What does it take to forget God? To forget God’s mission and message? How long does it take to let that mission and message go before we no longer hear it and respond to what God asks each of us to do and become?
Today text is a poetic love song. Told from God to his beloved people—Israel. The song begins with an image of abundance and provision as the Lord purchases a vineyard, and he tends to it.
This vineyard is a gift that the Lord offers to his covenanted people. Yet by the end of the song both the vineyard and the relationship have turned sour. God’s gift is met with ingratitude. Good is given; evil is returned. The initiatives of love, care and support have every reason to expect a reciprocal response, but they are met with contempt.[1]
This prompts me to wonder about our lives as God’s people. . . Do we meet the provision and grace of God in a similar way?
For we can testify to the places and the instances where God has blessed and cared for us, and rather than pass that provision on to others, we have kept the blessing to ourselves. We have met the blessing of God with the response of contempt.
This poetic love song is filled with images that capture the mind, but let’s meet those images as the prophet presents them.
Move 1- Grapes
The most vivid image in this text comes in the form of the grapes. Occurring in two places (verse 2 & 4), Isaiah contrasts the two types of fruit that God sees growing in his vineyard. Let’s consider them one at a time. . .
First the Lord sees, good grapes, growing in this vineyard. Grapes are one of the seven species mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:8 that signify the fruitfulness which will be found in the Promised Land for the faithful children of the Lord.
These good grapes are the result of careful pruning and attention by the owner of the vineyard. They require a terracing approach to grow and they will need time to flourish—likely 2 years to see a full harvest. The abundance that God wants to see happen only does so because of time. Like us as we consider our discipleship, it takes time to grow into the people that God wishes us to become. Yet we do not grow by ourselves.
The harvest reaches it potential because of all the other items that God has put into place around the vineyard that will assist in the growth. Items of security; items of protection. Fences. Watchtowers. God puts these into place to help the grapes grow. The wine vat which the owner places in the vineyard also, this will help in the production of the sacramental by-product: wine. Each item is put into place by the one who oversees and begins the work.
God values this work, and God hopes for a good harvest to come.
Then there are the wild grapes. They come second. These wild grapes are contrasted by the previous good fruit which God’s children have a clear understanding of.
Only occurring in these two verses in the scriptures, these wild fruits are more than the opposite of the good fruit. They are poisonous. Toxic. A fruit that turns acrid. A fruit that appears promising when it starts growing but the longer that it grows, it quickly becomes inedible. Nothing of value is left here. As a seed these ‘wild grapes’ began to grow outwardly in a promising way but inwardly they are morally rotten, and that rot works its way all the way down to the core. These ‘wild grapes’ possess a stench that alerts others to its very nature. They smell the rot, and others will avoid it completely.
Now God wanted good fruit only to grow in this vineyard, and all the fruit began in this way. It all came from the same seed. God did not buy some good seed and some bad seed. But before long, rotten, wild fruit took joined the good fruit on the vine (somehow). And as the story ends, we are left to wonder, why?
Move 2- why and how
The question that this parable, love-song, leaves us to consider is:
How did good fruit, fruit that God planted properly, become acrid and wild?
Because once God decides that this fruit is bad, the Lord acts in the second half of our text aggressively against the ‘wild grapes.’ The fruit that God determines is of no value, God acts against it.
God removes the hedges. He breaks down the walls. Ceasing the care for the fields themselves. It almost reads like God is letting the entire vineyard that He cared for before, go fallow because the ‘wild grapes’ have been found in and among the good fruit that the Lord planted. God makes it so that no more rain falls from the sky, God, in verse 5-6, acts aggressively against the vineyard—a vineyard, again where some good fruit is growing.
Yet again, I wonder, why?
And if we look to the end of our text, I believe the answer lies in how our text ends.
The last verse, verse 7, tells us that people of the Lord have forgotten what it means to be in relationship with God. They have forgotten what it means to serve their community, care for each other. And while Isaiah uses theological language and traditional prophetical formulation to get there, it’s clear. They forget who they were called, who they were made, to be.
For as God planted them, nurtured them from seedlings and protected them. The Lord was pleased by what he was seeing—a reference in verse 7 to the Genesis creation story.
Yet when God returned and surveyed the fruit that he left growing in one way, fruit that is us ,historic and present, God saw only bloodshed which is a sign of division. The Lord heard cries—and not of righteousness and evangelism, but cries of judgment and separation. Cries of division and isolation.
For the people of Isaiah, and by extension, anyone who finds the story of the vineyard and considers their placement in the story, we are in danger of forgetting the total nature of God who seeks relationship with us and wants us to seek relationship with others in a manner consistent with God and the church.
We can be in danger of forgetting how much care and work God put into us as God discipled us and asked each of us to disciple one another, to care for the church, and to care for our community just as God cared for us. This care is not a one-off moment, but as God has repeatedly cared for us, invested time and resources in our betterment, God asks us to follow that example as we are for the church and the community.
The vineyard is not producing the fruit that God intended and so God, as the text concludes, has given up on the good work that He began when he bought the vineyard and created a vision of how this vineyard would look.
If you read further in Isaiah chapters 6-10 you will see that the prophet speaks about invading nations who will come and destroy God’s people and carry them away—and the picture is rough for God’s people. In this care, there is nothing left that God can do in the lives of his people. For the children of Israel, and perhaps the Church, are only producing ‘wild fruit’ and not the ‘good fruit’ which the Lord began in each of us.
Move 3-
Yet, as I have said, that is not what God desires from us as his church. This was not the plan. And there is still time for God’s church to care and support the mission and message of the gospel.
We must remember our calling, our mission, and God’s message. We must carry that message out from this place and into the community around.
Conclusion
So, as we move about this week and as live out our calling as the Body of Christ, we have to consider and reflect on the fruit that we are bearing and producing. Is it the good fruit, the fruit that is consistent with the will of the Lord?
Or have we begun to travel towards the ‘wild fruit’ and towards fruit that acrid and rotten? These are reflections and considerations between the individual and God, but as you spend time asking God about this, he will show you how to align yourself more and more with his will and that will help your fruit grow deeper and richer each day.
DM
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