Hosanna In The Highest!

THIS IS THE LORD, WE TRUSTED IN HIM

Isaiah 25-6-9 - Easter, March 31, 2002

6On 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. 7On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; 8 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.

9In that day they will say, "Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation."

Dear Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:

Whom do you trust? Trust, whether we realize it or not, is a very precious commodity. For once a trust is broken, it is very hard to bring back that trust. Maybe at times that trust is never, ever regained. We know that from time to time in each of our lives, the trust we have misplaced in someone else or something else sometimes has been broken or dashed to pieces. The Lord reminds us in His Words from the Prophet Isaiah that we put our trust in God. That trust we put in God is never, ever misplaced. It is never, ever broken. Solomon wrote in Proverbs this good advice on this Easter Sunday: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight"(Proverbs 3:5,6). That is good advice, really great advice: because in the world in which we live, the world wants us to put our trust in so many different things.

Sometimes we need our trust broken in order to understand that the only good trust is the trust that we put in God. In fact our nation recognizes that. If you take any coin or money and look at it, you will see "In God we trust." As believers we are going to look at what that means for us. We are going to use the words of the Prophet Isaiah as our theme this morning where he says at the end, "This is the Lord, we trusted in Him." We realized that I. It is our Lord who provides us the very best and II. It is our Lord who swallows up death forever.

Interesting in the Book of Isaiah--Isaiah has some of the greatest gospel gems where he told about the virgin birth of Christ the Savior, where he told about the suffering and death of the Savior in Chapter 53. But in the rest of the Book, we also realize that Isaiah came as a prophet who was to pronounce God?s divine judgment against the people of Israel because of their wickedness and sin and rebellion. The fact is right before this chapter from verses 13-23 Isaiah comes and (we could say) dumps God?s punishment on all the people. So now as we find chapters 24 and 25 we hear it as a breath of fresh air, where Isaiah is able to turn away from just pronouncing God?s judgment against the wickedness of mankind and proclaim to them God?s gospel and the message of hope and salvation that was there.

He begins in our text by describing a very specific purpose for a very specific people. In verse six, he says, "On this mountain." When we think about "this mountain," people of Jerusalem thought of Mount Zion or Zion itself or even the city of Jerusalem where the temple was. Isaiah here is writing to the believers and reminding them of the hope they have in the Lord. What is the Lord going to do on this mountain? We are told, "On this mountain, the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples." He is going to prepare a banquet, and He describes it as rich food. Some translations have the best of the fat of the food. Our society avoids the rich foods and the fatty foods, but in the Old Testament times this was something that was a sumptuous fare. They didn?t very often get to eat rich foods or the fatty foods. Isaiah says, "On this mountain the LORD is going to prepare a feast of rich foods. He goes on: "a feast of rich foods for all peoples and banquet of aged wine." That aged is wine that sat around and was able to become better in quality and color than the wine that they commonly used.

It wasn?t just that there was going to be some good food and some good wine, Isaiah sums it up: "On that mountain, the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich foods for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine;" and then he tells us, "the best of meats and the finest of wines" for these people who rebelled against Him time and time again. The Lord still loved them and was going to prepare them a banquet of the best and give them the very best.