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.

Philippians 2:2 Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”

You see the emphasis on oneness, unity, sameness here, right? “…like-minded…same love…one in spirit and purpose.” The emphasis on unity is even stronger in the Greek behind this translation. This is an important quality for a faithful and functioning Christian congregation.

It is true that God gathers his people from diverse backgrounds. When Jesus gathered the Twelve, he chose a number of working-class men. Almost half of them made their living fishing. But there was also a wealthy government bureaucrat, and a member of an anti-government fringe group. Later he added a prominent Pharisee. These people were as different as my conservative and liberal friends on Facebook who post their strongly held and strongly worded political convictions. If there was an evening that Jesus wasn’t doing most the talking, I’m sure they could have had some interesting discussions.

So Christians don’t roll off an assembly line with completely interchangeable brains. Jesus does not produce us by cookie-cutter. And the different gifts, and different insights, each of us brings to the table is part of his plan to build a multi-talented church with all the resources it needs to reach the world with the gospel.

And yet, there is an important sameness God’s church requires. Paul introduces us to three areas where unity is important. Up first is “like-minded.” The church is an organization whose mission is to share a message. If we don’t have one mind about the content of that message, if we don’t share a common set of beliefs, then what are we going to share? We can easily end up working at cross purposes. What good does it do for one man to teach something, and then another one comes along and contradicts it all?

Have you ever told your kids to pick up the toys, and as fast as one is picking them up, another one who didn’t hear the order, or who is too young to understand, is dumping them all out again? What does that accomplish? It’s frustrating. You make my joy complete by being a like-minded congregation, united in your faith.

Another feature of this united faith is “having the same love.” This can include agreement about what is a loving thing to do, and what is not. That is not always easy for Christians to discern, you know. Sometimes we confuse making people happy with loving them. We can mix up giving them what they need, and giving them what they want. It’s helpful to agree on the loving thing to do.

But more than that, living faith gives birth to a selflessness, a genuine concern for other people that loves them without conditions. That colors all our interactions with all the other members of our church, and everyone outside as well. It gives a pastor no greater joy than to see his people practicing this same love with each other, love born of faith.

Altogether, a united faith produces a congregation that is “one in spirit and purpose.” Today, Christian churches involve themselves in all kinds of activities. They may collect food for the hungry, build homes, operate nursing centers for the elderly, host support groups of various kinds, operate Christian schools, run daycare centers, organize dinners and fund-raisers and trips. These are all noble projects. None of them, in and of itself, is the mission of the church.

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Jesus reason for leaving us here is clear. We are here to reach the lost, preach the gospel, win souls to faith in Christ. When our meetings, our conversations, our priorities, and our participation reveal that we are united in that faith and purpose, like Paul we have found another reason for joy.

Philippians 2:1-2 “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete…”

Sometimes the smallest words in Scripture deliver big messages. Are you struck by Paul’s repeated use of the word “if” here? He lists these gifts and blessings of faith. But he seems to cast a shadow over their enjoyment with the word “if.” He almost seems to be questioning whether we have experienced these things.

I think the apostle is on to something. Sometimes our faith and our practice, or our faith and our experiences, don’t line up with each other. We believe the things God promises, but then we fail to make the connection with our lives. We really mean it when we say we believe God forgives us. But then we carry our guilt around anyway. Maybe we even act as if we have to pay for our sins ourselves. We sincerely believe God when he tells us he will make everything work for our good and provide everything we truly need. But then something goes wrong, and we worry just like the people who don’t believe they have a great big God to take care of them.

This is why repentance, the transforming change of heart and mind over our ungodly way of thinking and acting, isn’t a one-time event from our conversion. It is a daily way of life for the child of God. I need God to change my heart every day.

Then we will know the comforts Paul describes here. “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ…” “You remember,” Paul is reminding us, “that when Jesus lived his perfect life of love, that was your perfect life of love. God gives you credit for his spotless record. When Jesus died on the cross, you died there with him. Justice was served on all your crimes and sins. When Jesus rose from the dead, you were raised with him. You have a glorious new life in God’s eyes, and someday you will leave your grave or tomb just like Jesus did.”

“But where? How?” we might ask. “You have been united with Christ,” is Paul’s reply. “All he is and all he did is yours.” That’s more than a cold, hard fact of history. If you listen, if you consider the things it changes for you and me, it is a word of supreme encouragement.

It also speaks volumes about the way Jesus feels about us: “…if any comfort from his love.” “No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus told the Twelve the night before he died. So that is what we have from Jesus. He laid down his life for us. You and I could not be loved more than the love we have from him. My wife gave up the life she loved as a stay-home mom and went back to work so that her children could get a Christian education in high school and not be saddled with debt in college. It is a sacrifice of love. But it is not greater than the love we have from Jesus.

I know a man who sold his Ferrari and his Rolex watch to help build a church. It was a great act of love for his Lord, but it was not greater than his Lord’s love for him. There is no more basic and dear message of the Christian faith than this: “Jesus loves you.” You know, the very first thing a faithful Muslim parent whispers in his child’s ear is “Allahu akbar,” “God is great.” But practically the first thing a Christian parent teaches his child to sing is “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Jesus loves me. Can you believe that, and not find some comfort from this love?

In order that we might realize these encouragements and comforts, God has given us his Holy Spirit. If we have “any fellowship with the Spirit,” if he is our friend, and teacher, and guide, then all of this becomes life-changing. Our own hearts turn toward Jesus’ own heart. More and more “tenderness and compassion” become features of our own lives.

“In view of Christ’s comforts,” these blessings of faith, Paul says, “Make my joy complete.” Let your life, transformed by this gospel, bring joy to others, too.

Romans 9:10-12 Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad–in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls–she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’”

Isaac and his wife Rebekah had a set of twins, Esau and Jacob. Scientists often find studies of twins useful because they are so much the same. They are useful for Paul here because there is nothing to distinguish Esau and Jacob, humanly speaking. Obviously they have the same parents. They come from the same family. They are born the same day. Even if you look at the lives of Jacob and Esau, you would have to say that neither one comes across as a particularly good man.

Then Paul backs up to a time before they are born. In the womb, neither one had the opportunity to establish a pattern of behavior. There is no performance on which to judge them. You can’t say, “This one is clearly better, kinder, or more godly.” And yet, before they are born, God makes a distinction between them. “The older will serve the younger.” The younger one enjoys God’s special favor. The younger one will serve God’s special purpose. The younger one receives God’s promise and will be God’s child.

This is the way God’s election works, the way he chooses people for himself: “…not by works but by him who calls…” The difference doesn’t lie in the works, the behavior, the performance of one person over another. All human beings look alike to God on that score. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

The distinction lies somewhere in God himself. He chooses and calls people just because he decides to do so. And at this point he doesn’t lay all his cards on the table. He doesn’t tip his hand and let us see the cards he is playing. “This is just my business, why I call the ones I do,” he is saying to us. “You have to trust me on this.” But it is not because he saw something different or better in us.

If you find this a little troubling, you are not alone. Even Paul felt the tension: “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion’” (Romans 9:14-15). It is a little hard to argue with the Almighty when he chooses to do something. He is the only being in the universe who is absolutely independent, and absolutely free to do as he chooses.

But Paul also wants us to know that it is not an issue of God being less than just. It is an issue of him being more than just. If God were merely just, then everyone would pay for their own sins and no one would get to be one of his children.

But God is more than just. He is also merciful. And his mercy makes all the difference. “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Romans 9:16). In his mercy, God promised to save people. In his mercy he sent his Son and died for the sins of the whole world. In his mercy he has given us his promises, and sends people to preach them to us. In his mercy his promises work the faith that makes us the children of God.

Thank God for the mercy he has shown to you and me!

Romans 9:8-9 “It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’”

We become God’s children by the power of God’s promise. This is how it was in Abraham’s own family. You may know that Abraham and Sarah had difficulty having children, but Abraham had a number of sons. Without any miraculous help, Abraham fathered a son Ishmael with the family servant Hagar. Ishmael was a “natural son.” But he and his descendants were not children of God.

After Abraham’s wife Sarah died, he married another woman, Keturah. Together they had six sons. We don’t know much about the men themselves, but later on their descendants, too, were not genuine children of God.

Abraham and Sarah had one son, Isaac. Isaac’s very existence was owed to the power of God’s promise. Isaac was a “miracle baby,” because Sarah was naturally unable to conceive. At the time she became pregnant with Isaac she was well past menopause. It was only the power of God’s word, God’s promise, that enabled Sarah to conceive. Isaac came from God’s promise as much as he came from his physical parents.

Paul is using this story as an illustration and example of what makes a person a true child of God. There is a miracle of God’s promise involved. God’s promises create another miracle birth. They give birth to faith, a living trust and hope in God. That is what made Abraham different.

Five chapters earlier Paul quoted this description of Abraham from Genesis 15, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” This is what made Abraham a forgiven child of God. It works the same for us. In his first letter the Apostle Peter tells us, “You have been born again… through the living and enduring word of God.”

God comes to us with a promise: “Your sins are all forgiven for the sake of Jesus’ death on the cross.” And faith stirs inside us. Like Abraham, we believe the God who forgives our sins and credits us sinners as righteous people. Like Abraham, we are God’s children because we are children of the promise.

Romans 9:8 “It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”

One day a man came up to Jesus and asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” As he did so often, Jesus didn’t answer the man’s question directly. He answered as if to say, “That’s an interesting question. But here’s the question you really should have asked…”

The relative number of people who are going to be saved is something of an abstract, theoretical question. It’s more of a theological football to toss around than a truth you desperately need to know. It’s poking your nose into God’s business.

So Jesus personalized his answer and answered the man this way: “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” “Before you are concerned about the percentages,” Jesus is telling the man, “You should be concerned about yourself. Will YOU be saved? Make every effort to enter through the narrow door…” And then, without going into detail about the ratio of lost to saved, Jesus does tell him that the number of people who don’t make it will be a large one.

God is not obligated to answer every question we might have about why some are saved and some are lost. Attempts to figure this out often lead to even bigger problems for our faith. But in Romans 9, the Apostle Paul’s words about the Jewish people reveal that ethnic heritage and personal pedigree are not contributing factors on either side.

Pedigree, family heritage, racial descent was a very important concern to the Jews. They took pride in being Abraham’s “natural children.” The “natural children” are literally “the children of the flesh,” physical, biological descendants of Abraham.

This direct family connection did not mean a free pass to heaven. Some of the rabbis of Jesus day had the idea that if you were born a Jew, then you had won the spiritual lottery. They wrote things like, “The worst Israelite is not profane like the heathen,” and “No Israelite can go into hell.”

You may remember a little exchange between Jesus and his fellow countrymen in John’s gospel: Jesus offers that his teachings will set these people free. He has in mind setting them free from their sins. But they shot right back, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.” “We don’t need you,” they were saying. “We have the right pedigree.”

To the best of my knowledge, I have no Jewish pedigree in me. My family tree is northern European. Chances are, you don’t trace your ancestry to Abraham, either. But this idea of special pedigree, being God’s child because you have the right background, still spooks around with Christians. Years ago I met a neighbor whose yard backed up to my church. After a little conversation I learned that he was not attending any church. I hinted that he might try ours. “No thanks,” he said. “My grandfather was a missionary to the Congo, and my father was a pastor, so I think I’m good.” As if his family’s Christian activity somehow counted for him.

We are citizens of a nation that seems to have played an exceptional role in world history. In the past we have often been described as a “Christian nation.” It is true that most of America’s founding fathers were Christian men. But American citizenship and being a true child of God are not remotely related things.

Our ethnicity, our nationality, won’t count against us at heaven’s door. Jesus came to save the world, all of it. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” (John 3:16). There is nothing wrong with appreciating your family’s ethnic heritage, whatever it might be. But don’t think that pedigree provides any advantage for winning God’s favor.