Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
How appropriate is the title I’ve selected today, “Beautiful Feet”, since we are “Walking with Jesus”!? So, a simple question… Do you have ‘beautiful feet’? Of course, I’m not talking about toenail polish or manicured feet, am I? So, what does God mean in Isaiah 52:7 when He said through His prophet “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings…”?
Again, let me set the scene for you, my friends. Isaiah is likely writing this as an old man, perhaps in his 70’s or maybe even 80’s. His lifelong mission had been receiving messages from God and delivering them to the kings and people of Israel in Jerusalem. He both spoke and wrote his messages because these God given messages were both relevant to the time in which he spoke them and they were prophetic pointing forward into the future long after he and the people of his generation would be dead and gone!
This powerful chapter of Isaiah 52 begins with a message challenging the people to recognize they are in despair because of their own moral failure, their chosen path of turning away from God. Look at Is. 52:2,3 “Shake off your dust, rise up…free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.” At the time Isaiah wrote this the northern kingdom Israel had been in captivity to the Assyrians for at least 30 years, and the southern kingdom Judah, and its capital Jerusalem, would be captured and dragged into captivity about 100 years later by the Babylonians.
Isaiah continued his message: “For this is what the LORD says: ‘You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed.” It means God Himself gained nothing by allowing both Assyria and Babylon to invade, capture and take His people as slaves, but also God would not pay anything for their freedom. 150 years after Isaiah wrote this God moved in the heart of king Cyrus the Persian and he released all the Jewish captives without their paying a penny for their freedom! Both their captivity and their release were demonstrations of the power of God working in the hearts of foreign leaders and armies to accomplish God’s purposes, and it should cause the Jews and all peoples to stand in awe of the Sovereignty and Almighty power of God!
God predicted the future through His prophets to prove that God is Sovereign overall, and He can see the future as clearly as this moment. That should give us confidence and hope in this crazy election year in America, my friends! God said through Isaiah: “All day long My name is constantly blasphemed. Therefore, My people will know My name; therefore, in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I.” (Is. 52:5,6) In Isaiah’s day both in the nations around Israel and even in Jerusalem, God was being mocked and disregarded as irrelevant. But God was predicting a future time when the events would defy logic and prove God’s Sovereignty. What events? Specifically for these people, the edict of king Cyrus; the freedom of Jewish captives and the rebuilding of demolished Jerusalem and the Temple, which is recorded, as it happened, in Ezra 1-6.
When king Cyrus issued that edict, in 538bc, the news could hardly be believed which is why Isaiah predicted it with these words: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!” (Is. 52:7) Jerusalem is surrounded by hills and thus as the news reached the few people who remained in broken down Jerusalem, of king Cyrus’ release of the Jewish captives and their beginning their freedom trek from Babylon back to Jerusalem, it was news that seems beyond possible and clearly was proof of God’s Sovereign reign!
But Isaiah was also predicting several further future events including the day when angels would appear in the sky near Bethlehem proclaiming the birth of a Savior for both Jews and all Gentiles of the world! (Luke 2:9-14) And the unforgettable future event when Jesus came riding over the hills of the Mount of Olives toward Jerusalem and people proclaimed, “Hosanna to the Son of David Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD.” (Matt. 21:9)
But Isaiah was also talking about events which are yet future even for us who are alive in 2024! Yes, the eventual return of King Jesus to rapture and resurrect His people as recorded in 1 Thess. 4:13-18. And yet one more very significant future event when finally, King Jesus will return to reign here on earth in His millennial Kingdom! (Rev. 20:1-6) This is the power of prophetic Scripture my friends.
Isaiah 52:7 is of course a missionary declaration which has been prayed over many generations of missionaries as they have left their homeland to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the furthest corners of the world. It was prayed over my parents in the 1950’s and over my wife and me in the 1980’s and over our daughter and family in 2014 as three generations of my family have gone as Gospel proclaiming missionaries. But it’s not exclusively for full time foreign missionaries, is it?
It’s for EVERY person in the world who has been redeemed by the blood and power of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ as we live as “ambassadors” of Jesus where-ever we are living our lives every day, right? It’s what the Holy Spirit led Paul to write to the Christians in Corinth: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, the old is gone and the new has come and all this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ Jesus and gave us the ministry of reconciliation… we are therefore Christ’s Ambassadors, as though God is making His appeal [to the world] through us!” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20)
I think we need to pause right here and consider our feet! Consider WHERE our feet have taken us this past week or two. In each place, have we brought the LIGHT of God’s TRUTH? In each place have we brought the compassion of God, the love of God for a humanity in rebellion against God? In each place have we brought the HOPE found only in Jesus? Does Isaiah 52:7 describe you and me, my friends? And where will our feet take us this next week, and the following week, and for the rest of our lives?
Let’s give that some deep thought and talk with God about it. How often are our feet walking exactly in the path God has for us that day? Here’s a beautiful worship song with three young women calling us to consider our feet and the path they are walking…
Today’s Scripture: Is. 52:1-7.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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