December 8, 2025
Your God Reigns
"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.' The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice; together they sing
for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the
Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing,
you waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord has
comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before
the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of
the earth shall see the salvation of our God."
I S A I A H 5 2 : 7 - 1 0
The word “gospel” or Good News comes from the Greek
euangelion. The Hebrew equivalent is the verb basar, which
also means “to bring news,” but with a distinctly military flavor.
In ancient Israel, to basar was to run from the battlefield with a
cry of victory.
That is what’s happening in Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful
upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news
[basar], who publishes peace, who brings good news [basar]
of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your
God reigns.’”
This message is not abstract or philosophical—it is the joyful shout of a herald who announces that God has bared his
holy arm, defeated his enemies, reclaimed his people.
The incarnation is where it all begins.
God lands on enemy
territory inside a virgin’s womb.
He might not look like a Warrior King, wrapped in those swaddling clothes, but the Lord
often shows up on our doorstep in seemingly unlordly ways.
Violence pursues him as murderous Herod wants him dead.
His townspeople try to throw him from a cliff. Plotters plot,
schemers scheme, and “the nations rage and the peoples plot
in vain against him” (Ps. 2:1).
But this is what he signed up for. He came to fight for us,
and to protect us from the enemies which surround us, threatening to knock down our doors, and the enemies within that
tempt to consume us, house and home. No longer wrapped in
swaddling clothes but in a burial shroud, this Warrior King, having soaked up all sin and death and hate on the battlefield of the
cross, finished the job.
And we? Rescued by him from the domain of darkness,
brought from death to life in his love, we break forth into singing, for we have seen the salvation of our God, Jesus the Christ,
and we raise our voices in harmony as we find ourselves safe at
home on Mount Zion, looking in hope for his return.
How beautiful are the feet of the herald who brings the good
news that the one in the manger, who hung on the cross, has
exited the tomb and now reigns over us as our merciful King.
KING JESUS, OUR WARRIOR AND REDEEMER, GUARD US AND
GUIDE US AS WE ENJOY THE FREEDOM OF LIFE
IN YOUR EVERLASTING KINGDOM. AMEN.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be
translated in whole or in part into any other language.
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Coming Home for Christmas: Advent in Isaiah © 2025 1517
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