(Sunday School) Armor of God: Shoes of the Gospel of Peace

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 6 · chapter mention

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,

Ephesians 6:10

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

2 Timothy 2:15

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.