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[WW] Caring for the Vineyard · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley Word.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Holy and gracious God, we thank you for this time together to come and to enjoy uh some great tacos and nachos and conversation with one another.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: We give you thanks for this time of worship that we can perhaps set aside what's going on or maybe bring that with us as we lay at your feet.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I pray that this time will continue to be pleasing to you, that you might speak through me or despite me, but in some way you might have a word for us this evening.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: We ask all this in Christ's holy name.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I got to do a really cool thing.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this past weekend, I went um homecoming was awesome, turned out awesome.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Second quarter, yeah, a little nervous, but we made it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: We made it, right?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: We kicked that field goal to go up 2110.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, we've got this, no problem.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: We own them.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Thursday and Friday, I got to go and do a wedding uh from one of my former students.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: She was the first assistant campus minister that I had.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't think anybody was around for her, maybe one or two.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Megan.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was a really cool time to go and I I saw people that I hadn't seen in years.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: They graduated in 2015, I believe, so it's been a while.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been around here for a while.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just cool to be um there and to celebrate and officiate that wedding.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it was neat.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, her dad sort of went through this uh this toast at the wedding and talked about um all the different factors that had to come together for Abby and Brett to meet.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um they he's from the West Coast, uh, she was from Fort Mill, and um, but both ended up meeting in New York at this job and all the different, like almost millions of steps that would have taken place to get them right there in that same moment on our first day of work to be able to meet.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a cool story um to hear all that um as it was going on.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the venue, y'all, the venue was incredible.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we were in the North Georgia Mountains, and I didn't know they had vineyards in North Georgia Mountains, but we went to like two or three of them for the rehearsal dinner and the rehearsal, and this, and the, and the um the wedding itself was out at uh Yana Yona Ven Vineyards.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been out there?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um just incredible.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I showed up at this venue, and I'm like, oh my god, this is awesome.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm ignoring the bear uh signs because you know, whatever bear.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I can run faster than some people.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um I'm driving, like, oh, this is cool.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we get there, and there's this fire billowing up out of this fireplace, and there's this beautiful reception place.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, this is awesome.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, so where am I gonna be tomorrow?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where are we standing?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, up the hill.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do you mean up the hill?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, up the hill.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so we literally like like trucked it up the hill, coming up through the vineyards, uh, through the vines, and we come out to this little plateau um overlooking the trees, and it was autumn.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the leaves were changing, it was incredible.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And just on brand, if you ever officiate weddings in these beautiful venues, they make sure that everyone has a beautiful view except for the pastor officiating, right?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was there at five o'clock and the sun was right here, and I was looking at the bride like you're hurting my face, right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: But that's how um it was the whole time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it was it was majestic views, it was beautiful.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was cool to hear their story, and it was cool to be in God's creation up there in the North Georgia Mountains and to see um the fruit of the labor of the people who planted those vineyards and the things that happened.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And as I was reflecting um on where I was gonna go this weekend because I was trying to get the wedding done and homecoming, um, I began to think about vineyards and where we see those in scripture, right?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we see over 300 times throughout scripture, uh, people talk about vines and vineyards, and I've done different series on this and stuff before at the vine, different places, but um we see vineyards over and over again in scripture because the people would have known that metaphor, right?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't want to drink the water back then, right?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was really like you hydrate and you digrate it, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you try to drink water, you probably die back then, right?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they would make sure they would produce, they'd plant vineyards so they could produce wine, so they would have something safe to drink, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um about a tenth of an acre could support your family for a year as you planted and had your water take in place.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: But here's this passage uh from this short uh verse from in Isaiah 5, um, where God is um talking about a love song, Israel's love song to God, and we see this metaphor of the vineyard begin to pop up.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Isaiah says, Let me sing for my beloved, my love song concerning his vineyard.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then we begin to see this metaphor to where the vineyard is earth, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: God plants this this vineyard, and the vine is always us.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's Israel, but here in today we see the vine would be uh us, human beings, God's creation and how we do things.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we see this in verse 2, Isaiah 5.2.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um we see that God dug it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: He cleared out the stones and planted it with choice vines, he built a watchtower in the midst of it, um, he hewed out a wine vat in it, and he expected it to yield grapes, good grapes.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: But this is what it says in verse 5, 2.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It says, but instead it yielded rotten grapes.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: That stings, right?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like at the wedding, there were actually some rotten grapes like there on the floor, right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But God planted this vineyard, created earth, put vines in it, put us, put Israel, put you and me.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the Israel gets this, you know, um rebuke of saying, I expected good grapes, but instead you produced rotten grapes.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: The goal is to produce good grapes and good grapes.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two things I want to talk about tonight.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one is sort of our purpose in life, right?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh cops, yeah, let me know.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we talked about this on the retreat a couple weeks ago, but our purpose in life is very much what we see in these chapters.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is to produce grapes, and to produce good grapes and good fruit uh that God had planted in us.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um we see in verse uh 5-7, continue on right there.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have it on the screen because it's short, I'm just gonna read it for you.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um says, For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what it says, all right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: God expected justice, but he saw bloodshed.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Righteousness, but instead heard a cry.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And these two words, justice and righteousness, again occur over a hundred times within the scripture, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And especially the Old Testament.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: You can't read the Old Testament, you can't know the Old Testament without knowing these two words, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Mishpat is the word for justice there, okay?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Zedekah is the word for righteousness.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: But Mishpat and Zedeka, over a hundred times in the Old Testament, we see them coming in.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Mishpat has to do uh with a marginalized people, right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like how you work with the marginalized people.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: How do you help and support the poor?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: How do you take care of the widows?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: How do you take care of the orphans, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what a big deal for the rich and powerful, because they could take care of themselves.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was no big deal, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: But God continually reminds us, right, who are we taking care of?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: The Pledge of Allegiance, which sometimes I say, sometimes I don't, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Liberty and justice for all.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible makes this same claim that there should be indeed justice for all people.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then Zedekah has to do with this idea of uh compassion, charity, love.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: When you do things for someone unmerited, you're practicing zedekah.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're practicing that righteousness, um, that compassion that is there.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we see this in the Old Testament throughout time, right?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, biblical farming.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't supposed to go and clear all of your crops when you harvested your your fruit.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: You were supposed to leave stuff around the edges so that those less fortunate and those hungry could come and glean those crops and have something to eat.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, maybe in your youth groups, um, you may have done some gleaning ministry.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: There are people that do that, and you go spend an afternoon um collecting the extra crops and bringing it um to a food bank or whatnot.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we see that in scripture.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this morning at church, uh, there were some shoeboxes that we're trying to fill up and send to uh folks on the reservation for Christmas.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's different opportunities that we do that when we fill the pantry.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: In a couple of weeks, um, there's gonna be a period park, period packing part, it's hard to say, um, at the Wesley building, so we can provide stuff uh for folks who can't afford the basic necessities of things.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And all those are our acts of Zedekah, compassion, charity, love.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's who we're called to be.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's who we're called to be as the vines that God has planted here on this earth.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: To be a people who produce good grapes, not rotten grapes, to be a people who produce justice and righteousness.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Mizpot and Zedeka.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when you when you look at this, this happens in our actions, right?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Mishpat is focused on um how society orders itself, um, even with like how who you put on the courts, who was ruling back then, um, who our judges are.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the time we keep a separation from church and state, and I don't usually get into that too much.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're not gonna endorse a candidate here, but you know, the reason the fall break is so late this year is because it's an election year.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And for some of you, this might be your first time being able to vote, right?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you're 18, surprise you get to vote, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would argue that that it matters who you vote for, right?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: The way that you you you live out this Mishpat and who you vote for.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, do I believe that God is like fully in line with the Democratic Party?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think he's fully in line with the Republican Party, absolutely not.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's some all here and there.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so it takes some wisdom and some discernment.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll be I'll be clear, like when I vote on my ballot, like if you look at my ballot, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's not a straight party ticket for me, right?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know about the people.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know their heart.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know are they gonna set up a law of the land that's gonna produce Zedeka?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is it gonna produce uh Mishpah, righteousness, and justice?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is a task that you have coming up quickly for fall break, and how you vote and who you vote for matters, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We have work to do.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so we want to be about justice, we want to be about righteousness, but how do we go about doing this?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I learned this uh in the in the winery um in the vineyards.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I saw again um there's some reading stuff.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um like if I go to a museum, I'm the guy that's gotta read everything, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like every single page everywhere.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just take my time like the old man because I'm becoming and I'm like reading it all.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: But there's this cool thing about vineyards um when they the the um where they plant the grapes, how they plant the grapes matter.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And where you plant certain grapes help you determine what types of uh grapes you end up with and what type of wine you end up with, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we call this the terroir.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's this sort of this climate that the grapes are are raised up in, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what the soil is like matters.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can get different tastes, you can get some more sweet, some more bitter.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um grapes that are planted down in the valley are gonna taste different than grapes that are planted up on the mountains, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: The the soil, the surroundings, even the air that goes around these grapes matters in how they turn out and whether you end up with good wine, sweet wine, bitter wine.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a wine drinker.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to be this weekend, try to, I definitely didn't sell it, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: But it matters in how um that is.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things that I would encourage us to think about, and this is sort of tying into that wedding that I was at, where um they talked about all these little things that added up to getting Abby and Brett married.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not a how-to to get married thing, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they had to spend years and years and years setting up their terroir, building themselves into the character of the people that they knew that God wanted them to be, to end up being at that spot, right?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you hear us as college students and recent grads, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: You have the chance, right, to begin to cultivate and to look at your soil every now and then and say, man, I feel like my grapes are not like where they should be.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you look in, you're like, I'm just in this like you know, poisonous soil.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you need to pluck yourself up and be planted somewhere else where you can find life, where you can be uh life-giving and get to where you need to be.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a family system, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's who you surround yourself with, what I'm getting at, matters and will affect the fruit that you produce, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're like a nice vintage or you're like spitting that junk out, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also a reminder here, reminder here, um, that these grapes that are produced, especially in the vineyard and even here, a lot of times it's not like what never, like I'm planting tomorrow and it's gonna be done today, right?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes from the beginning, it's at least a three-year process when they plant those first little saplings before they have something that's uh resembles what they could use, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you have to do the planting.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do the work.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can't expect to have a harvest if there is no planting.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I love tulips and I love like bulb plants.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And every spring I drive around, I see everyone, I'm like, man, I wish I had that in my yard.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: But now's the time.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I forget every October, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But in order to have that beauty, in order to have that harvest, in order to see those spring up, I've got to do the work now, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so as you think about who it is that God is calling you to be, to live a life of righteousness, to live a life of justice, as Mishpat in the Zedeka.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to check our soil, our terroir, and make sure that we're surrounding ourselves in a place with people, the community, what we intake, what we read, what we scroll through, all the different things to make sure that we produce good grapes, an abundant grape that can then be life-giving to the world.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So true on that, um, almost at some.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, do that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think one of the ways that we do that here, and I'll sort of wrap up here, um, and I want you to kind of ponder through those questions, um, is spending time at worship, spending time in a small group, uh, spending time having conversations with your friends one-on-one, and also spending time on doing things like the fall retreat.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had a great time there, and I appreciate Elizabeth and Schuler cotton sharing and sharing some perspective.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so as you think about your terror, you think about who you're surrounding yourself with, what that soil looks like, what your environment looks like, as you think about ways that God is calling you to produce grapes of righteousness and justice.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I will close here and as the band comes up, we're gonna watch uh sort of wrap-up video that Jacob put together for our forward treat that looks outstanding.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, get out there and love your neighbor.