Paul has just insisted that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, with no distinction and no special qualification. Now he works backward through four questions until he reaches the starting point. 14"How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?" 15"And how are they to preach unless they are sent?" Calling depends on believing. Believing depends on hearing. Hearing depends on someone speaking, and speaking depends on someone being sent. Salvation was never going to happen in a vacuum. It takes a chain of people, link by link, and every link begins with a sender.
Paul quotes Isaiah to describe the messenger. 15"How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" In Isaiah the line describes a herald crossing the mountains with word for a waiting city, and the news is "Your God reigns" (Isaiah 52:7). Feet are the least dignified part of that picture. They are dusty and tired and never the reason anyone remembers the message. Paul says they are beautiful the moment they carry this news, because the beauty comes from what they deliver.
Then Paul refuses to let the chain end on a triumphant note. 16"they have not all obeyed the gospel." He quotes Isaiah again: "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" A perfectly delivered message does not guarantee a response, and the preacher who is honest about that is spared the temptation to think results are his to produce. 17"So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." The word for hearing appears twice in that one sentence, as if Paul wants no one to miss where faith begins, in a message that has been spoken and received.
Paul then answers two excuses before anyone raises them. Perhaps Israel never heard? 18"Indeed they have." Perhaps they heard and did not understand? Moses had said long ago that God would stir his people to jealousy through a foolish nation, and Isaiah went further still, almost too bold to say: 20"I have been found by those who did not seek me." Outsiders were stumbling into grace they never went looking for, and the gospel was overtaking the people who had been told first.
The last word is aimed at Israel, and it is patience. 21"All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people." The picture is of a God standing with open arms through every refusal, and it sits at the end of the chain because he is the one who sent the messengers in the first place.
Two things follow for anyone reading this. Someone was sent to you. A parent, a friend, a preacher, a stranger with tired feet carried the word to your door, and you can give thanks for the whole chain. And the chain still has open links. You may be the next one, in a kitchen or a hospital room or across a fence, with no more qualification than a willingness to go and speak.
Prayer
Father, thank you for every messenger you have sent, every set of ordinary feet that carried this news somewhere it had not yet reached. Forgive us for the times we heard and did not obey. Thank you that your hands are held out all day long, patient with people who have every reason to expect you would have given up. Send us, if that is what beautiful feet look like today. In Jesus' name, amen.