Isaiah 5:8-30
Woes and Therefores

I. Modern Hymns Compared to the Psalms
1. Of 150 psalms about 27 are “judgment” psalms, about one out of six, but no hymns on judgement.
2. If we only sang psalms, we would sing about God’s judgment two out of every three services.
3. If we only follow the songs of the last 100 years or so, we will never sing about God’s judgment.
4. Soft words create hard people; hard words create soft people.
5. “Woe” is for mourning; “therefore” is for consequences.
II. Woe on the Materialists (5:8)
1. Woe to those who live their life only for what they can own, only for money or property or things.
2. The perfect man, the Lord Jesus said that as a man, He was intended for much more: the Word of God.
3. Human beings are not designed to live just for appeasing the bodily appetites.
III. Woe to the Party Animals (5:11-12)
1. They rise early, chase after liquor; they stay up late, getting drunk, hanging out in the bars.
2. They’ve always got to have their tunes but cannot spare the time to consider God’s ways.
3. Two problems: (1) they have no self-control and (2) they lack an appetite for God.
4. There’s an appetite for candy or basketball but not God. Some churches appear bored with God.
IV. Therefore They Are Exiled (5:13)
1. Because we call ourselves by His Name, God will take action against us.
2. They only cared about land grabbing, so God brings foreign forces to drag them away from all the land.
3. “For lack of knowledge”: the source of all our calamities is that we’re not taught by the word of God.
4. Therefore, because of the sin, He intervenes to discipline and punish us.
5. Because we wouldn’t listen to God, death itself will enlarge its appetite for us (5:14).
6. If we will not glorify Him, by living righteously, He will glorify Himself by treating us as we deserve.
V. Woe to the Scoffers (5:18-19)
1. You can tell that they are harnessed to sin by their scoffing. They are derisive, daring God to do it.
2. They’re teasing God. They’ve heard it all before but they didn’t repent and nothing happened.
3. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians that because they came to the Lord’s Supper in a self-indulgent and inconsiderate way that some of them were sick and some had even died (1 Cor. 11:29-30).
4. Paul wrote that if we first judge ourselves, we will not come under judgement (1 Cor. 11:31).
VI. Woe to the Moral Relativists (5:20)
1. They call what is really bitter “sweet” and they think that just because they call it that, it makes it so.
2. Instead of submitting themselves to God’s standard, they’ll make their ways the standard.
VII. Woe to the Self-Righteous (5:21)
1. Woe to the self-righteous who think they have the Christian life figured out, who’s self-important.
2. They can hear sermon after sermon, but it does no good because they are so wise in their own eyes.
VIII. Woe to the Up-Side Down (5:22)
1. They think it’s heroic to win drinking games; succumbing to that temptation is considered valiant.
2. It’s winning to cheat the poor; to bribe a judge. As long as you win, you’re a hero.
3. We acquit the guilty because when we want to do something wrong, we don’t want to be criticized.
IX. Therefore the Anger of the Lord Is Kindled (5:25-30)
1. The anger of the Lord is kindled like a fire. So He stretches out His hand and strikes them down.
2. He’s still not done. “For all this, His anger has not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still.”
3. The vicious people the Lord is bringing on them are ferocious, like an irresistible predator.
X. Invitation: Six woes in chapter 5. Isaiah pronounces the seventh woe in the next chapter when he sees the Lord in all His splendor and hears the angels shouting “holy, holy, holy”. He declares “woe is me!” When we really get a glimpse of the holiness of God, we know that a “therefore” is coming. But the good news of the gospel shocks us with a different “therefore”: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). In the gospel there is a new “therefore” for all who by faith cling to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father sent His Son to take our woes and, especially, our therefores; so that we could have a different “therefore”: the therefore of life, in the gospel. To get that “therefore” begin by saying, “Woe is me.”