Isaiah 25:6 - "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."
A couple years ago my wife, Amanda, and I drove from Alabama to Tennessee where we scooped up my mom and then drove on up the road to my mom's family in Pennsylvania. The memory of that trip reminds me of my childhood, specifically when my siblings and I were at our grandparents' homes in north-central Pennsylvania during strawberry season. Gram Yost had, what she called, a truck patch, which was filled with the most delicious strawberries you ever ate in your life. And Gram would just let us go sit in the truck patch and eat "strawbabies" until our little hearts were content. It was heaven!
Well, at least it was a picture of heaven.
In today's verse from Isaiah 25:6, God is telling us, as he does consistently in scripture, that heaven will be a feast of abundance. 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." And in order that we might enjoy the feast, God goes on to say that he'll remove death, tears, and disgrace.
Wow! Sign me up! I wanna be there!!!
But there's a catch, the same catch as always with God and his word. You must believe! You must believe that God is preparing this for you and for all people. In the face of whatever poverty, lack, difficulty, or hardship that you currently have going on, God calls you to believe that better times are on the horizon. And when you believe that a feast is just ahead, you actually begin to taste it in your heart right now.
That's the power of well-placed faith. When you put your faith in any person or power or comfort of this world, just count on being disappointed down the road. But when you put your faith in God coming through down the road, when you truly believe that God's going to come through on his promises, then you immediately start to taste the fruit in the present.
Like a truck patch full of strawberries from your Gram.
Like a heaven full of "rich food for all peoples."
God is bigger in providing than your problems are in taking away.
"Taste and see, the Lord is good; blessed is the one who trusts him." (Psalm 34:8)
The feast is ready right now for those who believe! Please come!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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