Meditation on the Text of the Week

Feet Upon the Mountains

How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Isaiah 52: 7

In ancient cities watchmen were set upon the walls. Their role was to warn of impending danger and cry out to marshal the city to arms if threats emerged. If the rulers and the kings of the city were away at war, the watchmen would wait eagerly for some news of the outcome of battle. It was common during and after battles to despatch runners to return to the city with news.

This is the background setting for the images and metaphors used by the prophet in our text. The watchman sees the messenger running on the hills leading up to Zion. The runner cries out from afar that the Lord has been victorious in battle and that, therefore, the city would know peace and salvation and happiness. The watchman on the walls thinks that man running on the hills is one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen.

Paul picks this declaration up and applies it to those who go into the world preaching the Gospel. (Romans 10: 15). Their feet are lovely on the mountains. We learn from this that in the person of our Lord Jesus and in His passion and resurrection and ascension and investiture as the Lord over all things, God has won a great victory. It is a victory over sin, evil, the principalities and powers of the air, and the Devil himself. It resulted in the ruler of this world being cast out (John 12:31).

As a result, He sends His heralds into all the world announcing His victory, calling all men to come to lay down their arms and come to His side, that they might be forgiven and restored. This is good news indeed. It will mean peace and happiness for Zion, God's holy city and civilisation upon the earth.

We are privileged to live in an epoch of redemptive history where one of our most important and honoured responsibilities is to send forth such messengers and heralds to the uttermost parts of the earth, proclaiming the Lord's victory through Christ crucified, the release of captives, the healing of human kind, and a restoration of the holy and the beautiful. The more blighted and devastated the world appears, the more this duty should weigh upon us and the more zealous we are to become.

The driving motivation is not just compassion upon the needy—although that is an inextricable component. It is also a deep conviction that such evil and devastation is utterly inappropriate to the Age of our Lord. There is no good reason to accept such things, as if they were inevitabilities, any longer. A Gallic shrug in response to human suffering, degradation, enslavement, an insouciant c'est la vie, is no longer appropriate. No—it is more than inappropriate—it is unbelieving: it is to break faith with Christ, and His victory, and His investiture as Lord of all.

Some will protest that the announcement of such good news in the face of such human depravity and suffering would be little more than cruel mockery. But not so. For the Lord has promised to use the preaching of His Gospel of Messiah crucified for the salvation of men to be the very instrument to bring men into His life and peace. The evils of the Roman Empire were extreme and gross. It was broken down, not by the councils and stratagems of men, but through the peaching of the Gospel of our Lord.

As we contemplate a world where (we are told) one billion people are now malnourished and starving, “rogue” states plan for war, where there are rumours of pandemics, devastation, global warming and fears on every hand—let us be adamantly certain that these things ought not to be. Such things are not appropriate to the days of our Lord. But, let us be equally clear about our response. It is to send forth an army of preachers of the Gospel.

As the Word of the Lord says:

[the Lord] abounding in riches for all who call upon Him; for “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?
Romans 10: 12—15