Is God Right to Judge? (Isaiah 5:1-30)
John 3:16 has supposedly been bypassed as the most famous, culturally known Bible verse. Whoever measures these sorts of things says that now it is “judge not, lest you be judged.” It fits the spirit of the age, I suppose, an age in which amidst all our connectedness we also long for a freedom from scrutiny. Don’t judge me! Give me some space to do what I want to do, what I think is right. We would rather not have people prying into our affairs. We don’t like being watched or evaluated. So it is not surprising that the idea of judgement has fallen on hard times —churches don’t preach about it, Christians don’t talk about it.
That doesn’t mean as individuals that we give up on the idea of justice altogether. Personally we need it, because we are keenly aware of what it is like when an injustice is done to us.
As humans we dare not give up on the idea of retributive justice, but we are just uncomfortable when we are the ones under review. That uncomfortableness comes right to the forefront when we think about God and the idea of His judgement of us. Far more people believe in God than believe that He will judge them. I was reading numbers out of 2019 survey that showed 80% of Singaporeans would say they believe in God. Only 56% of them said that there is some form of an afterlife. But then only 33% said they actually thought there was a heaven and a hell. Interestingly 10% said that they actually thought they would go to hell. But the numbers drop sharply.
I think for many people who believe in God they would prefer thinking of Him only in positive terms. As a kind, gracious, and benevolent deity. A God of love and of love only.
Does God judge? How does He judge, and why? And if He does, how should we feel about it? Is it something we should feel bad about? Should we hide it, like that family secret that we don’t want to come out?
We are studying through the book of Isaiah, and this morning we are coming to the end of his introduction. The first 5 chapters function as a sort of prologue where the prophet introduces us to the situation in Israel and Judah in the 7th century BC. And the situation is not good — Isaiah calls Israel a sinful and rebellious people who have forsaken the Lord. They were His children but they have risen up against their Father. He holds out the prospect of imminent punishment in the form of exile, but then on the other side of that a remnant saved by His grace.
But this morning it for us to stare at this thing called judgement right in the eye. We believe all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. So even a dark and sobering chapter like this one can do us much good.
God is right to judge, and judge rightly He will.
God is right to judge, and judge rightly He will.
We will consider that in 3 points:
God is right to judge
God judges rightly
God will judge
Let me orient you to the chapter before we break it down as we get into it. The first 7 verses are known as the song of the vineyard, Isaiah the prophet and God Himself give an overview of the bad situation in Israel, and invites us to judge for ourselves what he is about to do in sending them into exile. Then in the balance of the chapter, Isaiah 5:8-24 we have a series of woes which break down for us the sin of the people in a series of 6 woes: Isaiah 5:8, 11, 18, 21, 22 . After those first 2 woes there are 2 “therefores” (Isa 5:13-14), and then 4 more woes and then 2 more “therefores”(Isa 5:24-25). The chapter closes with a description of the coming judgement in the form of the Assyrian army (Isa 5:25-30).
God is right to judge (Isa 5:1-7)
There is a back and forth here in Isaiah 5:1-7. Isaiah is speaking in Isaiah 5:1-2 and Isaiah 5:7 and the Lord Himself speaks directly in Isaiah 5:3-6. Isaiah says he is composing this as a song — a poem around this picture of a vineyard. I think the translation “love song” is a bit misleading in English. This is not the kind of thing you are going to hear on Gold 905 on the radio. Maybe you were thinking as we read it, this is a mighty strange love song. Isaiah literally says “let me sing to my beloved a song of my beloved (Isa 5:1)”. I think he mainly has in view that he loves the Lord, but also that in what follows God showed His love for Israel.
But let’s think about this word picture of a vineyard that he uses. Grapes are the crop that grows best in that area — to this day Israel is a leading grape exporter to the world. But it is a crop that demands a lot of work. The land has to be cleared of other plants and rocks that litters the Judean countryside. This might take a year to do. Then the best vines have to be purchased and laid out and planted. The cleared rocks can then be used to build walls to keep out both 4 footed and 2 footed thieves. Watchtowers are then built to settle down in. Maybe this is another year’s work. Then perhaps by year 3 you are ready to look for a crop.
So Isaiah likens all this work to what God has done for Israel. We studied Exodus last year, remember all that God did in redeeming them out of slavery Egypt, how He led them to Sinai and gave them His law of how to love Him and how to love each other. Redeemed for worship is how we summarized all of that. As we keep reading through the Old Testament we see Him providing for them through the wilderness wanderings, how He leads them through the conquest of the promised land — Israel was planted in a land flowing with milk and honey.
So thinking about all that God speaks in Isaiah 5:3 and invites all of the people to judge, to render a verdict on His actions. “What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Did I leave anything undone? (Isaiah 5:4a)” No, we should say. Then He asks us a question, “Why when I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? (Isa 5:4b)” That word wild grapes isn’t a great translation. The word has a root of “to stink”, thus, some translators have gone with “stink fruit”.
Maybe a parallel for us is a bad durian. I’m no expert on durian in any way shape or form, but I’ve been told that you could cut open a durian and get a bad one. I don’t know if you would immediately know it from the smell — I mean some people would say it already smells disagreeably.
These wild grapes are inedible. Worthless. They render all the effort pointless. In Isaiah 5:5 we read of what God says He will do now with His vineyard. As often happens with parables, the metaphor begins to evaporate at some point and we are staring at the reality. We aren’t talking about grapes and vineyards, we are talking about a people who were redeemed for worship, and they didn’t worship. So He says He will take away the hedge, break down the wall, let briers and thorns grow, and it won’t even rain.
The prophet speaks in Isaiah 5:7 and makes plain what we have already gathered — the vineyard is the house of Israel, the men of Judah are His pleasant planting. He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed. For righteousness, but behold an outcry.
There is a wordplay in Hebrew — justice and bloodshed sound alike and so do righteousness and outcry. Alec Motyer suggests: “He looked for the lawful and behold the awful; the rightful and behold the frightful.”
And we should remember that those words justice and righteousness are really important words. They point to right practice on the one hand, and right principles on the other. A righteous person has right principles, and so acts justly with everyone around Him. Taken together they form the concept of holiness. A holiness of life and behaviour that comes from obeying God.
This song is supposed to make an emotional impact on us — the prophet means for us to nod in agreement as we consider what God had done for them and His right expectation of fruit, and then feel the wrongness of not just no fruit, but bitter disgusting fruit.
These people sinned against grace.
These people sinned against grace.
So what does this mean for us? One of the challenges of interpreting the Old Testament prophets is that it can feel like they are always talking to someone else. Like we are reading someone else’s mail about someone else’s problems. No, these things do apply to us, just need to make sure we apply them through the lens of the New Covenant that Jesus brought to light.
When we do that here we find we are much the same as they. Like Israel we are recipients of God’s redeeming grace when we trust in Christ, we are brought out of slavery to sin and into His family. We receive a better gift than they in the indwelling Spirit of God. And like them we are expected then to bear fruit — the New Testament everywhere uses that image. The fruit of the Spirit speaks of a transformed character. Jesus said he chose us to go and bear fruit —meaning that we would have a positive spiritual impact on those around us, winning souls and encouraging the saints. And the fruit of worship, praise to God, the fruit of lips that confess His name. When we do not bear fruit, like Israel we grieve the Spirit of God.
But when we think about what is going on here in Israel there is something more serious for us to consider. Paul tells us in Romans 9 that not all Israel was Israel. Many of the Israelites were God’s people in name, but not in reality. They were nominal—"in name only” Israelites. And that is why there was no fruit in their lives — Yahweh was not their beloved as he was for Isaiah. They were wearing the team uniform, but not showing up for anything that mattered.
That is a sober reality check for us friends. We try to be really clear here about the good news of Jesus Christ that you are saved from sin by faith in Christ not by what you do, not by church attendance or any other religious discipline. You cannot save yourself by your good works. We are saved by grace through faith alone.
But we ought to be just as clear that saving faith is never alone. When a person is uninterested in the bride of Christ, they should stop pretending they are interested in Christ Himself. It doesn’t follow. A man says he loves his wife but never spends any time with her — we rightly doubt what he says.
We should strive for holiness, we should press on to know the Lord.
Friend, if you call yourself a believer, a Christian, does fruit show up in your life? I’m not asking if your perfect, none of us are this side of heaven. We will struggle with indwelling sin until we die. But that is just it, we should struggle. We should strive for holiness, we should press on to know the Lord.
Let me speak for a moment to those children who are growing up in the church, who have grown up in the church. Realise that you have both a great blessing and a great danger. The blessing is that from your youth you have known the words of eternal life — you’ve been taught the scriptures that are able to make you wise for salvation. The danger is that you think that you are fine just by having been around the truth. That in a sad way you might be vaccinated against your need for self-examination. If this stuff is boring to you, if you are here just because your parents or grandparents are, if this is just your cultural background — cry out to God to reveal Himself to you really and truly. Pick up that Bible like it is the first time you have seen it, take it home to your bedroom this afternoon. Get down on your knees and ask God to give you life.
Even if you aren’t a Christian, maybe you are here this morning as a freethinker — you are still a recipient of grace, aren’t you? I’d encourage you to think about how it is that you came to be. You didn’t make yourself, you don’t sustain yourself — God has to maintain this world and send sunshine and rain and 1000 other things for you to be alive. Doesn’t God have the right to expect you to acknowledge this with thanks and turn towards Him in faith and submission?
The Song of the Vineyard speaks loud and clear that God is right to judge those who sin against grace.
God judges rightly (Isa 5:8-25)
Woes and therefores. Let’s consider the woes then the therefores, and I want you to see a progression here. The first two woes are grouped together:
The first woe in Isaiah 5:8 is a greedy hoarding of resources. Specifically property, the rich are pictured as buying up houses and land, crowding out the poor — these rich landowners are pictured as then living alone on vast estates. This was specifically what God told them not to do…land ownership in Israel was protected by laws of the Sabbath year and Jubilee year where even people who fell on hard times were given a respite. But the greed of the people has taken over and become a hoarding — which is the very opposite of stewardship.
The Bible doesn’t view wealth as bad, just dangerous. When company resources are put in your hands you’ve got to be really careful because they are not yours, you are entrusted to use them towards certain ends. God’s people don’t have private resources or personal resources in that sense — they are stewards of God’s money, God’s stuff. And we’ve got to be really careful because the ungodly around us simply amass it towards their own ends — pride and pleasure and power. Israel has become just like the world here.
The second woe is in Isaiah 5:11 and it is self indulgence or hedonism. People have given themselves to a pursuit of pleasure — eating and drinking alcohol and music. Again none of those things are bad in themselves — but when they become the pursuit of a person they are consuming, they warp a person into a slave of their appetites. IIt is what they are living for.
Again we are warned here to be careful. The fallen human heart does not merely receive some pleasure as a good gift, a good meal, a good drink — it demands more and more, even as the receding horizon of pleasure enslaves. Let me say a word here about alcohol — a Christian should never get drunk, Ephesians 5:18 is clear on that. It is a sinful giving over of control to the flesh instead of the Spirit. And if you find yourself unable to control yourself — be humble enough to acknowledge that and just stop drinking alcohol altogether.
So hoarding and hedonism, greed and self-indulgence are the first two woes.
Skip down to the next woe in Isaiah 5:18 and notice two things — one is that we turn from outward sin to inward sin, we are getting the thoughts behind the sin. And also the pace picks up, they become rapid fire here.
The third woe is that of hypocrisy (Isa 5:18-19). We see a person bound to their sin—drawing iniquity with cords and sin as with cart ropes — show how tied they are to it. But remember these are professing believers, so they have to introduce a falsehood or deceit. They have to start living a double life of hypocrisy. In Isaiah 5:19 there I think their words are questioning whether God is really going to judge them at all. “Let him show up and judge me”, if He is really there, they think.
Hypocrisy must lead to a redefinition of right and wrong, which is the fourth woe. In Isaiah 5:20, the person must call evil good and good evil. In modern times we see this most clearly in the so-called sexual revolution, where in movies and music and now videos sexual promiscuity and seduction and throwing off all sense of commitment in marriage went from being winked at to promoted to now gloried in.
Notice in the progression here that theology is rewritten to suit desire. That is why the prophet began with greed and self-indulgence. We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, as free thinkers capable for free thought. But friends don’t trust yourself to write theology and morality.
The fifth woe in Isaiah 5:21 is the enthronement of self — “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight.” This is the final step in the progression, the self has been enthroned at the center of all reality. There is no need any longer for wisdom from God. The fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom has been eclipsed by the rise and triumph of the modern self. Which it turns out is a project that isn’t very modern at all.
The sixth woe is descriptive of what we now have — Vanity Fair (Isa 5:22-23). Heroes at drinking, valiant at mixing drink— it’s ironic to use those words that might have been used of David or Jonathan mighty in battle trusting the Lord for victory. These heroes show their valour at happy hour behind a bar. And this plays out in their relationships — those who look to them for assistant are ignored or deprived of what is right.
These people do what doesn’t matter, and don’t do what does.
So how does God deal with them? We must turn from the woes to the therefores where we see that God deals with them according to their sin. He judges them rightly.
In Isaiah 5:9 the vast estate is pictured as empty of inhabitants. The greedy person now has to survive on a land where crops don’t have a positive yield, these measurements go down 90%. So an ephah is 10% of a homer.
The hedonist who lived for his appetites, now goes hungry and thirsty (Isa 5:13). Sheol, the realm of the dead is pictured as the one who is greedily opening its mouth to consume the rich revellers (Isa 5:140.
In Isaiah 5:15-16, God explains His judgment in terms of a humiliation of the pride of man, and in so doing He exalts His justice and show Himself holy in righteousness.
After the second grouping of woes describe the enthronement of self — God is very clear. They have rejected the law of the Lord and have despised His Word. And so He will judge—judgment will be as a fire burns. His anger is kindled, His hand is stretched out against them, an earthquake is pictured and dead bodies lying in the streets.
All of this is pointing to the exile.
When we say that God judges rightly we mean that the punishment fits the crime.
When we say that God judges rightly we mean that the punishment fits the crime. We said in the first part that God is right to judge, here we are meant to see that He judges rightly. What should God do with the person who rejects His rule, and sets up a rebellious kingdom? What should God do with the person who makes off with stolen goods, namely the resources He gave them? What should God do with the one who says, “yeah, I know God revealed His word and His will as a law to be lived by, but I don’t really care. I have desires that are more important to me.”
He is right to judge, and He judges rightly. The final section speaks of the certainty of what is to come.
God will judge (Isa 5:26-30)
The Assyrian army is described here, Assyrian was the dominant superpower from about 900-600BC, the most powerful army in the world. They had some important new military developments—organising military units in a mixed way. They had units of 1000 that mixed foot soldiers (Isa 5:27) archers (Isa 5:28a) and cavalry with chariots (Isa 5:28b). They were the first to use cavalry on a large scale — the Greeks and Romans would later copy that. Their siege warfare techniques were highly developed. And they assembled the largest armies in world history up to that point, likely several hundred thousand soldiers. They were fearsome, pictured like a roaring lion here, and they were unstoppable—it says there in Isaiah 5:29, “none can rescue.” Isaiah 5:30 pictures the hopelessness that accompanies their coming.
And yet did you notice how Isaiah frames this so that you can see Assyria is not the point at all. Who raises a signal for them to come, actually who “whistles” to summon them like a dog being called to do a masters bidding? It is God.
I was thinking recently about how modern communications technologies gives us unprecedented access to conflicts that are happening worldwide. If you are a consumer of news it can feel overwhelming. We not only get to hear about tension on the Korean peninsula, we get to watch missile launches. The conflict in Ukraine is chronicled, both sides actually putting out videos for our consumption — but fearsome stuff. Gaza, Houthi rebels, whatever. And we should be concerned about them, we should certainly pray for them and for peace and the spread of the gospel. That is why we try to pray for a different country every week in our pastoral prayer.
But it is very important that we understand that geopolitics is under the sovereignty of God. Assyria was the superpower of it’s day. Think of all the so-called superpowers that follow, Greece, Rome, China, Mongolia, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, the US…all take a turn on the stage. But the nations are as a drop in the bucket as the prophet will say. They are minor characters on the grand stage of history. But God is the architect of history.
Is God the great unseen reality to you this morning? Are you a God-fearing man or woman, boy or girl?
Is His evaluation, His judgment a certainty in your mind?
Assyria is the tool, but God is the judge. And what is clear here is that unrepentant Israel must deal with Him.
When you and I read this, we are meant to stop and ponder what we believe to be most real, most true. Is God the great unseen reality to you this morning? Are you a God-fearing man or woman, boy or girl?
Is His evaluation, His judgment a certainty in your mind?
It could take the form of an in the moment intervention to stop your sin — that was the case with Ananias and Saphira who lied to the Holy Spirit in Acts 5 and dropped dead on the spot. It could be. But it will certainly be an end-of-life reality. The Bible says that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 9:27)”.
The people of Isaiah’s day faced the temporal fire of God’s anger in the exile, you and face I the eternal fire that is reserved for the enemies of God. That is not a scare tactic of overzealous preachers — that is the plain revelation of the word of God and we dare not despise it.
Friends the application of this text must be to flee from the wrath to come. To run away from the consequences of sin to the cross of Jesus Christ. Where justice and mercy meet. It is the only shelter. God says its the only shelter, but it is a shelter.
“… if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. … For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Rom 10:9)”
The good news of Jesus Christ is that repentance and faith in Him leads to forgiveness and pardon and new spiritual life, and good fruit not bad. But we must consider where we are. God asks us to consider where we are, what kind of land we are, what kind of soil we are.
Let us remember the admonition in Hebrews 6:7-8: “For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.”
Let every person examine themselves.
Let’s pray.