In the fifth chapter of his book Isaiah describes the kingdom of Judah as God’s vineyard that He had cultivated and cared for (v. 2). There was nothing more He could have done for it (v. 4). Judah had experienced God’s works of salvation. They possessed the Holy Scriptures, the promises of the Messiah, the means of grace, the holy prophets, all of which could keep them in true repentance and faith. They had it all.

Sadly, the people of Judah “spurned the word of the Holy of Israel” (v. 24), by turning to themselves and the false beliefs of the day (v. 21), becoming obsessed with the material and sensuous pleasures of life (vv. 11, 12), ignoring the needy (vv. 7, 22), and determining their own truth to the extent that evil became good and good became evil (v. 20).

The vineyard of Judah yielded only bad fruit (v.2). And so Isaiah prophesied that Judah would be trampled, destroyed and become a wasteland (vv. 5,6). Their blessings would disappear because they had “no regard for the deeds of the LORD, no respect for the work of his hands” (v. 12). In the years around 600 B.C. everything came tumbling down: the people of Judah were deported, Jerusalem was burned, and the walls and temple destroyed. Their nation was devastated. A nation that spurns God’s Word that it once honored should not expect His blessings to continue.

What more could God have done for America? Consider how God brought the truth of the Gospel to this country, where it was preached freely, and where church buildings were raised across the country like no other buildings. This nation had theological heroes of faith in abundance, missionaries from here were sent out to the ends of the earth like never before, and believers used their bountiful finances to do it.

But now, as with Judah, a spurning of the Gospel and his Word has taken hold. We no longer live in a country where a Christian worldview holds sway. We live in a post-Christian nation: false prophets far outnumber true ones, confessional Lutheranism in most synods continues to lose ground, the assault on marriage and family are at an all time high; greed, promiscuity, homosexuality, morbidity, abortion, and apathy (under the guise of tolerance) have been firmly established; science and other fields of education are held captive to worldviews like Darwinism and postmodernism; secularism is becoming the state religion.

God’s solution was to humble the people of Judah by destroying any confidence they had in their idolatry so that they would repent, turn back to the true God, and cry out for his mercy of which there was a super-abundance. Isaiah told the people, “So man will brought low and mankind humbled, the eyes of the arrogant will be humbled” (5:15). Could that also happen to our nation?

However, believers in Christ should always remember that there still remains another country—the Kingdom not of this world—that was purchased by the “holy, precious blood, and the innocent suffering and death” of the One who “made every nation of men…and determined the times set for them” (Acts 17:26). Jesus is guiding world history so that the Gospel will be preached to the ends of the earth.

Jesus is leading all history to the time when He returns in glory with His heavenly kingdom. When that Kingdom comes, “our present sufferings” will not be “worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). Those who believe in Jesus will be truly satisfied with being with Him forever.

In the meantime, Jesus wants His children to be filled with the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament for assurance of forgiveness and strength to serve Jesus. For the Gospel about Jesus’ salvation enables us to endure and remain within the Church until it is finally glorified. Through Word and Sacrament we are “convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

David Thompson is the chaplain at the Schwan Retreat and Conference Center near Trego, WI.