God's care for man, and man's ingratitude.
Three times has God made himself a vineyard upon earth, planted a plantation of choice vines, endued by him with the capacity of bringing forth excellent fruit, fenced his vineyard round with care, cleared its soil of stones, pruned its superfluous shoots, hoed out the weeds from between the vine-stocks, bestowed on it all possible tendance, and looked to see a suitable result; and three times has the result, for which he had every right to look, not followed.
I. THE FIRST VINEYARD—THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD. Man was placed in a world which God saw to be "very good" (Genesis 1:31); he was endued with excellent powers; he was given dominion over the beasts; he was bidden to "increase and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28); he was guarded from a thousand dangers; he was fenced round by the Almighty arms; God's Spirit "strove with him" (Genesis 6:3), chastened him, warned him, spoke through his conscience, and showed him the right path to walk in. What more could he have done to his first vineyard, that he did not do to it? Yet the time came when he "looked upon the earth" (Genesis 6:12); looked for the fruits of what he had done; looked for "judgment and righteousness." And what did he find when he looked? "The wickedness of man was great in the earth; every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). "The earth was corrupt before God; all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth …. the earth was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11, Genesis 6:12). The vineyard that should have brought forth grapes had brought forth wild grapes. God's care for man had been met by man with ingratitude towards God; and it only remained that God should take vengeance, and lay his vineyard waste, and so vindicate his justice.
II. THE SECOND VINEYARD—THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. This is the vineyard whereof Isaiah especially speaks. God planted his second vineyard, Israel, on the "very fruitful" upland of Palestine—"a land of corn and wine, of bread and vineyards, of oil olive and of honey' (2 Kings 18:32); "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein they might eat bread without scarceness, and needed not to lack anything; a land whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills they might dig brass" (Deuteronomy 8:7-9). He fenced his vineyard round with laws and ordinances morally, as with mountains and deserts topographically; he cleared out from it the stones that marred its soil, the wicked nations—"stones of offense"—that once dwelt amid his people; he planted it with choice vine-stocks, the children of "faithful Abraham;" he built a tower—Jerusalem—in the midst of it, and made therein a wine-press—the temple—where he would have the gifts and offerings of the people, their good works, laid up in store; and he then "looked that his vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes." Oppression, wrong, robbery, murder, the form of religion without the power, covetousness, drunkenness, vanity, impurity,—these were what his eyes beheld when he cast them on his chosen people, who were "a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that were corrupters" (Isaiah 1:4). Greater benefits than those bestowed on the first vineyard had been met by a deeper ingratitude; and now the time was coming when the second vineyard would be laid waste, withered up, and utterly "ruined" (Isaiah 3:8).
III. THE THIRD VINEYARD—THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. God has yet planted a third vineyard, which he calls "his Church" (Matthew 16:18), the assembly of his "selected ones." He has not fixed it in any particular land, but has given it the whole fruitful earth for its habitation. Yet has he fenced it round, and separated it off from the rest of mankind by laws and rites and ordinances, which are peculiar, and made it a world within a world, a society within a society. He has gathered out from it the stones of many heresies; he has planted it with choice vines, the "chosen vessels" whom his grace has from time to time converted from unbelief to the true faith; he has given it for its "tower" of strength himself, and for its "wine-press" the book of life, in which he records its good deeds. And now, what is the result? Has his constant, tender care awakened the gratitude which it ought to have awakened? Has his Church brought forth such fruit as might have been anticipated? Is it not to be feared that even now his eye, resting on his third vineyard with its searching gaze, looks for something which it does not find—demands "grapes," and sees little but "wild grapes?"