Easter Sunday: Old Testament, Isaiah 25:6-9                                   

Isaiah 25:6-9

Death is an enemy. For all mankind. But for the Christian, who knows from whence death comes that understanding should be driven home each time the Law of God is preached. For it is our rebellion and sin against the Holy Law of God that brings death to our world as a plague unhindered. We can chuckle as we mock “death and taxes,” but death is no joke.

Death is also a weapon. In the hands of the One who created us, and who by the way, did not design death, it is powerful. The only true and living God, the Savior of all mankind takes into His almighty grasp that which plagues His creation and He destroys it forever. By His own death. Yes, you read that correctly. God dies. Here’s how: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

That’s big stuff. That’s good news, or as we say it, the gospel. In one masterful step, the Savior comes and destroys, by His voluntary death, the one who held the reins of death and the fear of its conquest. Death, the devil and fear all banished in the triumph the devil never saw coming. And to a world that knows not the reason for death, nor deliverance from it, we are tasked with proclaiming and displaying what a people freed from death should live like.

This Easter, this Resurrection Sunday, remember that with the Alleluias, the hymns and the greetings of “He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed,” remember that we have been gifted by a plague removed. Remember too, that your neighbor needs to hear it, to see it, and God grant it, to embrace it. Alive from the dead the Savior is. In Him, we are as well.

Live, Christian. LIVE!