Thursday, March 24

Isaiah 25: 6-12

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 him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

We’ve all seen the images; we’ve all heard the news reports; we’ve all read the terrible stories about the recent earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan. Hundreds dead; thousands left homeless; millions of lives changed forever. Events like this illicit two reactions: Firsts, we find ourselves asking, ”Why does God allow such suffering in the world he created?” Second, we sense deep in our souls that things are not as they should be – that something is broken in our world – and we long for the day when things will be made right again.

While there is no easy answer to the question of human suffering, the Bible does indicate that God is not the author of sin, pain and death. The Book of Job teaches us that Satan is the enemy of God who desires to destroy everything God made as good – including us. In his sovereignty, God has, for his own reasons and purposes, allowed Satan certain limited freedom to “roam the earth” wreaking havoc and inflicting pain and suffering. The Bible teaches that God entered into the human experience through Jesus – and that Jesus endured all the pain, suffering, temptation and death that Satan could dish out – in order to provide forgiveness, redemption and hope for each one of us. The whole Bible resonates with the great promise that one day God is going to destroy his enemy, and deliver his people and his world from the “shroud that enfolds all people.”

Notice that the celebration of God’s ultimate deliverance of his people is expressed in the language of a feast!  

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.

The imagery of a feast is a theme that is repeated often throughout the Bible. The ancient Israelites celebrated many different feasts as part of their worship and remembrance of God’s goodness. It was during a celebration of the Passover Feast that Jesus first used the broken bread and poured cup to symbolize his body and blood. And the book of Revelation speaks of heaven itself as the “Wedding Supper of the Lamb.”

We don’t use the word “feast” so much in our modern culture – but I think we know what it means. We celebrate many of the significant moments of life – graduations, birthdays, weddings, and retirements – with dinners, banquets and parties. We celebrate by gathering together with the people we love and sharing food, drink, love and laughter – by feasting together!

For now we live in a world that is broken by sin and death. For now the enemy of God has limited authority to inflict pain and suffering. But this is not the end of the story! The story will end with a feast, a celebration, a party thrown by our God himself! And it will be a celebration of such joy that all the sufferings of this world will simply fade into nothingness by comparison.

Some derisively call this “Pie in the sky” thinking. I call it hope.

Brian Coffey