Isaiah 52:7 “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."
Proclaiming the kingdom of God is as easy as saying your God reigns.
The reign of God, the government of God, and the kingdom of God are all the
same thing. To say it in today’s language you could simply say “God rules.” The
above passage is descriptive first and foremost of Jesus and his mission. He
came to bring the good news of the kingdom. That is the message, your God
reigns. One could not say God reigns without meaning that the kingdom of God is
a now thing. It is a present reality.
I have already stated that the decrees of Isaiah chapters forty through
sixty-six are promises written to the New Covenant People. That is the reality
of who we are. We are new covenant people, completely under the new covenant.
The covenant is made by God’s declaration. It is entered into by apprehension
on our part. Not apprehension as in anxiety but apprehension in relationship to
apprehending or arresting.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the book. Let’s take a look at
Genesis. Gen 1:27 & 31
“So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created
them. ….. (31) And God saw everything that he had made,
and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning,
the sixth day.” There you have God’s
point of view, man was created good in God’s image. In the reign of God, God’s
view is the correct one. With the knowledge of good and evil, man doubted God’s
original decree, and wondered if humanity was bad and not good. In the long
run, humanity concluded that they were essentially bad. Christ came to this
earth believing God’s original decree that he was good. He was willing to die
to prove it, knowing that God would raise him from the dead. This was proof of
our eternal nature. Because of Jesus, we can believe that we are eternal, and
loved by God, and that God thinks we are very good. That is in a nutshell the
gospel… that is the good news of the reign of God. Believing that specific
gospel message restores us to the original state. That is what redemption is.
It is truly good
news to find out that our God, your God, everyone’s God (I say that because
there is really only one true God) reigns. God reigns and therefore despots do
not. However, the reign of God is spiritual. It only moves into the natural
realm when we subject ourselves to his reign. The first step in this subjection
is to apprehend the gospel and the kingdom. We must, as I have said over and
over again, latch on to, hold on to, firmly grip this truth. We apprehend it
and do not allow it to go.
So then, the
beautiful feet on the mountain top are the feet of Christ Jesus. But, when we
are united to him by apprehending faith, and we begin to proclaim the love of
God, and the message that our God reigns in love, we begin to have the
beautiful feet ourselves. No matter what may come, our God reigns eternally. No
matter what may come we are eternally connected to our reigning God. We can
rest in the fact. If God merely reigns for this earthly life what good is that?
It is THE eternal reign that makes us bullet proof.
Now then, eternal
awareness should not cause us to cop out from achieving all that God wants for
us here. It should free us up to grab for the brass ring. It should free us to
reach for our highest achievements; all the while proclaiming our God reigns!
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