October 5, 2007-Good Grapes

saiah 5:1-7
Amanda called me on Wednesday morning to say that she was getting out the Halloween decorations already. When we visited them last, half of their front yard was covered with a huge pumpkin vine with baby pumpkins on it. It was a source of great pride so I asked how many pumpkins they'd be harvesting. She sadly reported that there were none. The wake of Hurricane Ike gave them such heavy rains that the pumpkins had all rotted on the vine. So she tore them all out.
This morning we hear a similar story about God's vineyard. We don't know whether or not Isaiah could sing well, but in chapter 5 of his prophetic book we have his "Song of the Vineyard." This song has three stanzas, found in verses 1-2, verses 3-6, and verse 7. Some translations of the Bible indicate this by putting spaces between the stanzas. If you notice the first stanza, God is referred to as He. In part two the song moves to "I" as God speaks directly to His people. In this parable, the entire kingdom was denounced for their failure to bring forth fruit. And we're not talking pumpkins.
The Lord placed Israel in the Promised Land. It says that He planted them after clearing the rocks. God promised them that He would provide if they would just trust Him and remove the things that would try and influence them against Him. He knew they could be tempted and ordered the things that would interfere with their worship of Him to be destroyed. For protection and security, God gave them the Mosaic Law, to help them from straying, and then He sent prophets to give them Godly wisdom. The Lord gave Israel promises of abundant blessing if they would follow and serve Him alone.

God did everything possible to help His vineyard produce good fruit. In fact, verse 2 says that He expected it to produce good grapes. He chose fertile soil on a hillside where there would be plenty of sunshine and rainfall.

But the good grapes never appeared! God gave His people every advantage and opportunity to produce good fruit. However, Israel produced nothing but the worthless fruit of wild grapes.
What can be done with wild grapes? Nothing! They look just like the ono kind, but are bitter, kind of sour grapes. You cannot make wine with them, you cannot eat them. Simply, God cannot use them. They have to be destroyed. The whole vineyard has to be destroyed or it will continue to produce the same kind of fruit. And as time progressed, they built shrines and it was as if they slowly moved the rocks back into the garden!
So this week I've been wondering about wild grapes. When Brendan Wong was little we used to sing and dance this song with him, "Wild thing, you make my heart sing, you make everything groovy." But things weren't groovy in Israel after they rejected God. On the outside they looked OK but when you took a bite of their lives, whoa! Da buggahs was sour!
I wonder about people who know a lot and talk about being a Christian but who never become more like Jesus. Outside they look like a grape, but they never let God transform the inside of them. They may have head knowledge but they don't have heart knowledge. They may even study Jesus, but they don't really want to know Him. And they have all kinds of excuses why they can't follow Him or be like Him. I wonder if God sees them as wild grapes?
How about folks who use the Word of God to prove a point? They use the Bible as ammunition to be right. But you don't see any love or joy or service to others in their lives. Instead of letting God's Word transform them to be filled with His grace and love, they become modern day Pharisees, right about everything. They sing, "Jesus loves me this I know, but He thinks that YOU"RE a so-and-so." Is that a wild grape?
I know people who really cannot believe that God would bring them happiness. Because they already decided God was a killjoy and they don't trust Him with their lives. Is that a wild grape?
It's amazing that God could see real fruit in any of us. If even I can see pride and prejudice, backbiting and backstabbing, wild, absurd false teachings, what does God see? To paraphrase Luke 18:8 Jesus asks, " when the Son of Man comes back, what will he find on earth?"
What is the difference between true fruit and a wild grape? Is it faith? It is good deeds? Is it both?
Well Jesus drew a line in the sand. He said that people will know that we belong to Him by our love for each other. The Apostle Paul said there are 3 things that endure: faith, hope and love. And James tells us that the evidence of a true faith is by the things that we do. So the life of fruitful follower of Jesus is marked by love, faith, hope, and doing things to help others. In other words, it is about a life that is Christ focused and not ME focused. Godly fruit is sweet in the lives of others.
Mirror-check. Am I a wild grape? Or do I live out the Word of God as living, active, and life giving? In other words, we have to avoid making God in our own image and instead let Him make us in His.

There are two types of fruit that we can produce.
1. Good sweet and bountiful fruit. Fruit that is worthy of God and true to His goodness.
2. Or fruit that is wild and sour, unpalatable. Fruit that would not be able to be used to make a sweet wine.

In verse 7of Isaiah, there is a powerful play on words to emphasize the contrast between the fruit God was seeking and the worthless fruit he found. In our English text we read that God looked for justice but saw bloodshed, and for righteousness but heard a cry for help, cries of distress. In Hebrew, the words for "justice" and "bloodshed" sound very similar, and the words for "righteousness" and "cries of distress" sound similar. To capture this play on words in English, one commentator translated this verse as follows: "God waited for equity but behold inequity. He waited for right, but behold riot!"

So what does good fruit look like? Dancing with the stars comes to mind. When we watch couples dancing, we know one is the leader. But the other partner is not just a follower. That second dancer responds to the lead partner, but she is fully engaged. The lead doesn't just drag his partner around the dance floor. They are both fully part of the dance. But when they are on their game, they are dancing in such perfect rhythm, they are so graceful that it looks almost effortless. But they never get there without practice and rehearsal. The 2nd dancer has to follow and learn from the expert dancer if they are ever to dance beautifully.

That is kind of like our relationship with God. God is the star that we dance with. He is the One that we see our sisters and brothers in Christ dance with. And the world is watching to see if we are graceful or stumbling awkwardly. The important part of our relationship is the communication - following the Leader. It's a dance of friendly following. While He is leading us, we become His friends. As we follow and grow, we learn to become fully engaged, sweet and ripe.

If we have that relationship, He will build in us that accomplishment.

I don't know about you, but I don't want the Lord to yank me out by the roots and toss me aside. I want to be sweet, juicy, luscious, and delicious fruit.
Which is why I love the parable Jesus told in Luke 13, "6 Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' 8 "'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'"

Here is the good news! Even if you are a sour grape, God is not done with you yet. He still hopes that we can become dancing fruit.

God has provided us with everything we could possibly need to produce good fruit for His glory. He starts us with new life, in and through the Choicest Vine, His Son. God nourishes us as we live in relationship with Christ. The Holy Spirit protects us, prunes us, sends us warnings, gives us counsel and encouragement through His Word, and brings godly mentors into our lives, and much, much more. Think about it this way. God has poured out His river of life into us to assist us in producing a glorious harvest of good fruit in our lives!

But He does more.

Our friend Ty sends out his daily devos every so often. Last week, when Luke 13 was the daily reading, he titled his journal entry, "God Uses Poop to Bring out the Fruit".

He wrote that God wants our lives to be full of the fruit of the Spirit as found in Galatians 5:22, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control". And based on Luke 13, the tree has plenty of water.

Then Ty makes an interesting point. What the tree needed to be fruitful was more fertilizer! What exactly is much fertilizer made from? That's right…manure. Stinky, smelly manure. If you pour out the right amount of water and manure on a tree- BINGO! You get fruit. What if God wants to strengthen our core and bring us to fruitfulness by the stinky stuff He lets into our lives? If so, we get to decide whether to be bitter or better when trials come our way. We get to decide whether to give to God or just give in when hardships come. We get to decide to go deeper into Jesus when the poop hit our paths. In fact, the stinky stuff may be a sign of God's extra attention in trying to grow us as His fruit.

Does this make sense?

Finally, if I may mix images, we cannot wait until things hit the fan. We cannot wait and only seek God in times of troubles. We must let Him build in us in the good times too. Like those dancers, we must be continually practicing. Then on the night of the performance, or when things begin to go terribly wrong, we will already know how to follow God's lead, to dance with His music, and know that He is at work in us, especially when we see that we are surrounded by dung.

Let me finish with this thought. One of the great signs of a fruitful life in Jesus is when we can see past the all the manure and look into the eyes of the skillful Gardener, who love us too much to let us wither, and is always at work in us so that we can be fruitful and give Him glory…..AMEN

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