Isaiah 5:1-7

Isaiah 5:1. Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:

You and I, dear friends, are placed in a position where we have very choice opportunities of glorifying our God, we are like «a vineyard in a very fruitful hill,» most favourably placed for fruitfulness. The Well-beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:

Isaiah 5:2. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

Is that my case? Is it your case, dear friend? Has even our religion been a false thing? Has it been like wild grapes or poisonous berries? Have we been at times right only by accident, and have we never carefully and sedulously sought to serve our Lord, or to bring forth fruit to his praise? O Lord, thou knowest!

Isaiah 5:3. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: and I will lay it waste:

There is no destruction like that which comes when God destroys the fruitless vineyard. When a human enemy or the wild boar out of the wood lays it waste, it may be restored again, but if, in righteous wrath, the Divine Owner of the vineyard himself lays it waste, what hope remains for it? «It shall be trodden down; and I will lay it waste:»

Isaiah 5:6. It shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

This passage has a special reference to God's ancient people, and one cannot read it without noting how literally this terrible threatening has been fulfilled.

This exposition consisted of readings from SOLOMON'S Song of Solomon 8:11; Isaiah 5:1; and Luke 13:6.