Israel’s in exile in Babylon because of their
faithlessness to God, failing to follow his
way, preferring their own ways and the ways of the nations instead. These ways,
as we reflected on last week, failed God’s call to live justly and walk in
righteous ways with each other. Here in Isaiah 27, we see the Lord punishing
Leviathan, the gliding serpent and monster of the sea, an echo back to how
Satan took on the form of a serpent to tempt Eve and Adam into sin and
disobedience. Isaiah associates the serpent with the sea, a place of chaos for
Israel who are more connected with the wilderness. The sea’s a picture for the
Israelites of the chaos sin brings; the power of its storms is like the storms
sin brings into our lives. Sin brings brokenness and destruction. So how do we
find our ways to fruitful vineyards, to the Lord’s unfailing love in Psalm 85
where the psalmist is searching for the Lord’s peace and salvation?
Matthew introduces us to John the Baptist, who comes to prepare the people for Jesus’ coming
and ministry. John’s message is simple and blunt; he calls the people to repent
by confessing their sins and turning back to God. He has his harshest words and
strongest calls to repent for the Sadducees and Pharisees who are showing up to
check out this wild prophet who’s baptizing people in the Jordan River, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the
coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you
can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of
these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the
root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut
down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance. But
after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy
to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork
is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into
the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
John’s hard on them because the Pharisees emphasize faithfulness to Torah, the
study of scripture, and full obedience to the law. They’re influential leaders
in Israel and created additional laws and requirements on the people, which
leads Jesus to later charge them with placing heavy burdens on the people that
God did not. But they also use these laws to benefit themselves, leading Jesus
to call them hypocrites because they don’t recognize or acknowledge their own
sin, only the sins of everyone else.
What is repentance? How do we live out repentance in our relationship with Jesus? In the
Hebrew there are 2 words that are used for repentance: nāḥam, which means ‘to be sorry, change one’s mind’ and šûḇ which means ‘to turn back, return’.
In the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, the call from God is for his
people to return to their covenantal dependance on God; to turn back to the way
of living with God and each other in the way God gave them at Mount Sinai, and
in the spirit of the other covenants God made with them. The picture of
repentance is of changing your direction away from your goals and destination
and turning back and walking with God as your goal and destination.
Pilgrim’s Progress is an example of what our journey
through life is like. It’s a story by
John Bunyan about a
man called Christian who journeys from the City of Destruction to the Celestial
City. It’s a story that represents the Christian life, where each person,
place, and event represents spiritual concepts and challenges. Bunyan shows the
burden of sin that Christian must carry and how the path to God involves faith,
perseverance, and overcoming obstacles like temptations and despair. Repentance
looks like getting back on the path to God by confessing when we fail, and then
putting our eyes on Jesus and trusting the way he taught us to live, shaped by
faith and trust in him and the Father.
John, when he calls the people to repentance, uses the Greek word metanoias, which combines
the send of both Hebrew words and means ‘to change one’s mind’ and to ‘feel
remorse or regret.’ Repentance is not just feeling sorry about what you did
or thought, it’s about changing the direction of your heart from you wants and
desires, your ways of thinking, what you believe, and embracing Jesus as your
Lord and Saviour, filling your mind and heart with his teaching, looking at how
he lived out God’s will, and embracing the spirit of God’s will; filling your
ears with Jesus’ teachings, and your hearts with the Holy Spirit’s voice, and
turning away from the voices that blast at us from our culture, trusting Jesus
and who he’s calling us to be as his disciples. It can be hard to tune out the
social media noise and chaos in our culture that uses conflict, anger, hatred,
and division to shape how we live in and understand our world. It’s amazing how
easily these voices grab us, how quickly we believe in them and turn away from
Jesus’ way. Christians are not immune to the spirit of hatred spewing out at
us.
John calls for the Pharisees and Sadducees and followers of God and Jesus to produce fruit that
grows out of repentance. John baptized people as a step of repentance into a
new life and identity, washing away their old life for a new life of obedience.
What does that look like for us as we’re called to repentance and turn back to
Jesus? When we look at our lives and choices, we find ourselves choosing
against Jesus regularly, choosing to listen to other voices instead of the Holy
Spirit’s.
Isaiah uses the imagery of briers and thorns for sin. In our verses today, Isaiah’s pointing ahead to
Jesus’ return when the dragon or serpent will be destroyed, and Jesus is going
to either find a fruitful vineyard or thorns and briars that will be thrown on
a burn pile. Jerusalem
was surrounded by vineyards which represented blessings while briers and thorns often come up in Jesus'
parables as signs of Satan's and evil men's work. Fire
is often used as a description of judgment, and later in the New Testament as
an image of hell. John the Baptist warns, “Even
now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does
not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Repentance leads to peace, flourishing, and new life. Repentance leads to
growth and fruitfulness; it turns away God’s wrath and anger as we eagerly wait
for Jesus’ return.
Repentance begins with confession, with being honest with yourself and God that you’re
a sinner. Our tendency is to minimize our sins, think about Jesus’ parable of
the Pharisee and tax-collector praying. The Pharisee praises himself to God
while the tax-collector humbly confesses he’s a sinner in need to God’s grace
and forgiveness. We need to see that we all need a saviour as we journey
to the manger, and as we wait for Jesus’ return. As we journey through the
danger of serpents and thorns, we also hear John the Baptist’ warning that
judgment’s coming. This is why confession needs to be paired with some hard
work in our lives and hearts. Isaiah talks about fruitful vineyards, but those
vineyards need constant weeding and feeding in order to grow healthy fruit. We’re called to do
weeding in our own hearts, lives, and minds, called to repentance, confessing
our sins, walking in obedience to the way of Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps us
identify the weeds and thorns in our lives and hearts, will help us in the
weeding; help us flourish and grow into fruitful followers of Jesus as we wait
for his return.
If
you wrestle with addiction or other struggles, you know that the strength of
addiction or mental or emotional challenges can make you feel hopeless because
no matter how much you want to change. It’s hard and you find yourself falling
again and again. Know that God is a God of mercy and grace who brings people
into our lives to walk with us, encourage us, find healing and hope, and to
pick us up again. We talk about sanctification in the church, the life long
journey to become more like Jesus, but it’s a life long journey filled with ups
and downs and we’ll never reach full Christ-likeness in our life time, only
when we reach heaven will we be fully renewed!
Paul
shows us what the fruit of the Spirit, what a fruitful soul vineyard looks like
in Galatians 5:22–25, “The
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and
desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” A fruitful soul vineyard, filled with these virtues
that reflect who God is, takes regular cultivating, weeding, and feeding. We
feed this fruit through attention to the Spirit, to regular study of the
scripture, time in prayer, and gathering together to encourage and build each
other up in these virtues. We don’t do this in our own strength, we need to
remember that the Lord is our keeper, that he provides what’s needed to grow
and provide a harvest of righteousness and faithfulness, helping to prepare the
way for his return.
How
are you tending to your vineyard? Are you rooted in the promises of God,
in Jesus and the power of the Spirit, and the community of believers?
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