A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on October 11, 2020 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Isaiah 25:6-9. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the prophet Isaiah, the 25th chapter:
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.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
There is a picture here of the end that, as God raises all of us up out of our graves, as we see our Jesus face-to-face, He brings us onto a mountain. In the Scriptures, anytime we see a mountain, we know something holy is going on. Whether it is the mountain on which Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac, whether it is the mountain on which Jerusalem is built, whether it is the mountain that Jesus goes up to pray, whether it is the mountain that He is transfigured upon, or whether it is this mountain that we find in Isaiah.
On this mountain here in the text, we find an amazing thing- a feast being held for us. A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, a rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well-refined. In Hebrew, one of the ways that they speak if they want to emphasize a point is to repeat it, and sometimes in a slightly different way. A feast of rich food, a feast of rich food full of marrow. The idea is this is being food beyond any food you have ever had before. A feast of well-aged wine of aged, wine well-refined. This is a wine that you have never tasted before.
You know, it's kind of funny, as we gather together around the Lord's Sacrament, our wine often is not as good as we would otherwise hope. I remember when I had my first Communion, I complained to my mother that the wine was burning on the way down. She told me it was just the Holy Spirit. Now, I know it just wasn’t good wine. I know some churches, mostly cathedrals, spend beaucoup bucks on their wine. Sadly, we’re not in that situation for ourselves, but the wine that we taste in the Lord's Supper is a wine that is a foretaste of the feast to come. It may be lower-quality in an earthly sense, but, in reality, it is highest quality, for in this wine we find our Lord's blood for us for the forgiveness of our sins.
That idea is the feast that God feeds us with at the end, a feast that never ends, a feast upon a mountain, a holy place, a place where we are safe and secure, where the enemies of God cannot assail us, where God pours out His wine, His blood for us and He gives us His food, His body, that we might be strengthened even into eternity on this mountain. God will envelop this mountain and over it with Himself. The text says He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that has been cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. Again, you can see the Hebrew, Isaiah’s repeating himself. This is big. There's something here that the people carry with them on to this mountain that God Himself will take away from them. As He develops them with his cloud of glory, He takes away the pall, the veil of death, that has been covering over us from the moment we were conceived in our mothers wombs to the time we close our eyes to this life. God swallows up death in His victory and He does this as we feast together. God will swallow up death forever, Isaiah says, which is a joy beyond joys and the Lord God will wipe all tears from all faces.
Then Isaiah says the reproach of his people God will take away from all the earth for the Lord has spoken. That reproach of His people is when the Law accuses us and sends us into hell according to His Word, for we are guilty of breaking His Law in every single way. As we break that Law, it's as if every time we do there are echoes that reverberate throughout all creation, infecting it with the stain of sin that comes from our hearts and from our minds and from our hands. God here takes that away. He takes away the accusation of the Law. He takes away our death sentence. He takes away the infection of sin and He sets us up on this mountain and protects us from all things that were evil in this life and gives to us all things that are good.
We will say on that day, Behold this is our God, we have waited for Him that He might save us. Which of us isn’t looking forward to Christ returning? We all should be. We should so love Him and so hate the world that we long for the day of His coming. After all, this has been an awful year. We’ve been in this covid pandemic status now for over seven months. We've got a wild and raucous political event coming up here in America with the vote. We've got, what some people are saying, the future of our country at stake. We've got people who are dying. I mean Van Halen died this week, for Pete's sake. This is a sad time to be alive, is it not? It always is, and it always has been. That’s why we should groan for Christ to return and finally fulfill this prophecy of Isaiah. We should want that day, because Christ will return, whether we are ready or not, and He will take this life and remake it to what He has desired always for us.
This is the Lord. We've waited for him. We've waited to see His glory. We’ve waited to sit at the feast with all those whom we love. Let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation. Jesus further explains this as He tells us the feast that would be happening on this mountain, a feast where God invites all people, is one that is set before the world. Now, yes, God had a chosen people in mind for this feast. He chose a people, the Israelites, to be His people. He sent out His Word, the invitation to the feast forever, but they sent his servants away. So He sent out more servants and they were so offended by these servants, that they killed those servants of God, the prophets who had come bringing the Word of God in the invitation to the feast which would never end. And so, God, in his anger, destroyed them, wiped them out. Now, this actually happened in the year 70, thirty years after the ascension of Christ, when the Romans leveled Jerusalem. That city was wiped out. It was razed to the ground by them, never to rise again in the same way. Everything that they had and everything that they would be was wrapped up into that city and it was destroyed, taken away from them. It was so bad that mothers were forced to eat their own children to escape death. It was so bad that everybody was horribly disfigured through starvation and the ravages of illness that ran through the place. It was an awful time. Yet, in that horrible circumstance, God begins to fulfill His prophecy in Jesus’ parable, that He would destroy all things and set it burning.
But God has not abandoned the feast. He now sets it before a new people, a new group that God is calling to Himself, a new chosen people. God has brought us, we who were Gentiles sinners, into the feast that would never end. What joy there is on that mountain, in that feast, now that we are called.
But notice the end of Jesus's Parable. There's a man there who has no wedding garments. It was customary in this day that, if you invited somebody to a wedding, you would provide for them clothing to wear into the wedding feast itself. You wanted everything to be beautiful and it was a way that you shared your wealth with those who are around you. And so, all people would have a wedding garment. The man who's not wearing a wedding garment tried to sneak in on his own. He didn’t come the normal way, he didn’t get the garment from the Master. He didn’t come in with all the other guest. He was not rejoicing in God's salvation. It should be that he came before God in fear. He came before God thinking, At least if I'm here, God will have mercy on me. I may not come in the right way. I may not do the right thing. I may not be dressed the right way, but God will have mercy on me. God will not. For those whom He calls, He brings in to feast in a rather easy way- the way of Baptism. There God clothes us with a garment that never wears out, never gets soiled, always is on us. That is the garment of salvation.
There is no other way into the Church than through God’s Word, and the normal way people have this Word bringing them in is Baptism, which is simply God's Word in a tangible, watery form. You cannot enter the Church through another means. You can’t backdoor your way in. You can’t just try to be good. You can’t just have Jesus as one of your favorite gods. We cannot sneak into the feast of God. You must be called, and all are, but then you must come in the way God has provided. You now are called and welcomed because you are His own. He has chosen you not because you are worthy, but because He wants you with Him. He chose a people who were not worthy. And then they proved their unworthiness. Those He has chosen anew still are not worthy. But God has made you worthy in His Son. God has brought you into salvation that you might rejoice in it forever. He has called you and clothed you and now He feeds you.
God has brought you to his feast which shall never end. This Feast that we have before us in simple bread and simple wine, this Feast before us is a foretaste of that feast which is to come, a foretaste that will never end. Even here in this life, as we continue on to the day that we die or Jesus comes back, this foretaste will never stop being given to you. That is why we rejoice at being able to celebrate it every week, because here we see that God's feast is given to us every time we gather together. Though we end the feast each Sunday and come back to it, it is a foretaste in that it is offered all the time. The feast which is to come, however, will never end. It is infinite and ongoing forever. In eternity, the feast which shall never end will always be available for you.
What a joy it is to be able to come to God in such a way that we may have perfect confidence in what He will provide for us, perfect confidence in His salvation, perfect confidence that we shall see Him face to face, and perfect confidence that we shall be with all those whom we love who are in Christ. In that great day, on that high mountain, we shall sit at that wedding table, a table set for us as we are joined to our bridegroom Jesus, and there we shall feast in his joy forever and ever and ever. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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