God Sends A Preacher Series

We’re about to do something very old-fashioned. It’s not often anymore that people will sit down for thirty or forty minutes, and listen to another person talking: without interruption, without visual aids, or any active engagement of the audience. But that’s what a sermon is. And so a sermon is an old-fashioned curiosity in the age of YouTube and social media, for those are the ways we get informed today—and entertained.

So the question is sometimes asked: Do sermons still matter? How can a preacher expect to get a message across in this way? If this sermon was a webpage, wouldn’t you be clicking or scrolling to get away as soon as it lost your interest?

Yet if have ears to hear, the LORD God has something to say. For He tells us that preaching has power. Through Isaiah, God says that He’ll use the spoken word to communicate good things to his people. And more than from any other source, the apostle Paul tells us in Romans, “Faith comes from hearing the Word.”

All that makes sense too, for God is a speaking God! Consider how God is speaking, right from the beginning of time—He calls all things into being: words with power. And how He speaks through every following century: talking to his friend Abraham, teaching Israel, warning through the prophets and apostles. It’s what God does, not just to make his point, but to communicate his love.

The humans who bring his message are always weak and ignorant, yet God will use their words. For if the text has been read clearly, if the text has been explained properly, if Christ has been lifted up, then the preacher’s words can be received as the Word of the living God.

This is what we see happening in our text. God sends a messenger to Zion, someone to announce glad tidings. It’s the same gospel message we need to listen to, and one that makes us think about how we receive the preaching each Sunday. What is the good news? And what does God what us to do with it? I preach God’s Word to you from Isaiah 52:7-10 on this theme,

God sends a preacher of his good news to Zion:

1) the waiting people

2) the reigning God

3) the growing praise

1) the waiting people: Imagine for a moment that you’re living in a city under siege, like a city in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War 2. Under siege and under threat, you wait anxiously for any news of deliverance. You live for the day when you hear that a friendly army has broken through the ring of invaders to set you free. If they do, there is hope. If not, then all is lost.

It wasn’t long ago that Judah had endured a siege, one thrown up against Jerusalem by the Assyrians. The enemy came, they made a lot of noisy threats, and their armies looked ready to starve the city into submission. King Hezekiah and the rest of Jerusalem had good reason to be terrified. But then another army came passing through the area, the forces of the king of Ethiopia. The Assyrians withdrew from Jerusalem, and came to Libnah, a city not far from the capital. And there, while the Assyrians camped, waiting for battle, the angel of the Lord went out and killed 185,000 of the enemy. So ended the threat to Jerusalem.

Think of how that news would’ve come to Jerusalem. Messengers would’ve raced from Libnah to Jerusalem, carrying the astounding report: somehow the enemy has been destroyed, and the threat has disappeared! Hearing this message, you might’ve thought it was too good to be true. Yet it was true: God had delivered his people once again.

That’s the kind of scene unfolding in our text, as God sends a messenger to his people concerning a great victory: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news” (v 7). And what makes this news so good is how bad the situation has been. That’s what Isaiah describes in the first part of this chapter. Zion has been defiled by the uncircumcised and unclean (v 1). She has been enslaved, with chains around her neck (v 2). She has been sold for a pittance (v 3). She has been oppressed (v 4) and she has been mocked (v 5). Both Egypt and Assyria have treated Judah like she was worthless.

But not for long. God cares too deeply for his people to ever leave us ruined and hopeless. God is the unfailing strength of the weak, the mighty Saviour of those who need rescuing. That is a message we need to hear, so God sends his preacher.

In our text, Isaiah pictures him as a lone runner, a man crossing the hills on his way toward Jerusalem. When there was going to be a battle nearby, that’s what people in the city under siege would’ve anxiously looked for afterwards: a sign of hope.