Isaiah 25:6-9 *
Dear Friends in Christ,
I think this is a fair statement: Most people like parties. I mean good parties as opposed to forced gatherings or ritual obligations.
So what constitutes a good party? A subjective question, certainly, but by anyone’s definition a good party is one where we gather together with people we really know and like, where the conversation is lively and free-flowing, where we’re in no hurry to leave (and may in fact even lose all track of time), and where the food and drink is good and plentiful. That is the kind of party we look forward to.
All of which is to say that God is really speaking our kind of language when He pictures
eternal life as one grand party, isn’t He?
Through the words of the prophet
Isaiah, today we have the blessed opportunity to reflect upon what awaits us
and what we look forward to. Our text
describes it all as THE FEAST OF LIFE…
And as we apply this text to our lives, the only conclusion to be drawn is that
IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS
Because at the Feast of Life
(Keying off the first verse of our text we’re going to stay
with the “feast” analogy throughout the sermon…)
Let me give you a little background information on this text. These words were written by God’s chosen spokesman, Isaiah, approximately seven centuries before the birth of Christ. Since his public ministry stretched over the reign of four individual kings and a period of some sixty years, Isaiah saw God’s people experience highs and lows; but we might describe the general tenor of the times as chaotic both spiritually and politically.
Throughout his book, Isaiah makes it clear that God’s
judgment will fall upon those who disregard or dismiss or despise Him. This applies to both individuals and nations;
and both inside and outside the Old Testament nation of
That’s where our text fits in. It follows a section which speaks of God’s final Day of Judgment and His ultimate victory over the forces of evil. Whereas this will be a terrible event for the enemies of God, it will be a wonderful day of blessing for God’s people. Here’s why:
“On this mountain the
Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of
aged wine – the best of meat and the finest of wines.” The
blessings Isaiah is about to outline tell us that the mountain he speaks of
here is not a physical place, but a spiritual place. The Bible often uses the terms “
And he talks about it in terms of a feast, a banquet – a party. Perhaps you noticed: this is not health food Isaiah is describing here. He’s not talking about reduced fat products or flavor-gutted delicacies which end with word “lite.” These words in Hebrew refer to lots of olive oil. This is rich food.
In other words, when God prepares a meal for us we don’t have to worry about the fat or the calories or the cholesterol or whether or not we’ll be clogging our arteries. This is the food we really like to eat, in contrast to the kind we’re supposed to eat – and it’s all guilt free and nourishing and satisfying and perfectly good for us. That does sound heavenly, doesn’t it?
But there is more to be said. Before this Feast of Life could be offered up
to us humans, there was a huge helping of terrible food that had to be consumed
first. We might refer to this as the
feast of death. This is the feast we had
cooked up for ourselves. This is the
feast that came from the recipe book of our own hearts. Jesus reminds us of the ingredients we use in
Mark 7:21: “Out of men’s hearts come evil
thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.”
This kind of feast Jesus ate up for us. And let’s make no mistake about it: it didn’t taste good. Do you remember Jesus prayer in the
Maybe we’ve never thought of Good Friday as Jesus feasting
on our sins and death. But the writer to
the Hebrews did. Listen to what he
writes (2:9): “Jesus… suffered death, so that
by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
Isaiah makes the same kind of reference in the next verse of our text: “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud (of sin) that enfolds all peoples, the sheet (of death) that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever.” And that’s exactly what Jesus did for us and all mankind. He ate our recipe and tasted the death it brings.
But He did more than taste it. He swallowed it. He consumed it. Meaning, it is no more. Three days from Good Friday Jesus rose from the dead. And death – not temporal death, but eternal death brought about by sin – died. Jesus tells us “Because I live, you also will live.” And the ultimate fulfillment of that promise will be in heaven. Which means the grand party that we’ve been calling the Feast of Life never ends…
Contemplate this and it naturally translates into high spirits for all who are involved. Isaiah describes it in this way: “The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.” How do we know this will happen? Because “the Lord has spoken.” In other words, no sadness in heaven. Whatever we endured here on this earth because of our faith or because of the sin that surrounds us will disappear. Whatever difficulties the Lord in His wisdom may have brought into our lives will vanish without a trace. And the only emotions we will know are joy and peace and happiness and contentment. That makes our spirits soar.
Isaiah sums up the joy of the redeemed and the kind of
exchange that goes on in heaven in our final verse: “In
that day they will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he
saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted
in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.’” High spirits, indeed. And the free flowing, happy conversation goes
on into infinity…
Pretty neat party God’s got planned for us, wouldn’t you say?
But you know, the Feast of Life doesn’t just kick in on the day of our death. It’s available to us now. However, we need to see it. We need to make ourselves available to it. And we need to be eating the right stuff.
We listen to a sermon like this and all this wonderful talk about heaven and it lifts us up as we hear it, but sometime about Monday or Tuesday we might be saying to ourselves, “Where is my joy? I know I’m redeemed and I know what I have to look forward to and I believe all this, so why am I unhappy? Why am I sad?”
The first thing to know is that this happens to the best of us mere mortals. Maybe you’ve heard the story how Martin Luther was moping around the house feeling sorry for himself when his wife Kate came out wearing a black mourning dress. Luther asked, “Who died?” To which she answered, “The way you’re acting, I thought God did.”
Perhaps the first question we might ask when we’re feeling down is: “Have I been attending the right feast?” There are all kinds of tasty looking dishes out there. Satan is a master at providing garnishes. A little relish here, a little rearranging there, and he can make some very unhealthy things look pretty good. And if we’re not careful and we’re not selective and we’re not discerning, we can find ourselves wolfing down all kinds of things that are not only bad for us, but also destroy our appetite for Jesus…
Some of the competing foods might be a preoccupation with
money or sex or power or self-centeredness.
The world certainly makes those dishes readily available. But the truth of the matter is, they never
satisfy. The equation that more equals
happier has been proven time and time again to be a myth. A lot of people who have gained a lot of things
have looked back on lives characterized by loneliness and emptiness. The hymnist perceptively writes: “Many
spend their lives in fretting over trifles and in getting things that have no
solid ground…”
A little later on in this book God asks us to examine our
diet. He asks us why we want to waste
our time trying in vain to find satisfaction in something other than
Jesus: “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and
without cost. Why spend money on what is
not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and
eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”
The “richest of fare” is the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. And the Gospel is revealed to us in the Bible. So if our joy barometer is a little low, perhaps we need to look at our diet. We are what we eat. How are we doing with our Bible reading? How are we doing with our daily devotions? Are we trying to exist on a starvation diet, eating only on Sundays?
King David offers us this advice in Psalm 34: “Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”
And when we do, the result is spiritual health, wealth and
vitality…
We are indeed blessed people. Thanks be to Jesus, we have much to look forward to. On earth, we receive a foretaste of all that will be ours through devotion to Word and Sacrament. But in heaven, we will receive the full taste of what God has prepared for His people…
Isaiah likens it to a feast – a party. Not just any party, but a good party… A party where the food is fabulous, the spirits are high and the celebrating never ends.
And it just doesn’t get any better than that. Amen.