The following is a part of our weekly devotional series, which is a companion to the 2013 Foursquare Life Journal. This week’s Bible reading comes from 2 Kings 17-19; 2 Chron. 28-32; Ps. 46; Isa. 22-35; Heb. 12-13; and James 1-5.
During a recent dinner party at the home of one of my professors, I sat back and observed the many different nations represented at the table. We reclined while eating tabbouleh, hummus, kabobs, rice and tzatziki sauce. Men and women from Kenya, Nigeria, Greece, Korea, China, France, India, Brazil and the United States all discussed the wonder and majesty of God. While at times there were some humorous misunderstandings due to the thick accents and differing contexts of life, I marveled at how people from such diverse places could all be enjoying themselves so immensely.
Isaiah painted the same type of scene on a much richer and grander scale: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Isa. 25:6 ESV).
Can you see the nations gathered on the mountain of God, feasting on the richest of food and best drink? This isn’t just a family feast of a few people from similar cultures and colors coming together. Rather, it is an expression of all peoples—differing in cultures, colors, ethnicities and economics—all of them coming to worship the one true God. This is the heart of God as revealed to the prophet Isaiah.
I was reminded that night as people shared their stories of God, ministry and family that while so different, we are all still very much the same. We all were eating and drinking; we all would be headed to sleep at some point; we all missed our families. The list could go on, but the point is this: We were and are human. We share in the same emotions, the same struggles, the same results; we either come to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus or we suffer eternal death apart from Him.
The text goes on to say, “And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears form all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, the Lord has spoken” (vv. 7-8).
The results of Jesus triumphing over death are the same for us all! Death has been swallowed up for my brothers in Greece, India, Nigeria and China, as well as my sisters in Kenya, France, Korea, India and Singapore. Our God’s mission was to engage the whole world!
As you go about your day, and you see people from around the world, you may think, what could we have in common? How could I engage them with the gospel message? I encourage you that maybe you aren’t so different from one another. As you experience life together, in your humanness perhaps you can see the glory of God being expressed through something as simple as eating and drinking together.
By: Jason Doescher, senior pastor of Living Hope (Hanover Foursquare Church) in Hanover, Mass.
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