Sermon
for Trinity 2, June 30, 2019
This is the day the
LORD has made. Let us rejoice and be
glad in it. Amen.
Isaiah 25:6-9 6On this mountain the Lord of Armies will
prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of aged wines, with
the best cuts of meat, and the finest wines.
7On this mountain he will destroy the
shroud that covers all peoples, the burial cloth stretched over all
nations. 8He has swallowed up
death forever! The Lord God will
wipe away the tears from every face. He will take away
the shame of his people throughout the earth.
For the Lord has
spoken. 9On that day it will be said, “Look, here is our God! We waited for him, and he saved us! This is the Lord! We waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”
Rejoice
in the Lord’s victory feast.
Dear
friends in Christ,
The most expensive wedding celebration in modern times
reportedly cost $110,000,000, and the marriage didn’t last. Twenty-seven hundred years ago, Isaiah
prophesied about a royal banquet that was to be not just a wedding celebration,
but even more so, a fight for life—for your life and mine. Therefore, as we consider the words of the
prophet, we will Rejoice in the Lord’s victory feast.
The first
thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah’s book contain many prophecies of woes, judgment,
and destruction, but here and there, we find some of the most comforting Gospel
ever written, and that’s what we have in our text this morning, pure Gospel
comfort. We are given a picture of a
victory celebration God Himself was preparing for all people. Isaiah tells us, “On this mountain the Lord
of Armies will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of
aged wines, with the best cuts of meat, and the finest wines.”
Likewise,
a few moments ago, in the reading from St. Luke’s Gospel, we heard Jesus speak
of a man giving a great supper to which all his friends and neighbors were
invited. However, most of them preferred
other concerns in place of honoring his invitation, leading the host of the
celebration to throw the gates wide open so that his banquet would be filled
with guests.
In that
parable, Jesus is referring to the same triumphant feast Isaiah was privileged
to see. With His parable, Jesus was
warning the Judeans that by not heeding His invitation to believe in Him, they
were putting themselves in danger of missing out on the victory feast that the
Lord Himself was preparing—a banquet that will offer the best of the best of
the best and is intended to bless all the peoples on earth.
The
mountain of Isaiah’s picture is Jerusalem.
There Jesus would prepare His victory banquet, but it is more than just
a festival celebration; it is the battle royal for the salvation of all
people. The Lord of Hosts, the One Man
who could call down twelve legions of angels at any time would take care of all
the preparations. As invited guests, all
that is left for us is to heed His royal call.
This
grand victory feast is for all people.
There is no circumstance that would make anyone ineligible for an invitation
to the Lord’s banquet. Plus, this feast
is solely God’s doing. It is the work of
the great I AM, and there is nothing you and I, or anyone else, will be asked
to contribute to the party. This is most
definitely not a potluck. No, the LORD Himself will provide all the
ingredients, and nothing but the absolute best will be served. Isaiah’s point is that this meal is the
absolute best thing we will ever experience, an event for which the host has so
amply prepared that the good things will never run out. No earthly meal or party will ever
compare.
Now, we
heard a few moments ago about a wedding celebration that cost millions of
dollars, and I thought that was crazy.
However, the victory feast Isaiah saw would be infinitely more
expensive. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t, for the Lord’s victory feast cost the lifeblood of God’s Son.
Remember,
I said this text is pure Gospel. This
feast pictures the Good News of Jesus coming to God’s holy mountain to prepare
a banquet of salvation for all people.
In preparing this feast, Jesus was waging war against the devil, the
world, and our human flesh. By never
once falling prey to the devil’s temptations, never once succumbing to the desires
of the flesh or the lusts and doubts so common among men, Jesus would offer His
perfect holiness in exchange for our sin, and when at last all was completed,
Jesus declared from the cross, “It is finished.” Christ then bowed His head in death, but
three days later He rose from the grave in everlasting victory and from that
point on, the Lord has been sending out His servants inviting all people to
come and partake of His feast.
So, what
has Jesus really accomplished for us?
Isaiah wrote, “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that
covers all peoples, the burial cloth stretched over all nations. He has swallowed up death forever!” In Isaiah’s vision, the LORD pictures sin and
death as a covering and a veil over all the people on earth. Sin keeps us from knowing God as our first
parents knew Him before the fall. Sin
keeps us in the dark about the truth and condemns us to death. Sin and death had kept us cowering us in the
shadows, separated from our Creator. Yet,
the psalmist wrote, “Though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” (Psalm 23:4) David wrote this
recognizing that our lives in this world are always under the shadow of sin and
death. But David also wrote these words
believing that the promised Messiah would take away the sin and death that kept
this world in darkness, and David believed God’s promise was already as good as
done.
Isaiah
reported, “He has swallowed up death forever!
The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face. He will take away the shame of his people
throughout the earth. For the Lord has
spoken.” Look at the picture
Isaiah presents here: death swallowed up!
It’s gone. Powerless! Forever!
But, someone might complain, “What do you mean, we know all people still
die?” Yes, they do die physically, but
for all those people who believe the invitation of the Lord our God, the great
I AM who promised deliverance for a sinful race, physical death is no longer a
worry. Instead of a terrifying end,
physical death has become simply our entry into the life of eternal celebration
in heaven.
And what
a tender picture Isaiah gives us: the Creator of all things, the great I AM
Himself, kneeling down and gently brushing away all our sorrows, wiping our
tears, and comforting us with the certain confidence that when our believing
brother, sister, friend, or spouse is called home to heaven, they are not dead
but merely have stepped across the threshold into God’s eternal victory feast,
already dressed in the brilliant white robes of Jesus’ perfect righteousness.
Death
which had for so long terrified the human race has been transformed into a
blessed reunion with our Creator and Savior.
As St. Paul
Hundreds of years before Jesus walked on this earth,
Isaiah had full confidence in the vision God gave him, “for the LORD has
spoken.” Anything the Lord God promises is already as
good as done, because God never fails, and never lies. Indeed, He cannot lie. He doesn’t change His mind, and nothing can ever
stand in His way.
When the
LORD promises, you and I can have absolute faith in the result, just as Adam
and Eve had full assurance that a Savior was coming to deliver them from
death. As Abraham looked up at the stars
and knew that his descendants would be uncountable, and that the Messiah would
come from his descendants to be his Savior from sin and death. As Moses had no doubt in God’s promises, and
King David was lifted up time and again by God’s assurances that a Son from
David’s seed would reign on his throne forever.
Throughout history, those who trusted God’s promises experienced the
grandest exhilaration when the angels carried them out of this life into the
eternal victory celebration of life in heaven.
What they already enjoy is certain also for you and me, so Rejoice in the Lord’s victory feast.
Are you
wondering when you will receive your personal invitation to the Lord’s victory feast? I can tell you, confidently, that you already
have. It was issued to you the moment
the water of baptism was poured over your head and God’s covenant words were
spoken on your behalf. It was issued to you
the moment you were told of Jesus and His sacrificial love for you that caused
Him to leave His throne in heaven and come down to earth to live and die for
you. Your invitation is issued every
time you hear the words of absolution assuring you that your sins are forgiven
for Jesus’ sake. And every time you eat
and drink Christ’s body and blood in His Supper, you again share in a foretaste
of His victory banquet.
Isaiah
wrote, “On that day it will be said, “Look, here is our God! We waited for him, and he saved us! This is the Lord! We waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!” If
you read various commentaries on our sermon text, you’ll find differing opinions
as to what time frame the LORD meant.
Some claim that Isaiah was given a vision of Israel’s return to
Jerusalem after their Babylonian captivity.
Others point toward Jesus’ return at the end of the world. A few point to Jesus’ suffering and death on
the cross. However, we needn’t separate
these things for they all go together in the vision and in God’s plan for our
salvation.
As the
faithful people of Judah waited in captivity in Babylon, they kept their eyes
focused on the promises God had given their forefathers, promises of a Savior
and a redemption. When they were allowed
to return home to the promised land, the faithful recognized that their true
wait wasn’t yet over, but that the LORD would continue carrying out His plan
for their redemption, and so they kept their eyes focused on God’s
promises. When Jesus walked on this
earth, many recognized Him as God’s promised Messiah, but even among those who
rejected Jesus and called for His crucifixion, some later repented of their sin
and turned to Him for forgiveness and salvation, and in doing so, they also declared,
“This
is the Lord! We waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”
And isn’t
that our story, as well? We too have
been invited to the eternal celebration of Christ’s victory over sin, death,
and the devil. At the same time, how
many of us haven’t allowed the pleasures of the world to distract us from the
Lord’s victory feast? How often haven’t
we found ourselves more interested in earthly gain than heavenly peace? How often haven’t our temporal families taken
precedence over heeding God’s invitation?
How often haven’t we, too, made excuses when the Lord’s servants came to
us delivering God’s invitation to celebrate His Son’s salvation victory?
That, my
friends, is to our shame, as is all of our sin.
But, what did Isaiah write? “He
will take away the shame of his people throughout the earth.” Yes, Jesus has taken away even these sins of
weakness with His perfect life and sacrificial death. Every sin was paid for by the slaughter of
the holy Lamb of God so that we may rejoice in victory in His living presence
at the banquet of heaven.
In the
Revelation, St. John was given a vision of martyred saints crying out "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until
You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Revelation 6:10) In other words, God’s people wonder, how long
until Judgment Day? And the answer came
to them, “that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants
and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.” (Revelation 6:11) Thus, while the
martyrs rest in heaven, the Christian Church on earth continues to wait eagerly
for the Lord’s return, all the while recognizing Jesus as God’s Son, following
Him as our Lord and Savior, worshiping Him, going to Him for comfort and help
in every trouble, carrying His invitation to the far corners of the earth, and
praising the Triune God for the salvation we couldn’t gain, but He has given to
us through faith in Christ Jesus.
This morning as we gather in worship, and the Lord
feeds us with His holy Word, and especially, each time we come to the altar and
partake of Christ’s true body and blood in the bread and wine, we declare
before God and man, " Look, here is our God! We waited for him, and he saved us! This is the Lord! We waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”
Dear
friends, trust always in the forgiveness and salvation Christ prepared for you
on Calvary. Know that all your sins were
removed from you and put on Him, and for them, He paid the due penalty. Rejoice for Jesus’ victory and that you have
been invited to His eternal celebration, a banquet feast so magnificent that we
can only begin to visualize its glory. Rejoice in the Lord’s victory feast. Amen.
Glory be
to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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