Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Romans chapter 16, and reading
for our text, verse 20. Verse 20. And the God of peace
shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Romans 16 verse 20. The Apostle Paul throughout the
letter to the Romans covers methodically the vital doctrines of our most
holy faith. When he comes to this last chapter
then he immediately is bringing in people. names, acknowledging
those that have been his helpers, those that have worked with him,
those that he commends for various reasons. And we are reminded
that whatever doctrines are set forth in the end, it comes down
to individuals, the Lord's people, and what those doctrines, what
that teaching means to them, means to us. And so may we be
able to, from this chapter, draw that which is a personal help
for us. Now what is upon my spirit is
that constant opposition that many of the Lord's dear people
have from Satan and from their own wicked and evil heart. It is that which very often discourages,
wears them down, and maybe Satan says as well, that if they were
truly a child of God, they wouldn't have such things going on in
their heart, such a hard work with it, and such a hard pathway
before them. But we have an answer to that
in the words of our text, as the apostle brings before us
the God of peace and what he shall do shortly for his dear
people. And he commends all to be by
the grace of God. So along with the Lord's help
this evening, Look at four points. Firstly, the God of peace. And then secondly, what he shall
do for us. In our text it is, shall bruise
Satan under your feet shortly. And then thirdly, how we are
to walk, waiting for him to appear for us. And we have that description
in verse 19. because our text begins with
an and, so it is setting before us firstly the path which we
are to walk in before God will bruise Satan under us. Then we
have the crown in the last point of all of grace. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you. Amen. But firstly we have this title
of our Lord, the God of Peace. Now, the Apostle in his letters
is the only one, only place we will read in scripture such a
description of God as the God of Peace. The first place that
we read of it is in the previous chapter, chapter 15. It closes with the words, now
the God of peace be with you all, amen. That is the first
time Paul mentions it. But prior to that, in the chapter
here, he also describes God in different ways. In verse 5 he
describes him as the God of patience and consolation and he says grant
you to be like-minded toward another according to Christ Jesus. Then we have in verse 13, now
the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing
that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. So the Apostle is using this
description to highlight aspects of our God that relate to the
path that we are presently walking in. In other parts of scriptures,
in the Psalms, we have our God spoken of as the God of salvation. And in other passages, well,
He is given titles that relate to what he is for the people
of God. So when he writes then further
to the Philippians, he says, there referring to the God of
peace, those things which ye have both learned and received
and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace shall be
with you. And then when he writes to the
Thessalonians, he says to them in chapter 5, And the very God
of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ. And the most beautiful reference
is reserved for Hebrews. where we read in Hebrews 13 verse
20. Now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of
the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. And he goes on and he speaks
of what the Lord Jesus Christ is to be for his dear people. Make you perfect in every good
work, to do his will working in you, that which is well-pleasing
in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and
ever. Amen. And so he uses these five
times this title of the God of Peace, and especially in the
reference in Hebrews, it is joined to the Bring from the dead our
Lord Jesus Christ. His sacrifice, John tells us
in his epistles, is a propitiation, a wrath-ending sacrifice. Bring in peace. When our Lord
was born, the angels heralded his birth to the shepherds by
saying, on earth peace, good will toward men. And it is our
Lord that says in the Gospel according to John, in me ye shall
have peace, in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world. And so It is lifting up the Lord
Jesus Christ in His work as being coming from the God of peace,
sent by the Father, obedient to the Father, and this triune
God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is the peace of the people of
God. No peace without God's provision. No peace without the sufferings
and death and rising again of the Lord Jesus Christ. And no
peace without the Holy Spirit to make these things known to
us and to apply that peace to our hearts and to our minds. So this title is Belonging to
the Lord. The Lord corrected the mistaken
thought that He had come to send peace on the earth. He said,
I have not come to send peace, but division. And that division
where God calls one and not another. He says in John 17, I've given
them thy word and the world hath hated them. And the very effect
of those are called out of nature's darkness and into his marvelous
light and are separated unto the Lord. who make their peace
with God will find that Satan is their enemy, the world is
their enemy, and they have much conflict where once before they
did not have conflict at all. And it's good for us to realize
this division. When we're speaking about peace,
that those that are dead in sin or those that are walking along
in Satan's ways, they're at peace with the world, peace with Satan,
there's no ruffle there, no difference there, but not at peace with
God, they're at war with God. But when the Lord comes and the
Lord blesses His people, when He separates them unto Himself,
gives them His word, and works in their hearts, then it is that
there is peace between their soul and God. There is that done
by the Lord Jesus Christ which shall bring an eternal peace,
but on the other side, it brings conflict with the world, with
Satan, and with unbelievers. We need to really remember that,
because as well as having tokens that we have peace with God,
we also, we could say, have a negative token where we have conflict
with Satan and conflict with the world and those that know
not the Lord. Woe is me, woe are we, when all
men speak well of us, the Lord says, for so they did of those
false prophets that were of old. And so the God of peace, it is
not the thought that, well, if he is a God of peace, why doesn't
He make there to be peace over all the earth. Take away all
of the conflict. That is not His will. That is
not His purpose. This will is under the curse,
is under the sentence of death. The Lord has His dear people
in it and He brings them out of it spiritually and then brings
them at last to be with Him, to be in eternal peace and eternal
happiness. But while we are here below,
will be this conflict. And this is why we have these
things joined together in our text. The God of Peace shall
bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The God of Peace and
Satan. Satan, instead of under our feet,
in conflict, warring against us. This is why our attention
is drawn to the God of Peace. May we always remember that the
peace the Lord has purchased for his people is by the purchase
of his precious blood, is taking away the sentence against them. It is satisfying a broken law. It is fulfilling the law on their
behalf. It is providing them a righteousness
which is not of their own, but is imputed to them, so they stand
faultless before the throne. God said, there is no peace unto
the wicked, but there is to the people of God. And He is their
peace. He is our peace. And we have
the beautiful letter to the Ephesians that speaks of this. And in Ephesians
chapter two, I read these verses from verse 13. and he's speaking
in the first place between the Jews and the Gentiles, but it
applies really to those that are called and those not yet
called. For he is our peace, you have,
in verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were
far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our
peace, you have made both one, and hath broken down the middle
wall of petition between us, having abolished in his flesh
the enmity, even the law of commandments, contained in ordinances, for
to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and
that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross,
having slain the enmity thereby. and came and preached peace to
you which were afar off and to them that were nigh. And it is preaching peace through
Jesus Christ, peace through his precious blood. It is that which
reconciles a sinner to God. It's that which reconciles Jew
and Gentile. So making one fold and one shepherd. And this beautiful title then,
is given to our God, our eternal God, the God of peace. May we truly know Him under this
title. I want to then look secondly
at what He shall do for us. In our text it says that He shall
bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Isn't it a wonderful thing that
we have recorded in scripture what the God of heaven shall
do for us, not what we shall do for him, not what we shall
do by applying the word and ineffectively doing it ourselves, but the Lord
doing it, the eternal God by His power and by His mind doing
it. This is very clearly set before
us here. We have a living God, a true
God, a God that is able to do exceeding more abundantly than
we could ask or think, and a God who shall deal with Satan, that
great arch enemy, one that is too mighty for us, too great
for us. We read in the first promise,
that the seed of the woman shall bruise thy head and thou shalt
bruise his heel. That was said to Satan while
man looked on and listened to that first promise of the coming
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have the picture of our
Lord's sufferings, of His death, and all that He endured on Calvary's
tree. Many men, they just looked at
what Christ did. They looked at His sufferings.
They looked at all He went through. But they couldn't see His triumph. They couldn't see the bruising
of Satan's head. All they saw was his sufferings. And maybe you and I are like
this. We look at our sufferings. We look at our life. We look
at the things that we're going through. We look at that which
we suffer of our fellow countrymen. We look at those things that
we endure in this world and think, well, Satan has the advantage. He has his own way. We are the
ones that are suffering. We are the ones who are bearing
all of this. But when we think back to our
Lord Jesus Christ, what was done at Calvary? Wasn't it the fulfilling
of the promise that Satan's head would be bruised? Wasn't it that
sins of all of God's people were put away there? Wasn't it that
the wrath of God was appeased there? Wasn't it that the law
was fulfilled there? Wasn't it that Satan was cast
down, the Lamb of God was slain, God saw the blood and passes
over His people? Many times the greatest conquest,
the greatest blessings are those that are not seen with the natural
eye, they are seen and believed by faith. And so it is with us
in our lives as well. Outside may look so bleak, Many
conflicts with Satan, many oppositions, many times that we have snares
laid for our feet and fall in them. Many times our temptations
beset us and we fall through them as well. Many times Satan
will turn and accuse us. Many times he will resist us. The apostles testified that Satan
hindered me. Satan's actions are very real
in the world. But we have here the Lord saying
that there is something that he will do shortly. And again
this tells us something else. That there is a period of time
when it appears the Lord is doing nothing. When the Lord is allowing
Satan to have a free reign. We think of the book of Job and
Job's life. The Lord didn't immediately intervene
and prevent Satan from doing what he did to Job. In fact,
the Lord gave him permission to do it, but save his life.
And Job had to go through that long time of trial, not just
from the things that came in his life, the terrible disasters,
you might say, and then the illnesses in his own body and then his
own brethren misunderstanding him and his own wife also speaking
against him and proving to be an added temptation. But the
Lord had a purpose and there was a time that Job had to walk
this path and it seemed to be that Satan was in the ascendancy
and he could do what he liked. and he could bring Job right
down to the ground. But that didn't always stay like
that. There was a time that the Lord
appeared and the Lord delivered Job, and the latter end of Job
was better than his beginning. The fiery trial that is to try
you. We're told by Peter that we're
not to think it a strange thing that has happened unto us, but
rejoice in as much as we are partakers of Christ's sufferings. Peter himself knew that path. Satan hath desired to have you
and to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee that thy
faith fail not. And Peter was brought through
Satan's sieve and brought safely to the other side of him. So
there is this shortly, and this then is to be a word for those
in Satan's grip at the moment, in temptation, in sorrow, in
that really the first day, like with the Lord's sufferings and
death, the disciples had to wait for the third day, a risen saviour. There is a needs be for those
trials, for the trial of faith, But then there's afterward, the
Lord appears and Satan has ended up to be really a servant of
the Lord. We would remember how Satan rose
up against Israel and that he provoked David to number Israel
and all that came on Israel. But the Lord overruled it and
used it, used it to show David where the temple was to be built,
Solomon's temple. There was a time that Satan was
to be bruised under feet. And this is the promise. This
is what the Lord will do here. It's a beautiful promise, a promise
of the Lord. A promise that we might say,
well, Satan sometimes tempts. Well, what are these promises?
Where are they? You think of the 4,000 years
from the first promises of Christ, when Christ Our Lord came all
of those years, and then the accuser of the brethren cast
down, because our Lord came and the blood was shed. When the Lord promises, he will
perform, but not at our time, often not straight away. Your
time is always ready. My time is not yet. In Hebrews
11, We read of those that saw the promises afar off and embraced
them and were persuaded of them. May this be a word to some battling
soul, tempted soul, tried soul this evening. Tried you are,
Satan seeming to be in the ascendancy. But shortly, in the Lord's time
and way, hear a bruise, Satan under your feet. He will deliver
you from His hand, give you sweet peace and quietness, give you
an exception from His rage, set a bar to Him so that He cannot
come near, He cannot annoy anymore. And you know, we have those times
just like our Lord, when our Lord was tempted of Satan 40
days and 40 nights. We read just to the last part
of those temptations, but then we read that Satan leaveth him
for a season. Our Lord knew other times, but
on that occasion he left him. And we will know those times
throughout our lives, not just once, but those times that we
go through these dark valleys, and when Satan is permitted to
really oppose us in many ways. But then we have this, this beautiful
promise. The God of peace shall bruise
Satan under your feet shortly. And there's a great last bruising. We think of death. We think of
the conquest. We think of Stephen looking up
and seeing our Lord in heaven. We think of the resurrection,
the rising of the body. The empty tomb of our Lord gives
assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead.
For those in heaven, for those ascended, Satan can no more annoy,
he cannot touch them. The martyrs that Satan stirred
up, the Roman Catholics to condemn them to the flames, They could
kill the body. The Lord said, fear not them
that kill the body. But after that, there's no more
they can do. But fear him, who after he hath
killed hath power to cast both body and soul into hell. But
once the body is slain, that soul is released, and it returns
to God that gave it. And those that know the Lord
of peace here, in me you shall have peace, in the world you
shall have tribulation. they shall have that eternal
peace. This is what the Lord will do,
not what we will do. What the Lord will do for us
and what a message for everyone that labours under Satan's temptations,
opposition and hatred to the word. But we have then a third
point I want to bring from the end of our text, the lead up
to it. This shortly, this time that
is to take place before the Lord appears, what are we to do? Apart from hoping in the Lord
and waiting for Him, what are we to do? How are we to walk? Well, that is said before us
in verse 19. Let us read it as it is. For
your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore
on your behalf, but yet I would have you wise unto that which
is good and simple concerning evil. So there are three things
that are set before us that precedes this, that these things are set
forth and then, and the God of peace shall bruise Satan under
your feet shortly. And the first is obedience. And it is an obedience that is
a very open and obvious obedience. It is an outward obedience, and
no doubt springing from the heart, but it is come abroad unto all
men. Many had seen it, they'd noticed
it, They'd seen the change, they'd seen the difference. How vital
it is for us, however much Satan might be seeking to annoy us
and tempt us, to seek, by the grace of God, we'll come to that
in a moment, to walk in obedience to the Word of God. So our outward
walk is without reproach. Remember, it was with Daniel
that when the princes sought to find something whereof they
should accuse him, they could find nothing, nothing in his
outward walk, only concerning that of his God, the fact that
he prayed so constantly to God. And what a witness that that
is. Taton certainly will gain an
advantage where the outward walk is inconsistent and where the
world can see very clear, and God's people, to their grief,
can see where there's inconsistencies. The hymn writer says, though
the outside be kept clean, he feels the filth within. Don't
let ever Satan tempt you and say, well, you've got so much
filth and evil within, so much unbelief, and you might as well
just sin and just take no care outwardly at all. But there is
a distinction here, dear friends. There is a distinction, there
is a blessing on that obedience that results in a walk that before
men is a godly and upright walk. Obedient to the faith, obedient
to doctrines, obedient to ministers of the gospel, obedient to the
ordinances of the house of God, walking in obedience to the word
of God. Paul in Romans chapter 6, he
says, knowing not that ye are servants to whom ye obey, whether
of sin or whether of righteousness. And so Paul says before these
dear Roman saints, He sets before them the path of obedience, even
though they are beset with temptations and trials and many things opposing
them, they still go on in a path of obedience. The second thing
that he brings before them is that they should be wise unto
that which is good. There's another thing I might
say here, that obviously Paul is looking upon them, seeing
them as being obedient and right, but he has those in his view
that cause divisions and offences. He says, beware of them, avoid
them, those things that are contrary to doctrine. There are those
that could easily draw them aside, easily deceive them. So his concern
for them, and this advice, is that they should be wise unto
that which is good. You know, that which is good,
it needs wisdom, it needs understanding. Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the scriptures. It needs faith in
the word. Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God. It needs good practice, it needs
discernment, it needs the gospel and faith, and it needs these
things to be taught. And we never think, well, we
can just go on and really not know what we believe or why we
believe it, because it just leaves it open for those of contrary
to come with their doctrine. all, he had to redress this with
the Galatians, who had those that came telling them that except
they were circumcised they couldn't be saved. And he had to address
that wrong doctrine, that wrong teaching. And so he says to them
here that he would have them wise unto that which is good. In other words, think of the
doctrines of the gospel, think of all of the blessings of the
gospel, all that is set before you in a positive way, make sure
you know what you believe and why. You know, we're not to say,
well, in order to be kept from evil, we need to know what the
Mormons believe, what the Masonic Lodge believes, what the Jehovah's
Witnesses believe, what the Roman Catholics believe, what the Muslims
believe, and you go on through all the religions in the world,
no, the Lord says you're not to know All of those things,
you know what you believe. You know the truth of God. You be wise unto that which is
good, the good and the right way. And knowing that, then you've
got a standard for everything that is not good and that is
evil. And so he has the other side
to this as well. And he says, and simple, concerning
evil. Very often, in our own wicked,
deceitful hearts, it will deceive ourselves, it will see something
that is evil, and really would be evil in the eyes of those
that saw it, and it will complicate it and it will make it appear
right. Someone might be walking in an
ungodly way, an unscriptural way, and then they say, well,
and they put such a spiritual slant on it as to making this
wrong thing to be right. And because God has told them
or given them the exercise, then it makes it right, supposedly
in their eyes, really deceiving them own selves. But the apostle
says here, Be simple concerning evil. If you take a look at it
first, and that is evil, that is evil. You don't listen to
elaborate arguments that suddenly will make it all right. Our deceitful
hearts and the subtleness of Satan. They always try and say,
well it's not really, it's the same as like in the fall, isn't
it? The Lord said, in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die. So Satan comes along and he says,
you shall not surely die. The Lord knows that in the day
that thou dost eat thereof, thou shalt be as gods, knowing good
and evil. And so he makes them as it was
concerning evil. The very direct thing of taking
that fruit to Adam and Eve, that was evil, it was wrong. When
Satan had finished with them, they looked upon it, and that
which began with evil suddenly began not so evil, and they could
do it. And this is what is warned here. Sometimes it is here, the simpler
soul, or perhaps even in the eyes of a child. A child can
look upon outwardly something that is being done or said and
say, that is evil, that is wrong. But you find those that are older
trying to excuse and argue away or reason away. The Lord said
of those in his day, they made the word of God of none effect
because of their tradition. And he said the word of God said
that we are to honour our parents. But he said, you have said, that
if a child says that you are benefited by what you profit
from me, then you make him that he does not have to obey them.
In other words, a trade-off and saying, well, I benefit you as
a parent, as a child, you have some benefit from me, therefore
I don't have to obey you. And they made the word of God
of none effect. They didn't really. But this
is what the warning is here. And man, when Satan comes with
arguments of what you've begun to see as evil, and then it gradually
doesn't become as evil, it doesn't look so bad, beware of that. That is the very thing that's
being warned here. Any doctrines that are not of
Christ, anything that is in any way dark, John, in his epistles,
he says, in him, that is in our God, there is no darkness at
all. God is light, in him is no darkness
at all. There's no hint of any deceit,
any cover-up, any lies, any shady business, no. It's all open and
right before the Lord. And it's good that we walk in
that way. Well, then we have a last point.
And this is where the apostle closes our text. The grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. It is all of grace. By grace you say through faith
that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. And all
that he sets before them, their obedience, their wisdom, the
faith that the God of peace should brew Satan under them, all of
these things are by the grace of God. The apostle says that
what I am, I am by the grace of God. And he sets this. Before the Romans here, this
really is his signature, isn't it? Whenever he wrote, he always
desired this for those that he wrote to. The grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. The seal of the Lord upon
it, that which is conveyed to poor, undeserving sinners. And you may come this evening
and say, I'm not deserving of the least of the Lord's mercies.
But I look at my life, I look at my failures, I look at my
sins. This doesn't speak of works. It doesn't even say, well, you
need to walk in obedience and have that wisdom unto that which
is good and simple concerning evil as a condition for the God
of peace to bruise Satan under your feet. No, there's not works,
there's not you must do this and then this will happen. But
there is direction, gracious direction, as to how we are to
walk when we are buffeted by Satan, when we're waiting for
the Lord to appear, not to despair, but to continue thou, to run
the race set before us looking unto Jesus. We are to remember
we have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin,
and to rely on this beautiful promise that acknowledges the
battle, the conflict with Satan that the people of God have,
but gives a sweet expectation and a promise. And the God of
peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly, The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.