Through the Prophet Isaiah the Lord God told us about His first vineyard (Isaiah 5). Even though He prepared it, removed all obstacles and fertilised it, it only produced rotten grapes. So He sent His Son to establish His new vineyard and chose His Vine in the Son that it would bear good fruit. This is that story.
1 Now I will sing to my Beloved a song of my Beloved concerning His vineyard: There was a vineyard to My Beloved in a horn, a son of fatness.
2 And He dug about it, and cleared it of stones, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in its midst, and also hewed out a wine vat in it. And He waited for it to produce grapes, but it produced rotten grapes.
3 And now, ones living in Jerusalem and men of Judah, I ask you, judge between Me and My vineyard.Isaiah 5:1-3 KJ3
This passage matches the parable of the vineyard that Jesus told His disciples (see below). Here the Lord God asked the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem to judge between ‘Me and My vineyard’. His vineyard, the people of Jerusalem and Judah, got into a bad state because they rejected the Lord God and His laws, by rewriting their meaning using their Satanic Talmudic traditions developed in Babylon. (e.g. Matthew 15:3-6; Mark 7:8-9; Colossians 2:8). It was a choice between God’s law and the traditions of the vineyard.
4 What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Who knows? I waited for it to produce grapes, but it produced rotten grapes.
Isaiah 5:4 KJ3
The Lord God then asks what else could He have done to produce good grapes, good fruit. This means He tried everything to get the Israelites to obey the law of God but they refused and rebelled and only produced bad fruit.
5 And now, please, I will make known to you what I will do to My vineyard. I will turn aside its hedge, and it will be burned. I will breach its wall, and it will become a trampling place.
6 And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned and not hoed; but briers and thorns shall come up. And on the clouds I will command the rain from raining on it.
7 For the vineyard of Jehovah of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah is His delightful plant. And He waited for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry!Isaiah 5:5-7 KJ3
God said that He will destroy all of Israel, Judah and Jerusalem included. God had waited for justice but they preferred bloodshed and unrighteousness. Jerusalem will be burned and the wall of the city destroyed. This happened through the invasion first of the northern tribes by Assyria and then later those remaining were taken into captivity in Babylon. The city and wall were destroyed.
Then after Judah returned from Babylon, and the city and wall rebuilt, they still were rebellious and rejected His Son so God sent His Roman armies who destroyed the city and pulled down the temple stone by stone. But the people of Israel never learned what God was doing in judging them.
Compare the description of the Lord God’s vineyard in Isaiah 5 to the parable of the vineyard Jesus told from Luke 20.
9 And He began to speak this parable to the people: A certain man planted a vineyard and gave it out to vinedressers, and went abroad for considerable times. (Isaiah 5:1-2)
10 And in harvest time, he sent a slave to the vinedressers, that they might give him the fruit of the vineyard. But the vinedressers sent him away empty, beating him.
11 And he again sent another slave. But they also sent that one away empty, beating and dishonoring him.
12 And he added to send a third. But they also threw this one out, wounding him.
13 And the lord of the vineyard said, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. Perhaps, having seen this one, they will respect him.
14 And seeing him, the vinedressers reasoned to themselves, saying, This is the heir. Come let us kill him so that the inheritance may become ours.
15 And throwing him out of the vineyard, they killed him. Therefore, what will the lord of the vineyard do to them?
16 He will come and will destroy these vinedressers and will give the vineyard to others. And hearing this, they said, Let it not be!
17 And looking at them He said, What then is this which has been written, “The Stone that the ones building rejected, this One came to be for the Head of the Corner”? (Psalm 118:22)
18 Everyone falling on that Stone will be crushed, but on whomever It falls, It will pulverize him.Luke 20:9-18 KJ3
This a very similar story.
Parables are by definition potentially real stories but with a particular message. They are a mechanism to describe real events.
This one did happen. Christ is the fulfilment of this parable. On the cross He fulfilled the old covenant and became the final sacrifice for sin. There can be no other. Temple worship was over; it was no longer needed. But those to whom God had given charge of His vineyard killed the Son. As a result, the Romans entered Jerusalem in 67 AD and destroyed it and the Temple in 70 AD.
In Christ’s parable the vineyard is the kingdom of God. Jesus told us that the vineyard was no longer something physical, i.e. made with land and stones, but it is in the spirit. It is found in Jesus Christ, the Corner Stone to the building of the house of God, His kingdom. If you do not fall on this stone it will fall on you and pulverize you. That is what happened to the physical nation of Israel, it was crushed and destroyed by God. He sent the Romans, His army to destroy it just as Jesus predicted.
The kingdom of God is found in Christ, who is the Vine. If you are in Christ you are in the Vine and by extension that makes you part of His vineyard. Jesus said to His disciples:
1 I am the True Vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser.
2 Every branch in Me not bearing fruit, He takes it away; and every branch bearing fruit, He prunes, so that it may bear more fruit.
3 You are already pruned because of the Word which I have spoken to you.
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself, if not it abide in the vine, so neither can you if not you abide in Me.
5 I am the Vine; you are the branches. The one abiding in Me, and I in him, this
one bears much fruit, because without Me you are not able to produce, not one thing.
6 If not one abides in Me, he is cast out as the branch and is dried up; and they gather them, and they throw them into the fire, and they are burned.John 15:1-8 KJ3
Those branches bearing rotten fruit, or no good fruit, God throws into the fire and they are burned, an illustration of hell fire. However the only way to bear good fruit is to abide or live in Christ. That is the only Way. Jesus said:
6 I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father, but by Me.
John 14:6
The Jews were given every opportunity to follow Christ the Son of God but they rejected Him and continue to reject Him, their own Messiah whom they were expecting. Instead when He came performing miracles, like raising people from the dead, they judged and killed Him as a criminal, a man who never did anything wrong.
Here we have this dichotomy.
- Christ’s vineyard, His spiritual kingdom in the heart of all true believers, who comprise the true Israel of God. Only by being in Christ, in the Vine, are you in His kingdom. The kingdom is not in a physical piece of land or in any ethnic group.
- Satan’s vineyard, the physical kingdom of Israel on Earth, in the flesh of men who reject the Son as Lord and Saviour. They are in Old Jerusalem which is in bondage to sin and not free.
22 For it is written, Abraham had two sons, one out of the slave woman and one
out of the free woman.
23 But, indeed, the one of the slave woman has been born according to flesh, and the one out of the free woman through the promise,
24 which things are being allegorized, for these are two covenants, one, indeed, from Mount Sinai bringing forth to slavery (which is Hagar,
25 for Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present [old] Jerusalem, and she slaves with her children),
26 but the Jerusalem from above is free, who is the mother of us all;Galatians 4:22-26 KJ3
This passage describes the dichotomy.
Old Jerusalem, physical earthly Jerusalem, is of the flesh and in slavery to it. She produces bad grapes. She is evil and unrighteous, under the old covenant, which she could not keep.
But New Jerusalem from above is free. She is the bride of Christ (Revelation 21:2). She is the spiritual kingdom of God, the vineyard of God. She produces good grapes, the fruit of righteousness. She is under the new covenant through Christ.
To obtain entry to God’s vineyard is by promise, that is, to be chosen by Christ because He paid our sin debt to the Father on the cross. Through trust in Christ as Saviour, by grace through faith and faith alone, you are redeemed from hell fire. It is not by any genetics or who your mother or father were.
Therefore labour in God’s vineyard, not for grapes that are continually rotting and perishing, but for the good fruit, the grapes that are enduring to everlasting life!
27 Do not work for the grapes perishing, but for the grapes enduring to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed Him.
John 6:27 KJ3 with my paraphrasing in bold
Those good fruit, with everlasting life, which never rot and die, are given only by Jesus Christ.
Recommended Reading
- Book: Apocalypse Now: On the Revelation of Jesus Christ
- Book: Merchants of Death: Global Oligarchs and Their War On Humanity
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