Isaiah 5:1-7 — The Lord seeks out true faith and judges falsehood
Luke 12:49-56 — True faith and holiness sets apart and can divide
Hebrews 11:29-12:2 — The kind of faith that spiritual heroes lived
• Read this week’s linked article Growing in Hearing and Trusting God
• Watch God Seeks the Trusting Faith that Gets The Job Done, a 13-minute video telling the story that comes through the Bible readings
Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
1-2 Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock. You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh. Awaken Your might; come and save us.
8-9 You transplanted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.
10-11 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. Its branches reached as far as the Sea, its shoots as far as the River.
12-13 Why have You broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes? Boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.
14-15 Return to us, God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root Your right hand has planted, the son You have raised up for Yourself.
16 Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at Your rebuke Your people perish.
17 Let your hand rest on the man at Your right hand, the son of man You have raised up for Yourself.
18 Then we will not turn away from You; revive us, and we will call on Your name.
19 Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make Your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
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Isaiah 5:1-7 — The Lord seeks out true faith and judges falsehood
Abusing His kindness by producing the wrong kind of fruit brings consequences
1 I will sing for the one I love a song about H is vineyard: My loved One had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
“My loved One” — the prophet is singing this for the Lord.
2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.
“Cleared it… planted… built a watchtower” — describing three years’ work to the first harvest, in a vineyard that lacked nothing.
“Yielded only bad fruit” — “sour” grapes of the wild kind. The vineyard tenders hearing this would have been shocked that such a well-planted, well-prepared vineyard grew the wrong grapes.
3 “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between Me and My vineyard.
“Judge” — Isaiah wanted his hearers to come out against the vineyard in the story, before revealing who the vineyard represents.
4 What more could have been done for My vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?
“What more” — The Lord instructed His people, loved them and gave them the Promised Land, but their ‘fruit’ was injustice and false worship instead of being a witness to the nations.
5 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.
“Trampled” — by pagan invaders from Assyria, when the northern kingdom fell in 721 BC, and from Babylon when Jerusalem and Judah was conquered 135 years later.
6 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.”
“Not to rain on it” — in an agricultural society, withholding rain was serious. It amounted to a judgment and a curse, Deut. 28:23-25. Haggai 1:11, 2:16.
7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines He delighted in. And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
“Justice… bloodshed” — the Lord was seeing the very opposite of His expectation. This is brought out in a wordplay between mishpat, justice and mispakh, oppression, and tsedaqah, righteousness contrasted with tse‘aqah, violence against the poor. See also Isaiah 1:21-23.
Reflection
SUMMARY Isaiah tells a parable about a choice vineyard, fertile, well-situated and planted with the best vines — but it produces only bad fruit. So the owner lets it fall into disuse, overgrown, a wasteland.
APPLICATION The vineyard is the nation of Israel, soundly established in right living and justice. Today, this sets out God’s expectation of usKesus followers, as His people being examples of His right values.
QUESTION What sort of ‘fruit‘ is the church supposed to produce?
Luke 12:49-56 — Faith and holiness sets us apart but may also divide
Jesus’ coming is never neutral but demands a response to who He is
49-50 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed.
“Come to bring fire” — in Scripture, fire usually signifies purifying and judgment, but here Jesus wishes the purifying fire was already kindled, looking ahead to the flames which accompanied the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Spreading fire characterised the fervour of those first Spirit-filled witnesses.
51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.
“Bring peace… but division” — Jesus has made peace with God a possibility for all, but He demands a response, of choosing to follow Him, Romans 5:1. To follow or not to follow is without middle ground; refusing Him sets up division with believers who have made that commitment.
52-53 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Jesus here quotes Micah 7:6 which ends “… A man’s enemies are members of his own household“, a verse which the rabbis had long taken as pointing to persecution and division at the Messiah’s coming.
54-56 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?”
“You don’t know how to interpret” — everyone knew the hot dry Sirocco from the south, and recognised clouds over the sea in the west as bringing rain. Jesus is saying that the spiritual signs of the times are just as plain, but tells people they are pretending not to see them.
Reflection
SUMMARY Jesus explains that he is coming will compel a response from people, and that will cause divisions.
APPLICATION This teaches us that there is no middle ground with Jesus. Either He is Lord He is a threat. this is entering the last times, and we are still experiencing the same divisions in the same era 2000 years later.
QUESTION Is there more belief, or is there more attack on faith, than ever before?
Hebrews 11:29-12:2 — The kind of faith that spiritual heroes lived
This roll-call builds a picture of past winners cheering our endurance race
29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.
“Through the Red Sea” — the Exodus from Egypt and miraculous deliverance through the parted waters was not without its arguments, but Moses’ leadership and the people’s eventual response and obedience was a triumph of faith.
30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.
“By faith the walls… fell” — another example in steadfastly obeying God’s hard-to-follow instructions.
31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.
“By faith… Rahab” — this Gentile woman of somewhat questionable lifestyle, even among Canaanites, recognised the one true God, became part of the faith community and was an ancestor of Jesus.
• For further study, see Joshua 2:9-11, Matthew 1:5, James 2:25.
32-34 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.
“Whose weakness was turned to strength” — a sample of all types of men and woman of faith. Some of the judges listed had a mixed legacy, but all responded to God in faith at critical times.
35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.
“Others were tortured” — an allusion to the Maccabean martyrs of 170-160 BC, stories that all Jews knew about Jews who suffered terribly rather than renounce their faith.
36-38 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated — the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
“Put to death by stoning” — Zechariah, son of Jehoida, was stoned to death for declaring the truth, 2 Chron. 24:21, and similarly various traditions about Isaiah and Jeremiah.
39-40 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
“Something better for us” — through the superior covenant in the Son of God. Now Jesus provides for all the saints of ancient times in the OT and NT, and recent times, to be “made perfect” or made complete at the full coming of His kingdom.
1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
“The race marked out for us” — the picture is of the “agony” of an endurance event, a super-marathon — the Greek word for race is agon. Runners keep focused on the finish line which is the glory of Jesus.
“Ignoring its shame” — the torture of crucifixion was the most shameful and humiliating form of execution, reserved for slaves and criminals who were not Roman citizens. Jesus took on that shame as if it were nothing.
Reflection
SUMMARY This roll-call of heroes of faith names many with clear allusions to others well known to Jews who had now become Christians.
APPLICATION The athlete’s agony in persevering through a marathon race is one picture of faith that is prepared to suffer — as these heroes were. The peace and security of eternal life in Jesus is a benefit of incalculable worth, but it does come at a cost.
QUESTION When things get difficult for us, should we cry out to God in surprise – or praise?
PRAYER Lord, I’m reminded again that you seek more than our mental assent to a creed, or our passive attending a form of worship.
May Your Holy Spirit grow in me a faith that is growing and fruitful, which gives You pleasure and which shines out to others.
May I grow to trust You more and more, cost notwithstanding.
Amen.
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