How Beautiful on the Mountains are the Feet of those who Bring Good News
Part 1
13th December 2019
Isaiah 52:7-12
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!"
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy.
When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.
Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has
comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all
the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.
Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing! Come out from it
and be pure, you who carry the vessels of the Lord.
But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the Lord will go before
you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
This prophecy has been fulfilled, and continues to be fulfilled, many times. It was given within twenty years or so of 700 BC, and it was first fulfilled in 538 or 539 BC at the end of the period we call the Exile.
70 years before, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had come to Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, laid waste to the city, and deported the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people a thousand miles eastwards, to the place we now call Iraq, but which was then called Babylon. And for those 70 years Jerusalem lay desolate. Hardly anybody lived there, and those who did eked out a meagre living amongst the rubble.
But around 160 years before, the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed that this period of suffering would come to an end, and Jerusalem would be restored. Now was the time for that prophecy to be fulfilled.
The picture in this passage, which says "how lovely on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news", was first fulfilled by runners coming from the east to Jerusalem to say that the people were coming home! King Cyrus of Persia had set the people free. They were marching across the desert from Babylon back to Jerusalem to rebuild the holy city.
What a moment for the remnant that had been left behind in the city for seventy years! Once again in the streets of Jerusalem there would be singing and dancing and joy. They would repair the ruins, rebuild God's holy temple, and begin their way of life in their own land properly once again. How wonderful for those who had been living as refugees in their own country to see the mass of their countrymen and women coming home to rebuild the holy city. It's hard to imagine how much joy there was when the first herald came over the hills and proclaimed, "The people are coming home!"
But there's even more than that here. Isaiah's prophecy contains these words:
Isaiah 52:8b
When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.
God was coming back to Jerusalem as well!
Ezekiel chapter 10 and 11 tells us that, when the exile began, God Himself left the temple and moved eastwards into the mountains. And Isaiah is prophesying that not only will the people will come back to Jerusalem, but God will return to his temple!
AS we've said, this was prophesied about 160 years before it happened. God truly is in control. We would understand if the people left behind in Jerusalem had thought that God has completely abandoned them, that everything had gone wrong, and they had no future, that their way of life had ended forever. But God was working His purpose out. God's plans will come to pass, and God will not abandon His people for ever.
God was doing a work in the Israelite people during the exile. In particular, they were exiled because of the sin of idolatry, of worshipping other gods. But when they came back from exile, they never committed any significant gross idolatry again. It had been a horrible 70, but it had done its job, and God's holy people more or less had repented of the sin of idolatry, so they were now ready to build again.
And there's a lesson for us here, isn't there? We don't commit gross idolatry, we don't worship bits of wood and stone and metal, but we can worship careers and bank accounts and families and ambitions and possessions. Some of us can worship our homes - spending more time polishing the furniture than worshipping Jesus. We can worship all sorts of stuff. And sometimes, when we treat other things, or other people, as if they were more important that God, we can lose that sense of the presence of God, and the peace of God.
In the parable of the sower, the seed that fell among weeds represents somebody who received the word of God, but life's worries, riches and pleasures choke the seed, prevent it growing to maturity, and make it unfruitful (Luke 8v14). And every one of us is susceptible to these things. Every one of us can commit the comparatively minor idolatry of things I like, things I care about, things I want to do, people I care about more than God, and we can lose that sense of the presence and holiness of God, and we can lose the peace of God, because we've taken our eyes off Him and we're focussed on something else.
God may put us through a period of time when we just can't sense His presence. And one day we might think to ourselves, "I don't feel as close to God as I used to. I wonder why that is". And if we have open hearts, perhaps we'll hear the Holy Spirit saying, "It's because you're not putting God first any more". You have to come back to putting God first if you want to know if His peace, His joy and His power in your life.
Being a Christian is a sacrificial way of life. It's a gazillion times better than not being a Christian, but it still involves sacrifice, including the sacrifice of always putting God first.
We'll look at some of the other fulfilments of this prophecy next time.