The Gospel of Peace
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Introduction
Introduction
[READING - Ephesians 6:14-17]
14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
[PRAYER]
[CONTEXT] The Apostle Paul opened his letter to the church in Ephesus blessing “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,” (Eph. 1:3).
These spiritual blessing include adoption as sons of God (Eph. 1:5), redemption through the blood of Jesus, forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace (Eph. 1:7).
This was true for the Ephesian believers and it is true for you today too if “after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,” (Eph. 1:13).
I don’t know about you but I want to be adopted as a son of God; I want to redeemed through the blood of Jesus; I want to be forgiven by the grace of God; I want to be seal by the Holy Spirit of promise—but if that’s what I want, then I must listen to the message of truth, the gospel of salvation, and believe what I hear!
What is that message of truth? What is the gospel? What is the good news of salvation? And how do we believe it?
We have to understand the answers to those questions before we can understand and do what God’s word commands in Ephesians 6:15, “Shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”
[TS] This morning we want to understand and believe the gospel.
We want to receive the peace it brings.
And we want to be always ready to walk in that gospel peace.
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
First, let’s understand and believe the gospel.
First, let’s understand and believe the gospel.
[ILLUS] A friend of mine once asked, “Why are so many people using the word ‘gospel’ instead of the name ‘Jesus’? Why do so many preachers today say ‘believe the gospel’ instead of ‘believe in Jesus’?”
Now, you may think that my friend sounds ignorant. Doesn’t he know that the gospel is about Jesus? But he’s not ignorant.
His point was that some preachers say things like “believe the gospel” without explaining what the gospel is and how it’s only found in Jesus Christ. In that case, it would be better to say, “Believe in Jesus!”
But the message of the gospel is indeed this: “Believe in Jesus!”
[EXP] The word gospel means good news, and the first thing to know about the good news of Jesus is that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
Everything starts from that point, so if you get that point wrong then everything else that follows will be wrong.
Because God created everything—including us—he has the right to tell us how to live.
You have to understand that God is the authority in order to understand the good news in Jesus.
How would you describe God’s character? Loving and good? Compassionate and forgiving? All true.
God describes himself as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness…forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but then God adds, “but who will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6-7).
That runs contrary to what many today think they know about God. This loving God is indeed loving, but He does not leave the guilty unpunished.
To understand just how glorious and life-giving the gospel of Jesus Christ is, we have to understand that God is also holy and righteous.
He is determined never to ignore or tolerate sin, including ours!
When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, He desired for them to live under His righteous rule in perfect joy—obeying Him and living in fellowship with Him.
However, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the one fruit that God had told them not to eat, that fellowship with God was broken.
In essence, Adam and Eve had declared rebellion against God. They were denying God’s authority over their lives.
It’s not just Adam and Eve who are guilty of rebellion or sin. The Bible says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…none is righteous, no, not one” (Romans. 3:23,10).
But we often don’t think our sins—our lies, our lusts, our thefts, our anger, our pride—is all that serious, so we wonder why God gets so upset about our sin.
But sin is the rejection of God Himself and the rejection of His right to exercise authority over those He created, those to whom He gave life.
To understand the gospel you have to understand that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23) because we’ve rebelled against the holy life God created us to live.
The death we deserve is not just physical death but spiritual death—a forceful separation of our sinful, rebellious selves from the good presence of God forever.
The Bible teaches that the final destiny for unbelieving sinners is eternal, active judgment in a place called hell.
This is the Bible’s sobering verdict: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
Every one of us will be held accountable to God.
The Bible warns that “whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18).
This brings us to Jesus Christ.
The name Jesus means Savior, because “He (would) save His people from their sins,” (Matt. 1:21).
The title Christ means anointed one or Messiah, referring to the anointed King that God promised would come to deliver His people.
So, when we say that Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus Christ, we’re saying that Jesus is Savior and King or Savior and Lord.
When Jesus began his public ministry, He came preaching, “The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe the good news!”
Centuries before God had promised that He would come as a great King to rescue his people from their sins. And here was Jesus saying, “The kingdom of God is here…now! I am that great King!”
Jesus’ mission was to bring sinful people into the kingdom of God.
Jesus came to die in our place, to take the punishment we deserved for our rebellion against God.
To understand the gospel, you have to under that as Jesus died on the cross, the awful weight of all our sins fell on his shoulders. The sentence of death God had pronounced against our sin struck, and Jesus died.
For you and me.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Jesus was crucified, and then He was buried. But on the third day, God’s word tells us that Jesus rose from the grave.
To understand the gospel we have to understand that in His rising from the grave, God was saying about Jesus, “What Jesus claimed about who He is and what He came to do is true!”
So what should our response be to this?
What does God expect us to do with the information that Jesus died in our place so we can be saved from God’s righteous wrath against our sins?
He expects us to respond with repentance and faith.
To repent of our sins means to turn away from our rebellion against God.
Repentance means we stop sinning. WE turn away from our rebellion against God by turning to God through faith in Jesus Christ trusting in what He did to pay the price for our sins and to set us free from the power of sin.
We may not live perfectly, but repentance means that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins.
Faith is reliance. It’s trust in the risen Jesus to save you from your sins.
“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned…He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree (i.e., the cross)…the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God” (John 3:17, 18; 1 Peter 2:24; 3:18).
If God is ever to count us righteous, He’ll have to do it on the basis of someone else’s record, someone who’s qualified to stand as our substitute. And that’s what happens when we are saved through faith in Jesus:
All our sins are credited to Jesus who took the punishment for them.
And the perfect righteousness of Jesus is then credited to us when we place our trust in what He has done for us!
That’s what faith means—to rely on Jesus, to trust in Him alone to stand in our place and win for us a righteous before God!
Do you believe that you have rebelled against God and deserve His wrath?
Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died the death that you deserve for your sins?
Do you believe that Jesus rose from the grave and lives to stand in your place as your Savior and Lord?
If so, then you believe in Jesus!
You believe the gospel!
The very same gospel that Paul references when he says, “Shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”
Let’s understand the peace that gospel brings.
Let’s understand the peace that gospel brings.
[ILLUS] This past Wednesday, during the funeral sermon for Bill Guy, I began by saying, “We live in a world that is devoid of peace. There are wars and rumors of wars. There are protests and riots. There is anxiety over increases in crime and corruption. There are knots in the stomach over spouses, children, finances and a hundred other things. And of course many of us worry about death.
When will I die? How will I die? What happens when I die? What will happen to my loved ones that I leave behind?
When live in a world that is devoid of peace.
But into this world of wars, riots, and anxieties, God sent His Son Jesus, the Prince of Peace, to provide peace to all who would call on Him for salvation.
[EXP] The first peace we need is peace with God. The Gospel of Jesus Christ brings us peace with God if we believe it.
Some, however, refuse to believe it. They refuse to turn from sin. They refuse to trust in Jesus. They refuse to believe the truths of the gospel.
They refuse to believe there is a God.
Thus, they have no peace with God.
They refuse to believe that God is creator.
Thus, they have no peace with God.
They refuse to believe that God is holy.
Thus, they have no peace with God.
They refuse to believe that they are sinners.
Thus, they have no peace with God.
They refuse to believe that they stand condemned before God.
Thus, they have no peace with God.
They refuse to believe they need for Jesus for a Savior, and they refuse to believe that Jesus is Lord.
Therefore, they have no peace with God.
To have peace with God, we must come to Him repenting of our sin and trusting in His Son.
We must come to Him believing the Gospel—the good news.
[ILLUS] Isaiah 52 was written to God’s people in exile. God’s people had continuously sinned against Him and God eventually gave them over to Babylon who carried God’s people out of the promised land and relocated them in the land of Babylon.
But even though God was disciplining His people, He had not forgotten them. He would restore them. He would one day send good news to them. Isaiah 52:7 says…
7 How lovely on the mountains Are the feet of him who brings good news, Who announces peace And brings good news of happiness, Who announces salvation, And says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Tremper Longman in the CSB study Bible says that in the “ancient world, news was carried by a herald. In (Isaiah 52:7) the herald announces the end of hostilities and the fact that God reigns as King over his people.”
The Apostle Paul uses the language of Isaiah 52:7 to in essence say to us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the herald who announces the end of hostilities between us and God!
But the Gospel not only makes for peace with God, it also makes for peace with each other.
Ever since Ephesians 2 Paul has been talking about the peace that Jesus makes between different people who believe in Jesus.
In Ephesians 2:14, he is talking about Jews and Gentiles who usually live in conflict with one another when he writes, "For (Jesus) Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one…”
In Ephesians 2:17-18 he wrote…
17 And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; 18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
This is why in Ephesians 4:3 we must be “diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Jesus died to bring us to God.
Jesus died to bring us together.
And I think Jesus died so that we could have peace with ourselves.
Our world is full of people who loathe themselves. This isn’t what God desires.
God intends for us to understand ourselves in light of who He is and what He has done for us in His Son.
If God loves us and sent His Son to die for us, why would we hate ourselves?
If we believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we can say along with Paul, “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” (1 Cor. 15:10).
Now, I believe that all of this peace—peace with God, peace with others, and peace with ourselves—results in joy!
This is a joyful peace that is brought to us only in Jesus, only in the gospel!
[TS] …
And, finally, we want to always be ready to walk in that gospel peace.
And, finally, we want to always be ready to walk in that gospel peace.
15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
[EXP] To have your feet shod with the gospel is to always have your gospel shoes on ready to go.
The Roman soldier wore boots with nails through the bottom so that he had firm footing, firm grip when in the battle.
Don’t forget that Ephesians 6:15 is given in the context of battle.
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
You can’t stand firm unless you have the gospel continually shod about your spiritual feet.
More than one Roman soldier died as he slipped in battle.
If we slip away from the gospel, we will die spiritually.
Having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace will mean that we are ready to hold the line.
[ILLUS] When I was in elementary school, we had field day. Our classes would compete against one another in games like tug-o-war.
Once, I was at the front of our class in tug-o-war, which meant that every time we started to get pulled toward defeat, it seemed like I was the first to know.
But as we got close to being pulled across the line, I found a rock hidden in the dirt. Every time we started to lose, I would find the rock and brace my foot against, and the other team could pull us no farther.
The gospel is like that rock that we must brace ourselves against to hold the line as this world tries to draw us away.
Having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace will mean that we are ready to advance the mission.
Not only are we to be always ready to stand on the gospel, but we are to be always ready to proclaim the gospel.
Paul speaks about all believers in Romans 10:15 and their readiness to tell the good news when he quotes Isaiah 52:7, writing, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!””
Brothers and sisters, having understood the gospel…
…and having understood the peace that the gospel brings…
…we must keep our gospel shoes on…
…ready to hold the line…
…ready to advance the mission—to make disciples of all nations, teaching them all things that Jesus has commanded us, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
Conclusion
[PRAYER]