The Swallowing of Death. Worship: October 11, 2026

What is more difficult to believe: a fable about a man defeating a deadly dragon by eating it or a prophet’s prediction that the Creator God would defeat death itself by swallowing it? What does Isaiah, the prophet, mean by saying God “will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8)? Does God eat?

The mighty, eternal, creator God is life Himself and has no need for sustenance. In order to “swallow death,” God took on our human form. We die because of the corruption of sin. To “swallow death,” the incarnate Savior “ate,” or consumed, death by taking the sin of the world onto Himself on the cross of Calvary. Jesus did not die for Himself. Jesus died your death for your sin. So it is that when a sinner is baptized into Christ Jesus, he or she is “baptized into His death” (Romans 6:3). Thereby, “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

Even with saving faith in Christ, we still have Christian funerals. But by faith we wait, hope, and fully expect to be raised in the resurrection to eternal life, to be present at the great feast of salvation. In Christ, the enemy, death itself, has been transformed for us by God now to be but His divine remedy, freeing us from sin and eternal death. Therefore, by faith in Christ we no longer need to fear death but rather can see it as a peaceful sleep from which we are promised to be awakened to eternal life and the wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom.