“GOD’S BOUNDLESS RESTORATION”
Isaiah 25:6-9
Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA
© Seminarian Faith Williams 11/22/2009
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A feast! Rich foods! Well-aged wines strained clear! How appropriate to celebrate the crowning of a king! The banquet
described in this text is the coronation celebration of Yahweh, the God of Israel, whose enthronement was just described in the
final verses of the previous chapter. This chapter begins with the celebrants’ jubilant psalm of praise to their newly crowned
Sovereign, Israel’s God. This is a celebration scene! A festive occasion! A coronation banquet!
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to attend a coronation banquet? Let your imagination leap back to 1685, the
crowning of King James II whose coronation banquet was the most splendid an English monarch has ever had. The enormous
Westminster Hall, filled with long rows of tables laden with rich foods and delicacies and the best of wines! Forty-six different
dishes of hot meats for the first course alone, served on fine dishes and accompanied by the music of minstrels! The king’s
champion, from the Dymock family of Lincolnshire, wearing white armor enters on a white horse, throws down his gauntlet
three times, and challenges anyone present to contest the king’s right to the throne. The king sitting on a marble throne, drinks
to the champion from a silver-gilded cup, gives it to his champion, and the feast resumes!
Like the banquet for King James II, the coronation banquet of Israel’s God as divine King
is also a festive event of royal proportions. Instead of Westminster Hall, it takes place on the mountain of the Lord—that is,
Mount Zion, which now functions for God’s people within the land of Israel much as Mt. Sinai once did. It’s the place where
they encounter God. Instead of 1685, the time is still in the future, the prophet’s vision that looks forward to a day that is yet
to come. Instead of a crowd of lords and ladies and powerful dignitaries, the attendants include everyone, all people, and all
nations, all the earth! And like all coronations banquets, the menu is lavish—well-aged wines strained clear, and rich food filled
with marrow—not a very vegan or vegetarian event. Oh, what a feast!
Ironically, we encounter this great feast against an utterly gloomy backdrop! If there was ever a nation of people
desperate for a hope and a vision of a Sovereign Ruler to come in and lead and protect and restore their land and their lives, it
would be these people of Israel at this time. Their situation has been desperate! In the chapters leading up to this banquet
scene, the prophet paints an extremely bleak picture of a very defeated people. Israel is fragmented, and hopeless! War, death
and destruction are the order of the day, because Judah has been invaded by Babylon and many Jewish citizens have been taken
into exile. The atrocities of the Babylonian invasion, the struggles to rebuild, and subsequent exile have been devastating. These
people mourn! Their faces are tear-stained! Their hearts are broken! They’ve been profoundly disgraced on the earth!
And in the middle of all this, the prophet envisions for them a Ruler who will bring restoration! Into this seen of death and
tragedy, the vision of a coming King is introduced. To understand what it means to be king in this situation, you might picture
the game we played as children; king of the mountain! You climb to the top of the mountain, or pile of dirt, or the fence, push
off whoever is there, and you are now king. That is, until someone else climbs up and manages to push you off and becomes
king in your place. This is the way these ancient cultures perceived kings. Their deities were their kings and visa versa, and
the most powerful deities would defeat the others and become rulers of the cosmos. That’s why we read at the end of the
previous chapter, “Then the moon will be abashed, and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion, and in
Jerusalem…” To the people of these cultures, the sun and the moon were gods—pagan deities, and the Lord of Hosts is
pushing them off their thrones and establishing divine and sovereign power in Zion—Mt. Zion; The Lord will be the Eternal King
of the mountain!
This is the coronation banquet of the Eternal King on this mountain. But it’s more than a banquet. Coronation meals are
also covenant meals in which both king and people enter into a pledge of faithfulness to each other. At this covenant meal,
Israel’s King pledges to bring restoration of all that is wrong. How does the prophet describe what is wrong?
First, a shroud, a veil, has been cast over all people. This is not the veil of ignorance spoken of in I Corinthians. Instead,
this refers to a veil that is worn as a sign of mourning. And then a sheet has been spread over all nations. They have been
figuratively covered with a sheet (or pall) used to wrap a corps. The shroud and the sheet are both symbolic of mourning rites.
This divine King will destroy the shroud of sorrow, and will cast away the sheet that wraps the dead.
What else does the prophet tell us is wrong? There are tears that still need to be wiped away. God’s people have suffered
disgrace and humiliation and their dignity and identity need to be restored. Grief and loss calls for healing. Israel’s King will
bring that healing, and will wipe away their tears.
And finally, there’s death. Death must be dealt with! This divine King will swallow up death—not just the sheet that
wraps death, but death itself! In ancient mythology the god of death would swallow up other deities, sucking them down into
the underworld called Sheol, the place of death. To be swallowed up meant death. In Numbers 16, the earth opens its mouth
and swallows up Korah, Dathan and Abiram—Israelites who rebelled against Moses as God’s chosen leader. Later, Jonah is
swallowed up by a huge fish, and he says, “out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and [God] heard me…” Death, with its insatiable
appetite, has been continuously devouring life. Now Israel is given a vision of a victorious King who will swallow up death.
Theologian Hans Wildberger explains that for the Hebrew people the word death had a much broader range of meaning
than it has for us today. “Death,” he says, “is anything that causes one trouble during one’s life. It is that which limits the way
in which one lives life. It is that which takes something away from one’s prosperity and gets in the way of fellowship with
other humans or God.”1 Understanding this broad meaning for the word death, this text is telling us that God will swallow up
all that troubles us, weighs us down, limits the way we live our lives, gets in the way of our flourishing as the individuals God
created us to be, or hinders our relationships with God and with other people! That’s a mighty big swallow!
That’s the boundless restoration that God desires to bring to peoples’ lives. But… it wasn’t what the people of Isaiah’s
day were experiencing. The prophet offered this word of hope to people who were actually living in a very broken world.
Isaiah’s vision of God’s future banquet did not change that broken reality, but it was a source of sustenance in the midst of
their difficult times. The prophet spoke of God as their King, and in that way he offered a word of hope to a troubled people.
Like the people of Isaiah’s day, we also live in a broken world. Bad stuff happens. Tragedy strikes. Broken relationships
plague our families, and deep disappointments are part of each of our lives. But the present difficulties are not the end of the
script! And for us, the script is more complete than it was even in Isaiah’s day, because God has come to us in the form of
Christ the King. We celebrate the advent of our King, and we rejoice in the coming of Emanuel; God with us! Christ has
come, and Christ will one day reign supreme and bring to reality the future vision of Isaiah. In the mean time, Christ walks the
difficult road with us. We fully experience all the heartaches of life, but we are not alone in the struggle. As we live in the
presence of trouble, we also live with the presence of Christ. And as God’s people, we join in the work of Christ as we
witness to a hope that the world might yet reflect the glory of God.
We confess that Christ will reign, and we aim to live our lives with God’s help, in ways that promote the reign of Christ as King
in the world today. We pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And we live in the sure and
certain hope that when the God of Israel is finally and fully King on this holy mountain all that threatens life, or that causes us to
doubt our ability to go on living, will have played its last hand!
There will be no limits to where God’s power will reach, and no limits to the boundless restoration that Christ will bring.
The beauty of this future vision that the prophet offers, is that it assures hope for everyone! The shroud of mourning is
removed from all people and the sheet that wraps death from all nations, tears are wiped from all faces, and disgrace taken
away for all the earth. The King of Israel will reach out to restore all God’s good creation, and everyone can live in that
hope. This text tells us that there is no limit to what God wishes to do to restore life for all people! We have a sure and
certain hope in God’s boundless restoration. We’re called to encourage that restoration, treating ourselves and others and the
world in restorative ways that are in keeping with the kingdom of God here and now. And in faithful response to Isaiah’s vision
of future hope we can say,
1. Wildberger, Hans. Isaiah 13-27. Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1997, 533.
Lo, this is our GOD;
for whom we have waited;
Let us be glad
and rejoice in God’s salvation.
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