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A couple weekends ago my wife and I were travelling home with our 4 boys from a soccer tournament. After a full weekend of games the aroma in the van was more than a little pungent….but every once in a while the smell would get incredibly bad. I couldn’t figure it out until I felt one of my boys feet touch the side of my head. His damp smelly socked foot was inches from my face. It was terrible.
Most people when they think of feet, think of misshapen toes, bad toenails and a terrible aroma. Feet are simply not beautiful.
But here were two Biblical Writers that wrote about Beautiful feet. How is this possible?
I remarked in our last AOH that in the past God Spoke through the prophets; and the first of these authors was one of those. His name was Isaiah. In Isaiah 52:7 He says “How beautiful on the Mountains are the feet of those who bring Good News, who proclaim peace, who bring good tiding, who proclaim salvation…”
You see…The Jewish people had spent close to 70 years exiled from their homeland. They were aliens in a land not their own and they longed to go home. So, when Isaih gives the picture of a person who comes bounding over the mountains (which separated them from their homeland) yelling at the top of their lungs that ”the war was over, there was peace, they could finally go home.!” That was GOOD NEWS. The feet of that messenger were beautiful because of the news that they carried.
Centuries later. After a long period where God seemed to be silent and distant, as the Jewish people once again found themselves oppressed, constantly threatened, heavily taxed, in a famine of leadership and feeling aimless and hopeless, new messengers show up on the scene. They will come not bounding over the mountains but right out of heaven itself.
An angel appears to a group of Jewish shepherds out in the country… and said, “Don’t be afraid, I bring you GOOD NEWS, of great joy which will be for all people, today in the city of David a Savior has been born.”
Throughout the Christmas story God choses to use angels to announce and direct the events that are taking place. Hebrews 1:14 tells us that “Angels are ministering Spirits SENT by God to those who would inherit Salvation.” These are beautiful feet because of the message that they carry. They announce the coming of Jesus the long awaited Savior.
But don’t miss this, This is the Key…These messengers are SENT…They themselves are not the source. God is SENDING…Salvation, victory and Peace come from God because he SENT His Son.
Decades later, Paul would speak again of these “beautiful feet” to Roman people. He starts off by sying there is no difference between Jews and non-Jews…”Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord wil be saved.” BUT, Paul asks, HOW will they know unless they hear? And how will they hear unless someone tells them? And how will someone tell them unless someone sends …but HOW Beautiful are the feet of those who bring GOOD NEWS. You see, God has SENT people to tell you the Good News and if you’re hearing it this news is for you.
You may not be Jewish, but we do feel bound up and enslaved or trapped maybe in an addiction or a bad relationship, we feel scared, we wrestle with guilt and shame we sometimes feel distant from God and others and we feel aimless and lost. God sent Jesus to set us free, to bring us into relationship with God and to forgive sin. He rose again to give you hope. If you’re thinking maybe for you but you don’t know what I’m going through…let me give you the words of one of those angel messengers “Nothing is impossible with God.”
“How Beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation and who say, ‘Our God Reigns!’.”
-Sean Brandow