Isaiah 25:6-9: Negentropy Defines Our Eternal Life

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 his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.” - Isaiah 25:6-9

Benjamin Franklin once famously said, "In this world nothing is certain except death and taxes". We delay taxes until the last possible day, we avoid taxes with deductions and tax shelters, we want our taxes to go to things we are think are important. In a similar fashion, we try to stave off death or even the appearance of death. We avoid death. We want our death to mean something. Death's inevitability casts a long shadow, pronouncing a conclusion to every endeavor with finality.

In these verses, Isaiah paints a strange scene, saying "The Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples" who are all dead, covered with a shroud-"a cloth placed over or around a dead body". If someone were to do that we would call it morbid and wasteful and bizarre.

Unless it is God, who "will destroy the shroud...he will swallow up death forever." The inevitable is not so inevitable after all because God. And because "the Lord has spoken" we are confronted not with the grinding, wearing down entropy of death but with the wonder and gladness of life. We have grown up living in avoidance, when the removal of shroud allows living in the abundance from God. 

Negentropy is the opposite of entropy, it is the process of things because more ordered or organized. Science terms this as a temporary state that exists before entropy starts. God says that it is the permanent state of those who are his people. I want to see what that looks like.