Today we're going to be talking about the shoes of Gospel peace.
So just kind of a reminder where we're at here.
So we're in Ephesians chapter 6. We're at the very end of
Ephesians and the first several chapters, about 3 chapters of
Ephesians is pretty heavy on theology getting, getting the
foundation of of our beliefs correct.
And then chapters four and five in the first half of chapter 6
are really focused on application, how that truth
impacts our lives. And then this, this kind of
ending spot that Paul has as he's talking to the church and
Ephesus is he's reminding them, knowing that there is spiritual
warfare, something that we can forget about sometimes, but
there is a spiritual realm. Battles are being waged and, and
we are a part of that. He encourages them to put on the
armor of God and, and it's a call to action.
And, and, and you kind of have this imagery.
Oh, there we go. There's some Roman armor right
there. Can we check in the I think the
cursor is anybody in the back the is the cursor on the screen.
That's probably there it goes. OK, yeah, we have kind of
imagery of the Roman armor. We're talking about the shoes
today and and this is going to be our our kind of title.
Our theme for today is that we we have to have the right shoes
on the shoes of gospel peace. So that's where we are going to
be for today. So first, before we jump into
our passage, as I like to do, we're going to kind of form some
little discussion groups and we're going to have some
questions as we go throughout. So if you can kind of find maybe
4 ish 5:00-ish people around you and, and find a little group you
may, you know, introduce yourselves or if you know each
other already, give each other a hug and then we'll get jumping
into our passage. So find those little groups real
quick. That'll work.
All right, so we're going to start by just going ahead and
reading the full passage. And then we will we'll we'll
focus in on our verse for today. And so starting in verse 10, if
you've got your Bibles, we're in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10,
it says finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his
might. Put on the whole armor of God,
that you might be able to stand against the schemes of the
devil. For we do not wrestle against
flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers, over this present darkness, against
the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be
able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to
stand firm. Stand, therefore, having
fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the
breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet,
having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace in
all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you
can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil. 1 and
probably a few slides behind. I forgot about that part.
All right, there we go, and take the helmet of salvation in the
sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying at all
times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication.
To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making
supplication for all the Saints and also for me that words may
be given to me in my in the opening of my mouth boldly to
proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an
ambassador in chains that I might declare it boldly as I
ought to speak. So there's there's the whole
passage, but we're going to focus in today on verse 15 and
it says and as shoes for your feet, having put on the
readiness given by the gospel of peace.
So we're going to we're going to kind of take this verse
backwards a little bit. I want to focus in on what we
mean by gospel of peace. And then we're going to circle
back and and figure out what what we're talking about with
shoes here, being ready with the right shoes.
And so we're going to we're going to focus in on Gospel
peace. So with that, got a question for
your groups. Take a minute and answer this
simple but profound question. What is the gospel?
So let's take maybe 2 minutes. Talk it as your group, and we'll
we'll circle back. All right, All right, let's
circle back up. So what did what came up in our
groups? What is the gospel?
Yeah, that's some good stuff. Anybody else have something to
add? Yeah, Blueprint about how to go
about your life. Yeah.
So we talked about good news. So good news is kind of the
literal translation of the word. It means good news.
But then what is the good news? We talked about what Jesus did,
a way to salvation, a way out of sin, a blueprint for our lives.
And so I think those are all good answers.
And you know, it's easy for us sometimes to go, OK, gospel of
peace gospel. We got that part down, so let's
move on. But I think it is good for us to
to sometimes focus in on that. There's a, there's a quote often
attributed to a guy, Jerry Bridges, that says we got to
teach ourselves the gospel every day.
We got to preach it to ourselves day in, day out so that we don't
forget what it is. And so that's what we're going
to do to start. We're going to get into what is
the gospel and kind of a framework that's helpful for me.
And there are, I think there are a lot of ways we can go about
going through the gospel. Some of us are familiar with the
Romans Rd. There's Ephesians 2 one through
10, which is just a little bit earlier in here.
This is a way that I found particularly helpful for myself
when when talking with people that don't know the gospel of
reminding ourselves what it is. And so it's the gospel and five
questions. We're going to go through these
one at a time. And so the first one is who is
God? We start with who is God?
So God is the creator of all things.
We get that right from the beginning of the Bible, Genesis
11. He is the first of all things
and he created all things and He's been there for all of time,
really doesn't have any beginning.
I like this verse in First Timothy 117.
It says to the king of the ages. So this is glorifying God,
immortal, invisible, the only God to be honor and glory
forever and ever. Amen.
He is the ultimate thing in there we have.
He is immortal before all time, invisible.
He got his spirit. He is the only God.
And so there aren't many gods, there is just one God.
He is also to be honored and we place him above all things and
we give him glory forever and ever.
He's perfect, He's holy, He's set apart, he is an other than
us. He's deserving of all praise.
And so I think as we get into the gospel, we've got to start
with who is God and, and having an awe of who God is and that he
is perfect and holy, set apart from us.
And then that would take us to the second question.
So if if we know who God is, then who is man?
Man is the the first, the preeminent of all creation, the
head of the created beings. We see this in Genesis 1/22/26
to 27. Then God said, let us make man
in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over
the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping
thing that creeps on the earth. So man was created separate from
the rest of creation with the image of God.
And there's some important things that come from that.
That's where we get the fact that that human life has
inherent value. It's made in the image of God.
We know that man was created with a special relationship with
God that was apart from the rest of creation in the garden.
This was a perfect relationship. We know the fall comes.
We're going to get to that in a moment.
We also have here I passed over here the ended that so God
created man in his own image, the image of God.
He created him male and female. He created them.
We also have Psalm 84. What is man that you are mindful
of him and the Son of man that you care for him.
This idea that again there is a special place that man holds in
the created order. We were made to worship and to
glorify God through this right relationship with God.
When we're in the right relationship with God, that
brings him ultimate glory through this relationship that
he's created with us. So we know who God is, who's
man, Then we can ask ourselves what happened between them.
Why are God and man no longer in this right relationship?
We know the fall at Genesis 2 and three there is this through
Adam, sin enters the world through disobedience, the aid of
the tree they were, they were told not to.
And from them we have the seed of sin that goes on.
We have what we commonly call the fall that we fell away from
this relationship. If you want to go ahead and turn
to Romans 5, we're going to have a verse here on this next next
point. But we're going to spend a good
bit of time at the beginning of chapter 5 here throughout our
time this morning. So we're going to start with
Romans 512 to 14. And that says therefore, just as
sin came into the world through one man and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men, because all sin, for sin indeed
was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not
counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to
Moses even over those over who's sinning was not like the
transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
So we have this idea of original sin, the fact that the sin in
the garden prevails to all men, that we have a sin nature.
And I think it's interesting, you know, when sharing the
gospel with most people, there are some who would claim to be
without sin. But you know, as important as
original sin is, even if that weren't a piece of the puzzle,
which it most definitely is, we ourselves can look at our lives
and see countless sins that we've made against God.
So if God is perfect and holy, man has fallen away from that
relationship and we need perfection to get back to God.
Even if it weren't for original sin, we couldn't get there.
But that sin nature is very prevalent in US.
And we can see in Scripture that it's no surprise that there is
sin in the world. That tells us that there is sin
in the world, that sin is all over our hearts.
And so we know that when we look at God, man, what's happened
between them, we find ourselves with this chasm between God and
man. And that's where the next
question comes in, who is Jesus? What did he do?
What's what's up with Jesus? And so we can, there's several
places as far as answering who is Jesus in Scripture.
One of my favorites to go to is Philippians 2 five through 11.
So I'm going to read that. It says, Have this mind among
yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was
in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing
to be grasped, But he emptied himself by taking the form of a
servant. Being born in the likeness of
man, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by
becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus.
Every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the
glory of the Father. Amen.
That's good stuff there. So we know that Jesus is God.
He's the four, it says, in the form of God.
He did not count equality with God if Him to be grasped.
Meaning he humbled himself to come to earth to take on the
form of a servant, which was not what was expected of him right
there. The expectation was that he
would come as this conquering king, a political or military
figure, but he came as a servant.
He died for our sins. Really we can see it.
As you know, God came in flesh. God wrapped himself in flesh to
come to pay the price for our sins so that there could be this
fix between in this chasm between God and man through the
blood of Jesus. Back in Romans 5 where we're at,
we're going to read at verses 6 to 11 that says while we were
still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps
for a good person one would dare even to die.
But God shows His love for us in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now
been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by
Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we
were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now
that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
So a lot there, but we know that through the sacrifice that
Christ made on the cross that we have a bridge between US and
God. We have peace with God, which is
where we're going to get to in a minute.
So 5th question. So we have who is God, who is
man? What happened between them, who
is Jesus? And then really what does that
mean for us? And so here we can see that
Romans 9 or 10, nine and 10 says, because if you confess
with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved.
For with the heart 1 believes and is justified, and with the
mouth 1 confesses and is saved. And so we find this free gift of
God, this grace that we get, that Jesus earned righteousness
for our sake by confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord.
And, and really, as we look at the totality of Scripture, we
see it's about repentance. It's about that we turn away
from our sins. We confess Jesus as Lord and he
then through his power and his works, not through our own do we
walk in godliness, not through our own power do we save
ourselves, but through his. And so in that we get to this
part about peace with God. And so Romans 5, one through 5,
if we're still there, I'll read this verse here.
It says, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into
his grace which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory
of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in
our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and
endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope
does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
That's good stuff there. So we see that we have this
peace before God. So we're going to, we're going
to talk about this. But first I've got a question
for you. It's kind of a two-part
question. So I'll give you guys about four
or five minutes to discuss this. But first, what is peace from a
biblical perspective? And then two, how might this
differ from how the world defines peace?
So we see through the gospel that we've just talked about
reminded ourselves of, we have peace with God.
What does that mean? And might how might that differ
from how the world defines peace?
So let's take a few minutes in our groups and then we'll we'll
discuss that. All right, what are some things
that we came up for? Maybe let's start with what is
what is peace from a biblical? Yes, yeah, yeah.
So, so biblical peace we have inside us.
It's it's not about the external.
Whereas, yeah, worldly peace is often very much about the
external. What what else do we have?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we have reliance on Jesus
taking away that where we have a lack of sin.
Anything else? I think, you know, there there's
really two kind of concepts of peace that are biblical, that
are both there and are both very much true.
We've talked some about this internal peace, right?
So, so when we have this right relationship with God, there is
this internal peace that we can be, you know, calm inside,
trusting and relying on God despite all of the things
happening around us. And that is an absolute blessing
that we receive from salvation. We also, I think really what
what Paul is getting to here in in Romans 5 is ultimately peace
with God is the absence of his wrath.
It's that we were once, you know, by nature, children of
wrath as as Paul says in Ephesians 2.
And then, you know, once we've taken, you know, he's poured
that wrath out on Christ and now we're at peace with God.
We don't have this impending wrath coming to us once we have
salvation. And yeah, that differs from the
world because because the world says, you know, yeah, it's about
everything around you. And, you know, we can find all
of these different ideas of how we can find peace.
I mean, throughout human history, there's so many
different, you know, types of, of governing that have been
tried or, or types of communities or different things
to try to reach some sort of utopian society where there's a
lack of conflict. Now, it's, it's not as if these
things are completely separate. I do think the biblical concept
of peace, there's some common grace there where where, you
know, even a lot of humanity strives to find, you know, a
lack of, of conflict, which can be certainly a godly thing, But
if taken out of its place in Scripture, we have to see this
peace with God comes after our salvation.
And sometimes when we think about even sharing the gospel,
there's some hard conversations that have to be had sometimes.
And some, I think oftentimes we can say, well, we don't want to
cause any trouble. We don't want to stir things up.
We don't want there to be a lack of peace in a relationship we
have. And so we kind of hide behind
that to avoid being appropriately bold and sharing
the gospel. And there's certainly a tension
there that I think we as believers feel.
And it probably takes us to a place of conscience to where
where we figure out exactly when and where to be bold and we seek
discernment there. Or when and where do believers,
you know, find themselves in the midst of things like conflict
and war? And that's not necessarily where
we're going today. I just wanted to point out
there's there's, there can be conflict there a little bit of
tension as we work that out as believers.
But we can see ultimate peace, you know, comes from salvation
where we no longer have the wrath of God pointed at us.
And then we have this calm internal peace where we can
trust in God despite really challenging situations.
So those were that was some good discussion.
I really appreciate that. We're going to for a moment,
head back to the verses that we just talked about and just break
this down really briefly before we we we finish off with that
with the shoes aspect of this. So we see in five one, it says,
therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
So something to remember there is.
Ultimately, peace with God is found through the gospel.
It's found through our justification, our our where we
are made right, legally declared right before God through the
sacrifice of Christ. That's where peace comes from.
Verse 2 says through him we have also obtained access by faith
into the grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of
the glory of God. And so this talks about, you
know, this grace won by Christ puts us in this new place before
God where we were no longer, you know, we were children of wrath.
Now we're children of God. And so it's Christ his sacrifice
that allows us to be in that position.
And then the last few verses, they're starting in verse 3.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that
suffering during character produces hope.
And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has
been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has
been given to us. And so this this points us right
back to spiritual warfare where we're headed with the armor of
God. There is going to be suffering
that comes, but we can recognize that that suffering has a
purpose. We can rejoice in that.
And maybe that doesn't mean that we are having a lot of fun about
it, but we can see with joy that's apart from our
circumstances. We can see that through these
challenging situations going on in our life that God is
sanctifying us, refining us, and pointing us to be more like Him.
And that there will be a day in heaven when we can look back and
see that for what it is. And that'll be a joyful day,
even though it can be challenging to find joy in that
now. So as a summary of the gospel of
peace, what is the gospel of peace?
It tells us who God is. It tells us how great and
awesome he is. It tells us who we are and, and,
and who we are apart from sin at first.
It tells us that we are in this special relationship created
with inherent value by God, but that sin separates us from him.
And it tells us about Jesus who saves us from that sin that
bridges the chasm between God and man that sin has created.
It calls us to repentance daily. That's the walk of of a
Christian. We are justified by our
repentance. And then we repent and repent
and repent as we're sanctified. And then it puts us in a
position of peace before God where we are no longer an object
of his wrath. So that's the gospel of peace.
So that leaves us with we we have to have the shoes aspect
here. What are we talking about with
shoes in battle here? So fitting in with the armor of
God. So here these are and I am going
to butcher this because I don't speak Latin, but these shoes are
called calige. Does anybody know how to
actually say that? No, I'm going to take that as a
no, but that's these these are this is an image of what these
shoes supposedly looked like. Something to notice here is, you
know, this is kind of before the medieval ages where you would
have armored shoes in the sense that the shoe was designed to,
you know, stop you from being stabbed or cut by something.
The main point of the shoes is to to have the right traction
that you need for battle, to have the right footing that you
need for battle. I think probably all of us have
experienced a time when we've had the wrong footwear on for a
particular activity. If you're trying to play
football and flip flops, or if you are trying to hike your
church shoes or something, you feel it a little bit right.
You don't have the traction that you need.
You don't have the support that you need.
And so in order to be effective, you have to have the right
footwear on for the job, to have the right foundation, the right
traction to do the job. So we're as a lot of the pieces
of the armor of God are about protection against those.
Yeah, the thrust in, the swipes of the sword, all of that.
The shoes are about having the footing in order to to do any of
that. And so as we think about this
concept of being grounded, kind of an encouragement for us as we
go from here, first I would say you have to be grounded in the
gospel. So we talked about this gospel
of peace. You've got to be grounded in
that in order to have the right the right footing and so of many
places we could go to in Scripture.
This is Jeremiah 17 eight God Speaking of what a righteous man
would be, which a Jeremiah's time was a scarce commodity, but
it says he is like a tree planted by water that sends out
its roots by the stream. He does not fear when heat comes
for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of
drought or it does not cease to bear fruit.
So basically, when we're grounded in the right things, we
can weather the storms that are going on.
We're not, you know, we're not overly concerned when the heat
comes on, when things get difficult.
We've got our footing in the right place in this gospel of
peace. Second one, we need to have a
solid foundation, the right support.
I think about, you know, if you're trying to play a sport
that requires a lot of quick movement side to side if you're
not wearing shoes with the right supports, you feel it for sure
you break your ankles says do your best.
This is second Timothy 2:15. Do your best to present yourself
to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.
This calls us to do exactly what we're doing today, which is
study God's word, know his word, know the gospel of peace so that
we're not ashamed of that and that we know how to correctly
handle the word of truth. Which takes us straight into
this next one, which is we have to be ready to guard against
false teaching. And this comes up several times
in Philippians, all over Paul's letters.
We know there's going to be false teaching, and we've got to
be ready for that. If we are grounded in the gospel
of peace, we're going to recognize false teaching for
what it is and be able to defend against that.
Second Timothy 4/3 For the time is coming when people will not
endure sound teaching but have itching ears.
They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit
their own passions. Man, we see this all over the
place. It it comes, it disguises itself
as sometimes as Christianity where it's a version of
Christianity where we just take the easy parts and we don't
listen to the hard parts. Or sometimes it's when we
overemphasize the hard parts and we don't lean on God's grace.
We make it really, really legalistic.
It could, it could go both ways. We can also see it with other
religions and where often times there are key pieces of, you
know, human passion or or confusion where another religion
tries to say, oh, I have an answer for that.
You can think of Eastern religions where it's all about
enlightenment, all about knowing, you know, IA human can
get to a point where they understand completely the
universe. We can see it even in the
theology of of our LDS neighbors where there's a lot of emphasis
put on exactly defining what comes in the next life and, and,
and where the people we know will fit into that.
Because sometimes we can as Christians go with our itching
ears, We can go, man, I would really like to understand
exactly how all of that works a little bit better.
But that doesn't call us to go away from Scripture to go find
answers to those questions. And then this is a verse that
we've probably all heard, and it's a good one to remind
ourselves of first Peter 315. It reminds us that we have to be
ready to defend. We have to be in that stance,
ready to defend the faith. But in your heart's honor,
Christ the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense
to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in
you. And we don't need to read the
rest of that, right? Because that's the easy part.
Now, if that's the challenging part, right, that we have to do
it with gentleness and respect, we can't forget that piece of
this. And hey, I mean, that's even
talking about peace that those are that's a good spot for us to
ponder upon as as we leave here, as we think about this during
the week, is how do we balance gentleness and respect?
But recognizing that that talking about the gospel can
bring up conflict, we, we have to find a way to do those
things. And we can see a lot of example
in scripture of how they go about doing that.
And I can tell you that the the answer is not do nothing.
We have to seek discernment, to find the right situations, to be
bold and doing that. So in summary, right, we have to
have the right shoes on if we're going to stand firm in spiritual
warfare, if we're going to be able to use all of these other
pieces of the armor. You know, we can't use the sword
of truth very well if our footing is not firm.
And so we've got to have the right shoes on the gospel of
peace. And so as we finish our time
last five minutes here, I want you guys in your groups and
we're not going to come back together to discuss this.
I want you guys just to have a conversation in your groups of
how can we take what we've discussed today and apply it to
our lives this week? Let's get practical.
What is it about the Scripture we've looked at today, the
concept we've looked at today with the gospel of peace that we
can use in our lives this week to have better footing as we
seek to fight that battle of spiritual warfare?
So let's have that conversation and I'll finish this off in
prayer here in a few.