God's investment property

 This week's verses are Isaiah 5:1-7:

I will sing to my love—
a song to my lover about his vineyard.
My love had a vineyard
on a fertile hill.
He built a hedge around it, removed its stones,
and planted a vine.
He built a tower in the middle of it,
and constructed a winepress.
He waited for it to produce edible grapes,
but it produced sour ones instead.
So now, residents of Jerusalem,
people of Judah,
you decide between me and my vineyard!
What more can I do for my vineyard
beyond what I have already done?
When I waited for it to produce edible grapes,
why did it produce sour ones instead?
Now I will inform you
what I am about to do to my vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and turn it into pasture,
I will break its wall and allow animals to graze there.
I will make it a wasteland;
no one will prune its vines or hoe its ground,
and thorns and briers will grow there.
I will order the clouds
not to drop any rain on it.
Indeed, Israel is the vineyard of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies,
the people of Judah are the cultivated place in which he took delight.
He waited for justice, but look what he got—disobedience!
He waited for fairness, but look what he got—cries for help!

These verses are God describing his rights. We don't often think of God as having rights, but he describes himself here as a businessman who has invested in some property only to be denied a return on his investment. What would you do if you were in that situation?

Or what if you bought a car and you couldn't get it working reliably? Would you keep suffering with it out of some sense of misplaced loyalty? If you hired an employee and all they did was browse porn and steal office supplies, even after repeated warnings, would you keep them on the payroll? And yet on some level we feel as though God owes us that kind of devotion.

In this case, Israel had not done what God wanted them to do. He was very patient. But he was within his rights to remove the improvements he'd made and use them up like cattle use up pasture. These verses are God warning Israel about his right to see a return on his investment.

Verses like these make God's grace all the more precious. God has invested in us, and we have not produced the kind of fruit we should be producing. Sometimes he repeatedly tells us not to do things and we keep doing them. He's within his rights to remove his blessing and use us as livestock feed, but he doesn't.

Read through the verses again and think about them. Is God wrong here? Is he being unrealistic? The fact that our walls still stand, and that our soil is tilled is a testament to his patience. We deserve hell but get heaven instead.

Thank God for his grace. And next time you're taking him for granted, imagine what your life would be like if he decided to enforce his rights.