The Believer's Armor, Part 3: The Shoes of the Gospel of Peace B

Peter and John walked into the Sanhedrin and they said, it doesn't matter to us what you say, we're going to serve God. And they had no fear, they knew who was on their side. The Apostle Paul did the same thing, boldly preached Jesus Christ because he knew his resources. He was at peace with God. God was on his side, you see, and in that we stand. And I can say to Satan, bring it on, whatever you want. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm Phil Johnson, your host. If you've ever stepped on broken glass or a Lego brick, you know that even a relatively minor foot injury can leave you less than mobile. Clearly, good shoes are important in everyday activities and extra critical for soldiers in battle. And if you're a Christian, you are a soldier in a war with a determined, deadly enemy. So how are you holding up?

How's your footing? How strong do you stand when Satan unleashes the weapons of his warfare, doubt and discouragement and temptation? God has given you specialized footwear for standing firm during battle.

Learn how to use it today on Grace to You. Here's John MacArthur continuing his series from Ephesians 6 called The Believer's Armor. I want you to see the feet shod with the gospel of peace. We have reasons for the things that we have. The shoes provide a certain function. And this is especially true in war. If it would be important in athletics, you can imagine how important it would be if you're fighting for your life. And a Roman soldier wouldn't get out in a battle with just a normal leather shoe with a slick bottom. He'd be slipping and sliding all over every place.

He'd be trying to climb a rock to fight a guy and he'd be slipping down the rock. And so they had to have a special shoe. And it was very important because in battle, this would save your life. And so there was such an importance of footwear. And here's what they used. They used a thick-soled hobnail semi-boot that came around like this on their foot and then had straps that tied it in all directions so that it was tremendously tight and adhering to their foot. On the bottom, they had hobnails, little pieces of metal that protruded from the bottom like a football or a track shoe or a baseball shoe to give them a grip on the soil.

This gave them firmness of footing so they could stand in the battle. And that's what Paul sees. He sees this Roman soldier standing and his feet are firm and he's able to hold his ground and make quick moves and keep his feet.

He doesn't slip and he doesn't slide and he doesn't fall. Now he says the Christian needs to have shoes too. You can get out there, you know, you can have your waist all cinched up.

Boy, you're committed. And you can have your breastplate on and you have living a godly and righteous life as the Lord wishes. But unless you can stand on your feet, you're going to fall over.

And so you must have a solid base. Your feet are to be shod with the preparation. And the word preparation here need not confuse you.

It's probably a little awkward the way it's translated. It simply means made ready or equipped. And all he is saying is your feet should be should be made ready by being shod.

That's what he's saying. They should be equipped. They should be prepared.

That's the idea. In fact, in Titus 3.1, the same term preparation is translated readied. So it's the idea to be ready, to be prepared, to be equipped. Our feet should be equipped.

They should be properly shod for the battle. Now, most people who read this and many commentators who've written on it assume that it has reference to going along preaching the gospel of peace. Boy, I've got my shoes of the gospel on and off I go to preach. And you know, they basically get that out of Romans 10.15. Because in Romans 10.15 it quotes Isaiah 52.7, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace. You have the same phrase there, the gospel of peace. And so in Paul's message in Romans 10.15, you know, he says, how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall anyone preach except he be sent? And so therefore, how beautiful are the feet of those who go and preach the gospel of peace.

Now, the gospel of peace, watch this, is something to be preached, no question. It is something to be taken and preached. That's what Romans 10 is talking about. That is not what Ephesians 6 is talking about. Ephesians 6 has nothing to do with preaching. It has nothing to do with going anywhere. What is the first word in verse 14?

What is it? Stand. This is not going, this is standing that the apostle is in reference to. And the point here is not evangelizing the lost. The point here is not preaching the gospel. The point here is fighting the devil. This is not evangelism for an unbeliever. This is conflict for a Christian.

He's not talking about going anywhere and preaching. He's talking about standing where you are and fighting the devil. The idea is best expressed in the words of 1 Corinthians 16, 13, stand fast in the faith. Stand fast in the faith. Verse 11, that ye may be able to stand.

That's the issue. Verse 13, that you may withstand. And having done all to, stand.

It's all about standing, not about going. So that is not the proper interpretation. Sure the gospel of peace can be preached. It is to be preached. And beautiful are the feet of those who go and preach it.

But that's not the issue here. This is not evangelism. This is the believer in conflict with Satan. And he is saying, because our feet are shod with the good news of peace, we stand our ground.

We don't slip, we don't slide, we don't fall when we're under attack. Now, let's look at the phrase, the gospel of peace. Well, what is that?

What is it? Well, gospel means what? Good news. And peace means what? Peace. It's the good news of peace. And what is the good news of peace? Romans chapter 5. Turn to it because it's a very important passage. Romans chapter 5.

This is the good news of peace. I want you to notice verse 6. Romans 5, 6. Now here is the basic picture of man. When we were yet without strength, all right, man is weak.

He is weak. Verse 7, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, which means for an unrighteous man, nobody would ever die. So the implication is in verse 6, we are weak. In verse 7, we are unrighteous. In verse 8, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, so we're sinners. Verse 9, much more than being justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath. That indicates we were unjustified, unsaved, and the objects of God's wrath.

Now there's a definition of man. Verse 6, weak. Verse 7, unrighteous. Verse 8, sinful. Verse 9, unjustified, unsaved, and an object of wrath. Summing it all up, that kind of man, verse 10, if when we were enemies.

That's the sum. You take a man who is weak, unrighteous, sinful, unjust, unsaved, and what have you got? An enemy of God, who is the object of God's judgment. God and man, a market people, are on two different sides.

Don't let anybody pump you the line that God is the Father of everybody, that God loves and tolerates everybody, that everybody is in God's family. God will not acquit the wicked. God is a God of vengeance and a God of justice. And if a man and a woman are enemies against God, they will feel God's judgment.

But what did God do to change this? Verse 6 again, when we were weak, in due time, Christ died. Verse 7, we were unrighteous and scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man some would dare to die. But God commanded his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God says, you're enemies, but I'm going to try to remember you. You're enemies, but I'm going to try to remedy this in the death of Christ. And we then are justified, verse 9, by his blood. We are saved from wrath through him. When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. You see?

Now then, listen to me. What is the gospel? The gospel is that man was at war with God, but Christ made peace, right? Christ made peace. That's the gospel of peace. Now go back to verse 1 of chapter 5 of Romans.

Therefore, being justified by faith, because of what Christ has done, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. The gospel is that man and God were at war, and God was on the opposite side against man. Like Jesus said, if you're not with me, you're what?

Against me. In the book of Revelation, the Lord says, I will come against you and fight with you with a sword out of my mouth. So man is an enemy of God, and yet Christ comes and makes peace a reality.

That's the good news. The good news is that you are at peace with God. God and you aren't on other sides anymore. You're on the same side, right?

God's on my side. That's the gospel of peace. We are reconciled. 2 Corinthians 5 19 says He has reconciled us. Colossians, tremendous passage.

Chapter 1 and verse 20. And having made peace through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, and you that were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled. You see? The gospel is that we are one with God. He is on our side. Now you know what that means? That means that a Christian who stands firm says, look, Satan, you come against me all you want. I've got shoes that anchor me in the ground, immovable, because God is on my side. You see? That's what helps us stand. If I had to stand there and fight off the host of hell by myself in my own strength, I'd lose.

Illustration. Peter in the garden, John 18. He's standing there with the disciples while the soldiers come to capture Christ. And there probably are 500 of them marching from Fort Antonius, and they have torches to light the night so they can find Jesus.

They assume He'll be hiding in a cave somewhere. And they come marching into that garden, and they've got clubs and staves ready to beat Him into submission and ready to fight off His disciples. And Jesus steps out and meets them and says, whom seek ye? And they reply, Jesus of Nazareth. And they fell over on their backs like a bunch of dominoes laying in the dirt, the whole 500 of them at least, however many there were, went down like dominoes. They all crawled back up and dusted themselves off, and He said, whom seek ye again? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth.

They had fallen flat on the ground. Peter is thinking to himself, no doubt, man, what power. Just His name and the whole Roman army collapses, and he gets an idea.

If He's this powerful, there's no sense in being taken, right? So the Bible says He grabs a sword, and He chops off the ear of the servant of the high priest. He was not trying to chop off Malchus' ear. I'm convinced He was going for His head, Malchus ducked. I know that.

That's all. Malchus had a good reaction. He wouldn't have done any good to chop off an ear.

But that wasn't the whole story. The story is He's going to fight the whole Roman army. You say, where does He get that kind of strength? What gives Him that confidence? He had just seen that whole army fall flat in the dirt at the very name of Jesus. And He's saying to Himself, Lord, if I get in any trouble, I'll just say, get them, Jesus, zap, and down they go.

There's a sense of invincibility, you see. He has a sense that there's nothing that can ever defeat Him because He's seen the power displayed already. And He takes the sword and He begins to defend the Lord. Ah, He knew who was on His side, you see.

He knew who was on His side, and that's where the resource came. I think about the host of Midian. And the host of Midian comes to assault and attack the children of Israel. And God moves upon the hearts of Israel to fight against the Midianites. And so the people in Israel decide to get the army together and they get 32,000 soldiers, the crack troops, you know, going to go out and fight Midian. And the Lord says, look, I don't need 32,000 soldiers to do this.

Get rid of everybody who's not serious. And so He tells Gideon to work a little system, and finally Gideon does, and he winds up with 300 guys. And the Lord says, all right, you 300 are going to defeat the host of Midian. Everybody get a pitcher and a candle and a trumpet.

And if I'd have been there, I'd have said, that's a little weird. You get up on a mountain and ring the host of Midian down in the valley, and when I give you the word, blow the trumpet, bust the pitcher and arrow stick up the candle, and we'll win the battle. And you know what happened? They did, and the host of Midian got up and killed each other. Listen, Gideon knew who was on his side, you see. He knew who was on his side. Peter and John walked into the Sanhedrin and they said, it doesn't matter to us what you say, we're going to serve God. And they had no fear, they knew who was on their side.

The Apostle Paul did the same thing, boldly preached Jesus Christ because he knew his resources. He was at peace with God. God was on His side, you see. And in that we stand, and I can say to Satan, bring it on, whatever you want. I can say, whatever you have to cast against me, I have absolutely no fear because God's on my side. You know something? Knowing what I know, if I wasn't a Christian and didn't have God on my side, I'd be scared all the time. I'd be scared to death.

Listen, you can stand in absolute confidence. When I was in junior high in the seventh grade, I had a little friend named Roger. Roger was the little guy, we were both in the seventh grade, and Roger, he was just kind of, he looked like about a fourth grader.

He just hadn't really developed much. He was kind of pudgy. He looked like the Pillsbury man that you poke, you know? He was just puffy and cute and, you know, cherubic.

And Roger was my little friend because I was the pastor's son and he was in the church too, and we were Sunday school buddies. And so, you know, we walked around this very rough junior high. I mean, this was a really rough junior high. We had knife fights all the time, and in the boys' room, we'd go in, they had a fuse box, and on the fuse box, the kids would open it and they'd leave marijuana cigarettes burning, and everybody'd come in and take a drag. And this was in 1950, I don't know, sometime in the 1950s, you know, and it wasn't, it wasn't like it.

We think of drugs as something very modern. No, no, it was going on all the time then. Kids were spaced out all the time. We had a parking lot for the kids that drove to school in junior high, you know, because they were so old. Herbie was 18 and had his own car, you know, he was in our class. It was a really rough school, and there were fights constantly, just constantly. It got to the place where, for some reason, they liked to tease Roger.

He just, by his looks, invited, you know, that kind of stuff. And so, we'd go walking along, you know, and they'd be always yelling stuff at Roger and teasing him. And I remember, this would commonly happen, these guys were always in trouble for wearing their pants too low in those days, you know. And the guy who was the vice principal would always, when he'd catch them, hike their pants up and tie a big belt around them, make them wear suspenders to embarrass them, you know. And this just agitated them all the more, so they were always upset. And one day, this was very calm, we'd be walking down, and they'd come up and hit the back of us and knock all our books out, which we'd carry under our arms, and then kick them. There'd be about six of them, and they'd just keep kicking them all down the walk and into the bushes, you know. And neither one of us could defend ourselves against that kind of stuff.

And so, we'd just kind of, you know, pick up our books and try to find our papers. And one day, I was in shop, and I was sanding some little thing, and this one kid who was a leader named Johnny took a two-by-four block and threw it across and split my head, and I had to have a sewn up and everything. So, you know, it was just something. I don't know what we did, but we just kept getting it, you know. And so, this went on all the time, and this one kid named Johnny was the leader. Well, one day, we were in the locker room, and we were just preparing to leave after gym class, and the gang came by, you know. And they were the hoods, the hard guys, we called them. And they came along, and they thought it'd be real cute.

And they came by and elbowed us, and we went over the bench and into the lockers and the back of our heads, you know. It was like a comedy act, just together, foom, you know. Bang, see.

Alphonse and Gaston, you know. And there we are laying on the floor, and you know, Roger finally says, that's enough. You can only take so much, right? Well, I said, what are you going to do about it, Roger? He said, well, he's going to tell his brother.

And I said, well, that's good. And his brother's name was Steve. Never forget him, the Williams family. Steve played middle linebacker for Long Beach State. Steve was 6'4", about 245, and had a 30-inch waist. And I'll never forget Steve, because I remember the first time I heard him give his testimony. He was driving a bread truck, and he hit a concrete wall going 40 and walked away.

That's the kind of guy he was, tremendous physical specimen. Anyway, Roger said he's going to tell his brother. So I said, good, Roger. So he came back the next day, and he said, Steve's coming to school tomorrow.

And he's going to do something. So these guys all had an area by the gym where they had worn out the grass. They'd come early every morning and smoke and sneak in pot and everything. And they'd stand there, you know, and wear out the grass and just carry on their conversation.

About six or so of them, and they were just always there. So this one day, Steve was there. He stayed behind a building where they couldn't see, and it was about 15 minutes before school, and Roger and I were, you know, just sort of hanging around waiting to see what happened. And so Roger yelled, and he says, hey, you, you know, to this Johnny, come here. And, oh, they were laughing.

They were going to really lay it on. So this Johnny kid comes swaggering out. He had a police record.

In fact, later on, it's kind of sad, you know. Later on, he actually wound up being killed by some kind of robbery or something. But anyway, he came swaggering out, and he was laughing and mocking Roger. Just at that point, Steve walked around the corner of the building. He walks up to Roger, and he says, which one? Roger says, that one? At which point, Steve walked over to this guy.

I'll never forget. This is exactly what happened. He just picked the guy up by the shirt, lifted him up, took his fist, and knocked out four teeth with one shot, just crushed his nose down, his two top teeth, and I don't know what all. And then he picked him up, and of course, the guy was out. He picked him up, and there was a big hedge in front of the wall of the gym, and he threw him over the hedge, against the wall, and down behind the bush. And then he said to the rest of the guys, don't you ever mess with Roger again.

And he walked away. You want to know what happened at our junior high? Roger ruled. No question about it. Roger ruled North Downey Junior High. You know why?

Because Roger had resources. You know, it's tremendous to know that Jesus Christ said, I am not ashamed to call you my brothers. It's a great thing to know that He's on our side, amen? And when Satan comes to attack, our feet are rooted firmly on the solid ground of the gospel of peace, which says, the good news, people, is that I'm not an enemy.

I'm not on the other side. God's on my side because of Jesus Christ. And so no matter what Satan brings, I can't, as verse 10 says, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

And that's the confidence of having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Listen, victory is available in your life as a Christian. Just answer these three questions as I close. Number one, do I really want to win? Do I really want to win?

Do I have on a belt of commitment? Question number two, do I seek to live a holy life? Do I have a breastplate of righteousness? And number three, am I bold in the battle because my feet are firmly rooted in confidence in God? If you're running around doubting the Lord and His strength, you're going to lose.

But if you can answer those three questions, yes, you're a winner. And God's going to do exciting and revolutionary things with your life for His own glory. How bold are you in the spiritual battles you face? As John MacArthur explained today on Grace to You, boldness comes when you're committed to Christ, that is, when you're wearing the right pair of shoes, the right piece of the believer's armor. You know, John, the believer's armor is one of our most popular studies. And of course, it's not a sensationalized look at how to bind Satan or command him, nothing like that. It's simply a careful verse-by-verse study of Ephesians 6, which says something about the appetite people have for biblical truth and about how Grace to You teaches God's Word.

Well, we understand that everything the believer needs is available in Christ, but we have to understand how to use it. In other words, it's one thing to say, Christ is in me. He is my protector. He's going to defend me.

He's going to protect me. It's something else to say, I know the means of grace by which I am protected. So the Lord does protect his own.

He does guard his own, but he's given us the means to do that. And that's why the Apostle Paul talks about prayer. We defend ourselves with all prayer against the enemy. We put on the armor of God, and each piece has a vital application in how we live our lives. So this is a very foundational area of Christian living. You need to know what's going on in the kingdom of Satan. You don't want to be ignorant of his devices if you want to be a victorious believer. So we have a new study guide on the Believer's Armor. This is a reprint and a brand new editing of the old study guides from decades back in the early 1980s and 1990s, and we published about 150 of those study guides. And we're starting to revive the volumes with a fresh new approach. The Believer's Armor is the second volume we've published, and it's designed to help you get everything you can out of our current radio series so you can listen and look at the notes in the study guide as well.

Great for home Bible studies, very affordable. You'll want to collect the entire edition as they come out over the next years. And as a reminder, in August we offered a free copy of this study guide to everyone who receives the monthly newsletter. If you're not currently receiving that letter, you should be. Every month we offer a special message on CD or a booklet or a DVD free of charge, and whenever these new study guides or new books are published, it's been our practice to offer them free of charge as well to those on the mailing list. So call, send an email, or let us know you'd like to start receiving the monthly letter, or simply place an order for the Believer's Armor study guide.

That'll get you on the mailing list. Friend, it is vital to understand the protection God gives you to fend off spiritual attacks. The Believer's Armor is a special gift. The Believer's Armor study guide explains it all. To order a copy, contact us today.

Our phone number is 800-55-GRACE, or you can shop online at GTY.org. God has not left you defenseless against the attacks of Satan, just the opposite. God has equipped you to withstand every assault. The Believer's Armor study guide unpacks the biblical defenses at your disposal. It's excellent for your own study and devotional reading, and perhaps even better as curriculum for your Bible study group. Again, to place your order, call 800-55-GRACE, or go to GTY.org. And remember, at our website you can download any of John's sermons free in MP3 or transcript format. You can also purchase the MacArthur New Testament commentary, individual volumes, or the 34-volume set. And the MacArthur Study Bible is also available in three English editions and several non-English translations. It's hard to find better prices than through Grace To You, and we ship for free. To place your order, go to GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Look for Grace To You television this Sunday, check your local listings, and then be back here on Monday for more on the Believer's Armor. It's 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.