Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil…
Yesterday at dinner I was telling my family that I wish to expand my summer garden. I know it is still cold outside, at least where I am, but I am already thinking about my summer garden and making it even bigger. There are no supply chain issues when you grow stuff in the ground. You take care of your garden, and it gives you carrots, tomatoes, and so on. So, you get out what you put in.
Now, God had a garden. It is called a vineyard because this story was not written about America. It is written about Judah. God had planted this vineyard. He had taken rocks out of it, cultivated it, planted it, beautified it, and He wished to produce full, large grapes sweet to the taste. What had been produced instead were wild grapes.
Now, here on the Ranch, if I go out in the back and see some weed growing out in the cedars with large blue or black colored berries on them, it would be foolish of me to say, “Hey, that looks just like a grape. I think I’ll eat it!” It might be the last thing I’d ever do. There’s a big difference between the grapes that you would wish to cultivate and the poisonous weeds that grow of their own accord. God says in Isaiah 5:7, “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.” So, God planted this vineyard, but it was going to seed and weed.
God is able to plow under that which refuses to be cultivated. What follows is all the ways that Judah refused to be cultivated. We find greed and hedonism, the idea that pleasure is the greatest end of mankind. We find inability to be ashamed, and we find deceit. The prophet says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.”
Now God is trying to cultivate what is good in your life, but when you come to an issue, you have a choice. You can respond in honesty or you can respond in aversion. Honesty means you see two choices and say, “This is good and this is bad. I know that is the case.” Aversion is where you flip the tables; you say that good is evil and evil is good. You try to justify yourself. The world at large is very good at this.
People are good at justifying and rationalizing the wrong actions, but I think it has been God’s people in particular that are the most prone to calling evil good and good evil. We know what is evil and what is good, and sometimes what we want and what we know to be true are in conflict. So, we try to lessen that gap by claiming ignorance instead of acknowledging wickedness. “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.” That is exactly what God’s people were doing. It was not just that they were doing evil, they were rationalizing it and saying it was good.
It is not just that they were not doing right, they were condemning those who did right because it hurt their conscience. There is something important to learn here: darkness comes to those who will not see the light. In verse 12 God says of His people, “And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of His hands.” They were trying to erase their memory by drinking and partying. He goes on to say, “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.” They would not acknowledge what they knew; they no longer knew what they needed to know.
In the last verse of this chapter it says, “The light is darkened in the heavens thereof.” In other words, those who had light rejected it. Those who had, as it says in verse 24, “despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” no longer had light. That is the way it is with all of us. Darkness comes to those who will not see the light.
Can I commend three actions to you when you face choices? First, there is conscience. Conscience is something that needs to be cultivated. There needs to be conscience in operation in your life, and if you are a child of God, you not only have a conscience that can be informed by God’s Word, but you have God Himself in the form of the Holy Spirit. Conscience is the ability to discern between right and wrong.
Second, there is curiosity. Don’t just say, “I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t seem to speak to this.” If it is important enough for you, it is important enough for God. There are times you may not know what is right and wrong; that’s fair. But, it is not right to plead ignorance when you are really trying to absolve yourself of wickedness. Sometimes you would rather say that you just don’t know than to acknowledge that you know but are just not going to do the right thing. So, if you come to an issue and you don’t know what is right, have the audacity to be curious enough to find out.
Third, there is courage. Courage is the ability to acknowledge what you know to be true instead of acting as if you do not know. These people had cast away the law of the Lord of hosts and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel.
So, conscience, curiosity, and courage are needed because darkness comes to those who will not tell the difference, who will not acknowledge the light.