Good evening. All right, we're
going to be in Isaiah chapter 5. Isaiah chapter 5, and we're
just going to be getting to the first two verses here in Isaiah
5. And our message is, it's a gospel
song of our Savior. And what the Lord reveals to
us in his scriptures and here as well, but especially throughout
all the scriptures is worth seeing. He's showing us, making a case
to us over and over again that man is utterly ruined in sin. He's corrupted, he's dead in
trespasses and sins, and he cannot save himself. And so, He is constantly
showing us these things throughout the scriptures. And as we know,
Paul wrote in Adam, all die in 1 Corinthians 15, 22. And so
that we see from Adam all the way through the nation of Israel
to the time of Christ and even in our day that man constantly
refuses to hear what God is saying, and he constantly refuses to
hear the salvation that God has provided for his people in his
son, Jesus Christ. And so here it is, we're looking
at the nation of Israel, and they've been around for quite
some time now, and they're under the kings here. and they still
are rejecting and rebelling against God. And we'll see in chapter
five as we progress through it, we'll see the guilt of man for
a sin and that in spite of him being placed in a very favorable
position where God is his God and God is merciful and God blesses
him with an abundance of things that are to reveal to him who
he is by nature and who God is by nature, and that God is the
Savior. Man still, in spite of all that,
man rebels and tries to throw off God and to do his own thing. Yet, through all of this awful
rebellion and through the judgment that is promised to come upon
them, we see the salvation of God for his people provided in
his Son, Jesus Christ. So we're aware, we're well aware,
we who read the scriptures, we who sit under the gospel, we're
well aware that in Adam we sinned and that we're an offense to
God because of that. Because when Adam sinned, death
entered the world and death came upon all people. But thanks be
to God that he in mercy reveals to us that salvation is to all
his people in Christ. So all died in Adam, But all
of Adam's seed died in Adam, and yet all of Christ's seed
shall live in him. Romans 5.18 says, Therefore,
as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation,
even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon
all men unto justification of life. So we'll see this tonight. We'll see the salvation that
Christ has provided for his people and our title is my beloved's
vineyard." My beloved's vineyard. And we're just gonna go through
these phrases in verses one and two and see what Christ has provided
for his people. What he provided for Israel,
naturally speaking, in a metaphor, he provided for us richly and
spiritually in the Son and for his people in Christ. So, God
here has come to the nation of Israel and he's looking for fruit.
He's looking for fruit but he finds no fruit and so he promises
them judgment upon the wicked and we know what follows. We
know that it was only so many years after this that eventually
they went off into exile in Babylon. Syria, I'm sorry, the northern
tribes had already gone off into captivity in Assyria and now
Judah and Jerusalem would go off into exile in Babylon. And then we know how God, we
see this played out numerous times, we saw how God sent his
own son to the Israelites and they rejected him. They would
not receive him. They would not hear him and he
destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. And so we understand that just
as God promised to destroy them in all these ages, we see these
pictures and types so that we know and are assured that God
will fulfill his word and destroy the wicked in this world in that
great and final day. But even in all that, the righteous
rejoice. They rejoice because They are
brought out of sin and darkness, and they're brought to Christ.
And so they rejoice in His righteousness because it's His righteousness
that saves us. It's His work. It's what He has
done that saves us. And the righteous in Him shall
also rejoice because they'll look at what God is doing in
destroying the wicked, and they'll say, that is righteous and just.
You are right, Lord. You're doing exactly what is
right, what you said you would do, and you're doing it perfectly
and justly. In Revelation 19, Revelation
19 verses one through seven, we see a song, if you will. It doesn't say it's a song, but
it is. It's a song rejoicing in the people and all the inhabitants
of the heavens are rejoicing in what God is doing in that
manner. It says in verse one, after these
things, I heard a great voice of much people in heaven saying,
hallelujah, salvation and glory and honor and power unto the
Lord our God. for true and righteous are his
judgments. For he hath judged the great
whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and
hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again
they said, Alleluia, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders
and the four beasts fell down and worshiped God that sat on
the throne, saying, Amen, Alleluia. Look at verse five. And a voice
came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants,
and ye that fear him, both small and great. This voice, what caught
my eye, this voice, it's so sweet that this is the voice of the
Lord Jesus Christ. It's his voice that's coming
from the throne of God, so that this is that voice which spoke
in Genesis 1-3 when God said, Let there be light. and there
was light. This voice is that which was
in the beginning, and is the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. All things were made by Him and
without Him. All that was made Without him
was not anything made that is made. All things were made by
him. And him was life, and the life
was the light of men. So that he himself is our light
and reveals to us who the Father is. In the verse of John 1 5,
and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
it not. That's because we're wicked.
That's because we are sinners. We come forth of that corrupt
seed of Adam so that we're born in darkness and we don't see
the things of God. We don't see the kingdom of God.
We don't understand God. And yet Christ, who is the light
of men, He's the one who shines forth and reveals to us the Father. So for Him to save from the throne,
praise our God, all ye His servants, That means He has accomplished
salvation because He now says to us, His servants, worship
God. Worship Him. You can worship
Him. We come boldly before the throne of God to worship and
to praise Him for the salvation which He has wrought in His Son,
Jesus Christ. And it says, and I heard as it
were there in Revelation 19, I heard as it were, verse six,
the voice of a great multitude and as the voice of many waters
and as the voice of mighty thundering saying, Alleluia, for the Lord
God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice and
give honor to him for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his
wife hath made herself ready. So we see this great praise for
the overthrow of false religion when God destroyed the whore
of Babylon. He's destroying her and going to destroy her works
and the works of the evil one in the earth forever. It's all
coming to an end. Paul worded it, the fashion of
this world passeth away. God is passing it all away. And then we see them rejoicing
for the salvation and the security that God's provided us. in his
son, Jesus Christ. Alright, so our passage begins
in Isaiah 5, verses 1 and 2. And it says, Now will I sing to my well-beloved
a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well-beloved
hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. And he fenced it, and gathered
out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest and built
a tower in the midst of it, and also made a wine press therein. So Isaiah here records this song
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but this is God
the Father praising His Son. He's praising the Son for the
work that He has done in the earth in establishing the house
of Israel. And we know that He's talking
about the house of Israel because it says in verse 7, For the vineyard
of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah
His pleasant plant. So what we'll see tonight is
that God committed all the care and the salvation into the hands
of his son, Jesus Christ. He put everything into his hands,
and so Christ himself has provided everything that's necessary for
our salvation. He's given us everything we need.
So let's look at now how God did this providentially for the
nation of Israel. in the flesh, he did this for
Israel, but we also see in this that spiritual work which Christ
does and works in the hearts of all his people there. In Isaiah
5, Isaiah 5 there in verse 1, notice he places them. He says,
my well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. So that God set Zion in the land
that he promised them and He was a God unto them. He was their
God. He called them and He established
them there in the land of Zion there. It says in Exodus 6 verses
7 and 8, And I will take you to Me for a people, and I will
be to you a God. And ye shall know that I am the
Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens
of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto
the land concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham,
to Isaac, and to Jacob. And I will give it you for an
heritage. I am the Lord." And so the Lord
brings them there to the land of Israel and he drives out their
enemies from before them. We see in that a type or a picture
of what the Lord does for his people, the believers, so that
we, brethren, are placed. We're brought into a fruitful
land. We're brought into a fruitful
hill, which is Christ. We are placed in Christ, and
he's that fruitful hill that the Lord has placed us in. Paul
wrote in 2 Corinthians 1, verses 20 through 22, he said, all the
promises of God in him are yea, and amen, unto the glory
of God by us. Now he which establisheth us
with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God, who hath
also sealed us, and given us the earnest of the Spirit in
our hearts, so that you see that abundance of blessing that he's
given to us in the Son, in Jesus Christ his Son, so that we were
placed in Christ before the foundation of the world. He placed us in
a secure place, in a fruitful hill. It says, according as he
had chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. So he
did all this. He placed us in Christ. All right, then in Isaiah 5 verse
2, in the very beginning it says, and he fenced it. He fenced it,
so that we see that God is the protection of Israel from all
of her enemies. He fenced it about. For example,
when he told them to go up to Jerusalem to worship him, that
the men should go up to Jerusalem and worship them, they knew they
had all these enemies around them, and yet he promised them
that You go and do this and I will protect your wives and your children
and your flocks and your lands and nothing will happen to them. I'll protect them. I'll deliver.
to your possessions out of the hand of the enemies. They won't
touch them. It says in Exodus 34, 23 and 24, it says, thrice
or three times in the year shall all your men children appear
before the Lord God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out
the nations before thee and enlarge thy borders. Neither shall any
man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to appear before
the Lord thy God thrice in the year. And so, we see in the Lord,
He continues to bless us, or He blesses us even more so in
His Son, Jesus Christ. For Christ promises us eternal
life. We are eternally secure in Jesus
Christ, His Son. We have eternal protection and
deliverance from that judgment which is coming upon the wicked
of this world. It says in John 10, 28, And I
give unto them eternal life. and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. So that Christ himself is our
fenced wall. He is our protection. Nothing's
going to touch us except what God permits for our good. He is our protection. It says in Isaiah 26.1, In that
day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah. We have a
strong city. Salvation will God appoint four
walls and bulwarks. So salvation is our walls that
fences us around. Salvation is our protection,
our bulwarks that keeps us and protects us and keeps us secure
from all harm. So that we see that in Christ
we are secured from all the harms and the ills that are coming
on this earth. And it says in Ephesians 1-4
that we're in Christ that we should be holy and without blame
before him in love. So he's put us in Christ and
we're secure brethren. You don't need to fear or worry
that there's some piece of unrighteousness left out there that's exposed
that's going to be seen and destroyed by God. You are perfectly secure
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we see that it says in Isaiah
5 verse 2 that the Lord gathered out the stones thereof. He gathered
out the stones thereof. So that we understand as we look
back at what God did in Israel Those were wicked nations that
they were going into. The Lord said, they filled up
their iniquity and I'm driving them out before you. These weren't
righteous or good people, they were idolaters. And he was driving
them out before the Israelites. And he was showing to them, they
had all these gods. They had all these idols and
different gods that they worshipped and bowed down to. And he was
showing to them, They're no gods. They're not going to be able
to save them. They're not going to deliver themselves out of
my hand. When I send you in there, you're
going to destroy them. You're going to overcome and
you're going to have the victory so that you might know that these
gods that they worship are idols. And they're going to know it.
And they're not going to be delivered from these idols. So the Lord
would do that and then he would send them in there and they would
go in and they would tear down their stone idols and rip them
apart. And so we see how Christ does
this in the believer, in the believer's heart, right? He gathers
his people out of every tongue and tribe and nation and he He dwells with us by His Spirit
and teaches us that He removes those stony idols from our hard,
cold, dead hearts that we have. And he strips us of those securities
that we have and trusting in those things that are nothing
but idols and those things that we think are our salvation and
those things that are going to protect us. But he shows us that
that's not salvation, but that he himself is salvation. And he says in Ezekiel 36 verses
24 through 27, he said, for I will take you from among the heathen
and gather you out of all countries and will bring you into your
own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall
be clean. From all your filthiness and
from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I
give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give
you a heart of flesh. and I will put my spirit within
you and cause you to walk in my statutes and ye shall keep
my judgments and do them." So this is necessary and this is
good and what the Lord has shown us is that by nature we're all
idolaters By nature, we're all looking to the flesh and the
things that are carnal and the things that we can see and touch
and trust in. Those are the things by nature
that man looks to and trusts in. The Lord has shown us, I'm
going to remove all that from you and I'm going to reveal myself
to you. as the Lord God who saves you and delivers you, and he
turns our hearts to trust in him, to put our trust in his
work and what he's done, which work is what he's done in Christ. Christ is that work which he's
done that assures us that we're his and that there's nothing
to fear. He's the one that's gonna remove
all those stony idols from our hard, cold, dead hearts. All right? It says we're gathered,
1 Peter 2.5 shows that we're gathered by Christ. He says,
ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house and
holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
by Jesus Christ. All right, then we see how the
Lord planted the choicest vine. He planted it with the choicest
vine. To the Jews, when he established Israel, when he established the
Jews there in Israel, he blessed them. He gave them his word.
He gave them his holy, just, and good law, established in
the hands of a mediator. He gave them the priesthood.
And in the priesthood, he showed them that they're to approach
and come to God in a lamb. He showed them the way of salvation.
He was pointing them to Christ. And he also sent them prophets
and teachers as was necessary to reveal to them what the word
said, that it was all pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ who
should come. And so to the believer, what he makes Christ to us is
he's the word. He shows us that Christ is in
all the scriptures, that they're all pointing to him because he's
the one that's the light and that he's the one that's revealing
and opening up these scriptures to us. He shows us that Christ
himself is the holy, the good, and the just one who is the one
who established the law as a lawgiver in our hearts so that he is our
righteousness, that he has forgiven us of our sins and cleansed us
from our filthiness and from the idols that we trusted him.
And he turns our hearts, granting us repentance from the works
and the righteousness and the acts that people turn to do to
gain some confidence or to gain some peace in their guilty conscience.
He turns us from that to the Lord Jesus Christ and he fixes
our hope in Him. And we see that He is the Believer's
High Priest. He's the one who's praying and
interceding for us because He shed His blood for us. That He
Himself is the Passover Lamb that should come and that He
shed His blood and that He bore the sins of the people and put
them away forever. So that now, Brethren, the law
doesn't say anything to us. The law has nothing more to say
to us and that's What we see here versus what man does is
man always thinks that they're trying to get back to a strict,
exacting, legal system. Notice that man is always in
religion, he's always trying to get back to that strict, exacting,
excessive, legal religion where they interpret everything to
just start laying rods on the people's backs and start whipping
them and beating them and getting them into shape. And what God
keeps revealing to us actually, what he's showing us in the scriptures
is that we are unrighteous. We can't keep the law. He keeps
showing us the perfection of the law so that we see, I can't
do it. I can't do it. I can't save myself. Like you read in Job. My right
arm cannot save me, it can't deliver me, it can't make me
righteous. He's not showing us these things
to get us to try and be more exacting in the law, but he's
showing us these things to humble us. and to bring us down and
to shut our mouths and to stop boasting and saying what we've
done for the Lord, but to confess, Lord, I'm nothing. I can't do
it, Lord. Have mercy upon me, a sinner. I need your righteousness. I
need your forgiveness. Be gracious to me, Lord. And
he shows us the Son. He shows us that that's where
God is gracious and merciful and at peace with us. so that we're not whipping and
beating each other. Do we want to go on sinning?
No, we don't want to go on sinning. But we show mercy and grace and
kindness because God has shown us mercy and grace and kindness
and we pray for one another. And when we look at each other,
we don't even see the things that we see in our own hearts.
We know what we are in our hearts. And the Spirit convicts us and
teaches us by those things that stay in me, look to me, trust
in me, keep seeking me. But to our brethren, he exalts
you in our eyes and says these are the sheep of the Lord. These
brethren are precious and holy and accepted of God and God receives
them in his son so that we love our brethren and we want to serve
our brethren and be with our brethren because he's made his
people holy and acceptable in him. So Christ is all those things
and it's in Christ that that we find our peace and our nourishment
and are fed in Him. He says in John 15, 5, I am the
vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me ye
can do nothing. And we know that now. We know
that now. We've tried that excavation and
that gardening and all that pruning. We've tried to do it to ourselves,
to bring forth more fruit, and all it was was corrupting, dead,
putrid, smelly fruit. It didn't profit anything, so
the Lord showed us that. And then it says that he built
a tower. He built a tower in the midst of it. Now for the
nation of Israel, he built the temple and revealed to them,
this is where God will meet with you. in the temple. You come here and the presence
of the Lord will be here and through my power I'll make known
to you that I'm in your presence and that they would behold that
the Lord was pleased to deal with them and to reveal himself
to them there in the temple. And for the believer that temple
was a type or a picture or a shadow of Christ that should come. So
that we now understand that Christ himself is the temple. It doesn't
matter what building or meeting place we're in. We want to be
acceptable and quiet in a place where we can worship, but it's
not about the glory of the structure that we're in, the glory and
the power and the awe. The Spirit are all in Christ
and it's all revealed to us in Him so that He lifts us up. We
don't need statues and stations and beautiful stones and artwork
and candles and stained glass. We need Christ and we need to
have the presence of Christ. That's what we long for is to
know Him and to know His forgiveness and the peace that we have in
Him with God the Father. Because we know what we are by
nature, and we know now what He's provided and promised us
in His Son, Jesus Christ. And there's the reconciliation
that we desire and are rejoicing. because there's no more enmity
between us and God the Father. So Christ is that place where
the Father meets with the children. That's where he receives us,
it's in Christ. And that's where he pours out
all his blessings upon us. As Peter wrote in 2.4 and a few
other verses in chapter 2, he wrote, to whom coming as unto
a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and
precious. Verses 6 and 7 say, wherefore
also it is contained in the scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief
cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him
shall not be confounded. unto you therefore which believe
he is precious. Because he himself is our entrance
into the holy of holies. He's our entrance to come before
the throne of God and not be destroyed because we're sinners,
but rather be accepted and received of God because Christ's blood
covers us and he's our righteousness and he's our intercession and
he's the peace that we have with God. so that in Christ, 1 Peter
2, 9-10, we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy
nation of peculiar people, that we should show forth the praises
of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous
light, which in time past were not a people, but are now the
people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have
obtained mercy, so that in Christ by his one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified he's perfected us forever and
secured us he's our temple and he's our security and he's our
provision in all things all right now this is how he accomplished
it it says he also made a wine press therein in verse two there
a wine press therein so that here isaiah is saying by the
spirit of god he's using metaphorical language and he's showing the
great care that he's shown to the nation of Israel. So that
Israel, having all these blessings and having the presence of God
and him doing all these things for them and pointing them to
the coming Messiah. He's pointing them to Christ
that should come. They should have brought forth
an abundance of fruit. They should have been praising
and rejoicing in him and thankful for what he's provided for them
in the coming Christ. They should have been looking
to him. And yet when he looked for fruit, he didn't find anything. He didn't find any fruit that
they had brought forth. Now, the reason is because Israel,
the greater portion of Israel, were just carnal. They were fleshly.
They didn't have the spirit of Christ in them, so all they saw
everything in, it was with natural eyes, and they just saw the dead
letter condemning word, only it didn't come to them as a condemning
word. They thought, that's my life, and so they invested all
their their attention and all their strength and everything
they could into keeping that law perfectly, only they didn't
understand it, they didn't hear what it was saying, and it didn't
shut their mouths and it didn't humble them. It puffed them up
in self-righteousness. In Romans 7, 5, Paul said, for
when we were in the flesh, which all men are by nature, except
God give them his spirit, right? The motions of sins which were
by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. That's all we were able to do
in the flesh is bring forth fruit unto death. It doesn't please
God and he doesn't accept it or receive it. And that's the
story that we see constantly throughout history with man.
Constantly throughout history with man. If you look over in
Genesis 2, turn to Genesis 2, 8 and 9, you see how God sets man
in a perfect place. He sets him in a perfect place,
a perfect environment. He has no sin even in him. Nothing
fallen or anything wrong with the man or the place he's planted
him in. And it says, Genesis 2, 8, and
the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he
put the man whom he had formed, And out of the ground made the
Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and
good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then verse
15, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden
of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded
the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die. And so God puts a perfect man,
he's righteous, he's made upright, he's not a sinner. He puts him
in a perfect garden and he has an abundance of trees and all
bearing fruit and they're beautiful and it grows easily and it's
not even hard or anything like that. And he's in this perfect
environment and the serpent comes and he Heeds the voice of the
serpent. He listens to the serpent and desires to be like God so
that he rebels and sins against his creator. And yet, you know,
so we see that in that perfection where man has a freedom of will
and he still rebels against God. And then we see it all throughout
history. We see in the flood after God destroys everyone in
the flood of Noah's day. And then it's just one family
on the earth. and they grow and they spread
out and they start multiplying on the earth, and what happens?
They're so corrupt that by the time he calls Abraham out, Abraham
is called out from a city of idolaters, where they're worshiping
and looking to a false god, right? And so, and even in that day,
we read of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the Lord destroyed them
because they were so wicked. They had grown so wicked there
after the flood. And then we see how the Lord
gathers up the nation of Israel. He delivers them from Egypt. He gives them a law. He shows
them all his miracles and power and glory there as they're going
through the wilderness. And yet every one of them that
were of a certain age all died in the wilderness. It says their
carcasses fell in the wilderness because They didn't believe God,
they didn't trust Him. And then it says again, we see
it, once they were in the land, they were established in the
land, and what happened? They stumbled over and over and
over again in the judges, and then the Lord gave them a king,
and they didn't do any better under a king, as we see it here
now, where now they're about to go off into exile, and then
finally, He sends the Son. And the sun comes, and all he
does is good. He tells them the truth according
to the Spirit of God that's in him, as it teaches him, which
is without measure. So he comes in power and in glory,
and he's going about doing good, revealing the truth. He's the
light of men. Do they hear him? Do they listen
to him? Nope, they take him, they slay him, and they hang
him up on a tree. And so they wouldn't hear that,
and so even now we know that Here we are in the time after
the Lord has come. The gospel has gone forth. We
have the gospel being preached and proclaimed and declared to
men. And yet, is this world a godly
world? Are there millions and billions
and billions of people that are all Christians and doing good
to one another? No. We're under the gospel now
and we're no better than Adam was or the Jews that fell in
the wilderness, or in the days of Noah, or in the days of Abraham,
or any of the kings or the judges. The examples are just over and
over to us, showing us constantly, we can't save ourselves. In the
best of circumstances, no matter what God provides, Man's, the
nature of man is not going to turn. It's not going to be, he's
not going to be able to deliver himself from the corruption that
he is by nature and the enmity that he is against God by nature.
It just will not happen. So unless God does a work, which
he does by his son, no man will believe on him. He said in Isaiah
5, 2, and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought
forth wild grapes, which we'll probably look at more next time. But in Ecclesiastes 7, 29, it
says, lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright,
but they have sought out many inventions. So man doesn't bring
forth anything that's good or pleasing to the Lord, so that
it's just an over, overwhelming example of how we can't save
ourselves. But turn over to Isaiah 63, Isaiah
63, because when the son came and they rejected him and they
wouldn't hear his words, in that hour where he appeared most weak,
and rejected of men. It was the worst sin that man
had ever committed in rejecting his creator and putting him there
on the cursed tree. But it was in that moment that
he secured us with the redemption price, being paid with the shedding
of his own blood. And in his death, he justified
us. And he reconciled us to God and
made peace for us with the Father, and that He's perfected us now
forever in sanctification, and that He gives us His Spirit,
His Holy Spirit that dwells in us, that's pleased to dwell in
us, and to reveal the Son to us, and to make us know that,
to understand that this salvation isn't something that we can do
now, but that He Himself and He alone provides it. I'm not
going to read that there in Isaiah 63 because it's getting late,
but he says in Isaiah 53, though, he says, He shall see the travail
of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
So this vineyard, we see that the Lord has done everything
to show to man, to prove to man that in the best of circumstances,
no matter how He's adjusted it for man. Man is never satisfied. He never improves. He never helps himself. Just
look at all those examples that we have there in the scripture
throughout all those ages. You see that no matter what,
man rejected them and wouldn't have anything to do with them.
Even through that, so God's going to destroy the world, but even
through that, He's provided salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ. He's
made us fit and righteous to stand before God, who is holy
and righteous and perfect in all His ways, so that brethren,
rejoice and be thankful for what God has done in His Son, Jesus
Christ. Not many people know him, and
that's why he's precious. He's precious to us, because
he is the only way of salvation. All right, let's pray. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father, for the precious Savior which you
provided in your Son. Lord, over and over again, you
were merciful, and you showed and demonstrated to us that No
matter what, man will always seek out the darkness. He always
goes towards corruption and only can bring forth fruit that is
corrupt and vile and wicked and putrid. Lord, we thank you that
you have provided a salvation, and it's in Jesus Christ. And
Lord, that it's not what we do, but it's what Christ himself
has done for us. And Lord, we thank you for our
Savior, and we ask that His blood would cover us and cleanse us
from all our sin, and that we would know the fellowship with
you in the Spirit being reconciled to you through Christ. Lord,
make that fellowship and that life that we have in Him sweet
and precious to us. We pray this in Jesus' name,
our Lord and Savior. Amen.