This warning comes from the prophecy of Isaiah, the 52nd chapter. Begin our reading at the first verse. Isaiah 52, starting at verse 1. Awake! Awake! Put on your strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments. O Jerusalem, the holy city, For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. Shake yourself from the dust. Arise. Sit down, O Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus says the Lord, you have sold yourselves for nothing. And you shall be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord God, my people went down at first into Egypt to dwell there. Then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now, therefore, what have I here, says the Lord, that my people are taken away for nothing. Those who rule over them make them whale, says the Lord, and my name is blasphemed continually every day. Therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, they shall know in that day that I am he who speaks. Behold, it is I. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns. Your watchmen shall lift up their voices With their voices they shall sing together. For they shall see eye to eye when the Lord brings back Zion. Break forth into joy. Sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted His people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Depart. Depart. Go out from there. Touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her. Be clean, ye who bear the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight. For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. Behold, My servant shall deal prudently He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at him. For what had not been told them, they shall hear. And what they had not heard, they shall consider thus far the reading of God's holy, infallible, and precious Word. May He bless His truth to our hearts and lives. Our text for this hour is taken from this chapter, and we'll be looking at the whole chapter, but especially we'll focus on verse 7. Let me read that again. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns. The whole of our chapter together. In the center of this picture, there is a valley around which are mountains, steep and tall, rugged and imposing. In the distance, there is bright light, but when you're there in the valley, You can't see the light because the mountains block the light and the valley, as a result, is dark. And in the middle of that valley lies a woman. A picture of Zion or Jerusalem or God's people. God's covenant people lying there in the midst of this valley. And children and young people, when you look closely, you see something around her arms and around her feet. She's there in captivity. She's bound. She's fettered. As a result, she is in great distress. The prophet tells us what has happened. Look at verse 3 of Isaiah 52. You have sold yourselves for nothing. They're in bondage because they have chosen it. And notice how... how ludicrous this choice was. You have sold yourself for nothing. Not even for money or for anything. You've sold yourself for nothing. Well, what has happened? Well, Israel here is pictured by the prophet 100 years before the captivity already, He's speaking prophetically of what would happen a hundred years later. Israel, over the course of the next hundred years, would sell itself at a deep spiritual level. Would give itself over to idols. And for what? What would be the gain that Israel would have? Nothing. But so bent was Israel on her own bondage and on her own destruction that she would sell herself. bit by bit to the nations around her and to their gods, to the idols which Israel would be worshiping. Now, congregation, before we go any further, we need to realize that the picture here that Isaiah paints for Israel applies to all of us at a deeper level. Because in Adam, that's exactly what you and I did. We sold ourselves in paradise. Upon the instigation, And the temptation that Satan presented us there, we sold ourselves. We sold ourselves for nothing. For nothing. For a mirage. He said we would be like God. Knowing good and evil. And in that instant, we enslaved ourselves. We, as it were, tied the chains to ourself. And all of us, by nature, are lying. as captives in the valley of life, you've sold yourself for nothing. Perhaps as you hear this this morning, you think these are stark words. This is really the message of the whole scriptures, at least at a first level. You wonder why the world is the way it is. You wonder why your life is the way it is left to yourself. It's because we've sold ourselves for nothing. But that's not where the news of our chapter ends. In fact, this mural gives us something else. Look closely to these mountains there in the distance over which the light is arising. There are people specifically men that are coming over these mountains. Who are they and what are they doing? Well, our text passage tells us that these are messengers. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that brings good news. And we live in a world of instant communication. And maybe you receive 20 text messages, 30, maybe even more each every day. Maybe some of you even every hour. Email messages reach us or can reach us constantly. But back in Bible times, to receive a message was was not a regular occurrence. Because people depended on messengers to come by foot. And especially in remote places, it would take days, weeks, months even to receive news from one place to another. People would come by foot. And notice how Isaiah focuses on those feet. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that brings good tidings. We would think that he would focus on their mouth because it's the mouth that delivers a message and he will speak about this message. But initially here on this mural, he focuses on these feet. Why? In fact, he calls them beautiful feet. Why? Well, we have to think about these messengers that are being sent here to Israel, of which Isaiah really is one. Isaiah and others who will follow them will bring good tidings to Israel in captivity. And these feet that will transport these messengers, they are beautiful in three respects. First of all, they are sent feet. Sent feet. You see, messengers don't come on their own. They come because they are sent. This was true then. The prophets. And this is true of gospel ministers today. And whatever beauty they have is a beauty they don't have of themselves. It's a beauty that they have derivatively from the Lord that they have stood in the presence of the Lord. That's how the Lord pictures it. Isaiah himself and Isaiah chapter six was there in the presence of the Lord. The cherubim and the seraphim were there covering their their their their faces and covering their feet. because of the beauty of holiness in which they were. And there, Isaiah feels his wretchedness and he expresses it. Woe is me, for I am a man of uncleanness. But as he stands there in the presence of God, in the beauty of holiness, and he's sent forth from that place, something of the beauty of the Almighty God radiates in his message. And he is sent then with that message. So there's sent feet. But secondly, there's swift feet, if you will. You can tell people's mood, people's spirit from how they walk. You can tell when people are fast paced, when they're moving quickly, when they're Tests is up when their faces is looking upwards that they're generally speaking. They're they're upbeat. They're they're happy. Or if people are really we say it in our language dragging their feet. Right. You know that they don't have. They're not happy. They don't have a good good message. And this is actually how watchmen on the walls of ancient cities could tell whether the messenger that was coming from the battlefield with news, whether it be good news or bad news. The watchman would watch. How are they walking? Is there lead in their feet? Or are they running with a steady gait? And is there happiness in their feet? And so they would discern that already from a distance. And these messengers, as we'll hear shortly in our second point, they have very good news. And so these feet are beautiful because not only are they sent feet, twist feet and something of the swiftness and the lightness with which these messengers move projects the message that they have to bring. Thirdly, these are strong feet. I don't know if you've climbed mountains. You need to be in shape to climb mountains. Maybe you've started up a mountain and you've let others go on before and you've stayed halfway because it takes a lot. It takes a lot of energy And the strain of climbing is not easy. But these messengers of God that have been sent to these captive people, they are mountain climbers. They are used to dealing here with rough terrain. But the message that they have been called to bring is such that no matter what the terrain is, they want to bring it to the people who so desperately need it. Well, congregation, here we have the mural that is painted to us this morning. I don't know where this message finds you. Maybe some of you are indeed in a valley of darkness and hopelessness. That happens. You come to church and you want to come to church. And yet, your spirit can be heavy. Because disappointments have crowded into your life. Difficulties. Conflicts, tensions. And there you are. And part of you is hearing what I'm saying, but part of you is not, because your mind is kind of settled on your difficulties and your problems. That's how it goes. We all know that. You feel the change. Situations you can't change. Hopelessness can set in. And all of us at some level can relate to this picture here because sin has affected all of us. Sin has bound us. Maybe you're here this morning and you are so chained to your sins that you've tried to get free, but you can't. And maybe you think of it as the new normal in your life. This is the way it is and this is the way it will be. However you find yourself, listen. Look at this mural. Because this message is not just for Israel in the past. It's a message that comes over the centuries to you and to me today. Awake! Isaiah 52 verse 1 says, Awake! Awake! Put on your strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. There's something that changes everything. There is, as we say in our day, a game changer. There's something so radically different. Something you haven't taken account of yet. And this will change things drastically. Why? Look at how the Lord speaks in verse 5. Now, therefore, what have I here? Says the Lord. The wonderful thing that the Lord enters into human history, that his eyes behold what is going on. And what a glorious wonder is that the Lord, for reasons only known to himself, he intervenes. He takes charge. What have I here? This is an interesting expression, especially in the original. And we all can relate to this, especially parents here. You know what it's like to to have some of your children, your young children, maybe or or even your teenagers fighting. There they are. They're really going at it. And you kind of hear it in the distance and the volume increases. And pretty soon you think that that that war is about to break out. So there you go. And you open the door. And what do you say? You say, what have we here? What do we have here? What's going on here? That's exactly what the Lord is doing in speaking reverently here. The Lord comes on the scene. There is captive Jerusalem, captive Zion, the people of God. And the Lord comes and He says, what have we here? And that is indeed what turns everything. It's the Lord who looks down from on high It doesn't just pity His people, but He intervenes. And He intervenes in the Gospel. And He intervenes, as we hope to see now, secondly, in the message that He calls His messengers to bring. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of Him that brings good tidings, that publishes peace, that brings good tidings of good. that publishes salvation that says unto Zion, Thy God reigns. Isaiah uses four phrases to describe the central message that gospel ministers bring. Good tidings. Peace. Good tidings of good. Salvation. And that's Hebrew poetry once again, where you heap terms on each other on top of each other in order to paint a whole picture. And let's look at these terms, because each one of them is significant. And it's as if the prophet here is approaching this message and he goes around this message and he sees the fullness of this message as he encompasses it. And the first thing he says is it's good news. In other words, this is not bad news. This is good. It's the language of triumph. When you get good news from the battlefield, it means there's victory. There's not defeat. It is good news for these captive Israelites. Secondly, it is a message of peace. The Hebrew word is shalom. You know that. It means the war is over. But not just that. a time of rest and peace and quiet, of freedom and tranquility, when things can come into their own, has arrived. It's that life where everything is in its place. Where everything has returned to its rightful place. Where that which had been upside down has been turned right side up. A message of peace. And Isaiah goes on here to a third term, good tidings of good. So welfare, prosperity, happiness. This is good news because at the heart of it, there is something really good. Really blessed. And in the fourth word, he gives us what is really at the heart of this all. He's been approaching this word, good, peace, good news of good. And in the fourth term here, he tells us what this exactly is. It's salvation. In other words, it's redemption. It's restoration. It's deliverance. There's a crescendo in these terms that reaches the height here of salvation, of deliverance for captive Israel. A congregation, do you know of any better news than that? Isn't that the good news that we all need and that our world so desperately needs? This is a message, indeed, to celebrate. This is a salvation that doesn't come from captive Israel itself. This is a jubilee that the Lord himself announces through his messenger here. And this is a salvation which the Lord himself has taken into hand, which he has accomplished and which he has already given a sense of in the third verse, right on the heels of saying you have sold yourself for nothing. He says, and you shall be redeemed without money, without price. I will see to it that you will no longer be in bondage. but that you will have an era of peace, that you will have salvation. And congregation, as he proclaims his salvation, he goes even deeper than this truth that he is a saving God. Because underneath this, if you and I were to ask, well, why is it that God saves sinners like you and like me? Then the Lord gives the answer Himself when He says here, when He puts into the mouth of these messengers these three words, Your God reigns. In other words, Your God is King. God is on the throne. He rules supreme. The throne is not empty despite what you may have thought. And there is no enemy on the throne, but God Himself is honored. Your God reigns. I don't know how you came into church this morning or how you are sitting on these pews here, but the message that each and every one of us needs again and again is at bottom and at its very heart this your God reigns. Because so often when we look at life, we look at the struggle in which we find ourselves at a national level and at a church level and also personally and in our families, we can wonder Who is on the throne? And we ask such questions as we find in the Psalms. Where is the God in whom I trust it? Where is the evidence of His power? Where is the demonstration of His reign? Because so often it looks like He has forsaken us and given us over to our enemies. And yes, in the final analysis, we know that we are to blame. At least, I hope we do. That we are sinners. That we have left God. And that our need, ultimately, when you trace it all to its bottom, is our own fault. That at bottom of it all, indeed, we have sold ourselves for naught. But still, in the end of the day, is that all that we have? And is that all that there is to say? And the Word of God says, no. In the middle of your trouble, When the chains rattle close to your hands and upon your feet, nevertheless, there is another message. And the message at bottom is this, Your God reigns. And this was the message that reached our first parents in their self-chosen captivity in paradise. Right on the heels of enslaving themselves to the devil. The Lord God Himself came and said, as it were, what have we here? And He uttered that first promise, the mother promise. I will put enmity between thee and the woman, He said to the serpent. Between thy seed and her seed. And your head, Satan, will be bruised. This captivity that you see here before you now is not going to last. Your God reigns. And this is the message that comes through the Old Testament, through every book, through every prophecy. And it comes there in the New Testament in all its glory, in all its fullness. As we kneel beside the manger in Bethlehem, in all lowliness, there in the open field. Bethlehem as it is in the hill country of Judea. In the darkness of Israel's life. that says it is enslaved to the Romans as the fourth successive empire to show where sin ultimately takes us. There in the manger of Bethlehem. As the angels announce, as the shepherds understand, And as Isaiah is already announcing here, we have this message. Your God reigns. God Himself in the flesh has come and said, What have we here? What have I here? And through all His life, the Lord Jesus Christ made manifest this very point. The Kingdom of God is among you. The Kingdom of God is at hand. He, the King of the Kingdom, showed himself to his church and people and among all nations. There's a reason why Isaiah 52 precedes Isaiah 53, which tells us that there was one who came into the valley of our sin and our captivity. One who was afflicted and bruised and wounded, not for his iniquities, but wounded for the sins of others. Bruised for their iniquities. Because over all His suffering and death, though crucified in weakness, He reigns most perfectly, most excellently, most gloriously on the cross of Calvary. But the superscription over Him, in words that Pilate never realized, said the exact same thing as Isaiah said so long ago. But we have before the whole world the truth that Jesus Christ reigns as the King not only of the Jews, but the King of all His people from every tribe, tongue and nation. And He reigns most gloriously in His death. Because ultimately, if you wonder why it is that these chains can come off this captive woman in the valley of darkness and despair, it's because He took them. He was bound that we might be loose. He suffered innumerable reproaches, even the pangs of hell, in order that we would not need to suffer, but we would live in glory with Him forever. The crown of thorns speaks to us the message, Your God reigns. And no wonder that the Lord Jesus Christ upon His death and resurrection, He told His messengers, go quickly, go quickly and tell all nations that all power in heaven and on earth is Mine. Your God reigns. Now this morning, if you have any doubt about the truth of this message, Friends, go to the empty tomb because it is empty. The enemy of our souls has been conquered there. The empty tomb proclaims to us this morning and also to this world, which is dying, that there is a God in heaven who rules and reigns through Jesus Christ in the Gospel. Isn't that good news? Isn't that peace? Isn't that good news of good? Isn't that salvation? And it's all because He reigns. Friend, if that's true, you can get up. You can awake. You can put on your beautiful garments. And that is what we want to see in our third and final point because there is an end. There is an aim that all of this has. This message has not changed one bit. In fact, it is the same because Christ Himself is the same. And this message of beautiful sovereignty, it aims at this, that there is a marriage about to happen. Where do you see that, you ask? Well, it's all over our text, but you have to read very carefully. Awake, awake. Put on your strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. Shake yourself from the dust. Arise. Sit down, O Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus saith the Lord. You have sold yourselves for nothing and you shall be redeemed without money. This call to Zion, to Jerusalem, is a call that comes to us as well. And it doesn't just say, God reigns. It doesn't just say here, the Lord reigns. But it says, Your God reigns. And that is the final thing that we want to emphasize here in our passage. Verse 7, very end. Your God reigns. It's very personal. This is a God who in Jesus Christ gives himself away to a captive people, to a woman who does not deserve to have any husband, much less the Lord as her husband. But the Lord comes and in infinite mercy, condescending love, he comes and he takes this captive woman to be his bride and his queen for his bridegroom king. And all of this leads up to chapter 54, where the Lord says in chapter 54, verse four and five, this is where it reaches its culmination. Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame. For you will forget the shame of your youth, and you will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore, for your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. He is called the God of the whole earth. The Lord comes to a forsaken woman, despised, having sold herself. And he is pleased out of infinite grace to marry her and to make her his own, so that the words are true. Your God reigns. Congregation, that's the message here today. It's not just neutral. It's not just generic. The Lord reigns. It's your God reigns. And this is a people who don't deserve anything from their side. They've sinned it all away. They have continued on in sin. They've sold themselves for nothing. If you're here this morning and that is you, the Lord comes so close in his word, doesn't he? And he's willing to be called your God. In fact, that is what he symbolized and signified in the sacrament of baptism. When he takes one of the children of Adam and attaches his name to your name. And it's signed and sealed there in the promise. And it needs to be realized in our lives by faith and repentance, because if he reigns congregation, then shouldn't we, first of all, rest in his reign? And that means that you and I shouldn't try to reign, at least apart from him. We should rest in his reign. So often we try to control our circumstances and control our lives and control things around us. And that's symptomatic for a person, another person who's not resting in the reign of God. Rest, congregation, this morning in God's good pleasure, in his promises, in his will for you as it is declared in his word. And don't try to be on the throne yourself. Your God reigns. Secondly, if He reigns this morning, shouldn't we bend our knees and worship Him and adore Him and submit to Him, honor Him and love Him? He who has of infinite mercy taken us to be His bride, who's paid for us with His own dear blood, who's gathered us, who's called us, who sent messengers, Messengers, many messengers over the course of your life have come from the throne room of God with this same message. When it all comes down to it, your God reigns. Well, bend the knee this morning. Kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. Honor and respect him, for he is your rightful Lord. Thirdly, if the Lord is reigning, shouldn't we, congregation, people of God, shouldn't we put on our beautiful garments? You see, what fits with this message of beautiful sovereignty is that the church adorns itself with all the graces that the Lord Himself gives to her and pours out upon her and clothes her with. And He calls us this morning, put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem. This coming week, as the congregation of the Neighborhood Bible School, what is it that the church is doing in evangelism and a mission work? Isn't it this shining the light that God has put in the church of Jesus Christ to the world? Let your light shine so that others might see it and glorify your father, which is in heaven. I don't know how you think about Neighborhood Bible School, but isn't it the church putting on its beautiful clothes, adorning itself, and showing the world what an immense privilege it is to belong to a God who has come in Jesus Christ and who has said, what have we here? salvation. Put on your beautiful garments. Shine in the midst of this world. Fourthly, if the Lord reigns, let us depart. Look at verse 11. Depart. Depart. Go out from there. Touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her. Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. This is a call to separation. Not that we would leave our world, because we are, as we just saw, We are to shine in our world. But we are to leave the systems of the world that seek for our allegiance. We ought to separate ourselves from those things which claim our allegiance, but are not from the Lord. We ought to follow the Lord himself and his call. And when he says depart, depart, he is in effect saying in two New Testament language, he's saying, come out from among her and be ye separate. We will shine. We will wear our beautiful garments to the extent that we live conformed to the will of God, which he gives us in his word and not to the will of man. Depart. Depart. Come out from among our worldly principles in our worldly life. But fifthly and lastly, how should we respond to this reign of the Lord? Well, we should break forth into joy. Your watchmen shall lift up their voices. With their voices together shall they sing, for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord brings back Zion. We are to break forth in joy. We are to praise the Lord as we do in worship here, taking his name upon our lips and lifting up his praises. And we are united in doing that. And if we're united in praising God, shouldn't that foster also a deep-seated unity among the people of God? We are bound together in the bundle of life with Jesus Christ, our Lord. We shall see eye to eye. An expression that's come into our own language. When you see eye to eye with someone, that means that you are united. You're bound together. You see exactly the same way. And that's what we want for the church of Jesus Christ. There's so much difference. There's so much pulling this way and that way. But when we have this focus on God reigning and we are subject to His words, We live in accordance to what He has told us. We will see eye to eye. Praise the Lord. As we close this morning, I don't know how you came in, but shouldn't we all leave with a song on our lips and a song in our hearts? Yes, your circumstances may not have changed a bit. Things may even become worse, but your God reigns in everything. He has conquered death, and he has conquered hell, and he lives forevermore. This is good news, when all around is bad news. Oh, for messengers to proclaim this. You've been vacant for a long time as a congregation. Yes, you've had supply, but you long, no doubt, for beautiful feet to come over the mountains. And God's promise is sure. Plead this promise before him as a congregation. And yes, the preachers themselves have no beauty of their own. Don't look for it in them either. These beautiful feet are not something they have of their own. They are sent. They are swift. They are strong feet. And they proclaim a beautiful message of beautiful sovereignty of a glorious God who takes the people to Himself. O congregation, shall we not praise Him and exalt Him? Amen.