Verse 15, he says, We are to
have our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Feet
shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. This is
the third piece of armor that that the Holy Spirit, through
the Apostle Paul, gives us to wear. Our feet are to be shod
with the preparation of the Gospel of Pete. There's nothing so comfortable
and more familiar to us than an old pair of shoes. Everybody
does have shoes on tonight, don't they? I asked my wife that before the
service. I said, what kind of shoes are you going to wear tonight?
She said, what? I said, are you going to have
shoes on? What kind are you going to have
on? Good ones? She said, what are you talking about? I said,
do you remember our text? But there's nothing quite so
comfortable as an old pair of shoes. Everybody here has one
or two or some. An old pair of shoes Something
you've worked in, or walked in, or played in, or many a mile,
becomes like an old friend to you, doesn't it? And you're loathe
to part with them at times. Well, y'all smile. Just standing
there with an old pair you wish you'd throw away. You hate to part with them. They
become so familiar to you and so comfortable and feel like
a part of you. I've got the old pairs that I've had for years. Well, the gospel is likened to
a good old pair of shoes. But like the shoes of the Israelites
of old, this gospel won't wear out. It's a good old pair of shoes
that you can wear, and they fit well, and they wear well, and
they work well, and they're comfortable. This gospel is comfortable, comforting.
And in time, it feels like a part of you. Yeah, it is a part of
you. It is you. And you feel naked without it,
this gospel. Let's look at the text here again
very carefully. I want to look at every word
in this one verse. Look at each word. It's significant,
given my inspiration of God. Look at each word in the text.
And then we're going to see how the gospel compares to a pair
of shoes. If you're taking notes, it would
be very easy to jot these things down. Alright, look at the text
again. He says we're to have our feet
shod. Verse 14 says stand. Right there
it starts. Stand, therefore, and then verse
15 says having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace. Your feet. Your feet are the lowest part
of your body, aren't they? the lowest part of your body.
Well, Christ is—what is he called in the Scriptures? He is the
head, and we are his body. And you have a body of saints. You have, like he said in Ephesians
5, saints in heaven and saints on earth. Well, we're on earth,
so we are, as it were, the lowest part of that body. We're the
feet of Christ. We're his feet, saints on earth,
or his feet, lowly as we may be. Lowly, but we're still members
of that body, body of Christ. And like feet, we get stinking. The saints on earth and in heaven,
the body of Christ in heaven is without sin. And we are too
in God's eyes, but as long as we maintain this body of death,
we will still have that stinking nature to some degree, lowly
feet. And as feet, we need covering. Your feet always need covering. They need to be shod, shod. One old writer said that man,
have you ever thought about this? Man is the only animal born on
earth that is born without a covering. without some sort of personal
protection. Every single animal or mammal
or whatever that is born is born naked, yet they're covered. And
man is the only one who is born naked and will not survive unless
he is covered. Well, the animals, you know,
didn't sin. That's a type of sin, isn't it? And the whole
creation, the animals included, grown because of man and his
sin. And man needs covering. Naked
we came, naked we return to our God, unless God covers us with
the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what
it means to be shod with the gospel. It's to be covered by
the blood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
need that, else we'll be naked before our God. And then it says
here in our text, it says we're to have our feet shod. We stand, therefore, it says,
having our feet shod. Sounds like someone else does
it, doesn't it? Is that what you got out of that?
It doesn't say you need to shod your feet. It says stand, therefore,
having your feet already shod. So that tells me that The gospel
is God's doing. Salvation is of the Lord. It's
God that shines us with the gospel. Of God, the Scripture says, are
you in Christ, who of God is made unto us. Wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, redemption, all those things make up the gospel.
So this thing is of God, isn't it? It's of the Lord. Like Ezekiel's
child, there in Ezekiel 16, you remember that story? It says
that when he passed by her, he found her naked, polluted in
her own blood. And what did he do? He said,
live. And then he began to cover her
with washer and then to cover her with various things, a robe
and a skirt. And then it says he shod that
little girl with badger skin. Shod her. And God Almighty is
the one who applies this gospel, applies this salvation to us.
We do appropriate it. We do take it to ourselves. We
do, by faith, appropriate the gospel. We wear it by faith.
Nevertheless, salvation is of the Lord. He's the one that brings
this thing to pass. He brings it to us. He comes
to us, shods us, covers us. And like the knowledge of the
gospel, that's by revelation too. Everything about the gospel.
The belief of it, the revelation of it, comes from God. So, according
to our text here, we are feet and we're to be shod. We're to
be covered with Christ's righteousness. We're Christ's feet and it's
God that shods us or covers us with shoes of the gospel. Now
look at it again. It says we're to have our feet
shod with the preparation. of the gospel of peace, the preparation
of the gospel of peace. And once again, I said, I don't
want to. I'm not trying to be clever here. Not at all. But there's a reason
why the Holy Spirit puts these analogies in here, isn't it?
That's the reason. I'm not trying to be clever or
original, but this applies, certainly, to our text, this allegory. I love John Bunyan's allegories
so much, and there's great spiritual truths with the Lord. That's
how he preached in parables or allegories, spiritual stories
or earthly stories that tell a spiritual thing. And here it
says we're to have our feet shod with the preparation, preparation
of the gospel. And when we get dressed in the
morning, what we're doing is we are preparing ourselves for
the day. Right? We're preparing for the
day when we get dressed. That's the first thing you do
upon rising is you dress yourself. You get prepared for the day. And when you do that, you go
to the closet or you go to your chest of drawers, your wardrobe.
And you choose certain clothing to put on for that day, certain
types of clothing. And you prepare yourself to go
out to work or play or whatever it is you want to do. You prepare
yourself. Well, when God Almighty purposed
our salvation, when He designed our salvation, when God Almighty
thought of Before he clothed this world, before he made the
universe, before he did all of this, the first thing he did
was do some preparation. Knowing all things before, knowing
the fall of man, he foreknew all things, predetermined by
God. So the first thing he did was
he chose something. He chose something. He chose
our Savior. Isaiah 42 says that, that Christ
is God's chosen, God's elect, God's servant, who would be the
firstborn among many brethren, the Lamb slain, He's called before
the foundation of the world, the covenant head, the King of
kings, the Lord of lords, the Savior of mankind. Before God
created man, He chose His Savior. And it's not like there were
other ones to choose from, Christ was there, and he chose Christ
to be the Savior of the body. And the Scripture says, in Psalm
40, he said, A body thou hast prepared for me, lo, I come to
do thy will, O God, to save his people. So Christ was, as it
were, prepared by God before the foundation of the world to
save a people. So the Gospel is called the Preparation.
the preparation of our salvation. And this gospel is also our preparation
for the day. And we'll talk more about that
later, what it means to prepare ourselves for the day with the
gospel. All right? Read on in our text. And it says
we're to have our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace. The gospel of peace. The gospel is the gospel of peace. It's called that many times in
the Scripture. The gospel is the gospel of peace. And it's
not like men like to say that we make our peace with God. That's not it at all. It's not
us making peace with God or deciding or us choosing or us letting
God do anything. But the gospel of peace is the
gospel that tells us of Christ who came to make peace by the
blood of his cross. Isaiah 53 verse 5 says, The chastisement
of our peace was laid on him. Or that is, those stripes that
were necessary to obtain peace with the Holy God were not laid
on our back. They were laid on his back. The
chastisement necessary for our peace, to appease an angry God,
to satisfy a just and a holy God, the chastisement of our
peace was laid upon Christ, and he bore that wrath of God for
us, thereby obtaining peace for us with a holy God. Peace, reconciliation
with a holy God who is angry with the wicked—that's us. But
we have peace with God. We're reconciled by the body
of Christ once and for all. This is a missing note in modern
day preaching, this thing of God's wrath and God's anger and
God's hatred against sin and the need for God to punish it.
What did he say? He said, I'm a first a just God,
didn't he? Before I'm a Savior, I'm just.
He will by no means clear the guilty, but he said I'm merciful
too. But first and foremost, he's just, he's holy, he's righteous,
he will punish sin. That's a missing note in present-day
preaching. The need for peace, it sounds,
what you're hearing today doesn't sound like we need peace. And
that's what they're crying, Joe, peace, peace, when there is no
peace. And men and women don't have the foggiest idea why they
need it anyway. God loves them, Christ died for
them. What's the problem? Sin's the problem. sins properly. And that peace had to be won
by Christ, and it took nothing less than the blood of God's
Son to obtain it. And that's the reason every single
epistle begins with this—grace and peace. Every epistle begins
with that—grace and peace from God our Father and our Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel was heralded when
it first came to man. It was heralded like this, peace
on earth, goodwill toward men. You see, peace comes from God
to us. We don't make peace. It comes
from God to us. The gospel is God's gospel. And
it's the gospel of peace. And God's the one that thought
it, God's the one that bought it, and God's the one that brought
it. And that peace must come from Him. So he tells us that
we need to be, or we are, shod with the preparation of this
gospel of peace, the gospel of our salvation, the good news
of how Christ obtained peace for us with a holy God by virtue
of his righteousness and his shed blood. All right, now let's
look at a few ways that the gospel is compared to shoes that we
wear. Okay? Are you with me? It should
be interesting to you. It should be good, I believe.
How the gospel is compared to shoes. And we need shoes. You hear that, kids? We need
shoes. These kids like to run without
shoes a lot, but we need shoes. And the first necessity of shoes,
the first thing we need shoes for is what? Safety. Protection. Protect us. if they're
our safety. I personally wear steel-toe boots
all the time. When I go out to work, I've worn
them ever since, well, it was mandatory in construction jobs
that I began working on when I was just a teenager. They made
us wear steel-toe boots. And many times, I was glad I
had them on. And I got used to wearing them all the way through
the wintertime. They're not cold on your feet. But I got used
to wearing them, and I've worn them ever since. Summer and winter,
I still wear them. I've still got a pair, a couple
of pairs, as a matter of fact. Steel-toe boots in my feet. Do you all wear them down at
the plant? Y'all do. Steel-toe boots. They're my protection. They're my safety. They protect
my feet. Well, the gospel is the gospel
of our safety. That's another word for salvation.
It's the gospel of our safety, our protection from the law,
our protection from wrath of God, our protection from condemnation,
our protection from our enemy, our protection from Satan, his
fiery darts, all of these things. The gospel is our salvation,
our safety. It protects us from thorns and
thistles and trials and troubles. It will keep our feet. It will
keep us. Secondly, the gospel is compared
to a good pair of shoes. You need shoes for support. not
only for safety or protection, but you need them for support.
Shoes bind your feet up. They bind your feet and form
your feet the way they should be formed and give you that needed
support that you need. There used to be a girl I knew
down in Florida, and she went barefoot all the time. She didn't
like to wear shoes very much. It was very obvious. Her feet
were about a mile wide. They were ugly, really. They were very ugly. They were
very unfeminine. They were very ugly to look at,
and she could not wear shoes for any length of time after
a while because she was used to going barefoot. Her feet were
too big to put in a pair of shoes. And they were ugly to boot. The
gospel is what binds our ugly feet. It makes them beautiful. It binds our wandering feet,
too. Binds our wandering feet. And
like I said, that girl's feet were too big to get in a pair
of shoes. And most people who don't have
the gospel, their head's too big. Their head's too big to
fit in the church house. They're not sinners. But the
gospel is that which binds our wandering feet, molds us, shapes
us, conforms us to the image of Christ, molds our feet into
Christ's feet, molds our feet, makes our feet walk in paths
of righteousness like the Lord Jesus Christ. We need good shoes.
We need to have shoes on for protection, for safety, for support. Another thing that shoes are
necessary for. Sanitation, right? They keep your feet clean, don't
they? And listen to this, kids. Shoes
are required in public places. You can't go in and eat a meal
without them. And for sanitary purposes, nobody
wants to smell or look at your ugly feet. That's especially
necessary that we wear them in here. And that's a gentle reminder
to our children that you need to keep your shoes on in this
place. or out of respect to what we're doing here. But also, I
could say it for sanitary reasons, shoes keep your feet clean and
keep you from being an offense to everybody else. Well, the
gospel is what keeps us from being an offense to a holy God. The gospel is what cleans us.
The gospel is what purifies us. The gospel is what keeps us clean,
keeps our feet clean. And Christ said it over in John
13, didn't he, when he washed their feet? He said, you know,
you're washed, but you'd need daily to have your feet washed.
And I think that's the sense here in the preparation of the
gospel of peace, that we're to put this gospel on and wear it
throughout the day, preparation for the day. It has a cleansing
effect. Seeing that you have purified
your souls, Peter said, in obeying the truth, the gospel of your
salvation. It keeps our feet clean and mind stayed on things
above. Next, number four, another thing
necessary about shoes is they give us warmth and comfort, don't
they? Shoes keep your feet warm and
comfortable. Good shoes are vital protection
as well as keep you warm in the wintertime and comfortable. Comfort
for your feet in the cold weather, in the gospel. is the only thing
that will warm this old, cold, dead heart of ours. It's the
only thing that will make an old sinner's heart burn. Like
those disciples on the road to Emmaus, after Christ got through
preaching the gospel, and, buddy, if you heard Him preach the gospel
tonight, your heart would burn, too. But that's what they went
away saying. Did not our hearts burn? These
old, cold, dead, dry hearts, they just burned when they heard
the gospel, the gospel of our salvation. And that gospel warms
us, and if the blood of Christ is coursing through your veins,
it will comfort you in this old wintry world. Number five. Another
thing that gospel is compared to shoes for is for work. You need a good pair of shoes
on to go to work, don't you? Rick, do you build houses barefoot? He'd last about five minutes.
He'd step on a sixteen penny, and he'd be done for. You need
good shoes to perform any real work, any kind of real man's
work. You need a good pair of supportive
shoes. I remember one time I had some
work to be done over at the house. We had some digging to do, some
ditches to be done. And I called a young man, asked
him to come over and help me. And he knew we had to dig some
ditches. And Rick, he showed up in a pair of tennis shoes. Now, you know what I knew then.
I wasn't going to get much work out of him. Not digging a ditch. You ever tried to dig a ditch
in a pair of tennis shoes? You can't do it, Pop. I wasn't
going to get much work out of him. You've got to have the right
shoes on to work properly. The right shoes fit certain works. You say, what's the analogy there? All of our works are totally
unacceptable to God. apart from gospel motives, apart
from a gospel motive, that is, a love to Christ or the love
of Christ that constrains us. Do you remember the article in
the Bulletin Sunday by Andrew Fuller? The last line, if you
read it, it was a good article. The last line he said, he said,
morality, which has no relation to Christ, and which is not enforced
on evangelical or gospel principles, is not Christian. It's heathen.
You remember reading that? You probably brushed right over
it. Let me explain what he meant by that. Morality, which has
no relation to Christ, or that is, I don't care your best deeds,
if they're not by faith in Christ, If they're not done with faith
and love and gratitude and by faith in Christ, his work is
positively sinful to God. The plowing of the wicked. Barbara,
he said the plowing. A man out there plowing his fields,
he's an unbeliever. That's wicked in God's eye. All
of our righteousnesses are filthy rags, stinking. Because our motives
are wrong. Our hearts are wrong. Everything
about us is wrong. It's in rebellion to the Holy
God. Everything, Vicki, that's not
of faith is what? Go ahead and say it. I'll allow
you to speak. It's sin. What does that mean?
Anything done apart from faith in Christ is positively sin to
God. God won't accept it. I don't
care. The most humanitarian effort, right? The most humanitarian
effort. I remember working on the railroad
one time, I was arguing with a guy who was Catholic, and he
was talking to me about how the Catholic Church, boy, I don't
call it that, Catholicism, does more good deeds or humanitarian
efforts than any other religion or denomination, and they do. They do a lot. They provide a
lot of services and so forth. I said, yeah, that's good, that's
all fine and good, but it's all heathen, it's all heresy, and
God Almighty, it's a stench in His nostril. But it's all done
for the glory, for the sake of the Catholic Church. Not out
of glory to God, not with hearts made grateful and gratitude to
Christ and looking to Christ to make that work acceptable. And any morality which has no
relation to Christ, without looking to Christ, is heathen. Anything that's not enforced
on gospel principles, or that is a love of Christ, constrains
us. This message right now, if it's delivered with any motive
other than the glory of Christ, it's positively sinful. And it led to my condemnation. That's the reason I say I'm not
trying to be clever. I don't want to try to impress you. I
want to try to impress God. I want to say what He wants to
hear. I'd better be talking about Christ, hadn't I? A Christian is heathen. Anything
that's not with an eye to Christ is heathen. Heathen. And only
real works perform. Only good works. really perform,
are those which have Christ at their center. At that church
work, you hear a lot about, well, this ministry or that ministry.
If Christ is not at the center, if it's not a gospel preaching,
God honoring, God glorifying, Christ exalting, trying to exalt
Christ and edify the sheep with food feeding on Christ, if that's
not the center of it, If that's not what it's all about, that
church, so-called, is an abomination of God Almighty. That work, that
ministry, call it that if you will, but it's not the ministry
that Paul said he had over in 2 Corinthians 4. Therefore, seeing we have this
ministry, as we have obtained mercy, we preach Christ. That's
the ministry. That's what the church is here
for. And that work, that's truly a work by the church is the preaching
of Christ and Him crucified. Everything else is abominable
and stinking like unshodden feet. All right, another thing that
good shoes are good for. They'll enable you to walk or
run well. Right? First thing you do, little
children, when they're born, their feet are so fat, it's a
wonder. Those little kids, it's a wonder they ever learn to walk
on those little things. You know, they're round on the
bottom. Maybe that's the reason they're
bow-legged for a while, you know. They feet have to be flat, and
you put a good pair of shoes on them, they'll start walking.
Right? Good flat foundation, able you
to walk and then eventually run well. You know, nobody ever,
No one has ever, in the history, far as I know, of any kind of
Olympic events or whatever, has ever won a race barefooted. I don't care what the old stories
are. Indians didn't run barefooted. They had better sense now. They
got them a good pair of leather-soled moccasins and used them. No great runner ever went shoeless.
You can't get a good grip, you can't get a good footing with
a gospel. Nobody runs a race of life. Nobody
wins the prize. The prize is the mark of the
high calling of God in Christ Jesus, apart from the knowledge
of the gospel, apart from a firm belief in Christ. The gospel
is what enables you to run this race and finish your course,
like Paul said. The only thing really that will
get you through this life is the gospel. The gospel is the
only thing that, like I said, you need a good pair of shoes
to give you a sure footing. The gospel is the only thing
that you can really stand on. It enables you to get a grip
on yourself. Right? I haven't been an athlete. I'm getting too old now. I'm
falling apart. But I know the benefit in every
single sporting event. I sat down and I thought about
this. Not one single sporting event can I think of that a good
pair of shoes is not vitally necessary. This would be beach
volleyball or something. You want to call that a sport?
Golf, now there's a sport. You understand? No, seriously. Every sporting event requires
a good pair of shoes, to wear a good pair of shoes. and to
get a solid stance, solid footing that's key to any kind of athletic
endeavor. Well, the gospel. The gospel
is the foundation of everything. It is our foundation. Everything we stand upon, every
endeavor that we seek to perform in this life needs to be founded
by The things of Christ, don't we?
We certainly want everything to be founded on Christ. To have Christ at its basis on
whom we stand and in whom we're clothed. Now, turn over to Exodus
chapter 12 with me and I'll quit with this. Exodus chapter 12. This is the first mention of
shoes in the Bible, except when God told I told Moses to take his shoes
off before that birdie bush. But this is the next mention
of shoes, Exodus chapter 12. Now, I said that good shoes will
enable you to walk and even run well. Well, shoes, lastly, are
necessary for travel, aren't they? If you want to get anywhere,
if you've got a long journey to take, You're going to have
to have a good pair of shoes, right, to get there. Well, the
Scriptures say that we are strangers and pilgrims here, that we're
sojourning. That means that we're on a journey. Sojourn. Sojourn. We're on a journey. And we're always, the Scripture
says, to have these shoes on. We're always to be mindful of
our eternal home. We're always to be walking by
faith in Christ and while walking by faith toward Christ. You don't march in, you don't
stand and walk in place. Faith means you're making a progress
toward a goal, aren't you? Well, we've pressed toward that
mark, as I already quoted. We're walking by faith to Christ. Not only in Christ, but what
is our goal? What do we desire? What is it
we're longing for? Where are you going? Where do
you want to go, Barbara? Heaven? You go to Him, right? Therefore, let us go to Him without
the camp. We've got to be prepared. The gospel of faith. Paul may have got that from this
here in Exodus chapter 12. Look at verse 11. Exodus 12. The mention of the Passover.
Our Lord gave it to Moses and he said in verse 11, This Passover
you shall eat it with your loins girded. Hey, I've heard that
before. Girt with the truth. And your
shoes on your feet. What kind of shoes? Your shoes?
I told Moses, you take your shoes off, Moses. It's holy ground. You take them off. I'm going
to give you some good shoes. They won't wear out. You take
those old rotten shoes off. They'll wear out, won't they?
Your righteousness won't get you there, Joe, will it? Take
them off. Throw it away like Barnabas did
that old ragged blanket. Be shod with the gospel, see?
That'll get you there. Everyone wearing it? It'll cover you. Have your shoes,
sir, have your feet. Have your shoes on your feet,
your staff in your hand. What's that? Huh? The Word of God. This is the
staff of life in it. Eat it in haste. Don't... He
didn't believe us. Makes haste. He's in a hurry. Today is the day of salvation.
Don't wait till tomorrow. Today is the day of salvation.
Make haste. Eat it now. Don't wait. Well, I'll eat tomorrow.
No, eat now. It's the Lord's vessel. It's
the Lord's gospel. This is the gospel. Finally,
brethren, stand having your feet shot in preparation for the gospel
of peace. Some of you have beautiful feet. It's obvious. God has shot you
with his gospel. That's the only thing that'll
make your old stinking feet beautiful. Gospel of course. All right,
let's stand. Stand! Our Heavenly Father, we thank
You for some simple parables that You preached in, simple
illustrations and allegories that teach us things that us
little children can understand. earthly things that tell us of
more important, far deeper and more mysterious spiritual things.
We marvel, dear Lord, at your wisdom, how glorious this Gospel
is and how everything relates to it. Truly Christ is all and
in all. He is in everything. In everything
we see there is a picture of Christ, a type of Christ in the
Gospel of Christ. We thank you, Lord, for this
book. We ask that you'd open it to us and make it even more
profitable and edifying. We pray that these thoughts might
go with us through the week. We might wear it, wear it well,
continue to wear this gospel by faith. By your grace, by your
mercy, by the power of your Spirit, we ask, we pray these things
in Christ's name. Amen.