Isaiah 5 - Wild Grapes

God doesn’t need a résumé. He wants a heart that’s honest, humbled, and ready to be changed.

We open with a simple cry that cuts through religious noise: Lord, save us, revive us, shine upon us. From there Pastor Carl leads a verse-by-verse Bible teaching through Isaiah 5, where God sings a Song of the Vineyard. Everything is prepared for good fruit, yet wild grapes show up instead. The hard turn is the point: the people invited to “judge” the vineyard realize they are the vineyard, and the issue is not God’s lack of care but our refusal to walk in His ways.

That theme deepens in Psalm 80 with the repeated prayer, “Restore us, O God; cause Your face to shine, and we shall be saved.” We talk about God’s mercy, the Shepherd of Israel, and why real spiritual renewal can’t be self-manufactured. The connections keep building into the New Testament: Jesus as the true vine, the vineyard parable, and Christ as the cornerstone in Matthew 21. The question lands personally, not theoretically: will we fall on the Rock in repentance and be broken so healing can begin, or hold out until pride turns into ruin?

We also touch Romans 11, Israel and replacement theology, and why God’s purpose is bigger than our categories. Isaiah’s “woes” bring it into daily life with warnings about greed, exploiting others, and intoxication that blinds us to God’s work. If you’re tired of striving, this teaching points to surrender, fruitfulness, and the grace that actually changes us from the inside out.

Subscribe for more Bible study teaching, share this with a friend who needs restoration, and leave a review. What would it look like for you to stop striving and ask God to revive you today?

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways and we shall walk in his paths.

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Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

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Because of Jesus becoming one of us and dying on the cross, we could call out to the Lord and say, Lord, save us, change us, revive us, shine upon us. That's his heart for us. It's not his heart for us to come with a resume and say, look at all these great things I did for you. His heart for us is to recognize our state, where we are, how we think, how we act. Not in alignment with him. We're walking in darkness.

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Our relationship with Jesus is one of desperation. We need to fully acknowledge that we're sinners and can't save ourselves. We need Jesus. Pastor Carl reminds us in his message today that Jesus doesn't need our resume. He needs our hearts. Repent of your sins, and to walk toward him in surrender. Wave your white flag today and give up the fight. Stop striving. Stop trying to do everything on your own. Jesus wants to be your help, your sustainer, and your Lord. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

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You know, God speaks to us in many different ways in the Word, doesn't He? When the Lord was here in person, He spoke to us in parables. In the Bible, he talks to us through history. He laid down the law to us, pretty straightforward, cut and dry. And he also speaks to us in poetry, in song, doesn't he? And in chapter 5, we see that the Lord is speaking to us in a song. Actually, it's a song between the Trinity. Watch this. Chapter 5, verse 1. Now let me sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. What we see here is the Father singing to his son. You know, the well-beloved is the son, right? And we saw that when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. The Spirit came down like a dove and ascended on him, and the Father from heaven spoke and said, This is my well-beloved son. I'm well pleased. This is my beloved son. I'm well pleased in him. Listen to him, right? So the father is singing to his son about his vineyard. My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its mist, and he also made a wine press in it. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. The father's talking and singing to his son about this beautiful vineyard that he that he planted. And he made sure it was in the perfect location. He got rid of all the stones so that it would have the perfect soil. There was a tower there to protect it. You know, there was a watchman in the tower to make sure there that no critters would come in and eat the vine. And there was the wine press ready to produce the wonderful vine, the wine from the fruit of the vine. And yet, instead of good grapes, wild grapes came. Bad grapes. It wasn't what he intended it to be. Verse 3 says, And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge please between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done to it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? Kind of like at the beginning of the book of Isaiah, God is kind of setting up a trial and calling, you know, heaven and earth to be the witness at the beginning. Now he's calling the people of Judah and Jerusalem, the leaders of Jerusalem, to be witnesses against them. And they're paying attention. And they're going, Yeah, yeah, you put all this time and effort, you did everything you could to make this a beautiful vineyard, and it's growing bad fruit. I understand that you're not happy about this, Lord. You know, in the next verse he said, What he's gonna do. So now, please let me tell you what I'm gonna do to my vineyard. I will take its away its hedge, and it shall be buried, and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it to waste, it shall be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will command those clouds, and and it will rain no more on it. And we'll see in uh in another parable in the New Testament that Jesus spoke, that the people said, Yeah, you're right, we're with you. Yeah, destroy that thing and start all over. And then he says, Okay, verse 7. The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression, for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. Those that he called to be a witness against the vineyard are the vineyard itself. And they agreed that it was wrong. They agreed that the vineyard should have been producing good fruits, but that was when they think it's somebody else. All of a sudden they realize he's talking to them. Now there are a couple of other places in the Bible that uh God refers to Israel as his vineyard, and one of those places is in the book of Psalms. So would you turn to Psalm chapter 80? And we'll take a look at another aspect of this vineyard. At the same sort of time, Psalm 80 was written about the time that the northern kingdom was taken captive in Assyria. And it's a cry for help that they go out with. In Psalm 80, beginning in the second part of verse 1, give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. Who is the shepherd of Israel? The good shepherd, Jesus, the Messiah. Even the psalmist is walking forward and he recognizes it's the psalmist that guides and directs Israel like sheep. He's a good shepherd. You who dwell between the cherubim, shine forth. Who dwells between the cherubim? Where is this place between the cherubim? Well, you have two cherubim on top of the lid, which is called the mercy seat, on top of the Ark of the Covenant, which is in the holy of holy place, in the temple and in the tabernacle, in the tent, in the wilderness, and then finally when the temple was built, that's where it was kept. That's where God met with men. That's where the high priest went in once a year to offer sacrifices and offer the shed blood on the altar. And that's where the Shekinah glory, God's presence, met with men. The psalmist is appealing to this one. You are the presence of God in men. We are appealing to you. It's your mercy, it's your grace. It's because you work on our behalf that we have any hope. You work before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh. We ask you to stir up your strength and come save us. Restore us, O God. Cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. The psalmist realizes that the vineyard is in trouble. Israel is in trouble. And we need the Lord's favor. How much better is it to be in the Lord's favor than to be in the Lord's judgment? It's the same Lord that judges and gives grace. It's the same Lord that destroys and gives life. It all depends on our response to Him and our response to our own sin. Do we recognize it? Do we see it? Verse 4 O Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in a great measure. You have made us a strife to our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, O God of hosts. Cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. The heart of the psalmist isn't trying to justify the sin of the nation. The heart of the psalmist realizes that we're in sin. We need to be changed. But the heart of the psalmist realizes that I can't change, our nation can't change except for the grace and the mercy of God. Unless God comes and moves on our hearts and changes us, unless he works a miracle and shines his light of grace upon us, we have no hope of salvation. So cause your face to shine and we shall be saved. Turn your face away from us and we will be damned because we deserve it. The psalmist is appealing to the nature of God, not to the nature of man. When we come before God and try to tell him how great we are, and try to appeal to him and try to justify our sin and say that we're really great people, we're missing the point because we're not. Right? We're fallen. We desperately need him. Anything that's good within us comes from him. Because of the fall and because we've been born into sin, as Paul said, we're all wretched. And he calls himself the chief of sinners, the Apostle Paul. Well, the Psalm goes on in verse 8. You have brought a vine out of Egypt, you have cast out the nations and planted it, you prepared room for it and caused it to take deep root, and it filled the land, the hills were covered with its shadow, and the mighty shadow cedars with its boughs, and she sent forth her boughs to the sea and her branches to the river. The Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, out of slavery, and planted it in this new nation, in this new land, and it prospered. Israel budded. It was glorious. But Israel went its own way. Why have you broken down her hedges so that all who pass by the way pluck her fruit, the boar out of the woods uproots it, and the wild beast of the field devours it? Return, we beseech you, O God, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see and visit this vine, and the vineyard which your right hand has planted, and the branch that you made strong for yourself. You remember what Jesus said in John? I am the vine, you are the branches. Without me you cannot do anything. Without me, you can do what? Nothing. But in him we could be fruitful. It comes from this idea that Israel is this vineyard. God is the vine, and we are the branches. But if our branches are bearing bad fruit, something's going amiss. Look down in heaven and see and visit this vine. Return, we beseech you. Come and help us. I can't help myself. I need you, God. I need you to change me because you're the one that is a giving God. You're you're the one that's the forgiving God. You can change me from the inside out. You're the only one who can, so I desperately call upon you to do it. And again, it's this idea that the vineyard was planted by who? The one at the right hand of God the Father. Who's that? Jesus. Jesus planted this vineyard. And the branch that you have made strong for yourself. And in some places, Jesus, as the messianic title, is called the branch. He's the branch. He's one of us. He became a man to show us what it's like to be a branch in the vine. Everything he did was in submission to the Father. Even in that prayer in the garden before he was crucified, he says, Not my will, but yours be done. As a man, he didn't want to be crucified. God the Father made the branch strong for himself. He is our example, and there's more allusions to it as we go on. But the vineyard, it is burned with fire, it is cut down, they perish at the rebuke of your countenance. When he shines our light, when he shines his light on us, we find forgiveness, we find salvation, we find hope. But when his countenance is a rebuking countenance, when it's not a smiling face, when it's an angry face, we perish before him. And the only reason it's angry is because he sees the effect of sin in our lives and how it's destroying us. Verse 17 Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand and the Son of Man whom you have made strong for yourself. Who is he talking about? He's again talking about Jesus, the man at your right hand. Make him strong, the Son of Man. He left heaven and became one of us. May your hand be upon him and make him strong for yourself. Then we will not turn back from you. Revive us, and we will call upon your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. Because of Jesus becoming one of us and dying on the cross. We could call out to the Lord and say, Lord, save us, change us, revive us, shine upon us. That's his heart for us. It's not his heart for us to come with a resume and say, Look at all these great things I did for you. His heart for us is to recognize our state, where we are, how we think, how we act. Not in alignment with him. We're walking in darkness. And his heart is for us to come and say, Lord, I'm a wretched sinner. Would you save me? Lord, even as a Christian, I've messed up. I've gone my own way. I've forsaken you. And I didn't mean to, it just happened. Would you revive me? Would you restore me? So that I will be able to call upon your name. Because when we're in that place, it's really hard to praise the Lord, isn't it? It's really hard to believe. Because we're stuck where we are. But at least we can call out and say, Lord, revive me. Lord, show me. Lord, open my eyes, shine your light on me. Because if you work in my heart, I know it'll change. But I can't change my heart. There's another story in the New Testament. You remember the parable of the vineyard? Where a man from a far land, you know, from far, far away, he came to this place and he and he bought a vineyard. And he prepared it. He got it all set, put everything in place that needed to be placed, and then he hired managers to take care of the vineyard. But those managers wouldn't send the portion of the uh crops to the master. So he would send servants to ask him about what's going on, what's going on, and they would kill the servants because the man is far away, we're gonna run this thing. It's like it's ours, we're gonna do it our way, and we're gonna keep the prophets. Or the master said, His son, because surely they'll listen to my son. And they thought, aha. He sent his son, so now we can kill it, kill his son, and we can own the vineyard ourselves outright. And then Jesus at the end of that parable, he says, Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes himself, what will he do to these vine dressers? And they, the people he was talking to, the religious leaders of the area, said, Well, he will destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vine dressers who will render him the fruits in their seasons. He said, These are the people who say, Yeah, that that's wrong. And he should come and wipe them out and put some new people in. That would be the right thing to do. So Jesus says in verse 42 of Matthew 21, Have you ever read the scriptures? The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, leaders of Israel, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. And whoever falls on the stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder. So they agreed with them. You know, it's like the beginning of chapter 5. Listen, you leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, uh, be a witness between me and my vineyard. And they agree, yeah, that was wrong. What happened with the vineyard? You should destroy it. And then he turns to say, Well, you are the vineyard. You are the vineyard, and I'm the chief cornerstone. And whoever falls on the stone will be broken. Will you fall before the Lord in repentance? Will your heart be broken before him? There's a cutting of the heart that needs to happen. Are you cut to the heart? Is your heart broken before the Lord? Because that's where the healing begins. The broken heart is convicted of sin. The broken heart goes back and recognizes, boy, I have messed things up, Lord. I have not done things your way, I've not walked in your paths. Please forgive me. And it's that broken heart that he could take and lift up. God will exalt the humble and bring low the proud. The second part of that is bringing them low. But who on whomever it falls, it will grind them to powder. If you don't fall on the rock, if you don't humble yourself before the Lord, the rock will come upon you and will crush you and make you powder. This is what the Lord was telling to Israel. And if Israel knew their history, this has already happened to them. They were taken captive by Assyria, they were taken captive by Babylon. And now they were brought back into the nation, restored, but Rome was in charge, and just a few years later, Rome would destroy Israel and they would be scattered to the ends of the earth. Today Israel is back. In 1948, Israel was brought back. An impossible thing to do. They should have been destroyed. They were such a small nation and scattered around the world, they should have disappeared. But they were brought back. And this will happen to them again. Israel is flourishing. The people of Israel in the land of Israel are flourishing. And yet today they're a secular nation. They don't really seek the Lord, which makes me scratch my head. But the same pronouncement is applicable to them today. And this is where replacement theology comes in. So it's like, well, you see, God has rejected Israel and He has now made the church Israel, it's the new modern Israel, and he's done with Israel. But that's not the fact either. He says these things, he gives these prophecies because it's his intent to save Israel. It's his intent to save mankind, isn't it? Whosoever will. And in Romans chapter 11, we get a glimpse of why he allows this to happen. I say then, Romans 11, 11, have they stumbled that they should fall? Did they reject God and did they did they trip over the cornerstone in order that I might destroy them? Was this my purpose to destroy them? Certainly not. But through their fall to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. And this is something I don't totally understand, but this is something about God works all things together for good for those who are called by Him and those who love Him are called according to His purposes, right? If Israel hadn't rejected the Lord, then the gospel wouldn't have come to the Gentiles. That's what this is saying. So we could praise God for Israel's fallenness, but we can't write Israel off because God still loves Israel and it will indeed restore Israel. Does that make sense? Don't forsake me. Walk in my ways, seek me, find me. Let me bless you, let me use you, let me be used by you. So back in our study of Isaiah, he goes into some specifics. Verse 8 he said, Woe to those who join house to house and add field to field, till there's no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land. In my hearing the Lord of hosts said, Truly, many houses shall be desolate, great and beautiful ones without inhabitant. For ten acres a vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield one epha. This is the idea of expanding in real estate. And does this mean that real estate is a sin? No. What it does mean if you're into it for the wrong reasons, and if you're stepping over people, if you're taking advantage of people in the purchasing, if you're charging too much in the rent, If you're not making, if you're not watching out for the people that uh you've you're dealing with, you're gonna end up with all this stuff and no one, nothing to show for. Even the vineyards are not gonna produce the way that you were hoping they would. And this is everything. Are we building our own kingdom? Are we building up what we think is comfortable for us, what we want to do? Instead of seeking after the Lord, what what do you have me to do? Again, real estate is one example here. You can have a successful career in real estate and glorify God in it. God can use it to promote his purposes and to provide places for people to live and to thrive. Or you can be a slumlord and just you know, sock it to people, and eventually you'll get what you're after, which is all this stuff that doesn't do any good for you. What kind of things do we put in our lives that we think will fulfill us? We stock it full in our lives and then we find it's just emptiness. Emptiness. This is the heart of what the Lord is saying here. Verse 11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may follow an intoxicating drink, who continue until night, until the wine the wine inflames them, the harp and the strings, the tambourine and the flute and wine are all in their feasts, but they do not regard the work of the Lord, nor consider the operation of his hands. The Lord loves celebrations, right? His first miracle was at a celebration, at a wedding feast, where he trained water into wine. Wine he intended as a blessing for mankind. Wine he attributes his blood to. When we take the fruit of the vine during communion, we remember the blood of the Lord, so it's special to him. But so easily we corrupt it. And we follow after it. It becomes intoxifying to us. The word tells us to not be drunk, but to be filled with the Spirit of God.

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You're listening to Pastor Carl of the Mountain Cross as he teaches through the book of Isaiah on today's episode of Come On Up. Isaiah is an important book for us to read in the Old Testament because this is where we read many prophecies about the coming Messiah. While we now know Jesus as our one and true Messiah, the people who originally read Isaiah's prophecies did not know when the promised Savior would arrive. So while the book of Isaiah calls the nation of Israel to repentance, it also inspires its readers to have hope in the coming Messiah who will establish a new heavenly kingdom on earth. Well, if you would like to learn more about what it means to follow this Messiah we know as Jesus, we have some resources online to help get you started. Just visit us at themountaincross.com and head to our How to Know God tab. You can also find a link to our podcast feed in case you want to catch up on past teachings from Pastor Carl. If you'd like to get connected with us in person, we'd love to have you join us here at the Mountain Cross. We meet every Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Smoky Mountain Cinema in Waynesville, North Carolina. We also host a Faith Film Night on the first Monday of each month. To learn about our next film, visit us online or search for Faith Film Night on Facebook. Thanks for tuning in today. Well, that's all for today. Come on up to the mountain with us again next time as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come on Up is sponsored by the Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.