people, my people have become enslaved because they have no knowledge. My people. That's the church. And we're not immune from these sins. The next two verses, verses 18 and 19 speak of profane, deceived scoffers.

And Isaiah employs a very graphic picture here, People pulling a heavy load as if they were beasts of burden. I've actually seen this in countries I've visited. There are people that have donkeys and wagons, and they use those donkeys to pull the load down the street in the wagon. And then if you go a little farther out in the country there are people that have donkeys but no wagon. So they use the donkey to drag the load on the ground while they walk beside the donkey.

And then there are people that have neither donkey nor wagon. And these people hitch themselves onto the ropes and they drag the load down the road themselves. Yes, that's happening right now in places in the world. And that's the picture here. People dragging this heavy load behind them.

And the heavy load that they are pulling behind them is their sin. They are pulling this terribly heavy load with cords of vanity. Vanity is futility. It's nothingness. Nothingness.

See these are people who have believed a lie. They believe something that's not true, that's nothing. And that lie has shackled them with a burden from which they cannot escape. And they go through their life pulling this heavy load behind them, dragging it along. They can't escape it.

They can't free themselves from the ropes that tie them to their sin. And yet these are the very people, Isaiah says, who say, where is God? They taunt God. If you are real, then why can't we see you? They demand that God prove himself to them, to their satisfaction.

These are the people that are that can't free themselves from this burden behind them that they dragged behind them. But, of course, God is not the one in the dock. He's not the one that has to explain himself. He has no need whatsoever to prove himself to them or to explain anything to them. See, in effect, these people are saying, is God really going to judge us?

If so, let's see it. Hurry up. Hurry up, God. Show us something so that we can believe. And they mockingly refer to God as the Holy One of Israel.

Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come that we may know Him. That's mocking God. That's blasphemous. This term Holy One of Israel is common to Isaiah. In fact, he's going to use it a little later in this chapter.

He uses it more than anyone else, probably about 25 times compared to a handful of other times in the rest of the Bible. And so it would seem that maybe these people have heard Isaiah speak of the Holy One of Israel, and now they are throwing it back at him, mocking his prophetic warning of God's judgment on their land. No human oppressor can ever ill treat these Israelites more severely than they are oppressed by their own iniquity. These cords of vanity, these cords of as a result of their self-deception, can only be broken by the Lord. We can weave the cords, but we can't break them.

The fourth woe is to the perverters of truth. Those who call evil good and good evil. The inversion of what's right and what's wrong. You know, a woman can murder her unborn child today and you go girl. But if you spank a disobedient child, you're investigated and hold before a judge.

You can take God's name with impunity in the government school, but if you teach that Jesus Christ is king, or mention that he's Lord of your life, you're fired. We honor the Federal Reserve Chairman who devalues our money, robbing the poor and overturning the very basis of our society as a great man, the savior who is going to turn our economy around. But If you feed the poor on the streets of Houston, you'll get arrested for serving food without the proper credentials. But even more subtly, this is the rationalization of sin to make it appear good. Perversion of truth calling good evil and evil good.

And we've always, Cultures have always had ways, respectable ways of justifying sinful behavior. And we can see it in prior cultures or generations. Killing somebody that you hated was made honorable if it was a duel and you were challenging and your honor was being challenged. That's just murder by people by somebody who hated you. Same thing with abortion, just a way to call something that's murder by some other name.

It's a rationalization of sin to make it appear good. And we do that all the time in our sinfulness. The fifth woe is to those who profess themselves to be wise. Those who are wise in their own eyes, don't think they need any help from others. They don't see their inability.

And their need of a savior. This is of course, pride and God resists pride. God knows them only from afar. But he regards the lowly and he gives grace to the humble, those who know They don't have any wisdom and need to ask God for it. Jesus ate with sinners and publicans and tax collectors, but those who thought themselves to be wise, he only knew from afar.

The sixth woe in verses 22 and 23 is pronounced against corrupt rulers. They are singled out, these corrupt rulers, with the connection of two things that we might not initially put together. The glorification of a drinking culture and the perversion of justice. But this isn't this exactly what we think of when we think about public corruption? It's those backroom deals brokered by lobbyists who excel at what?

Whining and dining, civil magistrates, and funneling money into their campaigns. This connection of those who excel in mixing Drinks are those who justify the wicked for a bribe and take justice away Well verse 24 describes the problem or the root of the problem in very simple terms. These people have rejected the law of God and despised his word. Now in a sermon on this passage at the start of the COVID drill, I walked through at some length how our nation has formally rejected the law of God and it began long before the establishment of our current government 250 years ago. It began before that with the rejection of the first table of the law of God.

And the rejection of the second table of the law of God, Commandments five through 10, was largely completed 40 years ago. I won't repeat that explanation this morning, but the consequences to Israel rejecting the law of God and despising the word of the Holy One, were calamitous. And they are metaphorically described in these last seven verses. There was the internal collapse of their culture through its own internal weight. But then through Assyria and Babylon and other nations, God brought utter desolation and destruction on the land of Israel.

Isaiah makes it very clear, though, that in bringing this judgment, these other nations are just God's servants doing exactly what God has told them to do. Isaiah calls them the God's servant. And in this path, in other places, in this passage, it says God will whistle to them from the ends of the earth, and they will surely come with speed. In other words, Isaiah is presenting a picture here that these kings are God's servants, and God says, jump, they say, how high. And that their desolation that they are bringing on the land needs to be seen as God's judgment, not just unfortunate circumstances of a greedy nation.

Yes, they are all that, but this is God's judgment. And so the question I want to close with this morning is how do we apply this passage about Israel to us? Well, there's a couple similarities and a couple differences. Israel is like all the nations of the ancient world and all the nations today, in that the Lord God created all the people in those nations, and in that all those who rule those nations, whether it's Israel, all the other neighboring ancient nations, or nations of the ancient world, or all the nations of the world today, those who rule them are God's ministers. And God has established a single standard of justice and righteousness and truth for all those nations.

And that standard, of course, is his word. There's not, you see, one set of laws for Israel and a different set of rules for everybody else. So there's a similarity there. But Israel is unique and different from all the other nations in that it's a prototype. If you're not an engineer, a prototype is the first of something that is made.

And it gives the pattern from which all the other things are made, whatever it might be. And so as the prototype, it illustrates or demonstrates what other nations ought to be. Israel is that example that we can look to, to understand the principles of justice and truth and righteousness. The circumstances in the land of Israel may be different from our circumstances, and so the application of the principles of God's law may differ, but the principles themselves don't change because the standard of the law of God never changes. But third here, this prototype, this nation of Israel, this first, shows the inability of all humans descended from Adam to meet the standard of justice, righteousness, and truth that God requires.

And it shows the inability of any man to fulfill the redemptive role to restore sinners under this that are under a sentence of death. You see through Abraham, God called Israel out of all the nations of the earth to be a peculiar and special people to him. And so Israel was the Old Testament church. But Abraham's descendants continually turned away from the Lord in generation after generation after generation, just like we are reading through the book of Judges. Abraham's own children turned away.

Ishmael, Jacob's son Esau, turned away. The Levitical priesthood could never offer a sacrifice to atone for sin because they were sinners themselves. King David and all the kings who descended from him could never subdue the hearts of the people because they were sinners themselves. And they went astray themselves. The old all the Old Testament prophets were never able to make people hear the word of God and know the Lord.

Because they were sinners themselves. And so you see in every way. This nation, this prototype nation is completely unable. To restore what was lost in the fall. It's only in Jesus Christ that the redemptive role of the nation of Israel is fulfilled.

Or the people of Israel. You see the Levitical priestly role is fulfilled in Christ. He has offered of Himself a sacrifice that does atone for sin, that never needs to be repeated, unlike the sacrifices of the priests of the Levi. Hebrews tells us that the prophetic role has been fulfilled in Christ. God who in various ways spoke through the prophets in the time past has now in these last days spoken through his son.

And by the power of his spirit, he is able to make dead people here and to know the Lord. Something the Old Testament prophets could never do. In fact, as we'll see in the next chapter, Isaiah is told to speak to a people who will never hear or understand. And the role of the kingly line of David is also fulfilled in Christ. He is now the king who can, unlike David, subdue rebel hearts to himself.

And he is the reigning king, bringing all nations under his dominion. This is the heart of the Great Commission. The commission to the church in the New Testament. We are to disciple all the nations because all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Christ. As Revelation 11 sells us, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.

And the twenty-four elders fall down and worship God saying, we give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, because you have taken your great power and have reigned. So we tell people that Jesus is king, and we baptize them and teach them how to follow his laws and walk in his ways. And we are to tell that to every institution, to every nation under heaven so that God's will is done throughout all the earth just as it is done in heaven. Now after. That after Christ's incarnation this ethnic wall between Jews and Gentiles is broken down and Gentiles are grafted into Israel so that the New Testament church contains both Jews and Gentiles.

In the Old Testament Israel was the church. In the New Testament the church continues to be Israel, the Israel of God. It's comprised of these Jews and Gentiles. So we see then the ways in which Israel is an example that we can follow. But yes there is a difference.

And so when we look at Israel, we see God applying His law to specific situations. And from these examples, we can learn how to apply God's law, God's unchanging and eternally valid law to our situation today, which is different in some ways. We see our complete inability to keep the law and thus our need for the Holy One of Israel. We also see the consequences of our inability to keep the law of God. Paul told the Galatians, do not be deceived.

God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. He who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. You see, what we sow in our individual lives, we will reap in our life.

What we sow in our families, we will reap in our families. What we sow in the church, we will reap in the church. What we sow in the nation. We will reap as a nation. And we pray that God would enable us to be a fruitful vine that brings forth good grapes and not wild sour ones.

Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for the tender love and care that you have shown to your vineyard. We are grieved at our rebellion and our sin, at our desire to cover that sin, to hide it, to deceive ourselves that it is not a sin or not as bad a sin as it is. Father, may you show to us the deceitfulness of our sin, the sinfulness of our sin, the calamitous consequences of our sin. May you conquer us in your grace and teach us your commandments and your precepts that we might walk in them. We pray, Lord, that in this walk, we might be steadfast and abound, that we might not grow weary in doing well, remembering that we will reap in due time if we do not lose heart.

We ask this morning specifically for your grace to persevere. For your grace to believe your word is true and continues to be true and continues to apply to us and to every situation. To believe in the sufficiency of your word for our every need. To believe in the wisdom of your word, to deal with not only our problem of sin and our inability to break the ropes that tie us to it, but also to every other area of our life. Lord, thank you for giving to us your wise statutes and commandments.

And we ask that you give us a heart to love them, to delight in them, and to meditate upon them. In Jesus' name, Amen.