Proverbs 30:5 “Every word of God is flawless.”

There is a picture behind the promise here. If you look at the inside rim of my wedding ring, there is tiny little print that says, among other things, “14 K.” “Fourteen karat gold” means that it is fourteen parts gold and 10 parts other metals. If it were “twenty-four karat gold,” then it would be pure gold, at least as pure as is humanly possible.

Before they could add the other metals to the gold in my wedding ring, they had to get the impurities out of it. It had to be refined in order to remove the other minerals in and around it. Chemicals and super-heated furnaces were used to purify the gold.

This is the picture behind the word “flawless.” God’s word is 24 karat pure truth. There are no impurities or additives. Do you see why this is important for you to know? I haven’t read all the other “holy” books of other religions, but from what I have read I know that the Bible is particularly careful to make this claim. God was anticipating the false criticism that was going to be leveled at his word. “The Bible is just a book written by men.” In other words, it is possible that it contains mistakes and errors just like any other human book. In fact, you wouldn’t make a statement like that if you didn’t think you already had found some there.

What does that do to our trust in the promises our Lord records for us here? Now it is up to us to figure out which promises we can trust and which ones are nothing but an illusion. And what is the standard by which we will judge–our own feelings? Our own opinions? Our limited experience? The findings of science and research? Only people who are grotesquely ignorant of the history of scientific investigation can believe that so-called “science” has given us consistently accurate explanations for why things are the way they are (not that they have gotten everything wrong). But each generation has to throw out large portions of the science of the generation before it and start over with new ideas about how to explain our world.

God hasn’t put us on such shaky ground with his promises. They are 24 karat gold for certainty. There is an empty tomb in Jerusalem to prove it. There are thousands of years of prophecies fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus to make us sure. There is the power the gospel has had on our own hearts and faith that convinces us, “These words aren’t just a collection of nice thoughts about God,” but the real history of how he has intervened in our world, the real description of who he is and what he is like. Trust his promises, and you will know that every word is golden.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

It is okay to cry. When someone we love dies, it is okay to cry. And it is okay not to. Grieving is not bad. It doesn’t spoil things. Paul does not say, “Do not grieve.” He is saying, “Don’t grieve like those who have no hope.”

But there are perfectly good reasons to grieve when we say goodbye to those we love. We all do it differently. For some it may mean a flood of tears. For others it may mean we become unusually quiet instead of our usual chatty self. There is no right or wrong way. It is okay to grieve our loss.

Even for the Christian, death is tinged with the sadness of sin. It’s a reminder. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. Everyone who dies is a sinner who could not save himself. So God gave us a Savior. And for us who grieve, that makes all the difference. That gives us hope.

There are those who lose the one they love, and all they have is memories. All they have is a legacy. Maybe they have some vague idea about a “better place.” God gives us Jesus. Christians who die are not just asleep. They are asleep in Jesus. “We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

Jesus knew about the sadness of death. At the funeral of Lazarus, Jesus was so overcome with emotion that he cried himself.

 But Jesus knew death even better than that. He experienced it. “We believe that Jesus died,” Paul writes. His body weakened. He struggled to breathe. His heart slowed, and finally stopped. He gave up his spirit.

All by itself, that fact doesn’t sound very hopeful. Paul assumes that we understand the relevance, the significance, for our hope. Since Paul doesn’t tell us this explicitly, let me give you some reminders. Jesus once told his disciples that he came to “give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus knew that his death was a payment, a payment that would set his people free. In his letter to the Ephesians Paul says, “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins.” There is that idea of payment again, “redemption,” and death, “his blood.” And the freedom this all adds up to is the forgiveness of our sins.

Well, that’s hope, isn’t it–not a wobbly wish kind of hope, but a reason to be certain and optimistic about our future. God does not intend to hold our sins against us. He held them against Jesus, if you will, who paid all we owed with his own death on the cross. Jesus has set us free.

And then hope grows, “We believe that Jesus died and rose again.” Three days after Jesus died, he woke up! Death is not the end. In planning funerals, many family members have said to me, “Let’s make this a celebration of life.” Yes, let’s do that. And that celebration begins with the celebration of Jesus’ life, who left his tomb perfected and glorified three days after he died, and now lives and reigns in heaven forever and ever.

Jesus’ new life is the promise of our new life. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said, shortly before he brought Lazarus out of his tomb. “He that believes in me will live, even though the dies.”

Here is where hope reaches the top. “We believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” In the scenario Paul is describing here, Jesus decides to close the book on the history of this world before you and I die. And as he comes back to gather his own and judge the world, he brings those we have buried, and every other person who fell asleep in faith in Christ, with him. They will all be there at the resurrection. And so will we. And that body, will be restored to life imperishable, and incorruptible, fully fit for the eternity together that is waiting for us.

Isaiah 25:9 “In 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 in his salvation.’”

“We trusted in him.” There is a flavor of waiting in Isaiah’s words here. God’s people often wait for him to keep his promises, and waiting requires faith. Abraham waited 25 years for the Lord to keep his promise to give him and Sarah a son. That’s almost half my lifetime. The nation of Israel waited hundreds of years in Egypt for the Lord to set them free from their slavery. The whole history of our nation isn’t that long.

The Lord promised Isaiah he was going to swallow up death. That promise was going to wait another 700 years after Isaiah put it on paper. That’s thousands of years after he had first made the promise to Israel’s ancestors. Many people gave up on the promise across the centuries. A faithful few waited, and believed. Their faith was rewarded when our Lord Jesus came and destroyed death as God had promised.

Patience has never been a very strong human trait. We probably have less of it than our ancestors. We live in an age of instant gratification. We don’t save up until we can afford something. We buy it on credit and pay with interest. We don’t save for retirement. There’s too much we want today. We get antsy if the checkout line at Walmart isn’t moving fast enough. We complain if they don’t open up a new register after five minutes.  A professor of mine once noted that the thing that makes common sense so valuable is that it isn’t all that common. In a similar way we need to keep reminding people that “patience is a virtue,” because while it may be good to have, not many of us show it much of the time.

The Lord’s timetable may seem painfully slow to people with so little patience. Believe. His answers to our prayers seem like they will never come. Believe. We have been putting up with these morons, suffering through this situation, dealing with this pain for weeks, or months, or years now, and he promises he won’t let me be tempted beyond what I can bear. Believe. Jesus promised to return and make everything right and take us home almost 2000 years ago, and he still hasn’t showed up. Believe. The Lord kept his promise to destroy death and save us from sin thousands of years after he gave it. We can believe that he is good for every other promise on which we are waiting. In all of history he hasn’t missed one yet.

Imagine how your life could be different if you knew that you were going to live forever. O wait, you do know that. The Lord has destroyed death, just like he promised. “Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25:7-8 “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; 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.”

Isaiah lived and wrote his prophecies in Jerusalem. The city was built on the same mountain where 700 years later Jesus’ enemies put him on trial, condemned him to death, crucified him, and buried him. There he paid for the sins of the world. And when he rose from the dead three days later he accomplished what no doctor, no scientist, no researcher can ever do. He destroyed death. “Swallowed it up,” Isaiah says. He broke it, stomped all over it, and it will never work the way it used to work again.

He changed death from permanent condition to temporary condition. He reconstructed what was once the gateway to hell, making it the door to our true home in heaven. We have gotten used to calling his victory day “Easter,” but Isaiah is describing “The Feast of the Resurrection.” There is no bigger or better feast of God’s saving work for us to celebrate than the day the Lord destroys death.

This makes all the difference. It destroys “the sheet that covers all nations, the shroud that enfolds all peoples.” What terrorizes people more than death? Isn’t that why we are so concerned about healthcare, and we pay the doctors so much? Isn’t that why people all around the world weep and wail at their funerals? Death is like a dark sheet, this shroud of gloom that darkens life.

But then there is the truly Christian funeral. We still shed some tears as we say goodbye. But it is not despair. And underneath the tears there are often smiles, even a note of joy. Gathered with those we love we often find laughter as we remember those who have died. We consider where they have gone. We know our Lord Jesus Christ has destroyed death, and we can celebrate the new and perfect life they now enjoy.

Isaiah understood why death’s destruction gives us reason to feast and celebrate. “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.” The great disgrace of our race, the whole human family, is the death our sin has introduced into the world. It spoiled everything. We didn’t just infect ourselves with the disease. The whole planet is dying, and our own sins perpetuate the catastrophe.

But Jesus Christ has erased our sin by his death. Our Lord has destroyed death by his resurrection. He has removed our disgrace, and we celebrate as we wait for him to come and make everything new.

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.”

When my wife and I got married, we fed dinner to over 150 people. When my children graduated from high school we fed 25 or 30 of our friends and family as well. My high school had an annual banquet to celebrate the academic and athletic accomplishments of the student body. Food is something we often use to celebrate milestones, achievements, and happy events.

We have learned this from our God. When the Lord created a worship schedule for his Old Testament people, he created feast days. The Passover, the great celebration of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, was the “Passover Feast.” Later in the year they had the “Feast of Pentecost” to celebrate the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, and the “Feast of Tabernacles” to remember their forty-year journey through the wilderness.

When God came to earth as a man, Jesus continued to show us that our Lord likes to celebrate with food. Jesus never got wild or out of control, but he was always up for a good dinner party. He attended the wedding of his friends at Cana, a banquet with tax-collectors and sinners that Matthew threw in his honor, and dinner at the homes of some of the Pharisees, who didn’t particularly like him. Some even accused him of being a drunkard and a glutton because he ate and drank so freely with people during his earthly ministry.

It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that when the early Christians started to put together their worship schedule to celebrate the things Jesus did to save us, feasting was something they had in mind. We usually call it “Christmas” when we celebrate Jesus’ birth. But the more formal name for this in the church calendar is “The Feast of the Nativity.” A number of less significant events were thought of as “feasts,” too. Maybe you never thought about the meaning or significance of these words from a song you hear around Christmas: “Good King Wenceslaus went out, on the … Feast of Stephen.” The day the church set aside to remember the first New Testament Christian to give his life for Jesus was described as a feast day.

So the Lord is announcing a new feast here in Isaiah. Before we look more closely at its content, this whole idea of feasting teaches us something about the faith we believe. Somehow we Christians have managed to give people the idea that Christianity is a sour, gloomy religion. The main thing about being Christian, we seem to communicate, is that we should feel bad about ourselves, give things up, and not enjoy life very much.

It is true that God wants us to repent of our sins, and we have plenty of sins of which to repent. But the main thing about sin is that God forgives it! We are free, and he doesn’t ask us to pay a thing. I don’t deny that our Lord warns us not to cling too tightly to this world and the parts of it that give us pleasure. But it still pleases him when his children enjoy his gifts with thankful hearts.

And as our senses fade and fail, and he takes away our ability to enjoy one thing or another, he does so only because he is going to give us better things, vastly better things, immeasurably better things, in the future home he has prepared for each of us. There is a happy tone, something to celebrate, in grace and heaven. A sour, gloomy life simply doesn’t fit.

Philippians 3:20-21 “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, our Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

“Rabbi,” they called him. “Teacher.” “Teach us how to pray,” his disciples asked him, and he taught them the Lord’s Prayer. He is still our teacher if we will listen, if we will acknowledge that maybe he knows more than we do. Jesus is our teacher, but he is so much more.

“Lord,” they called him. “Master.” In Jesus the disciples found a leader they could live under. They surrendered their will to his. “I will follow you wherever you go,” one man offered. “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor,” little Zacchaeus promised. “Jesus is Lord” is still a basic confession of the Christian faith. But Jesus is so much more than the Master who tells us what to do.

“Savior,” is what the angels called him on the day he was born. It is half of what the name “Jesus” means. Months earlier the angel had told his stepfather Joseph, “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” And on the cross, that is what Jesus did. He died our death and saved us from our sins.

But the one we call our Savior still has saving things to do. The reason we are eagerly awaiting a Savior from heaven is that, “by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, (he) will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Are you getting tired of your lowly body yet? Mine performs more and more like a high mileage vehicle. It needs all kinds of maintenance. I would say that it is getting time to trade it in, but who would take it? There are too many mechanical issues. The lungs don’t work at full capacity. The joints are wearing out. Hair is thinning, teeth need attention, eyes are fading. A future stuck driving this thing around would be worse than depressing.

So Jesus brightens our future. He is coming to rescue us from these wrecks in which we now live. He intends to give us, as citizens of heaven, a body worthy of living there. It “will be like his glorious body.” Will that include some of the cosmetic upgrades we’ve always wanted–better shape, better proportion? Possibly, though remember that when Jesus left the tomb with his glorified body he kept the scars of his crucifixion. What may be transformed as much as anything is the way we see others, so that we appreciate all the artistry of God’s creation in the endless variety with which he has put together the human form.

Is it possible our bodies will enjoy new powers? When Jesus left the tomb the angel didn’t roll away the stone to let him out. He simply vanished. He then materialized in the places he wanted to be. Will we pass through walls? Will we defy gravity, as Jesus did when he ascended into heaven? It is exciting to think about, but those aren’t the real substance of a glorious body.

Jesus’ glorious body is free from sin (his was always free from sin) and its consequences. There is no struggle to resist temptation. A glorious body lives in perfect self-control. We will be free from all the negative things: no more crying, pain, hunger, thirst, heat, cold. Nothing will make us sad. But most of all, Jesus’ glorious body lives, and loves, and serves with complete freedom and power. The slow creep of death is only a memory, and maybe isn’t even that.

That will be us as well, because our citizenship is in heaven, and Jesus is coming to transform us into the kind of people ready to live in our eternal home.

Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Paul explains the life of selfless humility by describing two sets of contrasts. The first has to do with attitude. In place of pride and conceit he urges a humility that thinks more highly of others. He isn’t counseling low self-esteem or promoting personal insecurity. He is trying to spare us from being an insufferable jerk.

We all know that guy who thinks he is God’s gift to…you fill in the blank. It may be God’s gift to women, or God’s gift to politics, or God’s gift to sports, or God’s gift to science, or God’s gift to barbeque, or God’s gift to whatever other topic moves him to strut his stuff like a peacock. His attitude of superiority makes him hard to be around.

You also know the person who may be quite gifted at something or another. But he is always noticing the gifts and talents of others. He is quick with a compliment for the good someone else does. When Paul says, “…in humility consider others better than yourself,” he is saying, “Be that guy.” That’s not only a nicer person to be around. That’s an attitude compatible with our faith and our understanding of sin and grace.

The other contrast looks at whom we serve with our lives. “…Look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Do we care to serve only ourselves, or do we care about others? Centuries before the government decided to create the social safety net, Christian churches were places where people actually loved each other and looked after each other. Christians didn’t have to be billed or taxed or shamed into doing something. They spontaneously gave and helped. It’s one of the reasons that Christianity was respected, even attractive, at a time when becoming a Christian could be dangerous.

These Philippians were known as a poor congregation. But when a collection was being taken for famine relief in Jerusalem, they begged Paul for the opportunity to contribute. That’s the kind of selfless living that made Paul’s joy complete. That’s the kind of selfless humility the gospel can still create in us today.