Sermon Transcript
From Isaiah 25. On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God.
We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
In our last series, when we talked about purpose, we said very often, if we really think about it, it is difficult difficult to find meaning for our lives. We said unless, unless we can find some way to tie what we do to something that really lasts, it’s hard to find a point of doing anything. Because no matter what we do, we are going to come to the exact same end that we would have if we had done nothing at all. We are just going to return to dust. Doesn’t matter if we are a titan of industry, a lazy bum.
It doesn’t matter if we love our family or abandon them. We are still just going to return to dust. And our family is too, by the way. So even if we work really hard for them, they are going to have the exact same end, the exact same outcome, as if we had done nothing for them at all. And then finally, uh, even the Earth and the entire universe will come to the exact same end regardless of what humanity accomplishes between now and then.
Eventually the universe will run out of energy, and there will be nothing that humans will be able to invent or discover that will change that fact. And once the universe runs out of energy. That’s it. It’s over. Just this last week, actually, like 4 days ago, I saw a brief interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
If you don’t know who that is, here’s a picture of him. Recognize him now? He’s a world-renowned astrophysicist, PhD Columbia University, appears on countless TV shows. He’s like the spokesperson for the cosmos. And CNN has a little segment with him now where he answers viewers’ questions, like anything you’d want to ask an astrophysicist.
So the question for this particular interview just a few days ago was, is the universe going to end and that’s it, or is it possible maybe the universe will someday shrink back to a single point and then explode again like another Big Bang, and then maybe it’ll keep doing that back and forth forever and ever like an accordion? Maybe it’s kind of like reincarnation. Reincarnation, right? We get to do this all over again. Like, it keeps restarting, keeps restarting.
Maybe even we’ve already done all of this an infinite number of times before because the universe has just kept doing this since forever, right? And Neil deGrasse Tyson said 40 to 50 years ago we didn’t have enough evidence to say for sure. Um, and he said there were many— this was very interesting to me— he said there were many scientists over the last few decades who really wanted to discover some way that the universe wouldn’t end. So scientists look motivated, they look for all kinds of ways. Maybe the— maybe, maybe it just expands forever and it’ll never end.
And he said, or maybe it is this kind of like keeps restarting. So they looked and they looked and they looked. They wanted to discover something because this is what he said, of the philosophical problems. He said that because of the philosophical problems involved if the universe has an end. If all of this is just going to come to the exact same end no matter what, people are bright enough to figure out there is no ultimate point to anything, and that is philosophically depressing.
So even scientists— isn’t this Isn’t that interesting? They, like, like they have motives behind their research. They really wanted there not to be an end, so they kept looking for an answer. They pursued all kinds of theories, but none of them panned out. And actually, the opposite panned out.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says, now we have enough information to say for sure, there is zero doubt anymore, the universe will end. No one is getting out of here. Sorry, Spider-Man fans, zero evidence of a multiverse. There will be no final triumph of humanity. It doesn’t matter if some small community of humans makes it to the very end of time and is somehow surviving off the last remaining bits of energy in the universe.
Doesn’t matter. The energy will still run out, and that will be it. And that will be it regardless of what we do between now and then. You can see why Neil deGrasse Tyson says, yeah, for a long time scientists tried to find a different answer. They tried.
You can see why they didn’t like the philosophical implications. It makes it very difficult to believe that anything we’re doing has real or ultimate purpose, that what we do matters, or that we matter. It’s kind of difficult to face true reality and then just still go on about your day. It’s difficult.
Which brings us to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead shows there is more to reality than scientists have measured. There is, in fact, a way out of the otherwise inevitable decay of of the universe. There is a final triumph. Life does win in the end.
Uh, Easter is when Christians stop everything else we’re doing and we specifically focus on Jesus’ resurrection and its implications. So today, as we look at our text, we will see how Jesus’ resurrection either immediately accomplished or set in motion a trajectory that will eventually accomplish 3 outcomes. Jesus’ resurrection swallowed up death, it will wipe away every tear, and it removed our reproach. It swallowed up death, it will wipe away every tear, and it removed our reproach. So Jesus’ resurrection swallowed up death.
The section that we’re studying in Isaiah this morning was written 700 or so years before Jesus was born, but Isaiah anticipates that God will one day remove the shadow that haunts each one of us. Isaiah calls it a veil or a covering cast over all people, verse 7. It’s death. None of us like to think about it very much, but we all know it’s coming. Actually, our knowledge of our own end is one of the things that separates us from the animals.
They don’t know that death is inevitable, but we do. We know we can’t get out from underneath of it. It covers us. We can’t escape it. It’s the elephant in the room.
It nags at us. Our best efforts to defeat it will still come up short. And now we know, thanks to Mr. Tyson, Dr. Tyson, uh, it covers the whole universe. It’s like the universe itself, in a way, is dying. But Isaiah says there will come a day when God will bring liberation.
And look specifically at this promise. It’s not, it’s not simply that we escape out from underneath of it, like we beat cancer, but then death still exists in the world and it might come to get us some other way later on down the road. That’s not it. That’s not the promise. The promise is that death itself will be swallowed up, will be defeated.
Defeated so that death doesn’t even exist anymore. The covering, the shadow, will be gone forever. When Jesus Christ rose from the grave, he didn’t just come back to life. It’s not like he was revived. Christians understand that Jesus defeated death.
Death tried to take him, but instead Jesus conquered it and he can destroy it. If you want to visual of the Christian understanding of the resurrection. This is such an old movie now, but I think it’s a good picture for what we’re talking about. In the movie The Matrix, the first one, okay, that was released in 1999. That was 23 years ago.
Anyone feel old suddenly? You’re like, wow, I thought it was like last week. No, it was 23 years ago. The plot of the movie is that humans are living a kind of post-apocalyptic sort of era. Humans are slaves to machines, and most of humanity doesn’t actually live in reality.
Instead, humans are all plugged into this giant computer simulation called the Matrix. But humans don’t know they’re plugged into the Matrix. They think what they’re experiencing is the real world. Then the main character, Neo, he eventually sees the Matrix for what it is— just a a computer program, and he learns he can change it. He can rewrite it however he wants.
If you haven’t seen the movie, try to follow along. At the end of the first movie, Neo has been growing in his understanding of how the Matrix works and how he can control it, and the machines are not very happy about that. They want to kill Neo. So while Neo is plugged into Matrix. He’s in this computer reality.
He’s not in real reality. The machines send agents— that’s their name— to kill him, which they do. The agents kill Neo. His heart flatlines in the real world. His heart flatlines.
But then Neo gets up. He resurrects. And for the first time, he has complete clarity for what the Matrix is. It’s just a computer program. Program.
The agents who killed him, he realizes and sees, they are just pieces of code themselves who he can change, he can manipulate. So he jumps into one of the agents and just like explodes him into a billion pieces and kills the agent in the movie. Now the metaphor as it relates to Jesus doesn’t extend into the next movie, so just try to pretend those don’t exist, and I haven’t seen the newest one. But in the first movie, the picture isn’t just that Neo escapes the agents, right? It’s not that he got away from the bad guys and he can fight again another day.
That’s not the picture. The picture is he’s more powerful than the agents. The agents have no hold on him. He can do with them whatever he wills. He can explode them to bits.
It’s easy. That’s the Christian understanding of Jesus’ relationship to death. Jesus didn’t just escape death. He’s more powerful than death. It’s like he absorbed death or swallowed it and then blew it to bits, like Neo absorbed the Agent and then destroyed him.
Jesus can do with death what he wills. It has no hold on him. It stands no chance against him. Okay, that’s the first implication of the resurrection. Second implication: Jesus’ resurrection will wipe away every tear.
Verse 8: The Lord wipes away every tear. It’s probably intuitive that if Jesus swallowed up death, that tear— that all the tears would be wiped away. It’s probably intuitive, but let’s dig into it a little. First, Jesus hasn’t wiped away all tears yet. Death is still very much a part of our lives for now, so this is a future hope.
We believe one day the covering and veil will be completely removed. The shadow that has haunted all of us will be really gone. Probably the best way to understand the current state of death is that it’s on the run. It has been mortally wounded. Death is still flailing around for the moment, but its end is sure, and eventually Jesus will finish the job.
And for us as Christians, this is not just some pie-in-the-sky hope or wishful thinking. Lots of religions or philosophies, lots of them have promises of life after death, right? That’s not new or different. And probably all of us would like to think that our existence somehow continues after we die. But how could we know?
How could we say that death is really going to end? Even Isaiah, when he wrote this, right, Jesus hadn’t come yet. So Isaiah is just trusting that God will do what he says. Somehow, some way, death will be swallowed up someday. Isaiah’s was much more of a blind hope because he had never seen anyone defeat death.
But we, on the other side of the resurrection, We know there is one more powerful than the grave. Some Easter we’ll probably talk about proofs of the resurrection. Not this year. You can Google them if you want to. But our hope is much more certain than Isaiah’s, much more certain than any other religion’s.
It’s a historical event that can be confirmed to the same or greater degree than any other historical event that has ever happened. We have seen death defeated. So we have a much, a much more sure confidence that one day death will be completely removed. The covering or shadow over all humanity will be taken away. The end of the Christian story, which is yet to happen, is that death will die and we will attend death’s funeral.
We will be liberated from this enemy and we will live forever. So first, all the tears haven’t been wiped away yet. But second, when they are, we will enter into a grand feast. One of the unique claims of Christianity is that we don’t live forever in some spiritual or ethereal existence. Instead, like verse 1 says, people will have a feast on this mountain.
We will eat food and drink wine forever. It’s a tangible, physical existence. Christianity is not, let me escape the physical and get to the eternal spiritual. Christianity is God redeems the physical. Jesus’ resurrection was not his spirit flying around visiting people.
It was not his followers saying, Oh, I, I can still feel his presence with us. It was not that. Jesus’ resurrection was his body was raised to life so people could touch and feel and hug him. He ate with them. He cooked fish with them.
He sat and had meals with them. Spirits don’t do that. His resurrection was real, and his physical body was no longer subject to death because he had defeated death. Eternity is physical. That’s unique to Christianity.
The Christian belief is that all of Jesus’ followers and, and in a way creation itself will experience a type of resurrection not entirely unlike Jesus’ resurrection. The scientists are right when they observe that death plagues not only humans and living creatures but really the entire universe itself. They’ve observed the universe is in a state of ongoing decay and eventually everything will just stop. That’s a pretty good description for what death is, right? Stop.
The universe is dying. Good observation. But if Christ really defeated death, and he did, and the covering is really lifted, and it will be, then even the universe will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and we will live forever in a remade, brand new actually, tangible world. The world will be brand new with mountains and rich food and wine, never to be subject to decay again because death is gone. I believe— discuss amongst yourselves over lunch— but I believe we would prefer that type of an eternity to an eternity where we are just kind of ghosts, or a place where there’s lots of bright light, or like Eastern religions teach, at death we lose all sense of ourself and we’re like a drop of water in the sea.
We’re not really us anymore because we’ve joined the all-soul. Given the choice between undefined spiritual existence or remade brand new tangible world where nothing ever decays and we enjoy rich food and wine, which do we pick?
I think there’s something in us that knows we shouldn’t just let go of the physical. We know it, we sense it, and we reveal, uh, that belief by our impulses anytime we, we’re like, we have to take care of people’s bodies, or we have to take care of the earth. If, if spiritual is the only thing that’s going to last forever, then who cares about your body? Who cares about the earth? Let it go.
It’s going to be gone anyway. But we know, don’t we? We know there’s something just a little off about that. The physical matters. We don’t want to just let go of it.
So if there was a way that the physical could last forever, then sign me up, right? If it wouldn’t decay, if entropy could be stopped, and this— we’ll get to this— if people treated each other nicely, if that was in place, then this world would be a pretty great place to live. This is where we would want to be. Uh, Woody Allen, um, obviously super famous Hollywood director, said it like this. Woody Allen says, I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I want to live on in my apartment.
You said it, Woody. That’s how we all feel. That’s what we want. Can I live here on this mountain with the food I enjoy? Can I do that?
Yes.
Yes, it’ll actually be a better mountain, a better apartment. It’ll be imperishable. But it’ll be physical. Jesus defeats death, not just for himself, not just for us, but for the whole universe. He destroys death everywhere in all its forms.
We enjoy a rich feast with no tears forever. Which brings us to our last point. Jesus’ resurrection removed our reproach. Approach, which we’ll explain in a minute, but we need to get there before we do. So, question: why is there death in the first place?
Is death just a part of life? Is it part of being human? Is death inevitable, or is death foreign to what it means to be human? Several years ago, one of my atheist friends actually introduced me to a TED Talk by a Cambridge researcher, Aubrey de Grey, who claims that death is a disease and is reversible. De Grey actually launched a research foundation which is right here in Mountain View.
Possible some of you have heard of him or met him. They have— this research foundation has tens of millions of dollars in various projects. He thinks it is possible to stop our genetic unraveling and humans could easily live to be 1,000 years old. Easily. So hypothetically, if they figure it out, or if somebody else does, as long as some tragedy didn’t befall you, you could live for millennia.
Who knows, maybe you could even make it to the end of time itself. Sound crazy? Uh, kind of does to me, and we are probably tempted to scoff at that, and perhaps rightly so, because reading other articles seems like the scientific community is skeptical about this. But before you write it off completely, completely. Remember, you don’t get to do a TED Talk unless you have some pretty serious data to back up what you’re saying.
And you don’t get tens of millions of dollars in funding for projects if it’s all smoke and mirrors. So, there might be something to that. Might be. Don’t know. I’m not— that’s not my field.
I just read other people. But my friend asked me, knowing that I’m a Christian, he asked, if there were a treatment available that would enable you to stop aging, would you take it? Or do you as a Christian— he’s asking me, you know, speak for all Christians, Dan. I’m like, whoa. Um, do you believe that you should, that you need to grow old and die?
That’s a question, isn’t it? I’m still not sure exactly how I would answer, and I imagine many of us might have a different answer depending on whether we are currently staring death in the space or not. Um, I certainly wouldn’t fault anyone for your answer, but I can tell you the Bible does not teach that death is just a part of life. It teaches that death is foreign to what it means to be human. In fact, it teaches that death is a curse or a penalty that has been levied on humanity.
Again, the verses we looked at today describe death as a veil over all nations, a covering over all peoples. In other words, it was added to humanity, like you have a blanket over you. That’s not you, it’s a foreign object on you, and if it could be removed, then you wouldn’t experience it anymore. That’s what death is like, which is not entirely unlike what Aubrey de Grey said in his TED Talk. It’s a disease, it’s not you.
You have a disease, you aren’t a a disease, right? It’s added to us. It’s not part of what it means to be human. Humans were meant to live forever. We were not meant to live only until the end of the universe, which maybe we could accomplish if we crack the genetic code.
Who knows? Don’t know. But don’t aim so low as to want to live only until the end of the universe. That’s such a short time, and if you somehow made it to the end of the universe, I bet the day the energy went out, you wouldn’t say, well, I had a good run. I’m going to smile while I am extinguished forever.
That’s not what you would say. You’d say, I want to keep going. I don’t want this to be over. There’s not going to be a tomorrow? Really?
You’d be frustrated. Frustrated because humans were meant to live forever, but we don’t because we as humanity rebelled against God. We broke his rules. We hurt each other. The reason the earth isn’t a nice place to live is because of us, because of our sin, because we hurt each other.
And so a curse, a reproach, a penalty was laid on humanity, and death covers us. Death is a rebuke against humanity for what we have done. It’s not part of being human. It’s a penalty. It’s a rebuke.
And God could justifiably wash his hands of us and let us deal with the mess that we created on our own. He could walk away. He could do that, and it would be totally fair. But God in his grace provided a way back to where we are meant to be. He provided a way for the penalty of death to be lifted.
Verse 8, the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth.
How, how does he take away the reproach? Jesus Christ came to earth as our substitute. He lived the life we should have lived without sin. He deserves no reproach, and he gave us the credit for the good life that he lived. And then he died on the cross.
He took our penalty. He took our rebuke. He took our blame so that it could be lifted off of us. He’s our substitute. That’s how God removes our reproach.
Jesus was rebuked instead of us. But then, instead of simply taking our our place to— in death, he rose to life again in power and victory over everything that had pulled him into the grave. Meaning he’s not only greater than the penalty we deserve, which is death, he’s also greater than our sin, which produced the penalty. He rose to life again in victory over all of that, like Neo rose in victory over the agents. Jesus is greater than both the penalty and the cause of the penalty, and he’s obliterating all of it.
He’s blowing all of it to bits. He is more powerful than your sin. He is more powerful than the reason we hurt each other, which is our sin. Listen, Christian, if you are so discouraged because you can’t seem to live a holy life and your sin seems so great, so big, and you don’t know how you will ever overcome it, comforted. Your sin is on the run.
It has been dealt a mortal wound. It is scared of Jesus. It has no hold on him. He’s too powerful. And he has given you, as a believer in him, that same power.
You have the power of the resurrection in you. Romans 8:11. The Spirit that rose Jesus from the grave lives in us as his followers. We get the same power in us that was victorious over grave and sin. He’s put his Spirit in us.
He’s working in us to mature us to overcome our sin. And if you’re a Christian, you experience that. You feel it. You feel God liberating you from your sin. It’s not always pleasant.
It’s not always a tranquil journey. Many times it feels like we’re going backwards. It can be super messy because we continue to rebel against him. It’s like we’re raw ore being refined in fire to be pure gold. It’s torturous sometimes, but he’s winning, and eventually he will have complete victory over our sin, just like he won over the grave.
He is greater than our continued rebellion. There will come a day when the refining process will be over. The work that he began in us will be complete, Philippians 1:6, and we will be like him. Then we will live in harmony with each other because the reason we hurt each other will have been eliminated. We will be remade.
The earth will be remade. The curse, the reproach will be gone and we will live forever in unity and peace both with each other and with him. In a tangible world with rich food and wine. The resurrection is a guarantee that redemption will happen. Complete redemption will happen.
Now, for anyone here today who wouldn’t identify as a Christian, we’re glad you’re here. And I completely realize lofty concepts like resurrection Resurrection, remaking of the world, everyone living in harmony— those might seem pretty far-fetched, maybe like a fairy tale. Like, that’s a nice story, a little inspirational, but hard to believe it’s literally true. If that’s you, I get it. I understand that.
So don’t start there. Don’t start with a cosmic miracle of future utopia. That is probably too big to grasp and take in all at once. Start— instead of that, start within. Look within your own heart.
Do your own evaluation of you. You’re pretty familiar with you.
Have you lived the life you should have lived?
Would you feel comfortable if every moral decision you ever made became public information? Would you be okay with that if everyone knew every moral decision you ever made? Or have you not lived the life that you should live? Have you contributed to the pain of the world like I have? Do you deserve reproach like I do?
Do you have a sense that your guilt needs to be removed, like there is a covering or veil over your life? And even if that guilt were gone, do you have some awareness that if you are ever going to become who you think you ought to be, if you’re ever going to get there to the future you that you would like to exist, if you’re going to get there, you need someone other than you, outside of you, to overcome you? Do you know you need someone other than you to refine you if you are ever going to be refined? Do you sense that? Just look within.
Is any of that there?
If you feel those pricks in your heart, those are pointing you to Jesus. He takes the penalty you deserve. He bears your guilt for you. He gives you the credit for the perfect life he lived so that you are seen as spotless, even if you aren’t. He puts a giant stamp on your life which is irremovable, and it says, approved, accepted, worthy.
He puts the power of his resurrection in you to wrestle you away from your sin. If your heart right now is telling you Yeah, I need that. I, I do. I, I need that. Then pray to Jesus.
Talk to him. Say, Jesus, I need you. Forgive me. Deliver me. Save me.
Refine me. Redeem me. I’m yours.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you that Jesus rose from the grave. Thank you that he took our reproach so that the penalty of death could be lifted. Thank you that our future is sure, and we know it because of a historical event of the resurrection. Lord, thank you that our future is tangible, physical, not spiritual or undefined, but real, solid, with you, with each other, living in peace and harmony, um, in a world that you have created where there is rich food and wine and celebration forever and ever. Lord, may we rejoice of what you have provided for us and how you have rescued us.
We celebrate all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
