He will swallow up death in victory;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces;
and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth:
for the Lord hath spoken it.
(Isaiah 25:8)
I love that image of death being swallowed up in victory. The only way that could be done was for Christ to lay down His life and take it up again.
However, that isn’t the end of what this verse says about resurrection. The second line about the Lord wiping tears from all faces, which we generally take to mean the ending of all kinds of sorrow, is meant to refer to the grief at someone’s death. The only way that can be wiped away is for all the dead to arise.
The third line about the rebuke of the Lord’s people being taken away from off all the earth is alsoabout resurrection. Think about the biggest way that the Lord’s people have been rebuked by the world. It’s by martyrdom, isn’t it? Killing the Saints and prophets has been the world’s way of saying, “Shut up forever, and leave us alone.” So when that rebuke is taken away, it means the Lord resurrects the righteous, and they can’t be gotten rid of any longer.
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