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Isaiah 5:1-7
'The Song of the Vineyard'
Divine Service
20th Sunday After Pentecost, 2005
Hope Lutheran Church, Aurora, CO
Pastor Wolfmueller
Dear People of God,
In our Old Testament text the prophet Isaiah sings a song, often called “The Song of the Vineyard.” This song is about God and His people, Israel. It begins as a love song, a ballad, extolling and praising God's great love and care for His people.
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.
And what does the Lord do with that vineyard, how does He treat it. Listen as this love song continues.
He dug it up and cleared out its stones,
And planted it with choicest vines.
He built a tower in its midst,
And He also made a wine press in it.
This verse is packed; all of the Lord's work and effort comes at us so fast that it is good to slow down a bit. This is rocky ground that the vineyard sits a top, and the Lord clears away the rocks, builds a stone fence all the way around it, and then builds a tower in the midst. Many fine vineyards in the ancient world would have towers in them, and the family would sleep in them, and keep watch, to make sure that no one would break in and steal the fruit. And then, the Lord quarries, out of the stone, a wine press. This is a lot of work, a lot of sweat and effort, days and weeks and months of strenuous labor. The Lord puts all He has into this vineyard of His.
Indeed, the Lord will, in a few verses, say that there is nothing more that He could have done, no more effort could have been extended. The Lord's work in His vineyard is full, complete, perfect.
We know of the Lord's work for His vineyard, for His people. He didn't just drip with sweat, but with blood. The Lord has done all, everything for His people, He has even sent His own beloved Son, and Him to the cross, for us, His vineyard. This is truly a love song, the most beautiful ever sung. The low echo of God's wrath matched with the perfect tune of Christ's righteousness, all blending in the perfect harmony of the Gospel, with the joyous and beautiful refrain, “Father, forgive them,” sung by the Lord Jesus from the choir loft of the cross.
This is the love song of God, for you. Let me sing to my Well-beloved A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard, a song of all of the Lord's work and effort and striving and dying and rising for us, and for our salvation.
But this song that the prophet Isaiah sings has two parts, two movements. The Lord does absolutely everything for His vineyard, and them the harvest comes. He comes looking for the fruit of the vines.
He expected it to bring forth good grapes,
But it brought forth wild grapes, sour grapes.
And it is here, with sour grapes in His mouth, that the song of the vineyard turns sour. No longer a love song, it is now a song of war, a hymn of vengeance. The vineyard is judged, and all the work that the Lord had done for the vineyard is undone. The hedge is taken away, the wall torn down, the stones left in the field, and the Lord even commands the clouds not to rain on His vineyard.
Why? Why all this judgment and destruction? Isaiah tells us:
[God] looked for justice, but behold, oppression;
For righteousness, but behold, weeping.
Righteousness and justice, that is what the Lord looks for, that's the fruit He expects to find in His vineyard, in His church. The Lord's working and giving and suffering and dying, all of the Lord's work for us, on our behalf, is for this reason, that we would bear the good fruit of righteousness and justice, of faith and love.
Today we celebrate stewardship Sunday. It is our hope and prayer that we would be good stewards and managers of the gifts that the Lord gives to us. That we would bear fruit, as a church, as families, as individuals. And so it behooves us to look at what kind of fruit the Lord expects of us. The Lord desires to see the fruit of righteousness and justice.
First, the fruit of righteousness. This righteousness is the perfection and the forgiveness of our sins which the Lord gives to us. It is the righteousness of Jesus which is ours by faith. The Lord expects of us righteousness, that is, faith, that we believe in Jesus, that we trust that His death on the cross was for us, in our place. This is the fruit of righteousness which follows the preaching of Christ: faith in the Gospel. Without this faith there is no salvation, no hope, no life, no heaven, but only the fearful threat of judgment and death.
To be a good steward of God's gifts, it is of first importance to have faith, that we trust in Jesus alone for our salvation. We thank God that He has created in us this faith, that we trust in Him alone and have the forgiveness of all of our sins. May He continue to send His Holy Spirit to strengthen us in the same faith into everlasting life.
The second fruit that the Lord expects to find in His vineyard is justice, a keeping of the law. This is the fruit of love. Love always follows faith, for faith knows of God's great love for us, and is ready and quick to share that love with others. Justice, in the Scriptures, is loving your neighbor and caring for them in need. Faith which detaches itself from love, which does not care for its neighbor is a dead faith, really no faith at all. And so the Lord expects to find His vineyard full of love.
Faith and love, this is what it means to be a good steward, really, what it means to be a Christian. That we, by faith, rejoice in the gifts God gives us, and that we, in love, share those gifts with our neighbor.
This, by the way, is why we give our money and our time to the church. Why you all have pooled together your money, and have built and sustained this beautiful church building, why you have called a pastor (they aren't cheap, I know), all of this you have given out of love, out of love for the Gospel.
The Gospel, of course, is free, a free gift of pure grace. And so we that God for letting us be a part of the Gospel's spread, its preaching throughout the world. This building, this font and this altar, this pulpit and this preacher, you have put here because you love to hear the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, because you love Jesus, and you want to share that Jesus with all the world. This is being a good steward of God's greatest gift, His Son. This is treasuring and sharing that Son with our families and our neighbors and all the world.
Stewardship is bearing the good fruit of faith in Jesus and love for our neighbor. May the Lord continue to work in us, His vineyard, so that when He returns He will find in us these fruits of faith and love. And finding us clothed in the gift of Christ's righteousness, the Lord would call us to join with the heavenly choirs, that we might join in the unending song of thanks and praise, singing to to our Well-beloved, to our Jesus. Amen.
And now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
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