Sermon Podcast

Isaiah(7):- Living The Life Of Stewards

Is 5:8-17 Rev Evan Seah

25 February 2024

Chapter 5 began with God’s lament that Israel was not producing good fruit. Following from this, He pronounces judgement on the unrepentant – those who ‘have no regard for the deeds of the Lord, no respect for the work of his hands (V12)’. The judgements can be categorised into 6 woes (V8, V11, V18, V20, V21, V22).

The first woe is directed at the desire for possession (greed). Israel’s greed was ‘adding house to house and joining field to field’ (V8). Having many houses itself is not a problem, but the problem is that Israel took away for themselves the houses of the poor people. By right, in the Promised Land, each tribe had their assigned lands from God – strictly speaking, their land belonged to God. Hence nobody who inherited the land could call it their own and use it the way they want. Israel did not know that they were meant to be stewards of God’s things, not owners.

Thus, greed can be defined as the assumption of what belongs to God as ours. This applies to every aspect of life. E.g. pastors think they own their members, parents think they own their children, etc. Once we take ownership of these, we will begin to carry out our own desires, instead of waiting on God & trusting Him. People of God must develop the life of stewardship – if God does not give or assign, we should not do. Doing what God did not entrust us to do is to do it by our own strength.

The second woe is against the desire for pleasure (V11, ‘those who rise up early in the morning to run after drinks’). In fact, the desire for pleasure is the cause of desire for possession, because the motive of gaining more is to enjoy the pleasures of life. We can see it in the Parable of the Rich Fool (Lk 12:16-21), that his purpose of having more crops is to “take life easy; eat, drink and be merry” (Lk 12:19), but judgement came upon him that very night.

The outcome of having the desire for pleasure is that one will have “no regard for the deeds of the Lord” (V12), i.e. His judgement. It is likened to choosing hell rather than giving up on their pleasures – as if Death “expands its jaws” (V14) to welcome them. Hence, the desire for pleasure is a major factor as to why Christians stop bearing fruit, become lukewarm & backslide. Thus, we should not set our life goals on having a carefree, easy and comfortable life that the world pursues.

To be continued…

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