Fine WIne

DEVOTION

ISAIAH

FINE WINE

Isa 5:1-6

5:1

I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 2 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.

3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? 5 Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it."

NIV

There is more to be said about this subject following what we have here, but this is enough for now to get something to ponder on. After all the Lord God did for Israel, bringing them out from Egypt, giving them this Promised Land, setting them up in the best possible location, there is not much he gets in return. He looked for good grapes and all he got was bad grapes. As a result he tears down the wall or hedge of protection around them and we know the history of how Israel had those times of being taken captive and taken away from the land. We can see a picture today that relates to the same type of story. God has down everything needed to create a vineyard today. This vineyard is the church, the body of Christ, the community of believers, we who are born again. Of course the whole of mankind can also be seen as the vineyard and what the Lord did is create all that is needed. The choice vine is Jesus and whoever is in Christ or accepts Jesus becomes the shoots, the branches and as long as we remain in Jesus, the vine, we produce good fruit. Those who are not in the vine will not produce good fruit, but only bad fruit. But, this can apply also just to we believers. Even though we have been planted in the vineyard, and we are in the vine, is it possible for us not to produce this good fruit? Can we become apathetic in our walk with the Lord? Can our life just become a habit, can we just go through the motions, without truly being connected to the vine? What does God consider to be good fruit, and what is the bad fruit? We would think the fruit of the Spirit would be the good fruit. Be then how does that fruit become wine? What is the winepress? It presses the grapes, it squeezes them to make the wine. The Lord disciplines us in order to produce the wine, the product of the fruit we bear as a result of remaining in the vine. Again, we have to see the fruit is not for the branches, we who produce the fruit. We are squeezed out so others may enjoy the taste of the fine wine which has been made from the fruit we bear. If we are not producing that fruit, look what the Lord did to Israel. Could that happen to us? Let us remain in the vine, and let us produce that fruit and let the Lord squeeze us out into fine wine.