I. Jesus Is Everything 00:11
Lord, we come before you today and we humble ourselves. We open our eyes, we open our ears. Speak to us by your mighty power. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So I was watching this movie on the plane yesterday. It’s called About My Father, and it’s this guy Sebastian something or other. Long story short, he has this tumultuous relationship with his Sicilian father, who’s played by Robert De Niro, and there’s this tension back and forth. And the crux of the movie, the big moment where everything resolves, is when he says, “You know, my dad has this old Italian saying: family is not one important thing, it is everything.” And it’s like, “Oh, yay!” The fireworks go off, the couple kisses, it’s a whole thing, right? Everything’s resolved.
But it was just sitting in my mind all day yesterday, and I was like, “But no, that’s not right.” Because you know what the saying should be? Jesus is not one important thing; he is everything. And guess what? Jesus’ plan for the world is the family. So they were really close. They were really close.
But as we read our readings today, you might find yourself feeling like, “Whoa.” I mean, every reading today is talking about how God’s going to uproot, tear down, destroy. The judgment of God is coming. And why is that? Well, ultimately it’s because the people being written to, the Israelites, the Church, the Pharisees, we all decide that Jesus is just one thing, but not everything. We get our priorities mixed up. That’s why Jesus says elsewhere, “Seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt 6.33). We’ve got to have the first thing first.
So as we read through this, just keep that in mind. What is the problem with the house of Israel, who ostensibly, supposedly, worship God? Well, again and again they give their hearts to other gods, to other things, to idols. They may still do their token sacrifices to Yahweh, to the God of Israel, but they get led astray by the other desires of their hearts. And so ultimately, as we read through this, I want you to think in your heart and mind: where have I let something take the place of Jesus in my life? Because that is how we’re going to see transformation: when we can put Jesus where he belongs in our life.
II. My Beloved Had a Vineyard 02:57
So, keeping that in mind, we’re going to start in Isaiah 5, verse 1, our Old Testament lesson, and it says:
1 Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. Isa 5.1–2
(Sorry, a wine vat. I’d like a wine van as well.)
Now, let’s start through this. It’s kind of interesting, because what we’re doing is reading a prophecy that the prophet Isaiah gave to Israel. But the early church fathers read this in light of the Church, because the Church is the new Israel. And so as we talk through this, keep that in mind. This is just as applicable to us as it was to the house of Israel.
And who is the Beloved? “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard.” Well, we know from the Gospels what happens when Jesus is baptized. The Holy Spirit falls, and God declares, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I’m well pleased” (Matt 3.17). And so we’re talking about Jesus here. And how did Jesus plant his vineyard on a fertile hill? He planted it on the hill of Calvary. He planted it on that hill where he died, the fertile hill that was fruitful for the salvation of the whole world. Out of that one event, all can be saved. He planted the Church on a fertile hill, the hill that was bathed in the blood of Christ, that won us our victory, that set us free, that empowered us to live resurrected lives. That’s the very fertile hill of our vineyard.
III. Choice Vines 04:10
He dug it, he cleared it of stones, and he planted it with choice vines. Did you know that God chose you? Yes, you. Every one of you. He didn’t choose humanity; he chose each human. He chose each of us. He didn’t put out a wide net and say, “Whatever I catch, I catch.” No. He knows each of us intimately and had each of us in mind on that cross. Each one of us bears the intimate, personal love of Christ. And he chose you. You’re in these seats. Well, guess what that means? God chose you to be here.
You need to know that you are chosen. Why do you need to know that? Because otherwise we’ll get pretty convinced that we have to earn God’s affection, that it’s all based on how we perform. So guess what? You have a bad week. Maybe you’re afraid to pray. That’s what it said in our collect: “forgive us those things of which our conscience is afraid.” Maybe you run into a moment where you don’t want to open your Bible, because you know what you’re going to see. You’re going to see your own failures exposed. But you know what you’re also going to encounter when you go to God? The same exact love that drove him to die on a cross, that you could be in relationship with him.
He chose you as his choice vines. The Church is his vineyard. You are his vines. You need to hold on to that identity. Everything else is secondary. Everything else should flow from the identity you have as the chosen one of Christ. And by that choice he has made you now the beloved. As you’re baptized, as you’re welcomed into his Church, you get the same promise as Jesus. It’s a completely rigged deal. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you accept his call, then you are now his beloved son, his beloved daughter.
I’m really emphasizing this point because we’re going to get to some harder passages coming up very soon, and I want you to remember that the reason why he gets so intentional with his discipline in this passage is because he loves you. And we cannot substitute performance for that. He doesn’t choose you because you’re the best at what you do. He doesn’t choose you because you’re a good person. He chooses you because he loves you and has called you to be his own.
IV. The Watchtower 08:09
Okay. His choice vines, right? And then he built a watchtower in the midst of it. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it, but that represents the Scriptures, the tradition of the Church, the faith that’s handed down in the creeds, and it includes the leadership of the Church. We are called to be the watchtower over the Church, raising up the vineyards and the vines. Jesus makes that abundantly clear as he calls to the exact same analogy in his Gospel. He says there was a man who planted a vineyard, but, you know what, the stewards of that vineyard, the watchtower of that vineyard, refused God what he was owed (Matt 21.33–41). He’s talking of the scribes and the Pharisees. So it’s very clear that there’s a call on the Church to steward this vineyard.
You know why God does that? Because he wants us to be participants in his plans in the world. Don’t you think God could just show up, and Jesus could walk around and manage everything? He could. But you know what he’d rather do? He’d rather transform Bishop Kessler. He’d rather transform Father Powell, Father Ed, myself, Deacon Phil, the leaders of the Church. He’d rather invite us to be an image of him to the Church, the same thing he’s going to ask you to do to the world: be image-bearers of him. He wants us to be a part of this plan.
V. Wild Grapes 09:18
So he built a watchtower. He looks for the grapes; he gets wild grapes. And we’re talking to a culture that lived on its agriculture. Did you know that Jews could not go and buy the grapes at Ralphs if the grapes at Albertsons weren’t good? If your crops failed, you were done. You might even die. Famine killed thousands of people on a generational basis. They were remembered: “Oh yeah, remember when Grandpa went through that famine, and half of our people just died because the crops failed?”
What I’m trying to say is, sometimes we read this like, “So what? Sour grapes, wild grapes.” We don’t take it with the serious nature with which they would have heard this. It was not an incidental thing. It didn’t mean that the wine was a bad vintage that year, right? It meant the fruit-bearing nature of these plants was the life of these people. When they prayed, “Give us our daily bread,” when Jesus taught them to pray, they actually meant, “I’m hungry. I need your provision and sustenance,” in a way we find it difficult to imagine. Okay? So wild grapes is a big deal. We don’t like it. Bad.
VI. Woe to Those Who Call Evil Good 10:32
What were they, the wild grapes? Well, later in the same passage, the same prophetic declaration (we didn’t read it this morning), 5.20 to 23 sums up the problem with Israel at this time, and it says in verse 20:
20 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! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! 22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! Isa 5.20–23
We’re going to quickly walk through this, because I think sometimes we read these things… Maybe you heard the “heroes at drinking wine” thing and it made sense to you. But it’s like, “Woe to those who call good evil,” and we’re like, “What? That’s not me. I don’t do that. I know what’s good and I know what’s bad. I know what’s right and I know what’s wrong.”
Do you know who knows more than anybody in this church about what’s right and wrong? My son, Rowan David Harris. He will tell you, “But Dad, that’s not right.” He’s pretty darn convinced he knows what’s right and wrong. And having lived with him for almost six years, I can tell you he’s wrong a lot of the time. And yet we grow up and we think, “Nah, I’ve got it figured out. I know what’s right and I know what’s wrong. I know what’s good, I know what’s evil.” But then you catch yourself doing things you regret.
Well, at some point you did something, whether it was flipping off that guy on the freeway. That felt really good at the time, right? I called that sweet. It felt sweet. But then later it becomes bitter. It sits in your gullet, and you’re like, “Man, I have a Saint Michael’s Church sticker on the back of my van. Dagnabbit!” But think about it, right? We get caught up in these things.
So I’m going to give you some categories to help you sift through this problem. Calling good evil: that’s when you justify your sin. That’s when you say, “You know what? I deserve to sit around and watch Netflix for three hours when I should be doing my work.” I’m calling it good, but you know what? In that context it’s evil.
Okay, let me give you a very specific example. God told me I needed to be specific this morning, because I asked him, “What do you want me to do?” and he said, “Be specific.” So I’m going to be specific. I’m driving my truck, and I leave at like 3:45 in the morning from house construction, and I get off Pico, I get on the 5… No, I’m not going to be that specific. But either way, I drive my day. I go all the way, I drop off the material, and I get to a hotel, because you’re not allowed to drive for more than twelve hours. And I check into the hotel, and it’s like 3:00 p.m., right? Because, you know, 3:45 to 3: that’s about the right timing. That’s usually when I get to the hotel.
I get into the hotel room, and I’ve got a list of things I have to do. Not things I want to accomplish, but things I really need to do: setting up bills, looking at my email, writing this very sermon. And then I find myself two hours later, and I have done these things: I have checked Facebook, I have scrolled through Instagram, I have watched some funny videos, I have seen a YouTube channel on the making of honey. I have done all of these things, and I have beaten a couple of levels of Bloons Tower Defense on my phone. How did that happen? Something in me said, “Do you know what’s sweet? Doing all these things.” But you know what? It was pretty darn bitter this morning when I opened up my laptop and I didn’t have a sermon written.
I confess, I’m a sinner, and I know my sin all too well. But all of us, we’re giggling, we’re laughing, we’re smiling, because we know we do the same thing. And yet we look at the Israelites like, “Those fools, those idiots. I would never do that. I would never bow down to a statue of a golden calf.” But I would spend ten hours looking at a glowing rectangle. There are problems in our life, and you know what it is, right? “Woe to those who call good evil.” You get told every day what is good and what is evil.
In fact, I forgot to mention, I also found a sale on Amazon, and I think I need a new TV. There are things shouting at you, “This is good! This is good!” And God is whispering, “It’s evil.” Listen to that still, small voice. It’s like honeycomb when you eat it, but it’s bitter in your gut. That moment of purchasing something on Amazon: you know that moment, and it’s going to be here tomorrow. Who knows how they’ve broken physics at Amazon, but somehow I click this button and it’s here tomorrow, sometimes today. The magicians at Amazon are out to get you. Really. I mean, maybe not magicians, but you get what I mean. They are really trying to convince you that what they’re selling is what you need.
And then we go to Sunday morning and we sing, “This one thing I ask, this one thing I seek” (it’s not a television set, I promise), “but it is to dwell within your house every day of my life” (Ps 27.4). What does that mean? Because I don’t come to church every day. I mean, most days, fair, but I don’t come to church every day. It means that where you live can be the house of the Lord. But guess what? You have to call what is good good. And you know what’s good? Doing what you’re supposed to do. It’s a very simple definition there, but it’s very useful, because, guess what, what’s good for you might not be good for him. You need to hear God’s voice and obey what he says.
Now, there are clear good and evil things: the Ten Commandments. There are several ways you can explain that. Most of us are familiar with those things, and most of us, if we’re committing those sins, are aware of it. We know to repent of it. Where we get lost is, “Well, he does that. Why don’t I get to do that? Well, she does that. Why don’t I get to do that?” Well, what did God tell you to do? In fact, God doesn’t want you to memorize a list of rules, rights and wrongs. He wants you to develop a relationship. What Rowan gets wrong nine times out of ten is that he’s memorized the known rules, and what I’m teaching him is that he needs to learn the relational journey of obedience. But usually it’s, “I can do this.” “Well, Dad told you to do something different.” “Well, I was helping.” “No, you were disobeying.” How often do we find ourselves in that trap? “I was making things good. I was doing the right thing.” “Yeah, but God told you to do something else.” My fear is that often I’m not even listening. Would I even hear if he told me? And then a couple of weeks later it’s like, “Hey, I never told you to do that.” “Oh, shoot.”
VII. Wise in Their Own Eyes 18:31
So all of this to say, we’ve got to keep going with these woes, because they’re great. I love the woes. “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” That’s the problem where you don’t listen to God. What happens when you’re wise in your own eyes? Well, you don’t need the spirit of wisdom to inform you. You’ve got it figured out. You’re shrewd in your own sight: “Well, I know how to fix this problem. I know how to solve all my ills. I’m smart enough to figure it out. I got like a high score on the SAT. Good for me.” Well, guess what? God’s ways are not your ways (Isa 55.8). He wants you to learn his ways, his kingdom. It doesn’t matter how smart, or, luckily for me, how dumb you are. He can work with you. It doesn’t matter how wise or foolish. But don’t convince yourself you’ve got it figured out. Listen. Listen and obey. He will teach you. He will guide you. There are so many promises about how he wants to give you wisdom in your life.
And it says, “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink.” And I think of the countless scenes in TV shows and movies where you get the guy who’s all big and tough looking, sitting at the table, and there’s the guy or the girl who’s less big and tough looking, and she drinks him under the table, and they go, “Hurrah! Yay!” Calling what’s evil good. Did you know it’s actually not good to be really good at getting drunk? Believe it or not. If all you paid attention to was the TV shows and the movies and the advertisements, you would think that the best people drink all the time. The best people, I’ve seen the billboards: they are swanky-looking people having that glass. Or the Most Interesting Man: “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, it’s Dos Equis,” whatever.
No, no. Yes: beer, wine, good. Jesus’ first miracle was creating gallons of wine. Hallelujah, praise Jesus. Our very sacrament is made from wine. God is talking about a vineyard. I’m not saying alcohol is bad. But gosh darn it if our culture doesn’t get it wrong. And it’s so easy, man, because you know what’s really sweet? That third Manhattan. Until the next morning, when it’s quite bitter.
But I just want to open our eyes today to see that even though we go to church and are doing our best to do what’s good, if you aren’t listening, if you’re not paying attention, we could easily be like Israel, following ten other gods besides the one who calls us, who saves us, who sets us free. Okay? Don’t be valiant in mixing strong drink. I had to repeat that one for myself.
VIII. What Does Love Require? 20:49
“Who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!” I think for us this is such a cultural burden that we have to remember. Did you know that it’s wrong to kill babies? Yes, it is wrong to kill babies. Did you know that drag queen story hour is wrong? Yes, absolutely, it is wrong. And we are doing this everywhere in our culture: we are praising the guilty and we are condemning the innocent, and it is a tragedy. But do you know what we all do? We see it and we go, “Oh, how awful,” and then we go back to our life, because it’s too big. It’s too hard for us to see salvation in those things.
So let me break it down a little bit farther. All of this, our cultural sickness, starts with you, sitting here today in this pew. Your job is to follow Christ with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12.30–31), in your life. And by doing that, you will change the world. Now, that may require things of you. In fact, I love this quote. It says, “Love, and do whatever else you want to do.” What does love require of us? That’s the only question you have to answer when you encounter these tragic circumstances, these injustices in the world: what does love require? And let me tell you this: it requires justice, it requires mercy, it requires truth, it requires perseverance.
I don’t know what the specific call in your life is when you hear about these great, tragic things, but I do know that God will tell you if you ask him. If you see something that breaks your heart, or that weighs on your heart, then bring it to God and say, “God, how can I do this? How can I be a part of the solution?” It starts with you and your household. But guess what? It doesn’t end there. We’re building the kingdom of God at this church. We’re affecting the neighborhood. We are affecting the world with our witness and what we do.
So when we think about this, and we look out in the world and get disturbed, guess what? That disturbance may be you feeling the heart of God. It may be a knock on your door that you need to answer. And if you look at the world and you are never disturbed by anything you see, ask God to awaken your heart, because there are things all around us, even in our local sphere: people who need that word of encouragement, of life; people who need that $20; who need that service; who need you to sit with them; who need you to pray with them; who need you to call and say, “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while.” All of that to say, this is not about giving you a list of demands. This is about encouraging you to renew that relationship with God, where you hear what he says and you do it.
IX. I Will Remove Its Hedge 24:45
Okay, now what is God going to do to this vineyard? It’s very important that we get to this part. Let’s talk about this. In Isaiah 5, verses 5 and 6, he says:
5 And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6 I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. Isa 5.5–6
If you persist in bearing wild grapes, then you will encounter the discipline of God. But the center of that promise was taken at the cross. Which vineyard was totally overthrown? Which person bore the thorns that are called out in that passage? Which hedges were broken down, that the wild animals could get at it? The one Vine, the True Vine, Jesus. He took the punishment for our sins completely in him, and you are not now guilty of your sins. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus (Rom 8.1). He took all of that. So now we can say, when God does discipline us, “Thank you, God,” because he’s only doing it to make us his.
Let me explain a little further. In the covenant that God made with Israel, there were consequences for breaking the covenant, and God by his justice would execute judgment on the people of Israel. In his love and in his justice, he would allow their hedges to be broken down and for them to be overrun. And we see it again and again: Babylon, Syria, all these places take Israel over. And then do you know what they do? They remember, “Oh yeah, we have a God who saves.” So even in those moments, what was God doing? Was he trying to get vengeance on Israel? No. He was inviting them to remember the God who saves.
So even when you read these passages and you’re like, “Man, God is pissed off,” remember: he’s not like us. We love our children, and yet we get overtaken by anger sometimes, and we yell at them, or we punish them unfairly, or whatever it is. And later on we’re like, “Man, I love them. What happened?” Well, we were overtaken by anger, let’s say. God is not that. God is never overcome by his anger. Even in the discipline, he is holy love. Let’s stop thinking of God as an angry father, and let’s come to him as the God who is fundamentally defined by love. You do not lose his approval. You do not lose your worth when you mess up. And even when we read this, “It shall be trampled down; I will make it a waste,” you have to recall that ultimately he took that judgment on himself, that we might not suffer it forever.
X. Thank God for His Discipline 28:39
Let me link these two things, because I have two strands going. One of them is: you’re not guilty. You will never be punished by God, because Jesus took it all. And the other one is: God’s a good father, and he’s not going to let you remain the sinner that you are today. He will transform you into a person who reflects the image of Christ, and that will require his loving discipline.
I’ve seen it even in people I know well, who let wild grapes come up in their life, and their whole life was just obliterated. The hedges were torn down. They went down a path that led to their whole life being destroyed. But do you know my hope for that person, or those people? It’s in 1 Corinthians 5, verses 4 and 5 (this is Paul writing to the Corinthians):
4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. 1 Cor 5.4–5
I look at that man who let wild grapes grow up in his life, and he was obliterated by the consequences of his actions, and I think of this verse: “I turn him over to Satan, that in the day of the judgment of the Lord he may be saved.” I don’t know how that all works. I don’t have any hand in the judgment of God personally here today. But I trust him, and I trust in his love. And so when the difficult times come and you think, “Man, I’ve messed up, and I’m suffering the consequences of my actions,” remember this: there is nothing God does towards you that is not motivated by your good.
We can actually thank God for his discipline. It reminds me of the story Deacon Johnson told once upon a time in his classroom, of getting corporal punishment as a kid and turning and saying, “Please, sir, may I have another?” And it’s funny, right? It’s funny in that moment. But when I think about God, it’s almost like, yeah: when God disciplines you, when you’re transformed, you can look and say, “Wow, thank God for that discipline.”
So we need to remember, even as we read (and every reading today was about the judgment of God), guess what? It was also equally about the love of God for you: his choice vines, his beloved, the ones who are called, the ones who are not measured by their performance but are transformed insofar as, like I said at the beginning, we surrender to his will. And don’t go memorizing a list of rules, so that you don’t fall into this trap. Ask God to show you what you should do, and do it. Get to Harris Ranch at 3 p.m. and write your sermon, like you know you should. It can be that simple. And guess what? Then you will dwell in the house of the Lord every day of your life, if you keep coming to him, asking him, “What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?” And there’s no end to the forgiveness…