HERALD OF GLAD TIDINGS

In these chapters of Isaiah we need to listen carefully to the different voices which are heard. In chapter 50 the call goes out to the nation, ‘Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant?’, v. 10. To those who would respond to that challenge, he again calls, in chapter 51 verses 1, 4 and 7, ‘Hearken unto me’. There then follows a threefold double call ‘Awake, awake’. The first is a cry to the Lord from the righteous ones of the nation desiring deliverance from their oppressors, v. 9. Then, in verse 17, and again in chapter 52 verse 1, the Lord takes up the call to ‘Jerusalem, the holy city’, to ‘awake’ in anticipation of promised blessings. A lovely picture is seen in verse 7, foreshadowing a coming Millennial day, when the cry will be heard in Zion, ‘Thy God reigneth’.

The primary application of these opening verses of chapter 52 may look forward to the return from Babylon after the captivity. However, the apostle Paul makes use of verse 7 in Romans 10 verse 15, to illustrate the propagation of the ‘gospel of peace’, the ‘glad tidings of good things’. We can no doubt apply these words also to the One at whose birth angels proclaimed ‘on earth peace’. No feet more beautiful than His have ever trodden earth’s mountains and pathways. The great forerunner, John the Baptist, himself a messenger of ‘good tidings’, considered himself unworthy to stoop down and remove the shoes from those feet. The lame, the blind, the maimed and many others found healing and relief at His feet. In wondrous grace, His steps would take Him to Sychar’s well, to Gadara’s tombs and Beth- esda’s porches to meet the need of the despised, the outcast and the friendless.

It was Mary of Bethany who perhaps had the deepest appreciation of the One who brought ‘glad tidings’. She sat at His feet to learn, Luke 10. 39. She fell at His feet in her time of grief, John 11. 32, and she anointed His feet as an act of worship, John 12. 3.

Others saw no beauty in those feet. Jewish leaders, with envious hearts, pursued His steps to Calvary, and Roman soldiers with callous indifference nailed His feet to the cross.