Trending
I think we would all agree our country is greatly divided. That disturbs me as a Christian. But the division I am concerned about is not about economics or taxes or deficits or surpluses or prescription drugs or entitlements. The division that concerns me is not anything political or social. In fact, in this time in the history of America we live in an environment where socialized economics, reallocation of wealth, big government and excessive taxation is firmly established and it can be only slightly altered no matter which party is in control of the House and the Senate. So the political divisions don't greatly disturb me. What disturbs me are the divisions in our country related to Christianity and its place in American society.
Our society is pro- tolerance but anti-Christian. Our country is divided over what I call Biblical standards. We are seeing in our country the death of morality and the displacement of Christianity. There is an interesting passage in Acts 14:16 it says, "In the generations gone by, God permitted all the nations to go their own ways; and yet he did not leave Himself without witnesses." That is the story of human history. All nations rise and fall. All nations come and go. And in the midst of that, God always has His preachers who are preaching the gospel. The cycle is always the same and he always has his witnesses. Someone wrote, "If men have learned anything from history, it is that men never learn anything from history."
The cynicism of the writer of Ecclesiastes is justified when he wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun. That which has been is now, that which is to be has already been." Men and nations follow the same path from glory to dust, from the heights to the depths, from great achievement to destruction. This America is caught in this doomsday cycle that has caught every nation and will do so until the Lord comes and establishes the glory of his own kingdom. We live in a dying nation in a world of dying nations, and a dying people. That's hard to swallow, isn't it, because we started with a primitive beauty, it started with people coming to this great land to seek out freedom, the freedom to express their love to Christ and a devotion to his word. It was in that context we established our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our government, our schools, our churches and our legal system. At one time in our history the Bible was held high as the source of truth and authority. We even put God's name on our currency. Worshiping God was a way of life and churches were the hub of communities. But as America matured we drifted into a degraded adulthood. Evil has prevailed and I believe now we are facing the judgment of God as a nation.
What happened to America? How did this all come about? In I Cor. 10, the apostle Paul said that the O.T. was written to give us an example and if you go back into history you can see how the same decline took place in other nations as a parallel to what is happening in America. God has always let nations go their own way, even his covenant people Israel. Israel was also a nation with bright beginnings. They were the covenant people of God. God gave them his promises and laws and prophets and priests. But they too followed a cycle that led to a tragic judgment. America is not Israel and we do not have a covenant or divine promises but we had the freedom to take the word of God and build a nation on that word. We have been a privileged people, and yet are following the same cycle as other nations. So Israel provides a good pattern for us because of the parallel of privileges.
To see that pattern unfold I want to take you to Isa. 5. I want to show you a nation in crisis and why both Israel and America are subject to the judgment of God. Isa. 5 is a huge billboard from the past, showing us what to expect. It is a divine insight to understand what is going on in our country. It is a model of starting with the glorious truths of God and ending up in the judgment of God.
Isaiah begins chapter 5 with a parable. Isaiah is prophesying to Judah, the southern kingdom, the judgment of God. He speaks of the judgment coming in the form of the Babylonians who came and destroyed the land, destroyed the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, massacred the people and carried those who were alive into captivity. The imagery is so graphic and clear and so parallel. v.1 is a song and it is written in poetic fashion. It is a plaintiff song, a death song, a weeping song, a sad song. It is the saddest song you could sing to a people who lived in an agrarian society. A man would take all his life savings and buy a vineyard, do everything necessary to guarantee its success and end up with worthless, inedible, sour berries. This is the story of personal bankruptcy. This is the story of personal disaster. When a man lost his crop, he lost everything. Consequently, in ancient times if you wanted to destroy your enemy, you burned his crops. You remember how Samson destroyed the crops of the Philistines by setting the tails of the foxes on fire and sending them through the fields.
On the contrary, if you wanted to guarantee your future, you saved your money, bought a piece of land and if you were in the valley, you planted grain and if you were on the hill, you terraced it and planted a vineyard. So if you were a native of Judah you would understand how this man felt when his crops only produced sour berries. So it is a sad song. V.3 adds a further explanation when the vineyard owner asks a rhetorical question, "What could I have done that I didn't do?" I did what I could to protect it and I even removed all the stones. Israel is filled with rocks and when you plant a vineyard you have to get them out of the soil so the roots can get down to the nutrients in the water. If you have ever planted a garden you understand what he is saying. They took those rocks and created flat level places on the hillside for the vines you planted. Then you pick the best bred stalk to plant and then you build a tower in the middle so a watchman could make sure animals didn't destroy the roots of the crop, or a stranger coming by would stop and eat the crop. So the question is what more could this man have done? The answer is nothing. It wasn't something he did. It wasn't the soil. However, something was wrong.
In v.5 ,God says I am going to remove the vineyards protection and break down its walls and lay it waste. Why, as a curse on an unproductive vineyard. What is he talking about? V.7 tells us. The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel. Everything that could have been done for Israel, God did, but she was unproductive, her product was useless. What did God do for Israel? Put them in the fertile hill, the land of milk and honey. The original Abraham covenant designed the land from the east and covered all the massive fields of oil that the whole world depends on today and that has made the Arab nations so rich. God put a hedge around it.
What was that, all the ceremonial law of Exodus and defined in Leviticus that made it difficult for Jews to have social exchange with Gentiles. It was a way to protect God's people from the encroachment of idolaters who worshiped false gods. So God created for his people dietary laws, laws of clothing, Sabbath laws, festival laws, laws related to how they dealt with animals and birds. It was different then all those nations who lived around them to protect them and keep them separated. God said, "I removed the stones." Who were they? The Canaanites. He says I planted the choicest vine. No one can argue that Jews are a noble part of humanity. They have made massive contributions to the world of science, arts and medicine. He built a tower in the middle, referring to Jerusalem, the place where kings and priests and prophets watched over Israel. There was a wine vat where grapes were crushed and the juice flowed out, a reference to the sacrificial system where blood could be poured out to cover over their sins. God did everything he could, gave them the best land, protected you from your enemies, gave them kings and priests and prophets as watchmen and a sacrificial system to deal with their sins. All he expected in return were good grapes but all He received were sour grapes. Thus, judgment. He expected them to do what was right. He expected justice and honesty and righteousness but they were oppressing the poor and the widow and the orphans and not carrying out justice by punishing the criminals. That is a sad song, isn't it? It is the same sad song in America today.
I ask you, if God's own covenant people could not avoid the judgment of God what makes America think it can? By the way, at the time Isaiah wrote this, there was prosperity in the land. Economics were good and the military was strong. But that superficiality of prosperity and military power brought with it a false sense of security. Underneath it all they were rotten and on the brink of judgment.
Thus we go from the parable to the Penetration in v.8. There, defenses were strong and had a great army according to II Chronicles 26 but underneath there was this wretched iniquity and God could see what men refuse to see. So He gives them a series of woes in verses 8, 11, 18, 20, 21, and 22. Six woes. Woe means cursed, damned, sentenced to judgment.
Six specific sins are indicated here. Number one was grasping materialism. Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field until there is no more room so that you live alone in the midst of the land. Avarice. Greed. Insatiable landowners accumulating land and more land, fields and more fields, and houses and more houses. Wealthy men ruthlessly acquiring all the property and squeezing out the poor and helpless and then making them buy things at inflated prices. You do know that materialism drives inflation. God placed a system in the land to control inflation. Every 7th year they were to let the land rest. Every 50th year they gave it back to the original owners, it was called the year of the Jubilee. That started the economy all over again and prevented the continual massing of material by a select few. I mean who would pay top price for something they had to rerun in a few years. But they violated those laws so God sent them into captivity for 70 years. In v.9 he said houses would become desolate and nobody left to occupy them. Fields would become unproductive and 10 acres of land would only produce 4 gallons of wine. 48 gallons of seeds would only produce 4.8 gallons of crop. That is what I call unproductive. Certainly in our country we can see a parallel with grasping materialism. That is what drives our economy. People today are more concerned with how much money they have then truth and morality. Someone wrote, America is like an unloved child with an ice cream cone; fat, full of pimples, and screaming for more. Today we have prosperity preachers who preach that Jesus wants everyone to be rich, and they are the ones getting rich in the process. We are preaching the golden calf. We are not called to stockpile, we are called to share and give. Yes, you can enjoy the riches of what God gives you as long as you have an open hand and an open heart to those in need and to give to God himself.
The second sin is drunken pleasure-seeking V.11. Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may pursue strong drink. Then they stay up late in the evening that wine may inflame them. It isn't just drunkenness but that party atmosphere, pleasure seeking. It is the nightclub scene, the party crowd, the singles bar. v.12 says they have no interest in the things of God and don't even consider the work of his hands. The work of his hands is the same phrase used in Amos 6 to refer to the physical body. The culture in America is preoccupied with the body, preoccupied with looks, preoccupied with cosmetics and gyms and workouts and at the same time we plunge ourselves into a life that dissipates and attacks the very body we are trying to preserve. v.13 says my people go into exile for their lack of knowledge. That refers to mindless merrymaking. He says they are famished and parched with thirst. They run for the party as fast as they can and fill up as fast as they can and when they are done they are still hungry and thirsty and have nothing. v.14 says the grave has enlarged its throat, opened its mouth without measure, and death swallows the mindless merrymakers. The parties send you right to hell and it doesn't matter if you are a somebody or a nobody; you will all go down together. We can't live like that against the standards of God and expect God to prosper our nation. He didn't do it for Israel and he won't for America. In v.17 he warned them strangers would eat in the waste places of the wealthy. That actually took place because when Israel went into captivity Arabs came in and occupied their homes.
A third sin is defiant sinfulness. v.18 Woe, damnation to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood and sin with cart ropes. It is the picture of someone so burdened with sin that they put it in a wagon and drags it around with cords of deception. They are like brute beasts filled with sin. Look at our country, read the papers, watch the news, sin is staggering. Sin, under the guise of tolerance, is promoted in every avenue of media and promoted in every realm of education. And it is not just sin but defiant sin. V.19 "Let Him, God, make speed, let him hasten his work, that we may see it, and let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come to pass, that we may know it." This is mockery. This is sarcasm. This is saying; let's see God do something about it if he doesn't like it. Let's see God act. Hurry up God. I think of Ernest Hemingway who said he proved there was no God because he took women whenever he wanted them, fought in revolutions, and lived his life just as he wanted to, ignoring all those restraining Victorian laws and codes. That all ended one day when he put a shotgun in his mouth and blew the back of his head off. God is not mocked, whatever you sow, you reap. Reminds me of Sinclair Lewis, the toast of the literary world. He wrote Elmer Gantry as an assault on Christianity. A preacher was its main character who was a drunk who engaged in prostitution and took money from people under the guise of preaching the gospel. The book was hailed as a great work and he was toasted around the world as a great literary figure. Few people he died as a drooling alcoholic in a third rate clinic outside Rome in absolute obscurity. Our country is characteristic of someone who mocks God, laughs at God, cursed God, and defies God.
The fourth penetration is the sin of moral perversion. V.20, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
We live in that kind of society today. Fornication is good and restraint is bad. is good, if you speak out about Homosexuality you are homophobic. Divorce is always acceptable. Doesn't matter if you tell the truth and lying is better if it achieves your goal. Politicians lie so often that those in the news have to do 'fact checks'. Serving God is politically incorrect. Believing Jesus Christ is the only way if salvation is bad because it is unloving and narrow. Lifting up the wrong standards, exalting adultery, fornication, lust, mocking faithfulness, mocking marriage, dirty movies and television, twisting and perverting everything so we can establish a whole new standard of morality.
The fifth sin is arrogant conceit v.21. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Aren't you sick of opinions? But when you reject the Bible that is what you are left with. They are called polls. Surveys. Everyone gets an opportunity to give their own opinion. The only right or wrong left is what the polls say. Arrogant conceit marks our nation. We sit around with a smirk of self-congratulations as conceited fools who don't know how stupid we are and then we turn to a poll which is really the sum of collective fools.
Number six: Corrupt leadership v.22. Don't you wish you could trust our leaders? Woe to those who are heroes. The word heroes is the Hebrew word for leaders. The leaders were drinking wine and the valiant men, another Hebrew word for leaders, were mixing strong drink. Let me sum that up -they were drunk. In addition v.23 they were justifying wicked people for a bribe. They could be bought and they would then take away the rights of those who were right. They abused people. There was no equality in justice. They were bought and bribed to get positions of power. They tried to control other and could not even control themselves. Does that not characterize many of the leaders of our nation today?
That leads us to our final point: The punishment in v.24. Therefore, like a tongue of fire consumes stubble and like dry grass collapses into a flame, like a rotted root disintegrates or a dead blossom blows away like dust. That is what is going to happen. Isaiah is speaking for God and he says it is the end. Why? Because they have rejected the law of the Lord. That's the real problem. That is what brings about judgment. And, listen, we may be shocked how fast it comes about. Because as in Israel, on the surface it all looked good. v.25 on this account the anger of the Lord burned against his people. If God's anger burned against his covenant people, against his beloved people, can you imagine how it burns against our nation who has no covenant? He stretches out his hand against them as strikes them down. The mountains quaked and their corpses lay like refuse in the middle of the street. Isaiah is looking ahead of what the Babylonian hordes are going to do when they arrive. God would use a pagan nation to judge his own people Israel. God's going to whistle, it says. He calls them to come and the image is of speed and unimpeded motion. They won't become weary, they won't sleep, they won't get tired, the belt of the waist won't be undone, their sandal straps won't break, their arrows will be sharp, horses will be like shining metal, chariot wheels like the whirlwind, they will roar like a lion when it seizes its prey. In other words the judgment of God through this army can't be restrained and it will come upon the people who are God's vineyard.
Back to v.24 for closing. Superficial prosperity but rotten roots and dead blossoms marked Israel as it does America today. Why? Grasping materialism, drunken pleasure-seeking, defiant sinfulness, moral perversion, arrogant conceit, and corrupt leadership were indicators that they had rejected the law of the Lord. I hold on to the hope that there are still a majority of people who believe in biblical morality and a place in our country for Christian faith, but I also believe it is hanging by thread and it is in decline. And I fear that the judgment of the Lord has already begun in our great nation.
•••
The Rev. Dr. James Barnes is currently the pastor of White Memorial Church in Milroy.