Isaiah 25:8. He will swallow up death forever. He follows Hosea’s word (Hos. 13:14): “O Death, I will be your plagues. O Sheol, I will be your destruction.” For He says that He will soon extinguish death, but that he will always swallow it up little by little, just as our old man day by day ought to swallow up death through the Spirit. So also Christ destroys death. As a plague consumes the body little by little, so Christ is the pestilence of our death and of our old Adam.
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, that is, from all faces, miseries, disasters, griefs, and tears Christ frees us and consoles us in our spirit.
And the reproach of His people He will take away. Since the godly are nothing but the cast-offs and offscourings and the reproach of the whole world who are rejected by all, so that nothing remains for them but sufferings without and within inflicted by the devil, O that these consolations of Christ may by all means find a place in us, so that He can console us in our wretchedness and affliction and we may daily come to a better knowledge of Him. Our King, Christ, who has such an afflicted people, is such that He always comforts them.
- It will be said on that day: Lo, this is our God. This is the preaching concerning Christ, and he is describing the worship of the New Testament, because the prophets always distinguish between the worship of the New Testament and that of the Old Testament. The worship of the New Testament is to believe, to trust, to hope in God’s mercy. No one has this kind of faith and hope except those who have been thoroughly afflicted both inwardly and outwardly. The prophet says not only that He will save us, but he adds:
Let us be glad and rejoice, that is, let us give thanks to God in various forms of praise even in all afflictions, for if we have been set free from one evil, we arrive at another one. This is the exercise of the godly and the worship of the New Testament” (Luther’s Works, v. 16, p. 197-198).