Season 6, Podcast 48, Isaiah 5:11-23, “The Five Woes.”

Season 6, Podcast 48, Isaiah 5:11-23, “The Five Woes.”

Isaiah clearly teaches us that laws bring consequences. Laws have conditions. Conditions bring consequences. Obedience to the conditions of law brings blessings. Disobedience to the conditions of law brings cursings. All blessings are predicated upon obedience to the laws of God. All sin is violation of the laws of God. When Adam fell, he transgressed the law of justice which brought sin into the world. Justice is unconditional. One is either inside the law of justice or outside the law of justice. We are outside the law of justice; therefore, because of the fall of Adam, we suffer both a temporal death, which means that the body is separated from the spirit; we also suffer a spiritual death, which means that the spirit is separated from God.

It is entirely beyond our power to live the law of Justice which is unconditional. Christ alone could do that. That is why he remained perfect. He obeyed the law of Justice perfectly which meant that he obeyed the Father perfectly in all things. He never ceased to be God. The atonement of Christ was necessary to satisfy the law of Justice to overcome temporal death through the resurrection and to overcome spiritual death by bringing us back into the presence of God.

The law of justice imposed conditions upon the law of mercy. Those conditions we call commandments. Only the law of mercy has conditions. It is the conditions of spiritual law that give us freewill and agency. It is the conditions of temporal law that give us freedom and liberty. Both temporal laws and spiritual laws have conditions. Without conditions there would be no freewill, agency, liberty or freedom. We have the power to choose which conditions we obey. 

Sin is the violation of the laws of Christ which were placed by the law of justice on the law of mercy. Christ is bound by law. He must stay within the law, or he would cease to be God. Nothing is arbitrary with God. The following five curses occur because Judah violated the conditions placed upon the law of mercy by the law of justice. 

Christ is trying to save them by calling them to repentance. If they do not repent, they will be subject to the law of justice. It is not Satan who punishes us in hell. Satan is subject to the law of justice. It is the law of justice that punishes us. It is Christ who saves us from the law of justice but only if we strive to obey his commandments. A ‘woe’ is a consequence of a broken law. If they repent, the atonement of Christ will save them from the consequences. That is the message of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, and the message of the Lord to all of us. 

Isaiah 5:11-12

11 Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!

12 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.

Two things are condemned in the above: drunkenness and forgetting Christ. Drunkeness symbolizes giving up agency, an abuse to the body which is a temple of God. They do not “consider the operation of his hands.” In other words, they do not acknowledge the hand of the Lord in their lives. They ignore his blessings, his sacrifice, and his miracles. They are guilty of ingratitude.  The following are the consequences:

Isaiah 5:13-17

13 Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.

14 Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

15 And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: