Isaiah 25:9-12
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,
the 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.”
Alleluia Christ is risen. Today is the day. Today is the day that we celebrate Christ's resurrection. We spent all last week looking at the journey of Christ to the cross. We celebrated Palm Sunday as he entered into his city, a king conquering, not with armies. But with his gentle power. And his word. We we watched as he did his last supper, when to the Garden of Gethsemane, was arrested, put on trial before the priests and then punches Pilate, and was nailed to the cross and entered into death's realm, as a warrior king, to conquer and destroy his fortress, and end his might. We waited outside of the tomb last night, as we celebrated the visual of our Savior. And now today is the day hallelujah Christ is risen. Today is the day, we remember that Christ burst forth from the grave and destroyed its power forever. He faced the enemy that we could not end defeated it. He emptied the tomb, he appeared to the women, then to the disciples, then to as many as 500 people, before ascending into heaven. Today, we remember that Jesus rose not as a ghost or a spirit, but as a man who appeared to His disciples and ate fish in front of them to say, I am truly alive, body and soul. It is the day of celebration of the victory of Christ over death forever. This is the day, the day we remember Christ's victory and ours over sin and death forever. And to remember this victory, we look back, many, many centuries before Christ, to a prophet, who saw into the future and knew what was coming, who looked forward to the day of Christ's death and resurrection, and even beyond, to the day of His return, as well. Isaiah chapter 25. 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. Many of you will be leaving today to head back to your places to have your own feasts. I'm not sure how many of you will have a rich food full of marrow. I've only had it once. It's really good. Maybe there will be aged wine well refined. But that's not really what Isaiah is talking about. What he's pointing to, is that on the mountain of God, there is going to be a celebration, a joyful celebration of the victory that God has won. Not only is God winning, but he's also providing that great food, the food that leads to joy and everlasting life. So we have to say which Mountain is he talking about? We know the mountain of the Lord is Mount Zion, the city of Jerusalem. And The celebration The victory is actually on a hill just outside the city where there was a cross and a Savior died and their nearby was a new tomb. No one had ever been laid in it. They borrowed it for the night. Because it was so close. They put the Savior in there and then it was empty. That is the mountain Isaiah is talking about where God's people will look and see the salvation of all mankind. It points to a couple of feasts that we celebrate and look forward to as well. The first is the feast at the end of time, the feast on the day that Christ's returns, we have a window into that, in the book of Revelation, we actually sing a song, based on that book, which we sang just before this, it's called, this is the feast. We celebrate and look forward to the day of Christ's return when he raises his people from the dead to give them eternal life. And that reminds us, of the foretaste of that feast, a little piece of Christ's resurrection coming to us on different mountains all over the globe, all at the same time. I don't know if you've noticed. But I'm not on a stage. up in front, right? There are stairs. It's not a flat thing that leads up to here, but a place where people might walk up. And it's designed that way to be just a little bit of the mountain of Zion, where God has prepared a feast for us to see it may not be marrow, or rich food, or even aged wine well refined. It's even better than that. The Body and Blood of Christ, with the bread and the wine given for you, as a taste of the victory on the last day as a piece of that life given to you right now. And assure promise that on the day that Christ returns, you will celebrate with him. This is a piece of that mountain. The mountain we remember today where the tomb is empty. Isaiah continues, he says, And He will swallow up on this mountain, the covering that is cast over all peoples the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. I think this metaphor of the covering the veil. It's a really interesting way of speaking about the way death affects us all. It's a it's a thing that drapes over all people. A veil that sits on top of us that presses down and we even get used to it after a little while. And each of us feels that weight. We feel the thing that that presses on us and pushes us down all the time. You may be feeling it today in your bodies. As you wake up in the morning with maybe a new pain that you didn't have last night. Like one right in your hip. You know, you kind of gotta wiggle it out. Before you get to church. Or maybe an old pain that hasn't gone away in a while. Maybe it's worse. Maybe today you are gathered here and you feel the weight of a missing loved one. Holidays we'll do that, won't they? As you gather together around your festival meal, and there's a chair that you wish was filled with or even as we sing these songs of joy proclaiming Christ's resurrection. You think to yourself we sang that at the funeral. Along with the joy there's just a little pain and grief. We know it. We feel it. It weighs on us
because it's a thing that sits on everyone. The veil that is spread over all nations, its death. But today we are reminded once more, that God swallowed up on this mountain, this very veil, he destroyed death forever. He swallowed it, he ate it like it was nothing. Because it has no power over him. Jesus Christ entered into death, and broke free from its prison. He entered into death because it could not hold him it had no power, the Lord of life could not be held in the grave. And he came out on Easter morning, tearing down the walls of the grave, paving a path wide enough for all of us to follow him through the grave, to everlasting life, swallowed up death forever. We gather here to remind ourselves of that fact. That even though we are pressed down, even though we feel the weight and the hurt and the pain, there is a pathway through it. Looking forward through the grave, to the point, when we will rise to the promise is what Isaiah says next, the thing that we cling to, 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. These Easter songs, these festival hymns, the joy of Christ's resurrection reminds us that what we face now is not the end. We have a hope, beyond the pain and grief that we feel a hope that is there for the return of Jesus Christ, because we will see him coming on the clouds with power and might not like the lowly king who entered Jerusalem with palm trees, but as the mighty king to judge the living and the dead. And when He calls us out of our graves. Wow, what a day it will be when our cemeteries are the most populated places on the planet. As we look around, and we see our family members as we see the people we miss, we see with joy, our Savior. As the judge returns to make all things new. For his people, that will be a day of joy, as he wipes away every tear from every eye as he gathers His people together for joy, to live forever with Him raised from the dead, always to be with our Lord forever. This is the promise we have. For us the challenge of this promise, the difficulty is to cling to it when everything we know has the weight of death on it. When we look in our world, and we walk around and we feel that veil presses down on us, and it wants to keep us from focusing on the promise, hearing the words of Christ and saying yes, this will be so yes, this will happen. I can cling and hold to it no matter what. That's the challenge for Christians who wait for that joyful day. It reminds us what it will be like Isaiah says, 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. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is a piece of Old Testament theology that is really important. The idea that God's people simply We wait for his promises to come true. We can't fight. We can't do it on our own. We can't go out and creates our perfect salvation from other might have our hands. All we can do is wait. And there are a lot of stories like that in the Bible. I want you to think about Noah, on the ark. Can you imagine that? That story? God comes to him and says build an ark. And he does. And he gets inside. And God sends a flood and it floods for over a year. And he's inside this ark. And he's like, What do I do now? Right? Can you imagine a storm that lasts that long? He just had to wait for the Lord. Or Israel at the Red Sea. Pharaoh is charging out after them the chariots and the horses in the military. And this rabble of Israel, no weapons, no safety, just a bunch of animals and women and children and they go oh, no, we're gonna die. But they don't. All they had to do was wait for the Lord to spread the Red Sea apart and they walked on dry ground. And then he fought. Then the Lord fought for them and drowned Pharaoh's army. Daniel, when he was thrown into the lion's den, no weapons, no defense. And instead of being torn up, he had a good cuddle with those big kitty cats. just waited for the Lord. Because that's the way God saves his people. And that's what we do. We wait for the Lord. We take courage in his promise. We hear that Christ is raised from the dead. And we know that will happen to us. And we gather every Sunday to repeat the promise back and forth to each other so we can know and cling to this thing that will save us our hope in Christ waiting for him. Because when he appears in the sky, we want to be there to say with joy, that we've waited for him. We don't want it to be a surprise and a terror. For a judge who comes to condemn. We want to be able to be there and say, 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. What a day that will be. Hallelujah Christ is risen. In his name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai