We will begin this morning in Mark's gospel, if you will turn there to Mark chapter 12. In a moment, I'm going to read verses one through 12. And we will use that as a launching pad into Isaiah five. And I hope you will understand why when we do so. This is a very sobering, convicting, relevant passage; relevant to our godless pagan culture in which we live. And I've entitled my discourse to you this morning "Judgment Upon the Failed Vineyard." And we will probably be here for three, maybe four weeks.

Let me give you the background so you are thinking in the proper context. Jesus has come into Jerusalem, now he's making his way inexorably towards the cross. He has purged the temple grounds from the very lucrative mini mall created by the high priest and us. In fact, it was called the Bazaar of Annas in that day. And this further infuriated the religious establishment for several reasons, not the least of which it cut off their money supply. They were getting wealthy from all of this, but it also threatened their power, and their prestige in the eyes of the people. And of course, money, power and prestige always motivate false teachers, religious phonies. And then the next day, Wednesday before his crucifixion, he goes back and he preaches the gospel, which refuted the works righteousness system of the Jewish apostate Judaism, I should say. And as a result, the chief priests and scribes and the elders attacked him. And in chapter 11, verse 28, we read what they said, "'By what authority are You doing these things or who gave You this authority to do these things?'" And then his response utterly humiliated them in front of all of the people that were standing around. And as a result, they all stood self-condemned before the judge of heaven and earth. And because of their deliberate, conscious rejection, Jesus then deliberately sealed them in their unbelief, extinguishing forever the light of truth, so that they could remain in the darkness that they loved.

And this brings us now to chapter 12, where Jesus speaks to the crowd, that's surrounding him, along with these humiliated religious leaders that are trying to trap him, so that he could be arrested and ultimately be put to death. So follow along as I read, Mark 12, beginning in verse one. HAnd he began to speak to them in parables: 'A man PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT, AND DUG A VAT UNDER THE WINE PRESS AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. At the harvest time, he sent a slave to the vine-growers in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers. They took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent him another slave and they wounded him in the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some and killing others. He had one more to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But those vine-growers said to one another, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!' They took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others. Have you not even read the Scripture: 'THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THEIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND ITIS MARVEOUS IN OUR EYES'? And they were seeking to seize Him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that He spoke the parable against them. And so they left him and went away.'"

This is a very graphic parallel to many other passages of Scripture that depict the wickedness of the Jewish people. And in this parable, you can see very clearly the outrageous wickedness of the Jewish leaders--the vine growers--given the responsibility for caring for God's vineyard, Israel. Now, obviously, no rational person would hear this parable and side with the wicked vine growers. But instead, they would denounce them in the strongest of terms. And in so doing, they would pass judgment upon themselves. And that was Jesus' intention. And while it is important to interpret the parable, which as you will discover is really rather straightforward, I wish to spend more time helping you understand the historical background of Jesus' condemnation, and the specific categories of sin that kindled his wrath against his covenant people and their leaders. And this will also help us examine our lives, frankly, to hopefully bring us even to, perhaps some place of repentance. Because friends, what we will see here is that there's nothing new under the sun. The same evils that resulted in God's judgment against Israel and Judah, in the Old Testament, by the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and later on, even the Greeks and the Romans, and all of the pogroms; in other words, the organized massacres that have occurred since then--all of those same type of sins that brought all that about, exists today. Evils not only in Israel, but evils that we see in every sinful nation. And frankly, we see in every sinful person, including ostensibly evangelical churches. The damning iniquities that infuriated God in the past, still exists today. And his judgment is as certain today as it was in days gone by. Now, to accomplish all of this, we have to go to Isaiah five, the passage that Jesus quoted in this very indicting Parable of the Vineyard .

Notice again in Mark one, or Mark 12, verse one, "And He began to speak to them in parables. A man PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A VAT UNDER THE WINE PRESS AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to the vine-growers and went on a journey." Now you cannot fully understand why Jesus used this illustration and the implications of all of it, unless you have a grasp of Isaiah five, which I can assure you, those people understood very clearly. So we go to Isaiah five.

Let me give you the context of Isaiah five. Isaiah prophesied during the period of the divided kingdom, with his primary audience being the southern kingdom of Judah, which had developed into a very prosperous commercial entity. They were militarily invincible, or so they thought; they perceived themselves to be this way. And under the reign of Uzziah, their military preparedness and their economic prosperity were comparable to those that were experienced many years before in the reign of David and Solomon. I spent some time in studying some of the ancient Israelite Judean military service articles, things that most of you probably wouldn't want to spend much time reading, but it was quite fascinating. Especially one article by Haggai Olshanetsky, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel in Switzerland. And here's what he said so that you get a grasp of what they had there, okay, in terms of military power. Quote, "Massive chariot forces were recorded as being deployed by the Israelites as can be seen in the Kurkh monolith where the battle of Qarqar from 853 BCE is depicted. According to this monolith, King Ahab's Israelite force included 2000 chariots." He went on to say, another inscription from the period, which mentioned their military might, is the Tel Dan stele. A stele is a stone slab and a number of us we've been to Tel Dan, you may recall that. That stele also has; a stele is like a piece of stone that has engravings on it. It's also called the "House of David" inscription. It's displayed now at the Israel Museum. But it was found at Tel Dan--Dan was, is one of the oldest sites in Israel, it dates back to 5000 years, and you can actually see the gates that they've uncovered in the city when it was an ancient Canaanite city, and those would have been the gates that Abram would have gone through, when he was chasing the captors of Lot. So anyway, in that place, they found the stone slab and he says, "And on that slab, the armies of the kingdom of Israel under King Jehoram, and of the kingdom of Judea, under Ahaziah, of the house of David had 2000 chariots at their disposal." So you can imagine that type of military might. And sad, yet very typical, they feared their enemies, all around them and prepared to protect themselves. But they did not fear the Lord, the greatest enemy of all; they had no fear of God. I'm reminded of our own country, right? We fear China and Russia and all of these other places, but we have no fear of God. Proverbs says in chapter one, verse seven, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction." And the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 20, and verse seven, "Some boast in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the Lord our God.'

Now, ancient Judah, like all affluent countries, gradually ignored God, and began to embrace the wickedness of the culture around them. They intermarried with the pagans; began to adopt some of their thinking, some of their religious practices, and their Judaism became nothing more than empty ritualism combined with pagan idolatry, and all of the wicked practices that went with it. For example, and we'll study this more later, they sacrificed babies to the fires of Molech. And when we were in Israel, we saw some of the high places where they did that. And they also worship the Queen of Heaven, which was a goddess that was considered to be the wife of Baal or Molech, he was called either one, she was called Ishtar, or Ashtoreth, or sometimes Astarte. So all of this wickedness was going on. And as a result, it absolutely exhausted God's grace, given all that he had done for them. And he then brought the Assyrian invasion to the coastal regions of Israel, in about 701 BC. And as they were heading toward Egypt, they began to spill over into Judah. And in that process, Sennacherib conquered many of the cities there in the southern kingdom as well, all the way up to Lachish, which is not far from Jerusalem. And you can see what they did there. And the Lachish Relief that is now housed in the British Museum, unimaginable torture. The same types of things that you would see in many of their ancestors today, in that region. And you may recall that when they moved towards Jerusalem, Hezekiah-- because Isaiah had talked with them--refused to bow to him, and in Second Kings 19 we read how the angel of the Lord came and killed 185,000 Assyrians. And Sennacherib then returned to Nineveh. But then consistent with Isaiah's prophecy, where we're at here today, about 100 years later, the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem in about 597 BC. And it finally fell in 586 BC. And in Second Kings 25, verse nine, we read this "Nebuchadnezzar burned the house of the Lord, the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire. So all of the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Then the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters, who had deserted to the king of Babylon and the rest of the people, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away into exile."

Now, that was just a historical summary of what happened, and where we're at now is the prediction of all of those things. So beginning in Isaiah one, you basically have a courtroom scene, where the Lord is the plaintiff, and Israel is the defendant. And the charge against them is literally failure to obey the Holy One of Israel. In fact, you read that title, many times, I think it's about 25 times in Isaiah, the "Holy One of Israel”; the one who had lavished his undeserved love upon them and protected them and provided for them. And their rebellion against the "LORD of hosts," which is used 60 times by Isaiah, that rebellion was so irrational, because he was the one that could destroy all of their enemies in a word. Yet they did not fear him. And in chapter one, verse 10, God likens their wickedness, to the godless homosexual perverts in Sodom and Gomorrah, that he destroyed. So the first four chapters really sets forth his case, as well as a promised day of reckoning, a time of judgment. And chapter five, where we're at this morning, is basically a summary of his lament over the rebellion of his people, and the specific categories of sin that animated his wrath against them. The same type of sins, mind you, that Jesus accused his people, and the religious leaders, of committing in his parable of the failed vineyard in Mark 12. So all of this was very familiar to them.

I want to look at this passage of Scripture over the next few Sundays, under three headings. We're going to see number one, the Lord's rigorous preparation, secondly, his reasonable expectation and finally, his righteous retribution. So let's look first of all, at his rigorous his meticulous, careful, painstaking preparation, verse one of Isaiah five. "Let me sing now for my well-beloved"-- Isaiah is speaking here, speaking of the Lord his God as his well-beloved--"Let me sing now for my well-beloved. A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard." In verse seven tells us that the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is "the house of Israel and the men of Judah His delightful plant." I want to sing a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard. "My well-beloved, had a vineyard on a fertile hill." By the way, you can imagine the Prophet here, visualize him in your mind, the prophet comes to speak, the people know he's a prophet, they begin to gather around, you could hear a pin drop as he began to speak. So they're very interested here, and they understand the imagery, because this was a part of their life. He says in verse two, "He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out of wine vat in it." So in other words, he went to great lengths to prepare the land. And certainly, we know that this is what God did with his people; he prepared that land for them. He removed the stones of the Canaanites, he placed them--the choicest vine--in it. And indeed, God's covenant people are among the most noble and brilliant strain of genetics on the planet. So there's enormous effort here. He built a tower in the middle of it, which they would do, to protect the vineyard, as well as to process some of the vines and so forth. And even hewed a wine vat in it, which would be a large stone type of structure. We've seen them over there, they still exist today. A stone that would have another stone on it, that would crush the grapes, and it would go into a large vat.

And then it says, "Then He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones." In Hebrew, it produced only "beushim", which was a sour, inedible, worthless grape, a fruit of some sort. It also denoted offensive putrefaction and the Arabs called the fruit of the nightshade "wolf grapes." We see the same imagery used in Deuteronomy 32, verse 32, where God describes the wickedness of Israel's enemies. It says, "For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters, bitter. Their wine is the venom of serpents, and the deadly poisons of cobras." So this is the type of thing that he sees now. What a tragedy. The Lord has done all of this, for his covenant people. He delivered them from the slavery of Egypt, he parted the Red Sea, he led them with his very presence. He cared for them in the wilderness. He gave them his law to govern them, morally, and socially and religiously. And he brought them into a promised land that was flowing with milk and honey. A land in the middle of two great civilizations, in that day of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Because of the Arabian Desert, all of Asia, Africa and Europe had to go through what was called "The Land Between", which was another designation--and even to this day is a designation of Israel. Israel connects three continents. He gave them victory over their enemies in miraculous ways. God took a family, the family of Abram, and eventually made them a nation. And as we look at Scripture, we see that their role was to proclaim the true God that was manifested in their midst through his miraculous deeds; to reveal the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Savior of the world would come through them. They were to be God's priest nation. As God told Moses on Sinai in Exodus 19, six, "You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." A priest, being a mediator between God and man; all Israel was to serve as a mediator for God to the rest of the world. We see in Scripture that they were charged with the preservation and transmission of divine revelation. They were to show the world the faithfulness of God, the blessedness of serving God, to show God's grace in dealing with sin. Indeed, He lavished his love upon them in ways that are unimaginable. He blessed them with supernatural endowments, and resources; nothing was left to chance. Nothing more was to be desired. So naturally, he expected his vineyard to produce good grapes of God glorifying righteousness, but instead, they produced "beushim." What a graphic picture of the viral nature of Judah's corruption. I hope you can hear the pathos of the heart of God in all of this. What a heartbreaking thing--I have done all of this for you. And this is how you turn out?

One of the great difficulties in shepherding is pastoring and caring for parents who did all they know to do for their children. And they ended up being "beushim." What a heartbreaking thing. I think of all that God has done for me, all that he has done for you, and I hope he looks at us and sees good grapes and not "beushim."

So this is the Lord's rigorous preparation, which moves us to the second point in our little outline, the Lord's reasonable expectation. Verse three, "And now all inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge between Me and My vineyard." And again, you can hear this is just a plaintive lament, a song of mourning. God has greatly grieved. Verse four, "What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?" Then the answer is, Well, that's obvious. There's nothing more that you could have done. He says, "Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes, did it produce worthless ones?" Despite his infinitely holy, righteous, rigorous preparation, they spurned his love, they squandered his provisions. They ignored his divine power, they mocked his wisdom, they disregarded his promises. And what's happening here is God is steering his audience towards self-condemnation. This is what's happening here, as well as what Jesus did in Mark 12.

And this brings us thirdly, now, and here, we will count for some time, the Lord's righteous retribution, verse five. "So now let Me tell you what I am going to do, to My vineyard,"--to my covenant people, distinct from all other people groups, the apple of my eye, the primary object of my supernatural care, the ones that I separated from all of the other nations to manifest my glory, here's what I'm going to do. "I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed." They put hedges around vineyards in many places around the world, they still do that. Hedges would be made up of large mounds of thistles and thorns that you couldn't possibly get through. I'm going to remove your hedge. "I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. I will lay it waste." And certainly this would happen later on when the foreign powers would come and invade and conquer. "It will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain, no rain on it." In other words, I am going to deprive you of any and all means of life. I'm going to make your land a complete wasteland. And you people the object of scorn and derision, which we see an anti semitism even to this day.

Verse seven, "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice but behold, bloodshed; In other words, he looked for the righteousness of God being manifested in his people, people that would be just in how they conducted themselves. Instead, he sees bloodshed. In other words, he sees violent murderers. Then he says he looked, "for righteousness, but behold a cry of distress." In other words, he would expect to see righteousness in the land and instead, he hears desperate expressions of anguish from people. And in the Hebrew, it's a play on words in this song. It basically says he looked for justice which is "mishpat," and instead behold, bloodshed which is "mispah." He looked for "mishpat" and he got "mispah." For "sedaqa" and he got "seaqa."

He then goes on to indict them with six categories of wickedness that kindled his wrath. Six woes--that is six judgment, six curses--against his people. "Woes" are the opposite of blessings. And we will look at three of them here this morning. The first one is the sin of covetousness. Or it could be avarice, greed, materialism, which by the way is a violation of the 10th commandment. In Exodus 20, verse 17, God said, "You shall not covet." Covet means to selfishly desire or to take pleasure in that which is not yours. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." You're not to do that; you are to be content and be thankful for what I have given you. So with this, we read the first woe of covetousness, in verse eight of Isaiah five. "Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field until there is no more room so that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!" You see, this was a curse against greedy property and land acquisition by the rich people of Judah, a serious problem in that day. In fact, Micah speaks of this in Micah chapter two verse two. He said, "They covet fields and then seize them, and houses and take them away. They rob a man and his house, a man and his inheritance." You see, this is what godless people will do. They live only for themselves, not for God and his glory. And they will go to great lengths to accumulate things that don't belong to them. Because this life is all they live for. Land speculators in that day, would devise clever schemes to drive away land holders and then steal their property to create for themselves enormous estates. And we've seen this down through history, haven't we? And then they would, as Isaiah says, "Add house to house." This means they would add on to existing structures to erect massive mansions to exalt themselves. And they would join field to field until there is no more room. In other words, there is no more room for anybody in all of my estate except me and my family. But we must understand that the land was also a sacred trust belonging to the Lord. It all belonged to him, and he allowed his people to live on it. And he gave each of them a portion of the lot as part of their inheritance. Individual families were allowed to live on, shall we say, the Lord's estate, the land they possessed as his stewards was an inheritance from the Lord. And they were required to remain--that the land was required--to remain in the family. And it's for this reason that the law says in Leviticus 25 verse 23, "The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. Thus, for every piece of property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land. If a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor, he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsmen, is to come and buy back what his relative has sold." I might add that God instituted the jubilee restoration of possessions in order to protect inherited belongings, and holdings of each family. We read about this, for example, in Leviticus 25:13, “On this year of jubilee, each of you shall return to his own property."

So what God describes here, in this first woe, is a very clear violation of his law, and exposes their avarice, their greed, their covetousness. And all through Scripture, we see how wicked that is. In fact, in First Kings 21, Ahab is a great illustration of this, you will recall, Ahab coveted Naboth's vineyard, you remember that story? They both had a vineyard, and Ahab wanted it for himself because it was close to his property. He wanted to grow vegetables on it, and he told Naboth, hey, I want your vineyard. I'll either buy it from you, or I'll trade you for a better piece of land. But in First Kings 21 verse three, "Naboth said to Ahab, 'The Lord forbid me that I should give you the inheritance of my father.'" And then you'll recall the rest of the story. The demon-possessed Jezebel schemed and had Naboth killed and on and on it goes, all through Scripture.

And certainly it's been my experience, we see that the sin of covetousness, when it is allowed to rule in a person's heart will ultimately destroy them and everyone around them. And it's a graphic illustration of the fact that they do not find their greatest source of joy in the Lord. The Lord is not their satisfaction. They have to have what other people have. And their commitment will not be to him, it will always be to themselves. I find it interesting to see how Americans today are absolutely drowning in debt. And much of this is fueled by the sin of covetousness. US credit card debt is 1.79 trillion, as of the third quarter of 2023. According to the latest consumer debt data from the Federal Reserve Bank, I was reading that 56 million credit card holders have been in debt for at least one year and nearly 30% are behind on debt payments in the nation's 100 largest metros. By the way, while I'm on it, debt is a cruel wicked taskmaster dear friends. Proverbs 22, seven, "The rich rules over the poor and the borrower becomes the lender's slave." You show me a greedy man who is always scheming to somehow have more material wealth and I'll show you a man that will never be satisfied. And I'll show you a man whose satisfaction and joy is not in the Lord, but in material things. In Matthew six, Jesus said in verse 21, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." In verse 24, "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." And likewise, Paul told Timothy in First Timothy six, beginning in verse 10, "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." And then he went on to say, "But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness." Dear Christian, if God is not the source of your greatest satisfaction, and joy, you will be tempted to greed, and your heart will go in secret search of other lovers and you will act wickedly to gain what you think you must have. But on the basis of the Word of God, I can tell you that what you're pursuing will never satisfy and God will judge you for your idolatry. Because greed is idolatry. In fact, Paul says this in Colossians, three, beginning of verse five, "Therefore consider the members of the earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and," here it is, "greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience." So dear friends, guard yourself from this wickedness. Left unchecked, covetousness will depose God from the throne of your life, and you will be ruled by your own depravity and the father of lies. Like all idols, greed, will promise what it can never deliver. And because of this, this was one of the first sins that God condemned Israel, Judah about and this is what we see in Isaiah five, a woe to those who add house to house and join, field to field. In other words, woe to you covetous thieves, that have annexed the dwellings of other people's lands, poor neighbors, forcing them to live someplace else, so that you can have it all for yourself.

In fact, King Uzziah seemed to be one of the worst offenders. In Second Chronicles 26:10, we read that he built towers in the wilderness and hewed out many systems, for he had much livestock, both in the lowland and in the plane. He also had Plowman and vinedressers in the hill country, and the fertile fields for he loved the soil. Now, I want you to remember this because when we get back to Mark 12 you will see that Jesus accusations against the Pharisees included the sin because they were guilty of the same thing, robbing of the poor, to enrich themselves. So notice the consequences. In verse nine we read, "In my ears the Lord of hosts has sworn," in the Hebrew is very clearly it's fascinating here. It is essentially saying that Yahweh has directly, verbally revealed his outrage by exclaiming it in my ears. I've heard him say this, surely many houses shall become desolate, literally a desolation. The term the Hebrew, carries the idea of waste an appalling horror, that your houses shall become a waste, either through decay or by being destroyed. He goes on to say even great and fine ones, without occupants. In other words, all that you have accumulated unfairly will be a desolation. And then he described famine conditions, the curse of barrenness on their land, verse 10. "For 10 acres of vineyard will yield only one bath of wine." "10 acres" here could be translated ten yolks, which is a reference to the area 10 oxen could plow in a day, and 10 acres would normally yield an average of 500 baths. One bath is equal to about six gallons. So 10 acres would typically yield about 3000 gallons of wine, instead of one bath, which would be six gallons. And he says, "A homer of seed will yield but an ephah." An ephah is a 10th part of a homer, which is about one bushel of grain. So it would yield only a 10th of the seed sown. In other words, 90% failure.

Oh, dear friends, please hear this. If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind. And that's what is happening here in this judgment. So we go from the first woe against covetousness. Secondly, to the woe of dissipation, which could also be described as drunken debauchery, gluttony, self-indulgence, and so forth. "Woe" verse 11, "to those who rise early in the morning, that they may pursue strong drink." This is indicative, is it not, of alcohol dependency and addiction, people that have to start with alcohol, kind of keep drinking it through the day. Then he says, "who stay up late in the evening that wine may inflame them!" Now I want you to understand that this is not merely an attack against the spring break crowd as we would understand it; not merely those who live in bars and honky tonks and nightclubs, and who love the drunken debauchery of music concerts, and all of that type of thing. Certainly, this is describing more of a person that just lives in a state of mild intoxication all day, and then kind of throws a binder at night. And certainly, it speaks to that, but as you're going to see, it's more than that. People do that in order to deaden their senses. They need to silence their conscience and squelch the horrifying reality of death and judgment, and they need chemicals to somehow alter their state of consciousness so they can kind of get through life, and they become dependent upon this. And of course, those chemicals give a temporary state of euphoria. And gradually that euphoria is less and less. So you have to have more and more chemical. And there you have the whole cycle of addiction. But the issue here is not so much in temperance in the wickedness of drunkenness and alcohol addiction, as wicked as that is, but rather, it is primarily a refusal to pay attention to the deeds of the Lord and consider the work of his hands. In other words, you people are just--you're like a bunch of drunks, and in many cases they were and therefore you're not paying any attention to the deeds of the Lord. You're not considering the work of his hands as it relates to creation as it relates to redemption. I mean, to be sure you talk to a party animal about these essential truths and they don't pay any attention to any of this; they never think about this. You talk to an alcoholic or a drug addict and ask him, do you ever give any thought to the deeds of the Lord or the works of his hand? They just kind of laugh at you. Like, huh,? What are you talking about. But this applies to anyone who uses alcohol or any other means to somehow escape the realities of life, as it pertains to God and his glory, and who he is in history; what he's up to in history and in your life, and the judgment that is to come. But these people couldn't care less about what the Lord is up to. They have no appetite for his word, they have no desire to know Him to worship Him, to serve Him; they just live for themselves in a state of stupor. So they have no sense of what God is doing. And obviously, these people were unable to therefore discern the word of the Lord that was given to them through the prophets. They disregarded the judgment, the warnings given to them. In fact, as we will see, they will eventually kill Isaiah. People don't want to hear the truth. You try having a spiritual conversation with folks like this. People that are just drunks, and you all know that. Maybe they're not drunk all the time, but they just kind of always have to have a glass of wine in their hand. You know, it's just how they live. You try to ask them something about theology, ask them about their love for Christ, they're longing to know more of him. And you'll see real quickly there's no one home. Unbelievers depend upon the anesthetizers of life, to help them suppress the truth in unrighteousness, that gnaws at their conscience, as Paul said, in Romans one, eight, "because the wrath of God has revealed from heaven against all men who suppressed the truth in unrighteousness." And they will do this, even though, as Paul went on to say, "that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them." And this is certainly indicative of what was going on with the people of Judah. I mean, they knew who God was, they had his law. They could see him in nature and the prophets. But they love darkness rather than light. They knew they were violating God's law, but after a while, they don't really care because after all, there's doesn't seem to be any consequences. So let's just keep living for ourselves. And so they defied him to judge them. But deep down, they're trying to silence their conscience. So they are devoted to self-indulgence. They're devoted to the fleeting pleasures of this world.

Verse 12, "Their banquets are accompanied by lyre and heart by tambourine and flute, and by wine; but they do not pay attention to the deeds of the Lord, nor do they consider the work of His hands." Certainly, we have to guard ourselves against this temptation. Peter addressed this in Second Peter three verse three, where he warns believers about falling back into that kind of wicked mindset. He said, he describes it as "the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you; but they will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead."

You're all familiar with Ephesians five in verse 18, where the apostle tells us under the inspiration of the scripture of the spirit, "do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit." God then speaks through his prophet and he pronounces judgment on those who further blind themselves to the word and will of God, verse 13, "Therefore, My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge." Lack of knowledge concerning the judgment of God that was upon them, especially since the false prophets were preaching to them peace and safety, everything's gonna be okay. Haven’t we heard that before? "And their honorable men are famished, and their multitude is parched with thirst. Therefore, Sheol," which is the place of the departed dead, or the grave, "has enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure." What a striking passage. Here, the grave is personified as, as some hideous monster with an insatiable appetite, ready to devour the wicked. And they will go to their grave in the same stupefied, befuddled state, that spiritually dull condition in which they lived.

And then he goes on to say, "And Jerusalem's splendor, her multitude, her din of revelry and the jubilant within her, descend into it. So the common man will be humbled and the man of importance abased, the eyes of the crowd also will be abased. But the Lord of hosts will be exalted in judgment and the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness. Then the lambs will graze in their pasture, and strangers will eat in the waste places of the wealthy." This is a picture that J.A Motyer describes as, quote, "The empty achievement of human vanity, the net profit of pride." How sad to see people flaunt their ungodliness living in a fool's paradise.

And we'll close this morning with one last woe; one last sin, and that is the sin, number three, of mockery. This is to blaspheme and dare God. Verse 18, "Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood, and sin as if with cart ropes." In other words, they exert themselves, like beasts of burden, pulling a cart of their iniquities. It reminds me of how Sodomites flaunt their gross immorality on large floats, and gay pride parades, daring anyone, including God, to challenge them. What a heartbreaking scene it is.

Verse 19, "Who say, 'Let Him make speed, let Him hasten His work, that we may see it. Let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come to pass that we may know it!'" Obviously, this is what Isaiah is hearing from the people. This depicts the utter disregard of the people, their utter contempt for the moral authority of God. Dear friends, this is spiritual arrogance at its worst. This is depraved defiance, like we see in our lives. How many times have we heard people arrogantly get up in front of others and say, "oh if there's a God, I dare him strike me down right now." And nothing happens. And so that's proof that there is no God. You would expect this, because these people were unable to discern the truth of God. They were, according to verse 12, "blind to the deeds of the Lord and they did not consider the work of His hands." So they shook their fist in God's face, and they dared him to judge them.

Peter reminds us of this very thing, and certainly we all are aware of this, Second Peter three beginning of verse three know this. First of all, he says, that, "in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world and that time was destroyed, being flooded with water." Obviously, speaking of the worldwide flood in Noah's days. But he went on to say, "But by His word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like 1000 years and 1000 years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance."

Well, the next time we get together we will examine the other three woes, but I pray that you will examine your own heart in light of these great truths, because indeed, God is a righteous judge and he will not allow sin to go unpunished. But aren't you thankful that there is grace in the gospel that God is a redeeming, long suffering, forgiving, gracious God? Were that not so we would have no hope. Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for the glorious truths of your word. May we grasp them, not merely in an intellectual way, in an academic way, but may we embrace them with our whole heart that they might motivate us with a longing to know more of Christ, to experience more of the joy of serving, of worshiping Him, and we thank you that there is grace in Christ. And we thank you that you are coming again one day to take us home. And for all of this, we give you praise. In Jesus name. Amen.