Opening Prayer
Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; They will still be praising You. (Psa 84:4) Amen.
Text: Isaiah 25:6-9
And in this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of choice pieces, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of well-refined wines on the lees. And He will destroy on this mountain the surface of the covering cast over all people, and 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; the rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day: “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”
Devotion
Could it be said more beautifully about our Lord Jesus’ glory and His people’s salvation than the prophet does in this text? “Many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Mat 8:11). The feast shall be prepared for all people. All nations shall be there. What the Lord of hosts, our Jesus, does, is not small. What a feast, what a banquet! There are wines on the lees,6 fat things full of marrow, which is pure, unmixed joy and blessedness, nothing other than love, nothing other than God Himself, who is all in all. For the veil that is spread over all nations is taken away, and we know God face to face. We see Him in Christ as He is. And then death is completely and totally destroyed forever. It is swallowed up in victory, gone, vanished, like the night with its darkness disappears before the sun. Sadness and sobbing and sighing and sorrow are gone with it. Shame and disgrace have sunk in an eternal grave.
This the Lord has promised His Church. The Lord’s mouth has spoken it. We wait then for the fulfillment, but in faith and hope we already have salvation. Thousands and thousands of Gentiles sit at the Lord’s Table in His Church on earth, eat His Body, drink His Blood, live by His life, taste His goodness, and see Him with unveiled countenance, yet it is only as in a mirror, dimly. And who can count the host who are already home in heaven? But these two groups, the believers on earth and the blessed in heaven are one people and stand together in one place, around the same Lord, except that the blessed already live with sight, we live by faith. Who will doubt then that the Lord shall fulfill what He has spoken and will gather us as one in perfect glory?
Closing Prayer
Praise be to You, Lord Jesus! Gather all people soon in Your Church, as many as can be saved and shall fill Your marriage hall, so the perfect glory of the Church may come soon. Amen.
Hymn
O that we the throng of the ransomed may swell,
To whom He hath granted remission.
God graciously make us in heaven to dwell,
And save us from endless perdition.
Have mercy upon us, O Jesus!
God grant that I may of His infinite love
Remain in His merciful keeping;
And sit with the King at His table above,
When here in the grave I am sleeping.
Have mercy upon us, O Jesus!
Landstad: There many shall come L 216:4-5 ELH 200:4-5 tr. P. Strømme;
tune: Der mange skal komme