Timely & Timeless: So Sad, Your Dad!

One Year Bible (Sep. 9)

Isaiah 3:1-5:30

“So Sad, Your Dad”

The word “WOE” is more of a lament than just a judgment. It basically expresses the thought, “How sad for you.”

A parable is a simple story used to Illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. It is a comparison, illustration, or analogy.

Today’s parable is of the Lord’s Vineyard, “Now I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a rich and fertile hill. He plowed the land, cleared its stones, and planted it with the best vines. In the middle, he built a watchtower and carved a winepress in the nearby rocks. Then he waited for a harvest of sweet grapes, but the grapes that grew were bitter.”

(5:1-2)

This sad story tells the strained relationship between Israel and God, with Israel depicted as a vineyard and God as the vinedresser. God has done everything necessary to enable HIS people to prosper and produce sweet fruit, but the vineyard did not produce good grapes. The fruit is bitter because they have chosen a life of bitterness and evil.

This parable in chapter five is followed by a series of SIX WOES against the people of Judah. This message is directly focused on those that have greedily accumulated wealth and power and those that have mocked God and recognized evil as good. (5:1-30)

The LORD lamented six specific sins in Judah. 1) Greed (8-10), 2) Debauchery or sexual immorality (11-17), 3) Blasphemy (18-19, 4) Perversion (20), 5) Arrogance (21), and 6) Corruption (22-23).

God’s people had not only rejected God’s laws and wisdom, but they had rejected HIM!

They had partied and were filled with wine, women, and wealth. They had traded God’s gift to them of intimacy for unnatural relationships and performed all kinds of perversions attached to idol worship. It was a big orgy with the offering of children as sacrifices. They trusted godless idolatrous nations as their allies to rescue and save them rather than turning to their God.

They were a vine that was overgrown with weeds of shame. They yielded bitter wine.

Why do you think the parable of the vineyard was selected for use in this passage by God to reveal their true sin? Perhaps, it is because their sin started with their inebriated condition of parties, orgies, and idol worship. Out of this flowed everything else. They lived to please their fleshly desires…

The Vinedresser grieves over the garden that he created, cared for, and cherished!

What more could he have done? Nothing!

The vineyard chooses its own destiny, and so HE will take away Judah’s Hedge of protection and it will become briers, thorns, and waste.

He will no longer “TAKE CARE” of a garden that doesn’t CARE!

Here is the saddest description of the vineyard’s sad state, “So, my people will go into exile far away because they do not know me.” (5:13)

God’s own creation no longer knows or heads the words of their creator!

Here is a result of them not knowing God or following HIS ways, “What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter. What sorrow for those who are wise in their own eyes and think themselves so clever.” (5: 20-21)

Isaiah began today’s passage in chapter five with these words, “My beloved had a vineyard.” (5:1)

My BELOVED. Yet, His own people did not love their creator, provider, and vinedresser.

HE was NOT their BELOVED.

Have you ever loved someone and done everything you could to show them that love? Have you come to their rescue when they were in trouble or in a hard place time after time? Have you ever prayed for them to change their heart and mind about their attitudes and actions? Have you ever given much grace but then they won’t give any grace to their family members, friends, or brothers and sisters in Christ?

I have experienced this and perhaps you have also. It hurts beyond measure! That hurt is a small glimpse of what God experiences to an infinite extent! The gift of FREE WILL is the greatest blessing and the greatest obstacle for God’s creation. We don’t always or often make the right choices. God went beyond and above in pursuing a covenant relationship with his children. But, HE wouldn’t make them love HIM, and HE was removing HIS HEDGE of protection…

Can you see these WOES being said about our nation today? As a REMNANT of His GRACE are we praying, interceding, and standing rightly?

“SO SAD, YOUR DAD!” … Those words are heartbreaking to HIS BELOVED!