Thursday, March 10, 2016

Isaiah 25: Good Times Are Coming

Wedged in among all the weary scenes of doom and gloom coming to the whole earth is a prophetic promise of amazingly good news about God's gracious plans for the world.

If you're like me, you need to hear some good news after receiving bad news.  Isaiah obliges us by sharing with us a hope that sounds incredibly like New Testament grace!

"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken" (vs. 6-8).

There's a lot to unpack here.  Reading Isaiah as a Christian, I cannot help but think of the blood of Christ when the prophet talks about the "wine" that God will provide on the mountain.  Is Isaiah anticipating the sacrificial death of Jesus upon Mount Calvary and all that act causes?  Certainly there can be no better or more ancient "well-aged wine" than that of the blood of our Savior!

Salvation is the theme of Isaiah going forward in the next two verses.  A blight that affects all the nations, a pall that covers the earth will be dealt with and destroyed "on this mountain."  To me, that sounds an awful lot like the curse of sin, which has been hindering humanity since Genesis 3.  According to Isaiah, death will be defeated - just as Paul in the New Testament says it is through Christ.  Death will be swallowed up forever (I Cor. 15:54).

But even here we are not done!  God wiping away the tears from all faces in verse 8 - doesn't that sound familiar?  Check out Revelation 21:4, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes."  The hope that we have in Jesus Christ is spelled out for us in the New Testament, but it is foreshadowed and hinted in the Old Testaent as well.  Thank God for the witness of the entire Bible in giving us the encouraging good news of an eternity without death or tears!

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