Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2480
Isaiah 5:1. Now willI sing to my Well-Beloved a song of my Beloved touching His vineyard. My Well-Beloved has a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. You and I, dear Friends, are placed in a position where we have very choice opportunities of glorifying our God. We are like “a vineyard in a very fruitful hill,” most favorably placed for fruitfulness. The Well-Beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill—
2. And He fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and He expected that it should bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. Is that my case? Is it your case, dear Friend? Has even our religion been a false thing? Has it been like wild grapes or poisonous berries? Have we been, at times, right only by chance and have we never carefully and sedulously sought to serve our Lord, or to bring forth fruit to His praise? O Lord, You know!
3-6. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt Me and My vineyard. What could have been done more to My vineyard, that I have not done to it? Why, then, when I expected that it should bring forth good grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: and I will lay it waste. There is no destruction like that which comes when God destroys the fruitless vineyard! When a human enemy or the wild boar out of the forest lays it waste, it may be restored again, but if, in righteous wrath, the Divine Owner of the vineyard, Himself, lays it waste, what hope remains for it? “It shall be trodden down; and I will lay it waste”—
6, 7. It shall not bepruned, nor dug; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant plant: and He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry. This passage has a special reference to God’s ancient people and one cannot read it without noting how literally this terrible threat has been fulfilled!
Luke 12:6. He spoke also thisparable, A certain man hada fig tree planted in his vineyard; andhe came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Let us, everyone, read this parable as if our Lord Jesus Christ were now speaking it for the first time to each of us. There is a lesson here which we shall do well to heed.
7-9. Then saidhe to the dresser ofhis vineyard, Behold, these three years Ihave come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and found none: cut it down; why cumbers it the ground? And he answering said to him, Lord, let it alone this year, also, tillI shall dig about it, and fertilize it: andifit bears fruit, well: andif not, then after thatyou shall cut it down. “In that case, I will plead for it no longer, for it will have had its full time of testing and every opportunity of bearing fruit— ‘After that you shall cut it down.”’ The parable is so simple that it needs no explanation and, therefore, our Lord Jesus has not given any. May we all make a personal application of its solemn teaching! Amen.