Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2005 : October 2, 2005

Theme: God's Grace Makes Good Grapes Possible

Church year occasion: Pentecost 20

This morning I want you to think of your parents. What is the worst punishment that they could ever inflict on you? If you said a dirty word, you might get a big bar of Ivory or Dial to clean out that dirty mouth. But that wasn't too bad. If you did something really bad, maybe you would get the wooden spoon. You knew you did something bad to deserve that punishment. But there was one punishment that went beyond even the wooden spoon. It was after you did something really despicable. And every time you heard it, it sent a chill down your spine. It was only one word. "We thought we had raised you better and you knew better, but I guess we're just disappointed." That was the worst. At least with the bar of soap and the wooden spoon, you knew it would be over soon. But with that word, "disappointed," you know you let your parents down. There's nothing worse.

This morning we hear that same kind of thing as God talks to his Old Testament people through the prophet Isaiah as well as to us. Isaiah used something that Jesus often used in his ministry to get his point across: a parable. He wants us to see that God's Grace Makes Good Grapes Possible.

Isaiah's parable actually started out as love song:

I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.

Let's see what kind of things the owner did for his vineyard:

1) verse 1 -- He built it "on a fertile hillside." -- so it has good soil
2) verse 2 -- "He dug it up and cleared it of stones"

Palestine was very rocky. The Arabs have a saying that when God created the world, an angel flew over it carrying a bag of stones under each arm. As he flew over Palestine, though, one of the bags broke, spilling half the rocks in the world over the land of Palestine.

3) verse 2 -- "planted it with the choicest vines" -- nothing 2nd rate
4) verse 2 -- "He built a watchtower in it" -- keep out animals/thieves
5) verse 2 -- "cut out a winepress." –-hewn out of solid rock

Just notice everything he did. He gave it every advantage and the utmost care. Why? For one single purpose: so it would bring forth a crop of good grapes. Such care and work went into this vineyard that the owner would naturally expect to see many beautiful grapes at harvest. But that didn't happen. Verse 2 -- "Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit."

Later, in verse 7, Isaiah explains who the owner and the vineyard represent. Who was the owner of the vineyard? The Lord. Who did the vineyard represent? God's people. God had done everything for them. He had adopted them as his own, delivered them from slavery in Egypt by miracles, kept them alive in the wilderness through miracles, cleared Canaan of any pagan nation that opposed his people just as the owner of the vineyard cleared stones from the vineyard, fulfilled every promise to his people even when they proved faithless, gave them his Word, his righteous law, a system of sacrifice to worship him and priests to serve as go-betweens, and especially the promise of the Savior who would come from this chosen nation. God gave them everything and more. But when he looked for a grateful response of good works done to glorify God, he found none.

Can God say the same about us as God's people of today? We are even more blessed than God's Old Testament people. Physically we have more riches than any other nation on earth has ever had and the freedom to use it however we choose. I just moved recently, and Sara and I have only been married nine years, and we have so much stuff! Can you name some of the physical blessings you've received? There are too many to count! Spiritually, we've been blessed by God beyond measure. Can you think of what God has given to you spiritually? We, like Israel, have been chosen by God purely by his grace. We did nothing to deserve that. God guides us through his Word. He feeds us through his Word and sacraments. Spiritually, we have more than Israel had because we have seen the fulfillment of God's promises in Christ who lived and died and rose again. It is fact.

So, God has lavished on us every blessing imaginable. And now he looks at our lives to see how much we appreciate it. He looks for a godly life filled with good works. But often what does God find? Bad fruit. Some typical bad fruit that he finds is in verse 7: "He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress."

Instead of justice, he sees bloodshed. What does that mean? If you go to school you know how this works. Suppose it's your first day of high school. You know people already, which is a great thing because you don't have to feel like you're left out with no friends. But you pass plenty of people in the halls that obviously don't have any friends. They are confused because they don't know where to go. They obviously don't know a soul. So what do you do? Do you go out of your way to befriend that person, or do you go right by just happy that's not you? Or you are looking to get that promotion at work? You've been working there for a long time and you deserve it, but another employee might get it instead. How do you treat that person? With Christian love, or as a rival, maybe even making sure everyone knows all the negative things you know about them? Those are examples of God not seeing justice, but instead bloodshed.

Instead of righteousness, God hears cried of distress. How would that kid at school with no friends feel like, do you think? They are probably going through some of the darkest days of their life. If you don't help them, who will? Perhaps that co-worker also has a family to support and could really use the raise, just like you. But if we don't act like the Christian God has called us to be, he will only hear cries of distress from them. I can still remember a kid named Ray who was a freshman in my high school class who ended up committing suicide because he had no friends and no one cared -- and I was one who didn't go out of my way to help.

When God looks for the fruit of righteousness and justice in our lives, what does he see? Very often, he finds nothing but bad fruit. Because of it, God looks on us and says, "I'm disappointed." With our parents, we didn't know where that put us in our relationship with them. But when God is disappointed with us, we know exactly what that means because he tells us. The eternal flames of hell. Rejected by God forever.

Does God have a right to reject us just as much as he had every right to reject Judah? Of course he does! "Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it." God would send his wrath on Judah in the same way. Then think of us and our sins. God should not only take all our blessings away, but should turn his face away from us and forsake us for an eternity, just as the owner of the vineyard broke its wall down so it would be exposed to harm, and neglected the vineyard and allowed it fall into ruin. He should no longer send his angels to guard us. He should take away all those promises that say he won't let us be tempted beyond what we can bear or that he's with us always or that everything will work out for our good. That would be justice! We would only be getting what we deserved. God has every right to reject us.

But he doesn't. He doesn't because this is really a story about a man who owned two vineyards. The first vineyard we already talked about -- we are the fruitless vineyard that should be rejected because of our lack of fruit. The second vineyard is Jesus. Jesus produced the fruit that the owner wanted. But Jesus took his perfect grapes from his vines and put them in our vineyard and took the shriveled and sour grapes off our vines and put them on his vines. Now when the owner looks at us, he sees a vineyard that is fruitful -- exactly as he expects. But he looks at his Son who now only has bad, shriveled fruit. So he turns his back on that other vineyard and takes care of us. That's what happened when Jesus died on the cross -- he took his righteousness and gave it to us and took our sins, our bad fruit, on himself. The God condemned his Son instead of us. As a result, Jesus could say, "He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." God trampled his Son instead of us.

God did all that for us in Christ. That's what he uses now to prompt good grapes from us. God gave us the perfect fruit of his Son and he enables us now to produce good fruit ourselves. God's Grace Makes Good Grapes Possible. So we can go out of our way to befriend someone who is troubled or down in the dumps to show them that they have at least two friends -- ourselves and Jesus. We can show kindness and friendship to co-workers, and so they can see Jesus through us.

Because of Jesus, your God can never say to you, "I'm disappointed." Instead, because of Jesus he says, "You're perfect." So produce the grapes in your life that God's grace has made possible -- the kind that come from a perfect child of God. Amen.