The shroud of death--ripped away!

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. 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. The LORD has spoken. 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 and be glad in his salvation" (Isaiah 25:6-9).

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

There’s no doubt about it—Easter is the best holiday in the Church Year. Easter is what the other 364 days are all about. Everything that God has done for us—creating the world, giving each of us life, even coming to live among us at Christmas—all of this is pointless without the rescue from sin, death, and hell that is our gift because of Easter.

Isaiah committed his prophecies to paper hundreds of years before the first Easter, but because of the grace of God, he was given a clear look at the wonder that was to come. In just a few stanzas of poetry, Isaiah beautifully sums up what Easter is all about.

The mountain of the Lord Almighty is Mount Zion, the mountain where Jerusalem and the Temple of God were built. It was on this mountain that God destroyed the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. That shroud is a funeral shroud, the shroud of death. And God destroyed that shroud through the giving of His only Son, Jesus Christ, who died to make sure that sheet was torn from us forever.

Sin prevents us from seeing God. Sin is like a sheet that we pull over our heads. Have you ever looked through a sheet? You can still see, but only very poorly. The sheet prevents you from making out much in the way of important details. That is what sin does to our ability to see spiritual things. We know that there is such a thing as right and wrong, but we are often unsure of which is which. Is it okay to steal a loaf of bread if it is to be used to feed a starving child? Is it okay to get an abortion if the child will be born with significant health problems? Because of the sheet of sin that obscures our vision, it can be very hard to see what is right and what is wrong, with the result that we fill our lives with bad decisions, decisions that anger God.

Because sin causes us to anger God, it becomes our funeral shroud. God is holy, and He expects us to lead holy, blameless lives. God reveals His expectations in the Bible, and He tells us to live our lives according to it. But because of the sheet of sin that covers us all, we cannot read and understand God’s word perfectly, and we end up living disobedient lives because we either misunderstand His will, or we just give up trying to see what God expects of us. Because of sin blinding us, we end up acting against God, and God has said that no rebellious sinner can have a place in the kingdom of heaven. The sheet of sin thus becomes a funeral shroud for us, because the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

But our God is a compassionate God. He created us because He loves us and wants us to live with Him forever. So God determined to remove the shroud of sin so that we can see Him clearly and stop angering Him; He did this by sending His holy Son Jesus to take away the shroud of sin.

Jesus tore away the shroud of death by dying in our place. Jesus took the sheet of our sin and wrapped Himself in it; Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 5:21, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. God punishes sin by sentencing sinners to the tortures of hell; with our sins covering Him like a shroud, Jesus suffered our hell on the cross. Because Jesus was punished for our sins, we are freed from punishment; Jesus has served our sentence, and God the heavenly Judge allows us to walk free from an eternity of punishment in hell. Because of Jesus, we are spared from a death that that lasts forever.

Jesus has ended for us the curse of eternal death in hell, but what about the inevitable physical death of our bodies? When Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, He proved that death is not the end of life and love; rather, for we who trust in Him, death has been transformed into a doorway that leads from this shadowed valley of sorrows into the plains of everlasting life, which are bathed in the warmth of God’s ceaseless love. By rising from the dead, Jesus proved that all our sins have been forgiven—there is no anger left in God for those who repent and put their trust in Him. And by rising from the dead, Jesus proved that He has the power to restored the dead to life—which means that all who trust in Him can be absolutely sure that physical death is not the end of life, but only the beginning of life the way God intended it to be—free of selfishness, free of hatred, free of betrayal, free of fear, free of isolation and loneliness, free of need and want. Life beyond the grave will be lived forever with God, and we cannot imagine how wonderful it will be. All we can know for sure is that Jesus said, Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be (John 12:26).

Jesus has swallowed up death forever. True death is eternal separation from God, eternal separation from love and belonging and being cared for. Jesus has taken away the funeral shroud of our sins; Jesus has made death nothing to be feared. Death no longer lasts forever—it is but the briefest moment, when we leave this tortured life and step into the presence of our Savior in heaven. And because Jesus has ended the fearful threat of eternal separation from God and life and love, our tears can be wiped away. When we attend a funeral, we don’t cry as if we will never see our dear one again, because we know that he or she has only gone on ahead, and in a short time we will catch up to them. Jesus dries our tears that are shed over death by comforting us with the hope that a funeral is not "goodbye", but "see you soon, in a far better place."

We as God’s people have been a disgrace. He created us to do good works, acts of worship and praise to God, and acts of love and care for each other. Because of our sin-filled lives, we have dishonored the God who made us. But God removed the disgrace of His people when Jesus died as the atoning sacrifice for our sins; when we look on our sins with disgust and ask in faith that Jesus have mercy on us, God credits us with Jesus’ righteousness; He looks at us as if we had never sinned. Paul writes in Romans chapter 4, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness...The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice of love for us, God considers us righteous; Psalm 103 says, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. And because God, for Jesus’ sake, regards us as pure, we are no longer a disgrace to Him—through God’s mercy, we are the kind of children that He created us to be, children of God. Through His death and resurrection on Mount Zion, Jesus has removed the disgrace of sin from His people.

This Good News cannot help but transform our lives. When we know that Jesus suffered hell on the cross for us, our hearts are warmed with thankfulness for such a tremendous gift. And as thankful love of Jesus is kindled in our hearts, we become horrified with our own corrupt behavior, and ask Jesus’ help in resisting the temptation to add to the list of our sins. As forgiveness becomes a daily part of our lives, we are moved to forgive others when they wrong us, instead of holding a grudge; and when we do wrong, we learn to swallow our pride and ask for forgiveness from those whom we have hurt. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus, we see the need to spend more time with Him in worship and study and prayer; with the sheet of sin torn away, we want to seize every opportunity to see our Lord clearly. With the fear of eternal death removed, we do not worry so much about how much fun we can squeeze out of life before we die, but instead we consider how to enjoy the quality of life that God gives His children, and how we can share that quality of life with others. When those whom we love approach the time to leave this life, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves because of the loss we will soon experience, we can instead offer words of forgiveness, words of comfort, words of love to help them through their fear and prepare them to meet their Savior. And when our own death looms near, we can have a peace in our final hours that calms our fears and gives hope to those who will survive us.

Truly, the great blessing of Easter redefines our lives. With all the good that comes to us because of Jesus’ saving work on our behalf, we cannot help but sing the praises of our loving God. And I can think of no better words of praise than those of Isaiah: "Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation."