If you would, let's return to the armor of God in Ephesians chapter 6. I'll have you follow along with me as you turn there and we will read the section to begin the message today from verse 10 through 17. Ephesians chapter 6, beginning in verse 10 and we'll read through 17. I have nine verses left to exposit in this book, and it only took two and a half years, so We're almost there. Paul writes, finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 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 one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Let's open this prayer. Father, again, we are thankful for your word. We praise you that you have revealed these things to us, Father, that we may know how to order our lives in accordance with our calling. Father, I pray that today we would Take these things in, take them to heart, that you would remove distractions from our mind. Father, the gospel of Jesus Christ would go forth here today to edify the saints, Lord, and to be effectual for the salvation of those who are lost. Father, I praise you for all of your good works, for all of your characteristics and attributes that we can learn about you, for your great love and mercy towards us. And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. John Owen once wrote that God has work to do in this world and for us to desert it because of its difficulties and entanglements is to cast off his authority. He says it is not enough that we be just, righteous and walk with God in holiness, but we also must serve our generation as David did before he fell asleep. What John Owen was pointing to was the whole idea that we cannot remove ourselves from the duties that God has given to us in this world, mainly the duty to proclaim the gospel and make disciples in every nation, to be about the work of the kingdom of Christ. And it is very unfortunate that many of us in the modern church feel or have felt that we are justified in having an in-house Christianity that feels no weight of responsibility for the world around us. And as we go through this whole idea here in our text of the believer's spiritual armor, much of what I said in explaining this text may seem foreign to your prior understanding of Christianity because you've been taught that you really don't have any responsibility to the world around you. And that you know what the rapture is coming one day and you're just gonna miss it all anyway, so you might as well just survive. We need to realize that it is our responsibility to engage in the spiritual battle where men and women's eternal souls are on the line. So as we look at these pieces of armor, I want you to consider again, that this heavenly arraignment does not imply or push us towards a life of complacency You cannot honestly approach this text of scripture and continue to excuse a lifestyle that is not fervently engaged in fighting this spiritual battle for the benefit, not only of your own lives, but for the benefit of the kingdom of Christ itself. And that will implicitly show us that we will also benefit the generation in which we now live and exist. This all begs the question of us, are we actually battling for Christ's sake? Are we actually bringing up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord? Have you now or are you now preparing them as the next generation to go out into the world to be a warrior for Christ? Are you concerned about the spiritual degradation of our own society and not to do what it takes to leave a godly generation for the years to come? which means that we have to pick up our armor, we have to pick up our sword, and we need to do battle here and now to ensure that the next generation will be one for Christ as well. I mean, we have to really look at ourselves in light of this text and ask the question, am I assaulting the kingdom of darkness? Am I going out to my neighbors, to my relatives, to my family members who are still stuck in chains of darkness? Am I speaking up for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the elect, at my job, at my hobbies, at all these other places? Do we care if men and women are brought to peace with God? These are the things that we've been tasked with as Christians. We've been equipped further to perform these duties, and we've been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ to assist us with this duty as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. I pray that it may not be said of this church that while the battle raged, we slept, that while the battle was being fought, we left the world to its demise because we were too busy saving ourselves from the worry, hassle and pains of battle, all the while sitting in our own comfort, fully equipped to engage and carry out this great commission. A good soldier. who is truly fighting a battle will not fail to engage and therefore we need to be of that mindset that we have a mission to carry out in this world and that's the reason for this armor. Now, A good soldier will also, one who does engage in the battle, is a soldier who is continually, constantly checking and then rechecking his or her spiritual armor to be sure that it is in good working order, that it is properly applied, that it is not rusting, that it doesn't have kinks in the armor, that it's all good and ready for warfare. So let's briefly just review what we've looked at thus far, and again, let us serve to you As a rechecking of your armor, as always, in the next hour, you will be leaving this building and going back into the spiritual warfare of the world. So you need to be equipped. We looked at the Belt of Truth, which is the first piece of spiritual armor that Paul has instructed us to put on. This is our centerpiece. The very belt that keeps the loose ends of our mind in place. It holds everything up and enables us to move freely. It centers us, it guides us, it directs us, and it keeps us from being constrained in the battle with false ideas and wrong thoughts and lustful ideas and worldly ambitions. Soldiers, we have to be diligent in this one especially. There is certainly a reason that Paul gave the instruction of spiritual armor first to the belt of truth. We have to be a people who are firmly planted in truth. We have to take nothing for granted. We have to test everything that we've been told. Every truth claim must be examined against the light of scripture to see if it lines up to the truth that God has revealed. We're to do this, you're to do this, you're to check everything against the Word of God and see if these things are so. Remember that the belt of truth is applied, first of all, it's applied in three ways, but first of all, knowing the content of God's Word. This is the only book that reveals to us the truth of eternal and spiritual realities. and how that immaterial spiritual world impacts us now in this physical present life. This is the only book that will give you any insight or truthful insight into those realities. You can't go anywhere else to find these truths. You can't dream it up in your own imagination. This is it. Sola Scriptura. You must know the content of this book in order to put on the belt of truth. Know the Word of God. That truth revealed in the Word of God must have an effect upon your inner person. When truth is accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, it changes the inner man. It takes him or her from total hypocrisy or total rebellion to a continually repentant person who is striving for holiness, who is striving for Christ's likeness in his or her life. You must be sure that the truth has indeed changed you because the truth, the same truth, as they say, the same sun that melts the wax can harden the clay. Be sure that the truth is accompanied by the power of the spirit to work a change in your inner man. Thirdly, The belt of truth is applied in your total commitment to the battle or to the journey. If we compared it to a pilgrim life, you just determined that because of what Christ has done for you, because of your faith, you are just going to go all in. You're not going to put in a 40, 50 or 60% effort. You're not even going to put in the 90% effort. This is going to be a 100% commitment to the battle and the journey of the Christian. You commit to waging war. You commit to fighting the good fight. You commit to keeping the faith. You do this with your hope set on Christ and the glory that awaits you in eternity. And you determine that you are going to fight. Well, then we looked at the breastplate of righteousness, which covers the vital organs of the Christian soldier. We're to put this armor on in two senses, as I said last week, one is to keep ourself protected from the attacks of Satan by remembering and continually sitting at the foot of the cross and really going back to that imputed righteousness of Christ that is given to us by faith. This is surely one of the greatest defenses we have against the devil's attacks, to remember that even in the midst of our failures, we, in the eyes of God, are covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Now also, We remember this armor in the most practical sense, which verifies for us the first point. We've put on this armor in a sense of living in a manner worthy of our calling. If you're not living in any kind of manner worthy of your calling, you have not been called. The assurance that you have the imputed righteousness of Christ applied to your account is that you are living a holy and righteous life now, or that you are striving towards that in the midst of all your failures. The true Christian who has been given the righteousness of Christ will indeed desire to live his or her practical life in accordance with their judicial standing before God. Again, although we're not perfect in this life, although we stumble, although we fall at times, we push forward. And there's a good way to know that if or whether or not you're actually bearing fruits of repentance, whether you're actually being sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because you see, when the non-believer falls down, when they stumble into sin, they get up further and further away from God. Every time they stumble, they find a greater distance between them and God. On the other hand, when a believer stumbles, when a believer falls, they get back up and find themselves getting closer and closer to God every time. hating sin more and more, hating their rebellion even more than they did before. They're lifted back up by the gracious hand of our Redeemer to be closer to Him than they ever could have imagined beforehand. That's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. You need to check yourself and see how do you fall? Do I fall closer to God or do I fall further and further away from Him every time? Remember that the hand of discipline from a truly loving Father. Our Heavenly Father does not push the child of God away, but rather lifts that broken child up to receive him or her again with great joy. So how do we fall? Righteousness is the pursuit of our lives, not because we want to earn merit with God, but rather, again, because we are so inclined to righteousness based upon the amazing grace that God has given us and closing us in the righteousness of Christ. That brings us to verse 15. And our next piece of armor, he says, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. And this is such a wonderful, blessed text. William Hendrickson, in his commentary on Ephesians, deals with every piece of armor with a question and his question for these, the armor of readiness that is put on as shoes for your feet. He says, Am I prepared to fight? This is the question he says, Have I shod my feet with readiness derived from the gospel of grace? Again, we remember that Paul is using the illustration of a Roman soldier who is armed for battle. The Romans were very particular about the footwear that their soldiers wore in their military campaigns. It was one of the great reasons for their widespread success in battle. They would always shod their soldiers in such a way that they could pounce on the enemy long before the enemy ever thought that they could possibly get upon them. They would go into battle, the opposing enemy would look at them and say, oh, they're a two days' march away, not realizing that the Romans prepared their soldiers so well with their footwear that they could cover a two-day journey in one day, and thus they would have the element of surprise in almost every campaign that they fought. They knew that the wrong footwear would spell immediate defeat. And so they equipped their soldiers with these hard leather sandals that had hobnails protruding out the bottom of them to give that soldier a very firm and constant grip on whatever surface he may be fighting in. If we just consider, it's much like the professional athletes of our day. They wear cleats or shoes that are designed to grip the surface upon which they're playing. Whether it's the cleats of a football player or the basketball shoes of the basketball players, they have their feet properly shod for the surface in which they are, quote-unquote, doing battle. If you think about a football player who who would suddenly make a decision to go out on the field of football warfare, we could call it. And instead of wearing cleats, they put on track shoes. That person would be pushed around, knocked over, beat down, and ultimately unable to stand firm or move decisively and push forward down the field. We can consider it also from the perspective of life in Montana. If winter comes around and we go out on our ice-laden sidewalks and roads with shoes that don't have the proper grip, we find ourselves very close to that ice. It's difficult to stand firm on any surface with the wrong footwear. And so proper footwear is utterly important in our daily physical lives, even from the daily routines of life as a worker who needs support and firm grip on whatever surface he happens to be working on. We understand that preparedness is typically seen, even in our culture, by what we have on our feet. If you think about this, Paul says, having put on, in the sense that we have to put on this readiness ourselves. Consider this, when you're heading out of your house in the morning to start your day, it's typically, you're seen as ready when you do what? When you get to the door and put your shoes on. The next step from there is that you open the door and walk out into battle. Readiness is displayed by what you have on your feet. You don't walk out your door to go to the office with your your bare feet or your sandals on. You first put on your work shoes, whatever kind of shoes those may be. We, in the same way, spiritually, are to be putting on this readiness given by the gospel of peace. This readiness is illustrated as the proper footwear that actually enables us to go out into the battle and to stand firm, to move decisively, and to fight against our enemy. And once again, what are we back to here? We're back to immersing ourselves in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of peace. This is the putting on of the readiness given by what our foundation, our foundational belief that we have peace with God is that which causes us to stand firm in battle. I want you to notice here again that readiness, it implies for us an offensive nature to the battle. We're not just called to put on our shoes and stand at the door and wait for the battle to come against us. There's a readiness. And in fact, the Greek word there, Heto Mesia, it speaks of the act of preparing or the condition of a person or a thing as being prepared. It speaks of full readiness. You don't put on armor just to stand there. You put on armor to go out and to fight, to do battle, to wage war, to beat down your enemy, to beat down your opponents. You are not prepared to fight until you have put on the readiness, this readiness that is given by the gospel of peace. Do this, he says. Put this on, he says. Be ready through the application of this truth in your life. Now, here's where we ask the question, what does he mean by this? Because I want you to notice there, he doesn't say be saved by the gospel of peace. He doesn't even say, go out and preach the gospel of peace, but rather it is implied that the readiness is something that the believer already possesses in some measure. It is something that enables him to prepare to go out and to fight in the spiritual warfare in which he is engaged. It is a readiness given by the gospel of peace. This is not talking about being saved or preaching the gospel. It is a readiness derived. from the message of peace with God through Jesus Christ. Now, does Paul intend to demonstrate here because the big question is that the application of the footwear is to go out and preach the gospel to the nations. That's typically how the passage is translated. I don't think so. If you're thinking of Isaiah 52 7, which is quoted again in Romans by Paul, it says how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation. But keep in mind that the preacher's feet described in that text are already shod. He's already got that gospel readiness on. He's already out fighting the battle. He's already on the mountainside. This is demonstrated in that he is already preaching the gospel. And the writer just seems to notice the beauty of his feet, which are ready, which are prepared, which are going, which are doing and taking that message of peace. to the nations. Romans 10, 15, Paul quotes it. He says, and how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? Notice what he says first. How are they to preach unless they are sent preparedness is expressed there. And then he says, look at the prepared person who is preaching the gospel. How beautiful are their feet? The feet of those who preach the good news. He's quoting from Isaiah and he's saying this is the preacher who's already wearing the footwear and doing the task. He preaches because he is ready, because he has put on the armor. He preaches not to prepare for battle, but because he has already put on that readiness and he is in the battle engaged currently. Again, this is what we do before we go, and this is the heart of the battle, we understand, is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Which is the means by which God has determined that men and women will be saved through preaching. So this text is our gospel readiness, but it's something we do prior to preaching. We remember, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? So again, we see that there must be a readiness that is put on prior to the preaching that enables us to go out and do the preaching. If we think about this just in our personal lives, I don't want you to try to delegate this all to just one single guy who is the preacher. Before you can go out and preach, before you, husband and father, can disciple your family, before you wives can go serve your husband and raise your children and keep your home, before the young man, before the young woman can enter into the fray of battle that is that early part of life. Now, this before any Christian soldier can do anything regarding spiritual warfare, he must put on, she must put on the footwear, the readiness that is found only in the gospel of peace. Before you can attempt spiritual battle of any kind, you need to be ready. And this is the readiness that he's pointing out. The gospel of peace is what provides for you this readiness. The gospel of peace is what secures us in Christ. It sets our feet firmly on the ground. It gives us a place to stand. It gives us the ability to move decisively. It literally makes us unmovable and unshakable when standing against our foes. It brings us a readiness. that can literally stand firm in the face of the schemes of the devil and all of his plans and actions against us. Further gives us the proper grip from which we can push into the battle and buffet the devil, push him back, us move forward and get closer and closer to our goal that is eternal in Christ. And so we ask, how do we do this? How does the gospel provide a readiness such as this? I want you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter five, verse one. This is just a very simple statement on the gospel of peace from the apostle Paul. Springboarding from that one verse, I want to show you how this gospel provides a readiness to fight. Romans chapter five, verse one, Paul says, therefore. Since we have been justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Right there is about the simplest way I can put what is the gospel of peace. First of all, the great conduit through which our justification before God comes, you see there in the text is the divine gift of faith. We believe we cast ourselves upon this only hope of salvation from the wrath and terror of the almighty God of the Bible and the just condemnation that is required of us for our sins against him. I want you to consider this now, because this is the very heart and essence of Christianity. It lies within this truth that the believer, that the one who has faith in Christ is the one who has peace with God, which sets a very sharp contrast to the one who does not believe and therefore does not have peace with God. The one who does not have faith does not have peace with the creator. The one who does not have peace with the creator is the same one upon whom the wrath of God continually abides and will surely one day fall if they are not brought to that belief. They literally live their daily life under the continual threat of the eternal wrath of God. Understanding that any moment. Any moment death can take you and the hand of God will smite you for all of eternity because of your sin, because of your rebellion against the Almighty God. It is a horrible realization to know that you are God's enemy. To know that God is not winking at your sin, that he is not just going to wave you through in spite of your sin. that he does not approve of sinful men or sinful women in any way, but rather that his terrible wrath is waiting, that it's abiding upon you, and that at the last beat and last breath that you take, when the time is up, if you are not found in faith, if you are not found justified in Christ, God himself will make unreserved and terrible immediate war against your soul for all of eternity. I know that feeling and I know that many of us know that feeling. There's times when you can't ignore, there's times when you lay in your bed at night and everything's quiet. And you remember that everything that I've done in this day has been to the rebellion against an almighty God. Even my greatest work, even my greatest deed was sinful in His sight. And I remember well the times laying in a bed quietly, pondering the fact that if I don't wake up, it will be because God is making war against me. Because I've sinned so heinously against Him. I'm His enemy. It's an even more glorious truth to know that it is through faith that we are justified. It is through faith that we, the sinner, the enemy, are declared righteous in Christ. That God can now look upon us as forgiven. That God can look upon us as covered in the perfect life of Jesus Christ. That His obedience becomes our obedience. That our sin, He paid for on that tree. and that now we have peace with God. And you say, how do I know that I have peace with God? The text tells you, faith then is the medium through which justification allows for us to have peace with God through the sacrifice and perfect life of Jesus Christ. You must believe. You must believe in Jesus Christ, and in order to believe what must happen, you must be born again, as Jesus told Nicodemus. The spirit of the living God must work in you new spiritual life that enables you to have saving faith, that that faith will then work effectually for the salvation of your eternal soul, that you may not be a rebel, that you may not be an enemy, but that you might have peace with God. She may lay there in your bed, not concerned that if you don't wake up, God will be there warring against you for all of eternity. But then if you don't wake up, you'll be in his presence. forever in love and peace as his adopted child. For not even a moment, though, should we think that we get a free pass. Consider this, if you're not found justified in Christ, if God was pleased to crush his only son, if it pleased the Lord to crush him in the place of the saints, how much more will it please him to crush you, the actual rebel? And it's faith that brings us justification that results in peace with God. Now, peace with God, I want you to understand, has two senses that apply to the readiness of this message. First of all, the sense, better stated, the reality that there is now a confirmed state of peace between us and God. The reality of peace, not just a sense of peace, not just because there is a sense of peace that has nothing to do at all with peace with God. There is a sense of peace that the world enjoys and that they drink themselves to sleep every night, forget their problems, forget their enmity with the Lord, and they sleep just fine. They fill up their lives with worldly possessions. They focus on worldly things. They so focus their lives on the temporal that they cause themselves to forget the eternal, and thus they have a false sense of peace. If you're so dedicated to your hobbies in this life that you don't think about eternity for even a moment, all you've done is give yourself a false assurance that will surely not last in eternity. But there is a Christian message here, there is a gospel message that is received in faith that brings a true peace, the reality that you are at peace with God. That there is an actual cessation of hostilities between you and God. There is a real and living actual state of peace that you, the Christian who has faith in Jesus Christ, are no longer at war with God. You see, where prior the sinner was on the battlefield, he was on one side, God was on the other. And God is there and he's laughing at you as you throw your stones of rebellion, which all fall eternally short of reaching him, by the way. With the realization that at any moment he could just unleash his infinite power to absolutely smite you from the earth forever, that there is hostility between the two of you. And mark it, the hostility is not so much your hostility against God, because who really cares if you're mad at God? The problem is God's mad at you. In the end, you can really do nothing. You can be mad at God all you want. You can't hurt him. You can't reach him. Your cries of rebellion will do nothing to him. You can't even wage any kind of attack against him in any manner, in the least form. And yet, at any moment, he stands ready to utterly destroy the sinner not found in Christ. Understand this, Christians, understand this, anyone who is not a Christian, your greatest need More than anything at all is peace with God. Because if this war goes on, God, who is ever faithful and cannot lie, has promised to eternally crush you. You put yourself on that battlefield. And you realize how desperate your situation is when you look across it. And it's not another person that you're fighting against. It's not an animal. It's not a country. It's not a nation. It's not an empire. It is the one who made all of those things by the word of his power. And at any moment, he can utterly destroy them all as well. Looking across that battlefield, there is hope. Because there is one who walked out in the middle of the battlefield and absorbed the war God was going to make against you in his own self. Peace is accessed through faith in the substitute, who is Jesus Christ. For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. It's faith in the one who, even before he died, even before he bore that wrath of God, he lived a perfect life of obedience. He who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So that not only would there be a cessation of hostility between the one who has faith in God, but that there are also be a righteousness there to merit you eternal favor with him as well. You see, this is the gospel of peace. It's not just that the war is over. It's not that both sides have retreated back to their respective countries or places. It's that God has brought peace in the sense that you were once on that side of the battlefield and now you're on this side of the battlefield with him. You see, the great dilemma of this life is not peaceful living in this world. The great dilemma is life is not making peace with God in this temporal life. Every person must deal in this life. With the truth that they don't have peace with God to start off with. And that means that in the life to come, there will be no peace with God if it is not made here. How can you escape a certain doom to which sin has eternally damned the sinner to be enemies with God? The solution to life's great dilemma is found right there in Jesus Christ. Believe upon Him, look to Him and be saved all the earth. Faith assures us, faith is the conduit through which justification comes. It assures us that indeed Christ has paid our fine. The faith that we have in the resurrection is the assurance to our heart that God accepted the payment of Christ on our behalf. The glorious fact that he now lives opens up the floodgates of peace to our hearts, that our Redeemer lives. He's not dead because the perfect sacrifice could not remain dead. And our King now lives forevermore to intercede on our behalf. to ensure that the payment is carried out in full, that he will receive the full reward of his suffering. The previous rebel who now believes is this one who, you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh. And God made us alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by how cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the tree. That's the gospel of peace. You see, it's in this divine court that we have appealed to the highest judge of heaven and earth. There can be no retrial. There can be no superior court for our case to be taken to. It has been examined by the highest of authorities. The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords looks at our life. And then he looks at Christ and says, you're cleared of all charges. by the payment of the substitute. Therefore, who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies who can condemn no one. Jesus Christ is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us. Further, no other charges can be brought against us. There's no, you understand, as a Christian, this is where your peace is coming from. There is no one who can come and offer up another infraction against the one who has faith. Why? Because faith is inseparable from repentance. This is conversion. And in repentance, what do we do? We freely admit in the courtroom that we are guilty of all charges. What can anyone possibly bring before you now? You've already admitted to all of it as a Christian. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And therefore, repentance and conversion is where we go into the courtroom and we cry out before the justice of God, guilty, guilty, guilty as charged. Every infraction is duly noted and we are fully deserving of punishment for every crime and every injustice. And thus, justice is then carried out in full. There is nothing that now stands against the believing saints. Why, for the record, the full record of our life's debts has been duly noted and then nailed to the cross, signifying that the price of all of our sins are paid for all of eternity. They're all gone. This is, again, the gospel of peace. You have peace with God for eternity in the sense no one can ever bring anything against you. Why? Because you already admitted all the charges were true. That you're a sinner condemned. That you deserve the wrath of God and by faith you look to the substitute. And justice is carried out on him. It's not as though God lets you go for free just because of your faith. It's that God punished all of your sin on Christ. He exacted justice on the substitute and you walked free. Therefore, your sins are gone. Never to be seen, never to be brought up again, just gone. The second way to understand this gospel of peace, the first way is just in the reality of it. The reality of your peace with God flows into really a, I guess you could say, a sense of peace. You reflect upon that reality that is affirmed to the true believer through faith in Christ Jesus. And therefore, you are filled with a sense of peace that can only come from knowing the reality of that sweet truth that indeed you have peace with God. This is really to open up the floodgates of joy, to open up the floodgates of happiness. This opens the doors of worship and praise to know that every single last sin is gone, paid for, taken away, never to be seen again. The foulest and deepest of your infractions have been punished in Christ who died for you. Even the guilt. Even the guilt of your sin is washed away in that deep crimson flow of blood pouring out from the veins of Christ who came into this world that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. This is life, this is life eternal, this is peace. For now, as you stand before the holy God of heaven and earth. You stand there as one wrapped in the garments of Christ's perfections with no sin left to condemn you to eternal damnation. You, Christian, the one who has faith, you have peace with God. And further, you are his newborn child adopted into his family. As you contemplate that, as you consider, I did nothing to merit any kind of favor with God at all. And the abundance of grace and mercy really is shown to you. It excites our hearts to a new level of what? Devotion, a new level of obedience, a new level of longing, of readiness, a love for God. Why? Because he gave it all, because he died to make peace with you who are the rebel, who are the criminal, who is now the beloved, the adopted child of God. See how the gospel of peace gives us readiness? It's precious peace. It's peace like a river that causes us to sing with complete sincerity and complete bliss. It is well with my soul. There is no greater motivation to pick up your armor and fight for the cause of Jesus Christ than to be made part of that cause by grace. To really one day consider this, to go from the losing side to the winning side, to one day be plucked up from the camp of sin and death, to be placed into the camp of holiness and eternal life, to go from a child of wrath to a blessed child of God. To be taken from the army of darkness and to be transferred into the kingdom of light. This is your inheritance as a child of the king to fight in the divine power of the Holy Spirit while clothed in armor of divine making by the eternal king and step out into that battle and wage war against your new enemy. And you do it for the glory of the God who saved you. Calvin writes that we are enjoined to lay aside every hindrance and to be prepared both for the journey and the war. He says, by nature, we dislike exertion and we want agility. A rough road and many other obstacles slow our progress and we are discouraged by the smallest annoyance. Says it's on these accounts. or for these reasons that Paul holds out the gospel as the fittest means for undertaking and performing our task. It's this gospel that gives us the reality of peace and a sense of peace that drives us. To be ready to go out and fight in this battle, we are dressed in readiness as we reflect upon the peace that we now have with God and Jesus Christ. Here is what you have to realize. And here's the point of the text. When you switch sides. When by faith you enter into the kingdom of God, guess what you've just done? You now have a new enemy. And that new enemy is your old master. And he's a master in which you will now have to deal with. Now, don't get me wrong. He is a vanquished foe. He has no doubt been beaten down by Jesus Christ, but he is still there and he is not happy about you deserting his army. Just as you have peace with God, you now, by the nature of your new life in Jesus Christ, are set forth as an enemy of Satan. And listen to me, that scheming serpent of old will use all the resources in his power to get you to fall. Christian, remember where your peace is at. You have every claim to it. You have every reason to be filled with a sense of peace. And yet, why is it that we have to put on this readiness as armor? It's because we say, I don't know about this peace you're talking about, preacher, it seems to me that all I do is is I just battle every day with sin. Where is this peace that you're talking about? How is this a gospel of peace when I have so much turmoil in my life? Listen, dear saint. Romans 5.1, what does it say? Know clearly who you now have peace with as one justified by faith. Your peace is with God. Is it any wonder that now you battle with sin? Is it any wonder that now that you have peace with God, there is conflict where there was previously peace? Listen, if you would stand up and say anything about your relationship with sin, other than that, how you hate, how you despise and how you continually have to make war with your sin, then I would have every reason to consider that you have no faith and therefore no peace with God. Because in entering into peace with God, you are now set at war with sin, and that is why you battle and why you struggle and why this life doesn't seem peaceful in every sense. It's because you've now been set free from the power of sin. You're no longer under its condemnation. And now you are here, still in the presence of it. It's still an issue in your lives. And if your enemy is there standing in front of you, you're on the battlefield, you're in the presence of your enemy. That hatred, that detestation of that evil foe will impel you to fight against it. Christian, you have not been given peace with sin. You have now been set at war with it. You get down and you get distraught, you think to yourself, you know, peace, what piece of this the gospel of peace, the devil is always attacking me. He's always waging what every day is just another full on assault against me. Did the text ever imply that you would have peace with the devil? No. You've been set at war with him now. You used to fight on his side, but you switched sides. The war is still going on. And he's angry, as you can imagine, that you are not going to hell with him. And soon you will be completely out of his reach. He won't be able to cast even a stone at you any longer. So here and now he is pressing every resource he has against you in a full on assault to try to bring you down. Peace with the devil. Christian, you're no longer on his side. Listen, you're a traitor. In the fullest sense, you are a traitor. And you will have no rest from his attacks in this life. But rather, you will be like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, who fights with Apollyon in epic battles. That's your life. But what of it? What of it? Would you not rather be fixed against the finite foe like the devil whose whose destruction is guaranteed and prophesied over and over again from the very beginning pages of scripture? Or would you rather be fixed against an eternal and omnipotent king of heaven and earth? I'll take the devil any day. You see, you lose that sense of peace rather you hand it over when you look around at the world and the way they mock and they chide and they come after you for your faith in Jesus Christ and they treat you like a dog because of your captain. And you say, peace, what peace does this gospel have? Church, we're not promised peace with the system of the world. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. We have no peace with the world, nor should we ever expect any. The martyrs of old had no delusions of grandeur and that they would somehow be spared by the mobs that came to torture, came to murder them, that rounded them up and killed them for the cause of Christ. They understood that there is no peace with the system of the world that lies in the lap of the evil one. The world is the resource with which the devil is coming after you, the traitors to his campaign. Don't expect peace with the lost. For if they hated the master and if they abused the master, if they crucified the master, how much more should they do to you? Do you think you should wear a crown of gold in this life when he wore a crown of thorns in his? Don't expect peace with the world. We've been sold the bill of goods, most of us, our whole lives that we are to expect an easy and peaceful life here on earth as believers. And if you're not experiencing this and you just don't have enough faith, what does faith bring us? According to the text, justification that brings us peace with God, but not with the world. In fact, our faith sets us at enmity, warfare and a pilgrimage. brings us difficulties in this life. Saving faith, then. Saving faith looks around at the battlefield. Saving faith looks around at our enemies in this world. And what does it do? It sees that whole battle taking place against us, and it simply testifies to the reality that we have peace with God. Because if that whole system is lined against us, then surely we must have peace with God. Peace with God is the only peace that matters, my friends. When you put this on, when you walk in this reality, when you recognize for whom you now fight, the glorious reality of peace with God will give you a readiness to serve that is like nothing else in this world. It will motivate you beyond any other material thing. You have peace with him. You can also spend your life in unbelief, even as a Christian. This is faith as a conduit through which we have peace with God. Faith is also the conduit through which we maintain our sense of peace with God. If we walk in unbelief and allow the world to convince us that everything is just turmoil and ugly and warfare, which it is in this life, and we stop putting our faith in the eternal kingdom to come, we won't be dressed in readiness. Visit the cross often. Live at the foot of the cross, cling to that old rugged cross. What was done for you there has brought you peace with God. And if you do that, you'll never cease to be ready for battle. Let's close in prayer. Father. We do praise you for the greatest of truths. That because of Christ, we have peace with you. Where once we were at enmity and strife, Lord, where every Every one of us who now believes. We're once rallied against you, Father. By faith and what Christ has done for us, we have now been justified and we have peace with you and what a peace it is, Father, to know that. We could die in the next five minutes. And that we'd be in the greatest place ever imaginable next to you sitting upon the throne with Christ. What a precious piece it is to be found in him. Lord, I pray that as we go to the Lord's Supper now and remember that price that was paid, that you would that you would convict us of our sins, that you would open our hearts to truth. Father, that you would show us the reality of what it took to bring peace between these two opposing peoples, Lord, that it took the death of your sons That it took your pouring out of your wrath upon your only son in our place. So that we could come back to you, Lord. Forgive us as rebels, Lord. Care for us as your children. And remind us of how much you love us today as we remember what Christ has done on our behalf. Praise in Jesus name, Amen. Before we go to communion, I want you to just look with me at First Corinthians 11. Every once in a while, I like to remind us of this. The Lord's Supper is an observance of what he did on that cross. In chapter 11 of First Corinthians, Paul talks about this. And he reminds us not to not to take part in this. observance in an unworthy manner. He says in Chapter 11, verse 27 through 32, and this should ring in all of our hearts and minds and serve as a great warning for us. He says, whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks Judgment upon himself says that is why many of you are weak and ill. Some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. In the simplest sense, in Matthew five, In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about this. What does that even mean not to take it in an unworthy manner? In 5.23, Jesus says this. If you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. In other words, don't enter into spiritual sacrifices while you still have hatred against somebody else in your heart. And then all the while we're remembering this and we're considering our fallenness and the things that we've done and we're going, you know, Well, of course, I can't take the Lord's Supper because I've done this and that all week and and I've just been reminded of it. And I remember Matthew nine, Jesus reclined at the table in the house. Behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard it, he said, those who are well, I have no need of a physician. But those who are sick go and learn what this means. I desire mercy. and not sacrifice for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Your sins should not keep you from the Lord's table, your failure to confess your sin and repent of that sin should keep you from the Lord's table. Don't let that refusal to confess your sin keep you from the Lord's supper, nor let it be the medium through which God brings judgment upon you for your failure to confess that sin. I want you to deal with this sin in your life in a way that reflects your great thankfulness for what Christ has done in giving his life to pay for your sin. And walk into it with open arms of thankfulness, remembering that he didn't die for good people. Not one good person did Christ spare. He died for sinful, wicked, evil people just like you and me. We confess our sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.