Day 23—Monday, December 22

How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace and brings good news of happiness,
Who announces salvation, and says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices, they shout joyfully together;
For they will see with their own eyes when the Lord restores Zion.
Break forth, shout joyfully together, you waste places of Jerusalem;
For the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations,
That all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God.
Isaiah 52:7-10

BREAK INTO SONG
There are five Great Commissions (the final earthly words of Jesus before his Ascension) in the Bible: in the four Gospels and Acts. Isaiah 52:7-10, a nativity prophecy, announces God’s salvation which will reach the “ends of the earth,” and that same phrase is later echoed in the Acts 1:8 Great Commission: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The two bookends of Jesus’ earthly life—Advent and Ascension, his coming and his going—are inextricably linked by mission.

Isaiah 52’s “lovely feet” reference has further missiological echoes with the Apostle Paul’s quotation of this in Romans 10:14-15: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But these are more than just missiological passages, they are also passages about worship, as both Jesus’ arrival on earth and His return to heaven are viewed with awestruck wonder. Having Immanuel (“God with us”) was so celebratory that Jesus’ disciples did not fast while the bridegroom was with them but instead they partied (Luke 5:33-35, 7:33-34)!

John Piper writes in his book Let the Nations Be Glad!, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions.” This can only be true for a God who has already won. Nobody is ever celebrated before they have done anything. But the inevitability of Jesus’ triumph over sin and death means that, even as a little baby born in a manger, we can sing with joy and certainty: “Joy to the World. . . let earth receive her king!”

However, there is also an eschatological dimension to this, as Acts 1:11 delivers the end of this particular episode: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” We are waiting for the Second Coming, the Parousia, the time when the Lord will remake the heavens and the earth and redemption will come to the entire cosmos. But it will not happen until “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). So missions will usher in our long-awaited expectation: that the whole earth will bend its knee to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Allen Yeh, Cook School of Intercultural Studies