The church God's word is unlike any other book. These words, these sentences and paragraphs reveal God to us.
They reveal the true human condition. And these words reveal the way to get from meaningless and sin, meaninglessness and sin to purpose and forgiveness and eternal joy. So what a privilege we have this morning to find salvation in these pages. I'm going to read just four verses today from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. This is a book that was written several centuries before Jesus Christ walked the earth, but a book whose central character is Jesus Christ. This is Isaiah chapter 25 verses six through nine. If you have a Bible, I'd invite you to turn there now and follow along with me and I'm going to ask you to stand in honor of God's word as we read it together. If you don't have a Bible, the words will be on the screen behind me. This is God's word.
Isaiah 25, six through nine. On this mountain, the lord of hosts will make for all peoples, a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain, the covering that is cast over all peoples, a veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord.
We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. The word of the Lord, let's pray. Father, we are starving and you have food, please feed us.
We are thirsty and you have drink, please quench our thirst. Lord, we are sinners and you have the blood of Christ. Please forgive us and bring us to the day when we can with Isaiah's audience, be glad and rejoice in your salvation. I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.
You can be seated. Old Testament prophets were the preachers before Jesus' coming to earth. They lived and preached in a time of shadows and symbols. They couldn't pick up the gospel books like we can and read about the life of Christ, his miraculous birth or his baptism, his teaching and healing ministry. They couldn't read about his death and burial or about the amazing resurrection that occurred three days after his death. They couldn't read about the life of Jesus.
They couldn't read about the creation that occurred three days after his death. They didn't have the letters of Peter and John and Paul explaining the meaning and purpose of the life of Jesus Christ. But that doesn't mean they didn't know a messiah, a savior wasn't coming, they did know this. In fact, they knew quite a lot about this messiah, but their knowledge was incomplete. And so their preaching about this coming savior and the salvation he would bring was often shrouded in a story and metaphor. We, on the other hand, have the privileged advantage of living 2,000 years after the earthly life and ministry of Jesus, and so we have the benefit of reading what those Old Testament prophets predicted in the light of the fulfillment of those predictions.
We get to see in full 4K resolution or 8K or whatever K we're at now, what these ancient prophets could only describe in shadows and symbols. Now the verses we're gonna walk through today were written by the prophet Isaiah some 700 years prior to the time when Jesus walked the earth. And yet what these verses tell us about Jesus Christ, again in the form of metaphor, symbol, shadow, is an accurate and beautiful telling of the good news of Christ's death and resurrection for the salvation of sinners. Are you a sinner? Have you broken God's law?
Do you find this inexplicable fear of death that resides in your heart and keeps you up at night worrying about the future? Do you know in those moments when you're the most honest with yourself that there is shame and reproach and guilt that cover you and you cannot get rid of it no matter how virtuous you try to be? Then this ancient sermon is for you. This sermon is for me because this sermon tells sinners what to do with their sin, how to be rid of their sin once and for all and forever. The metaphor that Isaiah uses is that of a grand and glorious feast that he invites the world to. But then there's another feast, one that's not so grand and glorious but is instead a distasteful and hard to swallow feast and God serves that feast to himself. Then Isaiah's sermon ends by returning to that first grand and glorious feast and we see the world rejoicing and full of gladness because of the salvation that God has brought about by eating the distasteful unpleasant feast. So let's walk through these verses and see if we can discover how to be guests at that grand and glorious feast that awaits the end of history. The sermon begins in verse six in which Isaiah describes God serving a rich feast to the world. God serves a rich feast to the world.
He says, on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. So Isaiah lived and worked in Jerusalem which was the epicenter of God's dealings with the human race during this time in which Isaiah lived. And so when Isaiah identifies this mountain in verse six, he's referring to Mount Zion, the place where God is, the place where God's people enjoy God's presence. Now this was a literal place in Isaiah's day. There was a physical place where God's people went to be with God.
But as we've already pointed out, Isaiah is preaching in symbols and metaphor and so there's a non-literal sense in which this mountain is more than merely Mount Zion or Jerusalem or the temple in ancient Israel. Metaphorically, this feast that God is serving is referring to the end of time when God will gather every person who sins have been forgiven by the blood of his son Jesus Christ and together, God and his people will feast in perfect joy, in uninterrupted bliss. The book of Revelation describes this feast.
In fact, let me read Revelation 19, verses six through eight. Revelation 19 says that at this feast, the sound of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder could be heard and this great multitude was crying out hallelujah for the Lord our God the almighty reigns. This noisy crowd says let us rejoice and exult and give God the glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. The lamb is Jesus, the bride is the church.
Revelation goes on to say that it was granted to the bride to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure and that fine linen, it says, is the righteous deeds of the saints and then an angel comes forward and announces, blessed are those who are invited to this marriage supper of the lamb. So this feast in the book of Revelation is the same feast that Isaiah speaks of in verse six. This feast is nothing less than the culmination of world history at which Jesus Christ and his bride, the church, all who have had their sins washed away by the crucifixion and death of Christ are joined together in perfectly blissful marriage forever and ever and ever.
What an amazing event, what an amazing feast this is and what an understatement for this angel to say, blessed are those who are invited to this feast. It is the party to end all parties. It is the most glorious, enjoyable, satisfying event that could ever happen.
It's the event that commemorates and celebrates the salvation of sinners from hell and ushers them into a glorious eternity and a new heaven and a new earth. It literally doesn't get any better than this. Have you ever experienced something that made you say to yourself, I don't ever want this to end, I don't want this day to stop, I don't want this scene to change, I want it to be like this forever.
Well, that moment did come to an end, didn't it? The feast that God is preparing, however, is going to be like those moments that we had that we wanted to never end, only it'll be even better and here's the best part, it will not ever end. I wanna be at that feast. I want my children and my children's children to be at that feast. I want anyone and everyone I've ever loved to be at that feast, to miss that is to miss everything. And so the most important question we could possibly ask ourselves today is this, how do I get to that rich feast?
How do we get on the guest list? How can we be among those whom the angel in Revelation said are blessed because they were invited? Well, Isaiah answers that question for us, again, in his shadowy sort of way. We discover the answer in verses seven and eight in which God serves another feast. Only this feast is repugnant and miserable.
It's hard to swallow. So rather than giving it to his guests, God consumes it himself. God serves a repugnant feast to himself. Look with me at verse seven. Isaiah says, and he, God, will swallow up on this mountain. The covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. Now this covering or veil that's mentioned in verse seven is the headdress of a mourner. In Isaiah's culture, as in many cultures, this is how people mourned over death.
They would wear a covering, a veil on their head to visibly show their grief, the sorrow they had in the face of death. And what is implied in verse seven is made explicit in verse eight. God swallows up the mourner's veil in verse seven. He swallows up death itself in verse eight. He removes the signs of sorrow from the mourner in verse seven He literally wipes away their tears in verse eight. It's a picture of God removing all impediments to joy. He's taking away or swallowing up every cause of grief or sadness or crying so that those who come to his feast can enjoy themselves.
Can enjoy themselves. If the rich feast of verse six is to be enjoyed then anything that prevents that enjoyment must be removed. So that's exactly what God is doing here in verses seven and eight. He's removing sorrow.
He's wiping away tears. He's swallowing up death forever. Verse eight is quoted in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 15, which is perhaps the most comprehensive passage in the Bible on the resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is explaining that the defeat of death through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent resurrection of all believers is one of the most central necessary tenets of the Christian faith. If Christ isn't raised from the dead, Paul says, then the whole Christian religion collapses in on itself.
It's pointlessly futile if Christ and by extension Christians are not resurrected from the dead. But Paul assures us Christ has been raised from the dead and therefore Christians just like their Lord will also be raised from the dead. And then Paul gives us a timeline.
He says Christ had to die first. Then he would be raised from the dead. After that Christ would begin systematically conquering every enemy that stands against him and the last enemy to fall will be death itself. When this occurs Paul says every person who belongs to Christ will be fundamentally changed.
Their actual physical body will change. What is perishable and mortal will become imperishable and immortal, never to die again. And then Paul quotes Isaiah 25, eight, our sermon text. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory?
Oh death, where is your sting? What this means is that the predictions in Isaiah's sermon about God swallowing the mourners veil that covers people and God swallowing up death itself forever, these predictions are fulfilled in what Jesus Christ did in his dying and being raised to life again. Death is swallowed, it's destroyed, it's rendered ineffectual through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now maybe we should just stop right there and ask where did death come from anyway? Why is death a thing? I suspect many of us think that death is just the natural, inevitable progression of life because that's all we've ever known, right?
The sun rises, the sun sets, fish swim, birds fly. Life begins at conception, life ends at death. But according to the Bible, this seemingly inevitable process of life and then death isn't natural at all. We were not made to die. God made us to live and live forever.
So how then has death become the norm? Well, scripture tells us. The Bible tells us that in the very beginning, God defined for mankind what is right and what is wrong. And God told mankind that if he ever broke the law of right and wrong, there would be an irreversible consequence. That consequence was death. God told the first human beings, if you break my law, you will die. And sure enough, they broke God's law and they died.
And their descendants have been breaking God's law and dying ever since. The wages of sin, the consequence, the result, the inevitable outworking of disobeying our creator is death. And this pattern of living and dying has been the normal pattern for all of human history.
It's normal, all right, but it's not natural. Dying is not what we were made for. We were made to live and enjoy our creator by worshiping him and serving him and trusting him, but sin ruined all of that by introducing death into a world that was previously perfect. Death is an unnatural thing, it's a terrible thing. Death is in fact the very thing that has rendered us incapable of enjoying this rich feast that God has prepared and invites us to. Hebrews 2.15 describes the human race as those who through fear of death are subject to lifelong slavery. That's who we are, who through fear of death are subject to lifelong slavery. We weren't made for death and yet we all die and this reality, scripture says, leaves us terrified. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we are terrified at the prospect of our own mortality and so we do everything we can to ignore death and pretend it isn't a thing. We live as if life will go on forever, knowing all the while in the back of our minds and in the depths of our heart that it will not go on forever. We will die, we will reach the end of life as we know it.
We will face whatever lies on the other side of that threshold and scripture says it frightens us. So much so that we are enslaved to the fear of dying. You know death has a way, doesn't it, of making a mockery of life. If everything I do comes to an abrupt end at my death, what's the point of doing it? Even if I say, well my contributions add meaning to those who come after me, well those who come after you will also die.
So again, what's the point? Where's the meaning of life if it all just ends at death? Like we could say the same thing about morality, ethics. Where's the meaning, the value, the nobility of virtue if everything comes to an abrupt halt at death? What does it matter whether I've lived a good life or a wicked life?
It all ends the same way for everyone regardless. Death makes a mockery of life's meaning and purpose. Death makes a mockery of morality and virtue because it all just seems empty and non-consequential.
So why bother? But if death has been swallowed up in victory, well then that changes everything, doesn't it? If my existence beyond my physical death and into an eternity is a thing, is real, then it matters what I do now. What I do now with my life is of infinite consequence.
My virtue or lack thereof matters if overcoming death is an option. I remember the first time I went to Chuck E. Cheese when I was a boy. You remember Chuck E. Cheese?
I don't even know if they're still in business. It was a restaurant and an arcade all rolled into one when you finished eating your pizza or whatever that was, you could buy a cup of tokens that you would then use to go and play games in the game room. And it was always such a hard decision for me to choose which games to spend my tokens on. But when my parents would tell me it was almost time to go, I would think, oh no, I've gotta spend the rest of my token so I'd start just indiscriminately playing whatever game was up next without much consideration for whether I even liked the game. It didn't matter because I had to spend my tokens before it was time to go. But then one day I learned that you could take your tokens home. And you could save them for the next time you went to Chuck E. Cheese.
Well, that changed everything. Now I had a reason, an incentive to be discriminating in my choice of which games I played. I didn't have to recklessly waste my tokens simply because time was running out. I could be selective and thoughtful and wise in how I used those tokens.
Suddenly tokens had consequence and import. They weren't something to be wasted. Now maybe it's a silly analogy, but the point is something that is temporary and short-lived is of so much less value than something that is lasting and enduring. That which exists only for the present moment is easily squandered. That which exists beyond the present moment is appreciated and wisely used and treasured, not wasted. If death is the end, then sure, waste your life.
Eat, drink, and be merry. But if death is not the end, how I spend my hours and days and years matters, and it matters greatly. If a game token is not worth squandering how much greater significance is one's eternity? The Bible tells us that death is not the end. How we live today affects how we will fare in eternity. The Bible also tells us that none of us left to ourselves will fare well in eternity because we've all squandered our tokens. We've lived foolishly. We've wasted what God has given. We've ignored what God has said, and we deserve eternal death because of it. We are slaves to the fear of death because in truth we are slaves to the sin that brings about death.
Who will deliver us from this predicament? Let's go back to Isaiah's sermon, verse eight. He, God, will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach, the shame, the disgrace, the guilt of his people.
He will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. God promises to consume a repugnant meal so that we can enjoy his rich feast. How does God do that? How does he wipe away our reproach? How does he swallow up death so that it's no longer a threat? He does it, he did it by becoming one of us, a human being, and by living a perfect life in which he incurred absolutely no guilt, and by dying as a sinner, though he was not a sinner.
This is the process by which God swallowed up our sin and our guilt and its consequences. He became sin and died for that sin. The glorious good news, however, and the reason we're all here today is that he didn't stay dead. He conquered death by removing the cause of death and the fear of death and the consequence of death and the power of death. He rose from the grave. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory?
Oh death, where is your sting? And just in case we think it's all too good to be true, God obligates himself with an oath at the end of verse eight for the Lord, Yahweh, has spoken. God doesn't tell lies. If he says he'll defeat death and remove sinner's guilt, he will surely do it. Well this brings us then to the end of Isaiah's sermon, verse nine, in which we see the world enjoying God's rich feast.
Says it will be set on that day, that day at the end of history when God's rich feast begins. Behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord.
We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. It's a day of celebration and joy because everything will have been set right.
Sin will have been canceled. Death will be no more. There's not even a tear to be found in God's magnificent hall of feasting. It's perfection. It's exquisite happiness.
It's forever and it's real. So God serves a feast and invites the world, but the world cannot come because the price of admission is sinlessness and the world is full of sin. So God deals with the world's sin. God deals with the guilt and the consequence of that sin. In other words, God removes every impediment to this everlasting joy that he's offering to the world. And so forgiven sinners are able to come, and they do come, and they sit down, and they feast in laughter and love at the table prepared by God.
What a wonderful, happy ending to an incredible story. And we want to believe that story. We want to be a part of that story, but there's something in us that resists it, that doubts it, that maybe even mocks it. The reality of life in this messed up world begins to encroach upon our longing for this idealized feast to be real. We have bills to pay.
We have jobs to work, families to raise, appearances to keep up. I don't have time for fairy tales like feasting with God in his heavenly hall or conquering death or believing in an afterlife. That stuff is for children and fools. But me, I'm a realist. Well, I've told you the good news of the gospel, and perhaps you're not convinced. Let me tell you the bad news of the gospel. If we had time to read the rest of Isaiah's sermons, we would discover that although God invites the world to his banquet, not everyone will come. There are those who will reject his invitation. There are those who think they can come on their own terms, ill-prepared and unready. People who have held on stubbornly, relentlessly to their guilt and reproach, refusing to acknowledge their need for someone bigger, someone stronger than themselves to swallow sin and death for them, thinking they can just do it themselves, and thereby they reject God's sacrifice and provision.
God has a place for those who reject his salvation, those who would rather swallow their own reproach than admit their need for a savior, and it's a terrible place. Every fear and terror you suppress in this life comes to fruition in that place, and it never ends. The very last verse of Isaiah describes what this awful place is like. It says that the guests at God's rich feast go out of God's feasting hall, and they look on the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against the Lord. But their death is not some sort of peaceful, silent sleep of death.
It's a conscious, torturous sort of death. Isaiah says, for their worm shall not die. That means that scavengers will not cease tormenting the flesh of these people.
Their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. It's unimaginably terrible, and the most regrettable aspect of this is that it's avoidable. God has made a way for sinners like you and me to escape this terrible place. What is that way of escape? Here it is, summarized in the most well-known verse in the entire Bible, the way of escape. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, shall not go to this awful place of eternal destruction, but instead shall have everlasting life, feasting with joy in God's presence. The way of escaping that terrible place is to believe that Jesus Christ went to that terrible place for you, in your place, and in going there has paid every moral debt you owe to a holy God. To believe in Jesus is to rely on his ability to swallow death and wipe away guilt rather than stubbornly insisting that either your sin isn't all that bad or that somehow you are capable in yourself to wipe away your own guilt. Believing in Jesus means abandoning your own solutions to your sin problems and resting in his goodness and virtue and love alone. You may have convinced yourself that you're just a realist.
You may think that you've gotta spend all your tokens as fast as you can because this life is all you get. But I can tell you on the authority of God himself that is not true. I can also tell you on the authority of God himself that deep down in your soul you know it's not true. If you've not yet come to the point of trusting Jesus Christ rather than trusting yourself, then you are living in the fear of death and are in fact enslaved to that fear. But God has been good to you and is inviting you to abandon that fear, to walk away from that slavery and start getting ready for a feast that will end all feasts. It begins by admitting you're a sinner, a rebel who deserves God's anger, who deserves God's anger. It continues by acknowledging that the only way to be rid of your sin, the only sin swallower is Jesus Christ and that his death and resurrection are more than sufficient to wipe away your guilt before God.
So sufficient in fact that it makes us not only cease being God's enemies, we actually become God's guests, God's friends, God's children. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is shouting to everyone here this morning that no matter what you've done, there is hope and forgiveness, there is peace and joy, there is an eternal feast awaiting all those whose faith is in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Let's pray. Lord, we're blinded by our own sin, can't even see the way out of that sin, but your salvation is so powerful and comprehensive that it has overcome death itself. And if it can overcome death, then it can overcome our blindness, our stubbornness, our rebellion, our sin. So save us, Lord, that we might enjoy the feast that you've prepared for all those who are in Christ. And it is in the name of Christ that we pray, amen.
