8-02-2026

“NOTHING LIKE IT!”

Text: Isaiah 55:1-5 – Pentecost 10

Sunday August 2, 2026

Trinity – Creston

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

       Our text for this Tenth Sunday after Pentecost is the OT Lesson from Isaiah 55 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray:  Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that all of our imaginations about our heavenly home will never come close to the beauty, joy, and peace that we will eventually experience.  Until then, we remain the word and sacraments that you give us to remain ready. Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

We Christians all know that heaven will be wonderful, right! Beautiful! Glorious! The place we all want to be forever! Nuthin’ like it!

Yes, it will be that wonderful! But in Holy Scripture, God does tell us of several things that will be like it. A mansion with many rooms. A city of gold. A place without tears or death, shining in glorious light.

And often in Scripture, including in our text today, a great feast. All hints of what heaven will be like. Best part of all of them, though, is being with Christ Jesus. Today, let’s look at the picture the prophet Isaiah gives us. He tells us that

Being with Jesus Will Be like a Great Feast—
and Nuthin’ like It!

I.   Being with Jesus will be like Food Court at the Iowa State fair—except it’ll be nuthin’ like it.

A. Our text has the sound of Food Stands—energetic vendors inviting us to choose their fare! “Come, every­one!” (v 1). Come, one! Come, all!

1. “Get your fresh-squeezed lemonade here!” Get your apple slush!  Get you pork chop on a stick!

2. God’s invitation through Isaiah is real! He’s calling out! It’s energetic! It’s for all!

3. God deeply desires that all “peoples,” nations we know or don’t know, would enjoy the feast he’s offering (vv 4–5).

B. Except what Christ is offering when we’re with him is nothing like fair food.

1. I love fair food: funnel cakes, giant turkey legs, cheesr curds, fried “whatever on a stick”. But a lot of it is junk food.

2. Isaiah says we “labor” for junk food, what “does not satisfy” (v 2b). (Give examples of how hard we work at things like devotion to our hobbies, getting to the lake place each week, earning the next promotion.)

3. God’s food, on the other hand, is the best! It’s a banquet—“a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine” (25:6).

4. Jesus: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (Jn 6:35). Being with Jesus is having the best. It satisfies long after the sugar buzz of a deep-fried Snickers—or sports or the lake or the job—has dumped us. Nothing like it!

II. Okay, then, picture being with Jesus as the finest banquet food—except it’ll be nothing like it.

A. So then it’s filet mignon and fine wine.

1. $26 a pound, $60 a bottle. Love it. Can’t afford it.

2. We spend so much for what is not food (v 2). ( our “investments” in wardrobe, staying young, the hottest new toy, and such.)

B. Christ gives us banquet food, except it’s nothing like cuisine prices (v 1).

1. We have “no money.” We can’t offer God anything for the privilege of being with Christ. Our sins (including chasing after those “junk foods”) can only buy us hell.

2. But the best and finest is free to us. We will be with Christ for eternal life in heaven!

3. That’s because the one Isaiah names “David”—in fact, David’s Greater Son, Jesus himself—has paid the price for “our filet mignon” (v 3). He paid it on the cross!

4. What a feast! It’s freely given and freely received.

III. Okay, then, there’ll be nuthing like it—except there is.

A. Heaven will be wonderful, delicious, and free, but in the meantime, life in this world is nothin’ like it.

1. The table is pretty bare. Seems like just some picked-over bones and scraps.

2. We suffer disappointments when our leisure, job, junk food run out on us. We can’t buy youth forever; we get tired, sick. We lose loved ones. One of these days, we’re going to die.

3. This life is nothing like heaven.

B. Except already here and now we do enjoy the heavenly banquet with Jesus.

1. Being with Jesus isn’t just heaven. Our text certainly includes heaven, but it’s not about heaven first and foremost.

2. The banquet is being in the presence of our Lord, even dining with him. And we’re with him, he’s with us, now.

3. Jesus’ resurrection was so that he could be with us now, every minute. And he is—right now—in this very Word we’re preaching. Christ’s rich food is received through our ears.

4. Above all, he’s with us, we’re dining with him, when we come to his banquet table at this altar. Here we have forgiveness—the assurance that our sins can’t keep us out of heaven.

 But here also is the assurance that he’s with us when our table on earth looks pretty bare.

Conclusion: That’s like heaven, best part: being with Jesus. That’s now and at the heavenly table. Nuthin’ like it!

“Come,” the Lord is inviting us to a feast (Is 55:1)! And here are more details—even a closer look. Read Isaiah 25:6–9. Oh, what a glorious feast!

Can you imagine being there? What would be on your plate? Can you see your loved ones at that feast with you? What’s on their plates?

Look down the table to where the Lord himself is sitting. Look at what’s in front of him. He has a plate too, but it’s covered. It’s not covered with a fancy silver lid. No, it’s covered by a sheet, a funeral pall.

When you lift that veil, you can see what’s on Jesus’ plate. It’s death on his plate! We have the finest of fare and the richest of cuisine, and he has death on his plate.

Could you imagine choking that down? In the ancient Near East, they imagined the false deity of death as a big mouth. Death was voracious, and it was never satisfied.

They called this false god “Mot.” So picture this: We’re eating the finest feast, and Christ is eating the eater! He does this so that it can never get at us again.

Paul is right in 1 Corinthians 15:54–57: “ ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Amen.

Now may the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior...Amen.