Taste and See That the LORD is Good

Isaiah 25

The Feast of

Salvation

We all loved Chinese New Year celebrations. It is a celebration full of festive cheers, good food, and not forgetting, the many ang pow that come our way. It was even more wonderful that Chinese New Year last a whole good fifteen days. On the fifteenth day of Chinese New Year, technically the final day of the festival, is a day known as Chap Goh Meh. In the Hokkien dialect, Chap Goh Meh simply means "the 15th night of Chinese New Year".

Aside from being tagged as the last day, Chap Goh Mei is also known as the Chinese Valentine's Day. In the old days, this is the only day in the whole year that young maidens are allowed to stroll the streets. However, they must be accompanied by a chaperon. Knowing this, many young men would gather around with hope of catching glimpses of these lovely maidens. Who knows they would find their future spouses.

In Gospel of John Chapter 2, we are told that Jesus was attending a wedding feast, the event where man and woman are united before God. This is surely a grand event, grander than Chap Goh Meh. Guess what happened in the wedding feast?

Before the feast ended, the wine had run out too early. So the hosts were in danger of social humiliation. Jesus came in to rescue them. He turned several large containers of water into superb wine to keep the party going!

When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from. He called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

This master of the feast is very blur. He lost count of the usage of the wine, and he also did not realise that. But Jesus is the true ‘master of the feast’. He is the Lord of Feast. He came to bring festival joy, to rescue lives. The Bible says, Jesus has taken the penalty for our sin for us, in our place. Whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life. This salvation of Jesus is just a feast, and Jesus is calling us to “taste and see” that is good.

Feast is a very real thing! When we believe in and rest in Jesus’ salvation for us, it becomes real to our hearts. Jesus’ love is like honey, or like wine. Rather than only believing that he loves us, we can come to sense the reality, the beauty, and the power of his love.

If you are filled with shame and guilt, you can come to Jesus and sense, on the palate of the heart, the sweetness of his mercy. Then you will know you are accepted. If you are filled with worry and anxiety, you can come to Jesus and you will see, with eyes of the heart, his dazzling majesty.

The Bible also tells us that the ultimate purpose of Jesus is not only individual salvation and pardon for sins, but also the renewal of this world; the end of disease, poverty, injustice, violence, suffering and death.

God did not create a world with blindness, leprosy, hunger, and death in it. The climax of history is another feast where all these corruptions of God’s creation would be abolished. Jesus hates suffering, injustice, evil, and death so much, he came and experienced it to defeat it and, someday, to wipe the world clean of it.

Today, we can live a life based on Jesus salvation, and this life will bring us finally to the ultimate party and feast at the end of history. We can have a foretaste of that future salvation now in prayer, in service to others, in the changes in our inner nature though the gospel, and through the healed relationships that Christ can give us now.

Isaiah 25:6-8, describe this ultimate party and feast to come:

“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 this people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.”

So God is inviting everyone here to taste and see the salvation of Jesus. Jesus is able to give you forgiveness of sin; peace, joy and rest if you receive him as your saviour and Lord.