Your God Reigns
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Isaiah 52:1-3, 7
1. Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean. 2. Shake yourself from the dust, arise, O captive Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. 3. For thus says the Lord: "You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money. 7. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
I looked up publish in the dictionary, the (2) definition is: To bring to the public attention; announce. I guess, considering myself a writer, I should have known that – I would have thought of announce or broadcast in this context. Of course, at the time Isaiah was alive, there wasn’t a lot of writing going on and most information was dispersed via spoken word.
What announcements! Peace. Salvation. Good tidings of good. How about, “Your God reigns.” That’s the kind of news one would be thrilled to receive. When I read these verses I’m reminded of times I wait for someone to visit me who I haven’t seen in a long time – my parents live on the west coast – so we don’t get to see them nearly as often as we would like to. Waiting for them to arrive invokes the same feeling. Anticipation; expectation; excitement; all those and more run through me as the time for their arrival approaches.
Get up! Get dressed up! Put your best foot forward! God is redeeming us yet again! We were overtaken and forced into slavery, time and time again. Now God is saying it’s all over! We’re free, and we don’t even have to pay the price of freedom – He’s granting it to us without payment or promise. It’s free! And not only that, He will go before us to take care of anyone and anything that might get in our way. That’s the kind of news one wants to spread! Who wouldn’t want to make an announcement like that!
Isaiah is proclaiming that Jerusalem will once again be great – it will be rebuilt and flourish – all a part of God’s plan for His chosen people. Of course we know that time and time again, God’s chosen strayed, stopped trusting in Him, took matters into their own hands. I wonder if God sent Christ to earth because just got tired of telling us the same thing over and over again, year after year, generation after generation, century after century. He decided He needed to do one final thing – tell us one final time for all time how much He loves us, how much He wants us to honor and worship Him. That’s one of the questions I’m going to ask Him when I get to heaven. “Didn’t you ever just get tired of it all?”
The Good News should be ever on our lips, ever in our minds and on our hearts. God redeems us, over and over and over again.
My prayer today is that you publish abroad the Good News of the risen Christ. And that you always remember Your God Reigns.
Mary
