Isaiah 5:5, 6 And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up… The picture presented is one of complete desolation. A miserable sight is the untended vineyard. No desolation is so complete as that which comes to lands which man has once tilled and then left neglected. Hugh Macmillan remarks that this judgment has even been literally fulfilled. "No country in the world has such variety and abundance of thorny plants as Palestine in its present desolation; there are giant thistles, growing to the height of a man on horseback, impenetrable thickets of buckthorn, and bare hillsides studded with paliurus and tribulus." "The absence of the pruning and digging answers to the withdrawal of the means of moral and spiritual culture. The command given to the clouds implies the cessation of all gracious spiritual influences." I. THE UNGRATEFUL MUST LOSE THEIR PRIVILEGE. The grace of God, and the provisions, defenses, and guidings of grace, are the glory of a life and of a nation. No nation has ever been so favored as Israel was. Compare Jehovah's pleadings and reproaches in Hosea 2.; and also our Lord's parable of the "cumberer of the ground" (Luke 13:6, 9). "God, in a way of righteous judgment, denies his grace to those that have long received it in vain. The sum of all is that those who would not bring forth good fruit should bring forth none. The curse of barrenness is the punishment of the sin of barrenness (Mark 11:14). This has its frequent accomplishment in the departure of God's Spirit from those persons who have long resisted him, and striven against him" (Matthew Henry). II. THE UNGRATEFUL MUST BE LEFT TO THEMSELVES AWHILE. Compare the figure of the unfaithful wife in Hosea 2., who must be left alone to her willfulness and its bitter consequences. Illustrate from the garden let alone. The grass grows rank, the weeds flourish and seed themselves, the paths are full of green; the place looks neglected and miserable. So is the man, so is the nation, from which God withdraws his gracious hand, his special care. Illustrate the misery of David in those months when, because of his sin, God's grace was withheld. His "bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long;" and presently he comes to pray, with a great intensity of feeling, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." There is a sense in which, like Jerusalem, our "day of grace may be passed," and we maybe left to ourselves, to the woe of being ourselves only. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: |
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