“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
– Isaiah 52:7
Think about this verse (Isaiah 52:7) and the imagery in it. The feet of those who bring good news. You think about people who brought you good news. You’re waiting to hear what happened in this or that circumstance. Somebody comes out and brings good news. I think about being in a hospital when my wife is having a baby and coming out in the waiting room and saying to family members and friends, “It’s a boy! Come and see this baby!”
There are people all around us who need good news, and we have peace to publish and salvation to make known.
This Verse Reminds Us to Publish Peace
Those are beautiful feet. People in the waiting room are waiting for that person to come out and bring that news. So then think about on a much grander level because this verse is talking about publishing peace, bringing good news of happiness, publishing salvation, like to sinners who are on a road that leads to an eternal hell somebody comes out and says there’s a way for you to go to heaven that you can be saved from all your sins. Forgiven of all your sins. You can have peace with God. You can happiness for all of eternity. And you can be saved from your sins.
Isaiah 52:7 Bringing Salvation to the Lost
That is great news and those who bring it have beautiful feet.
So now apply that picture to your life today, my life today. There are people all around us today in need of that good news. They’re dead in sin right now, on a road that leads to an eternal hell, and you and I have peace to publish. We have happiness to bring. We have salvation make known. So may God give us feet that go and make this good news known. Whether it’s in a conversation with a coworker in the office beside us, the neighbor who lives next to us or maybe it’s people in the other side of the world that God may call you, either short term or longer term to go and make this good news known to.
There are so many people in the world right now, about two billion of them, who’ve never even heard the good news of what God has done in Jesus. It’s not that they’ve heard the good news and rejected it, it’s that they’ve never even heard it. So may God raise up some who are listening to this right now to go either on a short term trip or long term where their life to make this good news known to people who’ve never heard it. Oh God, help us, help us we pray.
Prayer for God to Help Us Bring the Gospel to the World
Help us to publish peace, to bring news of happiness to those who need to hear. Help us to publish salvation today. And help us to make salvation known today with joy. Oh God, I think about walking into that waiting room with that kind of news. I wasn’t dreading that. I couldn’t wait to get into that waiting room. God, give us that kind of perspective on conversations about the gospel to people who are lost around us. God, help us to look forward to it. Help us to anticipate it. Help us to make the most of every opportunity we have today to share good news with people arounds us and God, we do pray that you would call us as you will. Call men and women out. Individuals, couples, families, call us out to make this good news known to people who have never heard it.
God, we pray for people who’ve never heard it, that they would hear good news from the people whose feet are crossing those mountains to bring the good news to them. Please, oh God, bring salvation, happiness, and peace through more and more and more of your people taking the good news to those who’ve never heard it. Oh God, may it be so today and every single day to come. God, use us to publish peace to bring good news of happiness and to publish your salvation to people around us as you say it is good to do in Isaiah 52:7. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
