"I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit."
Isaiah 5:1-2 (NIV)God chose the best hill, cleared the stones, planted the choicest vine, built a tower, and prepared a winepress, doing everything a loving vinedresser could possibly do. Then He waited for good grapes. What He got was wild grapes. In Isaiah 5:7, the meaning becomes unmistakable: He looked for justice and found oppression, for righteousness and heard only cries of distress. The people God had lavished with every possible advantage had produced the opposite of what He cultivated them for. His response was to remove His protection and let the vineyard be destroyed (Isaiah 5:5-6). It is a sobering picture, and it becomes even more sobering when we realize that we, as Christians, are God's vineyard today.
What greater investment has ever been made in a vineyard than the death of God's only Son to cleanse and restore it? Yet the question Isaiah's song places before each of us is deeply personal: when God looks at His vineyard today, what does He find? Does He see justice, righteousness, love, joy, mercy, and truth, or does He find the wild grapes of selfishness, hypocrisy, and indifference? God judged Israel for bearing bad fruit, and He will judge us by the same standard, for to whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48). May we be found bearing good grapes, fruit worthy of the price He paid to plant us.
Lord, You have invested everything in me through the sacrifice of Your Son. Search my life today and show me where I am bearing wild grapes instead of the good fruit You planted me to produce. Prune what needs pruning and help me to yield a harvest worthy of Your love. Amen.