Isaiah 25:6-9 * October 4-5, 2008 *
Pentecost 21 * Senior Vicar Gawel
Come to the Feast!
1) Heed God’s gracious invitation
2) Delight in the blessings of his love
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Isaiah 25:6-9
On this mountain the LORD Almighty
will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine – the
best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the
earth. The LORD has spoken. 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.”
Have you ever known a person who refused to believe something that was obviously true? All the facts and evidence were lined up for inspection. The conclusion was clear as day. But he just refused to believe it. Or, similarly, have you ever known someone who refused to accept an invitation or a giveaway with no strings attached? Everything was already paid for. The deal was real. But the person just wouldn’t accept it.
In this day and age we have learned to be wary of deals that sound too good to be true, always looking for the fine print. Certainly, there are plenty of lies that science and the media try to foist on us – all with pretty solid-looking evidence. And there are plenty of scams that offer free giveaways, but which are really just trying to dupe us into revealing our personal information so that they can have a free ride at our expense. Every week, it seems, I get a “phishing” email that claims to be from a wealthy Nigerian who wants to put 10 million dollars into my bank account. I don’t fall for it.
But, for as many lies as there are out there, there is also some truth. For as many cons and scams that try to rip you off, there are also some genuine no-strings-attached giveaways. There are some people like Eric Gagne, the Brewers’ pitcher, who paid out of his own pocket to give away tickets to 5,000 lucky Brewers fans. It sounds a little far-fetched. If you hadn’t heard about it from a trusted source, you might have doubted the truthfulness of the report. “Would anybody really be so generous as to do that?” But, if you didn’t believe the report, and didn’t go to the website to claim a ticket, you didn’t get into the game for free… You didn’t get to take advantage of a gift that had already been paid for.
This is often our spiritual problem. We doubt that God’s gift is really what he makes it out to be. “Nothing can be that good,” we reason. “There’s gotta be a string attached somewhere. And, even if I can’t find one, I’ll make one! I’ll try to work for something that God wants to give me freely!”
But, brothers and sisters, in our text from Isaiah, we see the many free blessings of God, laid out for us in beautiful form. We see a royal banquet all prepared, and an invitation that God himself extends to us. So, Come to the Feast! Heed God’s gracious invitation. Delight in the blessings of his love.
The first verse of our reading describes a great feast that
the LORD will prepare on his holy mountain.
For the people of
But this fulfillment only explains part of what Isaiah
prophesies here. Isaiah’s main focus was
not
This theme in our text of the great feast of heaven is quite similar to our Gospel for today: Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet. There we heard that certain people were invited to the feast, but they didn’t come. Some of them actually attacked and killed the messengers who gave them the invitation to the wedding banquet. Others simply paid no attention and walked away – back to their fields and their businesses. “How could they do such a thing?!” we wonder. “How could they walk away from an invitation to this lavish wedding banquet, which was free to them?!”
But these same questions could be put to us, brothers and sisters. Often our own reactions to God’s gospel invitations are similar in substance: “That sounds nice, but I don’t really have time to think about heaven right now. I’m busy with my family and my work, my TV shows and sporting events, my recreation and my social life. I’m busy with these things now – but maybe I’ll think about Jesus and heaven more later on, when I’m not so busy.” The truth is, we’re not so different from those people in Jesus’ parable, who rejected that gracious invitation to the feast of heaven. Often, like them, our “fields” and our “business” are more important to us.
Isaiah explains to us why this is. He says that there is a big shroud that covers over us. A thick covering that blocks the light of God’s love. This shroud is our sinfulness. Our sin blinds us to God’s truth. When God tells us about the salvation he won for us through Jesus, when he gives us an invitation to the great feast of heaven – according to our sinful nature all we want to do and all we can do is reject that invitation, because our hearts are darkened. No light gets through the shroud of our sin. And so we go off, in the dark, back to our fields and our business – down the path of eternal destruction.
But thank God our story does not end there! Isaiah tells us: “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations” (v.7). This is the work that Jesus accomplished by his death on the cross. All sin was paid for by his blood. The power of sin over us was destroyed. Jesus rips away that thick covering of sin that blinded us, and he shines the glorious light of his love into our hearts. With the shroud of sin removed, we can see and understand how wonderful that feast of heaven truly is – how great it will be when we are there, when all sin will be completely removed from us forever.
This light that he shines into our hearts gives us faith to trust these promises of his, by the working of the Holy Spirit. It gives us faith “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18). And, when he paints this beautiful picture for us of the great feast in heaven and invites us to come as guests, we accept his invitation by faith, with joy in our hearts and songs of thanks and praise on our lips. So, do not be like those apathetic guests in Jesus’ parable, who rejected God’s invitation. Rather, Come to the Feast! Heed God’s gracious invitation!
As Isaiah continues to paint for us this beautiful portrait of the feast of heaven, delight in the wondrous blessings of God’s love that are in store for us there: “He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken” (v.8). What amazing statements of comfort!
“He will swallow up death forever.” Even if you’ve never been to a graveside committal, you probably know the scene well from TV and movies. Family and friends of the deceased stand around the deep pit of the grave as the casket is lowered down, and finally dirt is thrown and shoveled on top. The great gaping jaws of death swallow up yet another victim. Death swallows up all living things in due time. But the mystery of God’s grace is that he has turned the tables – and now death, that great swallower of all mortal men is itself swallowed up! Forever! Jesus won this victory over death when he rose from the dead that first Easter morning. He broke the power of death. And at the great feast of heaven, he will destroy it completely. “Then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory!’” (1 Corinthians 15:54b).
And with death gone forever, the Lord himself will comfort each one of us: “The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces.” You parents know well how this scene goes. Your little one is crying from a fall or a fight. You scoop your daughter up in your arms and hug her close. You gently wipe away the tears from the face of your son. You hold him tight until his sobbing subsides. You say: “I love you, my son. I love you, my daughter.” So it will be at the great feast of heaven, when God himself will take us each in his arms, to dry our tears and comfort us with his love.
“He will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.” At the feast of heaven, we will not even have a trace of a memory of the sins of our past. The guilt that so troubles us in this life, that weighs heavy upon our hearts – the guilt that brings us shame and disgrace and causes us to despair – God will completely remove all of that from us. We will not feel guilty or ashamed to stand before him, because he will give us garments of Christ’s righteousness. He will forgive our wickedness and remember our sins no more (cf. Hebrews 8:12). In fact, he has done this already, through the cross of Christ. Because Jesus died for our sins, we now stand before God innocent in his sight.
All of these wonderful blessings will be ours for eternity. Eternity, and perfection! It’s hard for us to grasp these concepts. No suffering or pain or guilt or sin! And no end to joy! We can’t even begin to imagine what that will be like, because our entire existence is constantly affected by these things. But God gives us a foretaste of this eternal feast of heaven when we celebrate the feast of the Lord’s Supper. He brings us into Communion with him and with each other, giving us his own body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. As we celebrate this feast here on earth, we think about that great eternal feast of heaven that Isaiah describes. In a few minutes we will join to sing this stanza in our communion hymn: “Feast after feast thus comes and passes by, / Yet, passing, points to that glad feast above, / Giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy, / the Lamb’s great marriage feast of bliss and love” (CW 315, s.6).
Just as we join together here at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in songs of praise and thanks for God’s great salvation, so we will join together with all believers of all time at the eternal feast of heaven, to sing this hymn that Isaiah teaches us, praising God for his saving grace: “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!” (v.9).
So, as you see these beautiful gospel promises in God’s Word, as you receive this invitation to the great feast of heaven, accept it in faith, with joy and thanksgiving, knowing that Christ has paid for your seat at the feast by his death on the cross. He himself has set the banquet table and prepared the food. He himself will be there to comfort you. So, Come to the Feast! Heed God’s gracious invitation! Delight in the blessings of his love! Amen!
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus! Amen! (Philippians 4:7)