Text: Isaiah 25:1-9
As Jim and I were corresponding earlier this week
about the service I asked him what “Examining the Scripture” was there in the
order of the service. He wrote that it
is something new he’d been doing as a way to try to fill you in on the
historical background and what not of the passage before getting into the sermon
and it wasn’t anything that really had to be done if time didn’t allow. Well I got to thinking about this passage
from Isaiah and thought well we’ll just do some examining of the Scripture and
skip the sermon because time probably won’t allow for it so just crack you
Bibles back open to Isaiah 25 and we’ll take a walk through it.
The first thing we need to take into account is that
the passage has no direct historical referent.
Actually it lies in a whole section of Isaiah that lacks a referent. There is no specific event in the history of
Israel to which Isaiah is referring. Isaiah refers to a city laying in ruins but we
have no idea what city or when. That
being the case, it doesn’t mean there is no history associated with it. It is not a-historical. Rather, it is description of all of history
from the slant of all of humanity’s relationship to God the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. This is Isaiah summing up
what’s going on in all of history.
In verse one Isaiah points us to what our human purpose is within history. It is to point to God and stand in awe, give
voice to that awe, and know we can trust God.
He says: “Yahweh, you are my God. I lift you up high. I praise your name.” Actually, the word for praise there isn’t the
usual word for praise. It’s meaning is more like “I publically confess you are
God and I am not.” We make this
confession based on the awe-demanding things that God has done. Not only has the God the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit Big Bang-ed this Gobsmacking universe into existence. Look at this picture of the Hubble Deep Field.
Those bright spots aren’t stars.
They’re galaxies over 13 billion
light years away. Just as sure as God
created those galaxies so he gets involved in each of our insignificant little
lives. He’s got plans for us, plans from
long ago, plans that are sure and certain indeed trustworthy. They will come about. God is God.
We are not. He does wondrous
things so let’s praise him and trust him with our lives.
In verse two Isaiah tells us that God has turned a
city into a heap of rubble never to be
rebuilt. As a said a moment ago, there
is no particular city we can point to so city must mean something else
here. I suspect it means human efforts
to be God. To the Old Testament prophets
the “city” often turns up as an image of humanity organizing itself to be its
own god. The image that comes to mind for me is the Tower
of Babel and what that represented.
God turns humanity’s efforts to be its own god into a heap of ruins, a
city never to be rebuilt. Isaiah says
that it is the city of the “estranged one’s”.
The NIV says “foreigners”, but that doesn’t get the sense of the Hebrew
word which describes someone who has turned away or become estranged to the
extent of humanity trying to be its own god. In verse three Isaiah calls these people strong
and ruthless. A better way to translate
here would be terror-striking people.
Isaiah says that God will in the end makes these ruthless,
terror-striking people fear or revere him, bring glory to him. As Paul says at
Philippians 2:10-11: “…at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven
and on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.”
Coming into verse 4 we have some very beautiful
imagery describing how our God is with his faithful ones as we live in the
midst of those who are terror-striking and estranged. God, his very self, his presence with us, is
a refuge like a shelving rock in the midst
of a torrential downpour or like the shadow of a
cloud passing over out it the middle of a desert. That a cloud shadow passing over is your only
relief from the heat out in the desert truly points to God being our only
source of hope and comfort in this world amidst a humanity estranged from its
God and source of life. Verse five is
summary; only God’s presence with us, in us
can silence the war-roaring of life estranged from God.
Verses six through eight are one of the most powerful
images in all of Scripture of what God is up to in history, indeed in each of
our lives. “On
this mountain” in one sense refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
where in ancient Israel it was the place where God dwelt but figuratively it
means God’s presence. All things
necessary for God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to deliver humanity from its
estrangement from him come forth from this mountain. On this mountain
where God is, God has made and will one day ultimately make a feast for all
peoples that for is like feasting on the finest of meats and wines, but it is
also of God’s once and for all swallowing up of death. The mountain is what God has done, is doing,
and will ultimately do for all of his creation in, through and as Jesus Christ,
the incarnate Son of God, our Lord and Saviour.
God the Son as Jesus of Nazareth took upon himself our estranged
existence and died with it and God the Father through the powerful working of
the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead making a new humanity being made new
by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who awakens faith in us. God has swallowed
up death in victory forever.
Resurrection is humanity’s end.
God himself does and will wipe our tears away. We who have stood and continue to stand
faithful in steadfast hope and patient endurance in this world of estranged
humanity that tries to put us to shame for striving to be faithful, we are
being delivered from that death right now because God is not just with us, he
is in us making us to live anew, changing us to be more as he is. I like the way verse eight ends: “Indeed, God
has spoken.” Indeed.
Finally verse nine chimes in with “And it will be
said on that Day, ‘Look! This is our
God.” Our God, God the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Our God is the only God
through out all of history to really get involved in the details of human life
for the good of humans. He’s been our
refuge, our shelving rock, our cloud shadow in the midst of a humanity that is
estranged from him and is ruthless towards each other and especially to those
whom our God calls his own and has given the faith to patiently endure. Our God is the only God that will do away
with death and make all things new. Our
God has made a feast for all peoples.
The feast of his death-swallowing, tear-wiping, resurrecting, all-things
healing very self he makes available to everyone.
Friends, that Day is present now. That Day came with Jesus. It’s not here in its completion but Jesus is
fully here through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who organically
unions us to Jesus so that we share in his relationship with God the Father
now, a relationship that will blossom into the healing of all Creation when this
Day reaches its fullness at Jesus’ return.
Today is World Communion
Sunday. Christians all over the
world are celebrating the Lord’s Feast as a sign of unity. But also, today we gather around the banquet
table in the midst of a world torn with the effects of humanity’s estrangement
- viruses out of control, terrorism, poverty, war, economic oppression, abuse,
climate changing due to pollution, the list goes on – we gather on this Day as a
global Christian community to say “This is our God, the God we are waiting
for. He has given himself to make all
things new. He is reducing the city of
our estrangement to rubble, swallowing up death along the way, and making all
things new.” Today we say to this
estranged world, “Come and feast. Come
and rest. God is here, victorious over
death, and he will wipe away your tears.”
Amen.
