Shoes Of Peace

Let's get into the message today. We got a lot of ground to cover, so we're going to jump right in. We started a series last week, Pastor Mild, did a phenomenal job with the Belt of Truth, and this series is called Dress for Success. And here's the deal.

God calls you and I to be successful in every area of our lives. That is not the response. That I was expecting on that one. God calls us to be successful in every area of our lives, Christians.

Come on. And He gives us spiritual armor to help us walk out that success. We're going to start in Ephesians 6, verses 14 through 17. So stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breast plate of righteousness in place.

That comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming areas of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. So last week we started this eight part series called Dress for Success.

And what we're looking at in this series is the armor of God. God gives us eight pieces of armor to wear in our lives. And we're going to look at this series as Pastor Milds was saying last week from a different angle, from a different perspective than probably is normally done when people teach on this topic. Usually they exclusively talk about spiritual warfare.

And we're definitely talking about spiritual warfare. But as Pastor Mild shared last week, spiritual warfare is not the end game of the armor of God. It's not the end. It is the means to the end.

And you and I being successful at fighting the enemy is not the goal in mind. The ultimate goal here is being successful in life as a Christian. When we don the armor of God, we can become all that God has called us to become. And we can do all that God has called us to do.

Amen? So that's where we're going in this series. How can we be successful in this Christian life? How can we overcome temptation?

How can we deal with the trials and the temptations? All these things that we face in life and be successful and do everything that God has called us to do. And it is absolutely critical that we equip ourselves with the armor of God. It is critical.

This is not optional. This is not my opinion. This is not something extra in your life. No, no, no.

We must equip ourselves with every single one of these pieces of armor that God lists for us in scripture. And today in part two, we're going to be looking at the shoes of peace. The shoes of peace. The NLT says Ephesians 615 this way.

For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared. I'm going to read that one more time for shoes. Put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared. So the shoes of the gospel of peace are one of eight things that God says it is absolutely crucial, critical for you to have in your life.

And we're going to look at three areas this morning so that we can make sure that we don these shoes, that we put these shoes on, and we are wearing them, and we are living life with the gospel shoes on. So that, why? And what's the end game? So we can be successful.

I think I repeated that already a couple of times. We're going to wake up. It's the first service. It's lovely, but it's early.

It's early. It's all good. What does this passage mean by peace? What does it mean?

Why does God associate shoes with peace as a picture here? And I just want to make sure, before we really get into this thing, we look at the first area, that we're not just taking this in to say, OK, you're going to be pre-shipped past around. You're looking at these three areas. I understand them.

I got it and move on. No. No, no, no. I want us to understand everything we need to know about the shoes of peace so that we can actually apply this, actually get this into our lives, and make sure that I can walk out this Christian life successfully, and make sure that I got the right shoes on, and that I'm walking out everything that God has called me to do.

Amen. Anybody with me? Amen. So here is the first area that we're looking at with the shoes of peace.

Number one, we need to discover what the word peace really means. There's a lot of misunderstanding here. There's a lot of the world's influence on this. And we want to make sure, biblically, that we understand what this word peace really means.

And that comes from the Greek word, which is translated as peace. And that Greek word is iranne. OK? Iranne.

The depth of this word is absolutely fascinating. But when we normally hear the word peace, what's the picture that we get in our minds? This pastoral, bucolic setting with a green meadow, and a daffodil blowing in the breeze, and this babbling brook in the background. And it's most heavily in our minds associated with tranquility, calmness, tranquil.

But that's not what iranne means. That's not biblical peace. Biblical peace is very different from that. And some might say, OK, well, if it's not this tranquil setting, set in nature out somewhere, then what is it?

Is it like a cessation of warfare? Like two armies are fighting, and they're fighting, and then all of a sudden they decide to call a treaty, and they call a truce, and there's an end to fighting. So now have we come to peace? Well, that's a part of this word, iranne, but it's not the whole picture that's described by iranne.

One of the best ways, Church, for us, to deepen our understanding of these words that we see in the Bible is to understand the original language in the context that it was written in. You can use different resources, like binds, expository, dictionary. That's a good one. But even with that one, I would say if you look up this word, or other words, it's going to give you more of a surface level understanding.

If you look at something like Thayer's Greek lexicon, that's going to go much deeper. And it's going to be very helpful so that you can understand where these words come from, how they were used in the first century, and the context that it was written in, so that we have a deeper understanding. So if you dig deeply into this word iranne, you'll find that it was originally a medical term. And it's speaking of a bone that has been completely broken, and it must be reset by a doctor.

And over time, that place where it broke, and it was reset, it calcifies, and it becomes even stronger than it was before it broke. And so the bone has been made whole again, and it most likely will never break in that spot again, because the healed break has become the strongest point on that whole bone. In fact, if the bone breaks again, it most likely won't break on that point, because it's stronger than it ever was before. That bone has come to iranne.

Oh, do you see that picture, Church? It's come to peace. And what a glorious picture of what God has done for us. Amen, Church?

What a glorious picture through the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. God's relationship with man was broken, but through the bloodshed on the cross by Jesus Christ, God's relationship with man has come to iranne. And our relationship has been reset. It is calcified.

It is stronger for all of mankind. It is stronger than it was before. See, a lot of people they read Genesis, they look at the Garden of Eden, it's like, man, I wish I could have been Adam or Eve. I wish I could have been there in perfection.

And they long for that. But what we have is better. Our goal should not be to go backwards. Our goal should be to go forward.

See, Adam and God, they had an incredible relationship. Adam got to walk and talk with God, but our goal is not to be like Adam. The relationship that God has for each one of us is born again Christians. It's even better than the one that Adam enjoyed with God.

See, Adam was never referred to as a son of God. Eve was never referred to as a daughter of God. He never had 100% ownership of the kingdom of God. And scripture says that you and I is born again believer, sons and daughters of God.

We are co-heirs with Christ. Come on, have you read that before? Come on, we need to be good Bereans. We need to read our Bibles.

We need to understand what the Bible's actually saying and what that means for us today and what that could mean for others in our lives that don't know Jesus. And give us a passion to go share it with them because it's like, no, no, no, no. There is a kingdom and it is growing and God is on the move and you can be a part of it and you can get over these addictions. You can get over all these things that are just troubling you in your life and weighing you down and you can have a purpose in a life that you never imagined.

Amen? So you can go back and be like Adam if you want to, but I'll take Christ. I'll take the new covenant. Amen?

God has restored that relationship and taken it much further than it was before the fall of man and that is the good news. And then what he has done is absolutely amazing. So let's look back at another part of Ephesians 6, 15. Let's read it one more time.

We're gonna look at one more part. For shoes, put on the piece that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared. So it says for shoes, put on, put on. That's the word, the Greek word there, Hupadayo, Hupadayo, sorry.

And sometimes the phrase put on, we think of that very passively, don't we? Like I'm gonna put on my shoes and I'm gonna head out the door. But this Greek word was not passive at all. Hupadayo, well it meant to bind to oneself.

So I want you to picture someone aggressively binding something so tightly that it cannot be removed from their life. That's Hupadayo. So when it says for shoes, put on, aggressively bind it to your life, the piece that comes from the good news so that wise, so you will be fully prepared. See the armor of God, it's critical.

We're not gonna be successful to the degree that God wants us to be until we bind on his armor aggressively church. Be aggressive about understanding these things. Be aggressive about getting it into your life and putting it into your life and holding onto it in such a way that it's not going anywhere. You're not going to move off of it.

Come on, is anybody gonna do that? Does anybody wanna do that? Come on, this is a big deal. Pastor Rob and I, we sit down with people every single week struggling, struggling, struggling, struggling and some of these simple truths.

I'm just trying to be a good pastor here and share with you. These simple truths were just neglecting. We're not putting some of these simple truths into practice and it's like, wow, God gives us these things on a silver platter and all you have to do is just apply them to your life and you will find victory and you will find success and you will victoriously live out this Christian life and it's like, I don't wanna do that. And then you're surprised when, what happens to your life, right?

And you're not the only one, I've been there. I've done it too and I find myself doing it and there's levels that we go through as a Christian. You're progressing, you're not perfect, right? And you're learning and learning and growing but we need to get these things into our lives.

We need to be aggressive about it. Find it in such a way that it cannot be removed. So what is the purpose of all this? Scripture is clear, the armor helps us to be fully prepared and these qualities help us to become everything that God has called us to become and you are not fully prepared for life if you don't put on the shoes of peace.

See, battles with the enemy will come. Maybe some of you are in a battle right now, spiritual battle, marriage and shambles, finances not looking great, whatever it is, maybe your heart is broken. There's tough circumstances right now. You will not be fully prepared in life without the shoes of peace.

Circumstances and situations will always be thrown at us. All of us have lived on this life and experienced that but here's the truth. Victory comes only through believing in what Jesus has done for us. Victory only comes through believing in what Jesus has done for us.

You won't be fully prepared for the battles unless every day you put your battle boots on. You gotta put your battle boots on. And that comes from just not just knowing, not just knowing Jesus' story but believing in what Jesus did for you through his life, death, and resurrection. I'm not talking about learning this so that you can get a good grade on a test or reciting it so that you have something memorized.

It's not enough to just know what he did. That's knowledge but the Bible describes that as knowledge. Yes, but the Bible also says we need to get from knowledge to wisdom. And the way that we get from knowledge to wisdom is actually attaining that knowledge and applying it to our lives.

That makes you wise, not gray hair. Got a lot of them, right? And if it was gray hair, I'd be a very wise man, right? But that is not real wisdom.

Real wisdom is applying the knowledge that we gain from God's truth to our lives over and over daily, daily, day in and day out. Amen? Jesus' work must be reality to us. The daily we're living in it constantly before me, constantly active in my life.

I must know that I know that I know what Jesus, not just for the whole world but for me. Come on, put yourself in that picture for me. What did Christ do for you? Who does he say that you are in him?

Not in yourself, not in your street, in his strength. Are you abiding in Jesus? Buying that truth to yourself, make it your reality, a part of who you are. Maybe it's all you're about, right?

I'm just not sure if everything's just sinking in this morning or y'all are with me. I mean, come on, we gotta get this into our lives, amen? And then once we do, you will start experiencing that eurene, and your relationship with God and your life, it will be stronger than it was ever before. We're storing you way beyond your starting point.

That's the shoes of peace, amen? So that's the first thing, we need to understand what peace really means. Here's the second area we need to look at with the shoes of peace. What is the purpose of the shoes?

The purpose of these shoes, when Paul is writing to the Ephesians about the shoes of peace, he's referencing Roman soldier's shoes to make his point. And that was very familiar to a first century audience at that time where they were. The early believers knew very well what Roman soldiers looked like. So if we don't have the same understanding that those first century believers did, we're gonna miss some aspects of the shoes of peace.

So Paul wrote Ephesians in 61 to 62 AD, and the shoes of the average Roman soldier during this time, they have these very interesting details that a lot are unfamiliar with, because a lot of us, we just know what they looked like because we've watched movies, right? That depicts Roman soldiers, and we just think, oh, well, that's what they look like. Well, it's close, but it doesn't give us the full picture. See, when Roman soldiers were on the battlefield, not at home or dressed up for some non-military event or something like that, their shoes were not just leather sandals that we all pictured from the movies.

They used the leather as a base material, but they covered the entire shoe with a thin plate of brass. And that's because their enemies were gonna shoot arrows, and they didn't want to get an arrow in their foot, because the Romans understood that a soldier with an arrow in his foot is a sitting duck. He's not going anywhere, he's not gonna do anything. If you have a wounded foot like that, you are incapacitated, you're no longer able to fight, and you're probably going to quickly die.

So that plate of brass offered a layer of protection. You see in this spiritually what this picture for us, the shoes of peace protect us from the arrows of the evil one. And that's the truth of who Jesus is and the truth of who we are in him. It protects us from the lies of the enemy and the world around us.

Another critical feature for the soldier's shoes they're most around aware of is in that time, period. The shoes didn't just have flat bottoms. They had these huge metal spikes. It's fascinating.

The closest thing that we could use as a comparison these days are track shoes. But track shoes have thin little spikes, right? Because they're going for speed and they're trying to get traction on the track. But these spikes that we're talking about from the Romans soldiers, you gotta think like, they estimate that they are an inch to an inch and a half thick.

Wow, wow is right. And they are thicker, they are longer, they are deadly. And these spikes, they serve the number of purposes. The first one functions offensively.

So they use these shoes as part of their arsenal as a warrior and they use it to attack and injure the enemy. And the deal was the commanders would train the soldiers to use their feet against their opponent when they were shield to shield. They would attack them with their feet. And if you got somebody in their shin with spikes like that, I think they're going down pretty quick and you're on to the next dude, right?

So that's one aspect, it functioned offensively. But the main purpose of the spikes, and man, the spiritual picture for us today, man, this one just hit me so much when I was preparing this message, it is defensive. See, when a Roman soldier, when they dug their feet into the ground, it was almost impossible to move them. And once the whole army was set on a piece of ground, the enemy basically couldn't move forward anymore because they were standing firm, they were firmly in the ground with those metal spikes.

And they couldn't be bull rushed. Anybody here been bull rushed before? You ever had a life situation just thrust upon you out of nowhere, you didn't see it coming out of the blue? Sometimes life blinds sides, just doesn't it?

Negative circumstances rush in, and they can knock us off balance. Sometimes they knock us off our feet. If we don't have the shoes of peace on set firmly in the ground, standing firm. And once we're off balance, it's easy to pick us apart.

It's easy to pick us off, it's easy to become the casualty of the situation. But the shoes of peace gives us the ability to dig in. See, unexpected situations, anybody ever dealt with one before? Every hand goes up, right?

Every single one of us. Unexpected situations don't have to knock us off balance. They don't have to knock us off our feet. The shoes of peace will help us hold our ground.

See the dialogue on the armor of God, where we started with the first section of scripture that we read this morning. What were the first two words? Stand firm, stand firm. And the rest of the armor is absolutely important, but the shoes of peace might be the most critical element to following the first command with the armor of God.

Stand firm, how do you stand if you don't have the right shoes on? How do you stand your ground? And don't get pushed back, don't get knocked off your feet. You gotta have the right shoes on, right?

Before Ephesians starts describing the armor of God, it says in verse 13 of chapter six, it says, therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you've done everything to stand, see some people, I mean, my heart goes out to them when they're in these circumstances. And I've been there too, where you're just like, you don't understand, pastor, right? I've tried everything.

I've declared, I've confessed, I've repented, I've prayed, I've fasted, I've tried everything. I've done everything. What do I do now? Stand, stand.

What about stand your ground? Stand firm. And your convictions and God's truth and his promises and what he says, don't give an inch to the world out there. Don't give an inch to the enemy.

When you can't do anything else, stand. When you've done everything else, stand. Amen. See, one thing that we have to realize with this is the problems and the battles, they will come.

They're a part of life, but it's still important for us to understand where they are coming from. See, not all of our struggles are caused by the devil. Not all of them are caused by the devil. Sometimes struggles come because you've left a door open to the devil.

Unresolved problems create repetitive battles, the same struggles, they surface again and again. You fight them again and again. Until if you really want to be done with them, you have to deal with the root issue. You have to deal with the root problem.

See, many people, they want to put an emphasis on spiritual warfare, and they want to make every problem in their life about a demonic attack. Man, the devil's just in one of his demons. They're just attacking me. They're attacking me.

They're attacking me instead of dealing with their disobedience, instead of repenting, instead of dealing with the issues that are deep down in their hearts. Amen? I got this picture. It's like when somebody's doing that in their life, it's like you're in a house and you've got fly-swatter and you're really proud of it.

And you're just, you just, yeah, got that one. Got that one. Oh my god. And you have a good friend.

And a good friend would do this. Just standing off to the side watching you in your antics. And they wait for you to stop and you're, wasn't that cool? I swatted all these flots.

Man, they're dead. And that good friend goes, well, why don't you close the window? Maybe the flies won't come in. Maybe you, we could just sit down and have a nice discussion.

Maybe some coffee, a donut, you know? And you wouldn't be huffing and puffing over there. Come on, y'all. It doesn't really matter how skilled you are if the fly-swatter, with the fly-swatter of spiritual warfare, when the window of your heart is wide open to the enemy.

Amen. We're all imperfect, amen. We all have levels of temptation and sin and struggles that we face. Search your heart.

Respond when the Holy Spirit convicts you. Declare God's truth, his word over your life. Repetitively, over and over again. Pray and fast.

And when you've done all of those things and you don't know what else to do, stand your ground. Stand your ground and wait on God. See, you don't always have to attack to win a battle. Sometimes all it takes to win is to stand firm, to stand your ground.

See the example of this in 2nd Samuel, 23. Philistines, they were overcoming David and his mighty men. They were routing the Israelites. And David's army was starting to flee.

The situation looked bad. It looked grim until Shama, one of his men, he did something to turn the tide. He stopped trying to advance against the Philistines and he stood his ground. And from that moment on, the battle shifted.

The tide turned and the people of God achieved victory that day. See, sometimes getting victory, all it's about is standing. Stand firm. There are times when God gives us victory simply because we won't budge.

He'll turn the tide in our favor when we plant our feet and say, man, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not moving. I don't know what's coming. I don't know what else to do.

But I can tell you one thing. I'm not giving up this ground right here. I'm going to stand firm. And there's an incredible promise when we do this.

In Exodus 14, verse 13, it says, stand firm. And you will see the deliverance. The Lord will bring you today. Who needed to hear that today?

Come on. Stand firm. And what God has called you to do, stand firm in his promises. And exactly where he has you right now.

And what he's told you to do. And you will see deliverance from the Lord. Amen? The stand firm right there in the Hebrews.

Love this. It says, to dig in, to be unmoved, to be confident, to be undistmade. That's the definition there. I'll look at that.

Dig in, unmoved, confident, undismate. Stand your ground confidently. Don't be dismayed. Don't be anxious.

Don't be worried. Don't be stressed. Ask the Holy Spirit. There's anything that I need to do different or he wants me to do to deal with my heart issues.

But when you've done all of that and you have nothing else to do, be confident. Stand your ground and wait on God. Wait on God. That's the purpose of the shoes.

That's number two. In that cool. They protect us. They give us a weapon.

And they help us to stand our ground in the midst of all these things we deal with in life so that we can be victorious. That's one and two. Last one. Last area we're looking at with the shoes of peace.

God is a God of peace. That's a simple truth. God is a God of peace. And it might feel like a dust statement.

But we really need to look at this one. And it might go in a direction that you're not anticipating this morning. If it does, then maybe you don't have a biblical understanding of godly peace. Because a lot of people out there, Christians out there today.

I mean, back in the day when I first became a Christian, you didn't know about a lot of people like this. We have social media now. So you see people all over the place. And they use a wildly unbiblical version of peace to try to not just their personal views, but their worldview.

They just try to put that on other people on social media. For so many people, peace simply looks like, well, if I just treat you nice, you'll treat me nice. And that, my friends, is just naive. It's naive.

It's not true. We give Iran $150 billion. Well, surely they'll be nice to us. How did that work out?

Since we gave them that money, things have gotten worse. They've gotten more evil. That's not political. It's just a fact.

So for some, it's not being naive. For others, they have bought into this idea that life should be all about pacifism. That's what peace really means. It's pacifism.

And they turn to scripture to try to back up their viewpoints. And they cherry pick scripture, and they take it out of context. And they, hey, I'm going to look at this part. But what about this part?

And it's unbiblical. They say things like, well, Jesus said, turn the other cheek and do good to those who hate you, do good to those who persecute you. And can I say it to you lovingly this way, this morning church. Don't take instructions on a personal level and try to turn them into geopolitical methodologies.

Bad move. Amen? Bad move. If Jesus were a pacifist, which he was not.

Before I get into this, I'm not trying to get on a soapbox here, but here we go. There's so many people out there, they see the God of the Old Testament is just hateful. And he's just killing people. And then they see Jesus as the literal opposite.

Jesus and the Father are one in the same. They are one in the same. Jesus is not a pacifist. And you'll see this as we go through scripture this morning.

If Jesus were a pacifist, he missed his golden opportunity to demonstrate this in Luke 22, verse 36. This is from Jesus' own mouth. He said, whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one. And he's not talking about a spiritual sword.

He was talking about an actual sword. Those don't sound like the words of a pacifist, do they? If you took Jesus out of the picture and heard those words from anyone else, would you think that person is a pacifist? Clearly they are not, right?

And to add to this, what happens later, after Jesus says this, one of the disciples says, hey, I got two. And he says, that's enough. But here's the deal. This is why we have to interpret scripture properly Christians.

Because people with a pacifist bent, instead of a biblical bent, a correct understanding the language in the original intent and the way that it was written when it was written, if you don't do that, then you get off in left field, right? This is where we get in trouble if we don't interpret scripture properly. Some with the pacifist bent, they'll say that when Jesus said that's enough, he's saying, that's enough. Put the sword away.

That's not what he's saying right there. The Greek word for enough means sufficient. So that disciples says, I got two swords and Jesus says, that's enough, you don't need anymore. That's what he's saying there.

Come on. And then hours later in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter slices one of the high priest's ears off. And then Jesus says, in Matthew 26, 52, those who take up the sword will perish by the sword. And some people with a pacifist bent will say, see, we shouldn't even have swords.

We shouldn't have weapons. We shouldn't have guns. That is Jesus' own words there. But they will skip.

You're probably noticing there's some words in red there, right? I did that on purpose. They will skip the first part of what Jesus said. Look, turn it white.

What does it say? Put your sword back in its place. What does that mean? The sword has a place.

Even say, throw that sword away. We're done with those. I have come. So peace means that we are done with, no, no.

He says, put the sword away. And if you'll just read the story, you'll understand. He's saying, put the sword back in its place. Because what's happening here, Peter, is God's will.

This is part of me going to the cross and dying and fixing all of the sin of mankind. This is part of God's will. Men? Kind of went on a tangent there.

Where am I? OK. So trying to make God out to be a pacifist and Christianity to be about pacifism. That's not the truth of Christianity.

That's more Buddhism than Christianity. That's the teachings of Gandhi, not the teachings of Jesus Christ. We need to understand that. You go back to the Old Testament, you look at Esther.

She's the one. She saved her people for such a time as this, right? Haman set out to attack the Jews. And because of Esther's influence on King Xerxes, King Xerxes gave about armaments to the Jews so that they could defend themselves.

So that they could fight. And they ended up winning a great victory over their enemies. And in fact, God told them to set up an ongoing celebration as a festival to celebrate their great victory after they fought the enemy. Why are you with me?

But don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying we attack and we fight so that we can be aggressors. I don't know. It's about defending ourselves from the enemy.

And these physical, actual pictures in the Old Testament, they are spiritual truths for us today. We are being attacked by the world around us, by ourselves, sometimes by the enemy. And we need to fight back. So here's the problem.

God understands there's evil in the world. And if there's evil in the world, you cannot be naive about it. And you cannot be a pacifist. And here's the crux of the problem.

A lot of people out there have a humanistic view of the world. A humanistic viewpoint, worldview, versus a biblical worldview. And because of that, they just think that all people are inherently good. And if I do good to you, then eventually you'll come around.

You'll do good to me. And that's naive. It's just not true. It might be true sometimes, but not as a whole.

We are not inherently good when we are born on this earth. We have original sin. I mean, if you have had children, you've heard me say this a million times. I'll say it a million more.

If you've had children and you watch them, you realize, oh, wow, you are a little sinner. We got to work on this thing. And guess what? When you were a little kid, you were too.

We are not inherently good. We always want to push boundaries. We always want to be rebellious. Come on.

We're honest. But God understands there's evil in this world. And unfortunately, history's not taught in schools like it was decades ago. So that we can learn lessons.

Because if we don't learn the lessons of history, what happens? We're destined to repeat them. And we can look at the disaster of the Holocaust and Nazism. How in the world did this evilness of Nazism spread across all of Europe?

Well, one of the main reasons for the spread of Nazism was because of a pacifist movement that spread all throughout Europe into some degree in America as well. So you've got to think the world came out of World War I. And thousands, thousands of people died. And then they just swung all the way in the other direction.

They said, well, we don't want to do that again. And they started this pacifist movement. We don't want to get in the fight. And then what happened?

Evil will continue. Hitler kept gaining ground and gaining ground and gaining power, gaining influence, taking this and taking that. And if Neville Chamberlain did not come out of leadership, out of being prime minister at that time, then man, the outcome of the war might have been a very different thing. He was a very much a pacifist.

He just wanted to negotiate, negotiate. We don't want to get in the fight. He lost power. In comes Winston Churchill.

And he goes, hey, man, this is evil. And we need to deal with it. We need to get in the fight. And that is what changed things.

And if you read the history, I mean, it's amazing to see what happened from then on out. But it's not. I mean, there's evil. And it needs to be fought in this world.

OK? And did you know that God is a warrior? I thought this point was about God being a God of peace. He is a God of peace.

But we're getting there. You're going to see it here in scripture in just a second. God himself is a warrior. Exodus 15, verse 3.

God is a warrior. The Lord is his name. Don't get more plain than that, does it? Isaiah 42, verse 13.

The Lord will go out like a warrior. He will stir his zeal like a man of war. He will shout. Indeed, he will raise a war cry.

He will prevail against his enemies. Well, how can he be a God of peace and also a God of war? Well, look at Romans 16, verse 20. Gosh, I love this one.

We've got to get this truth into our last Christians. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Most of us probably don't think that we would see peace and crush in the same sentence, right? But that means that we have the wrong definition of peace.

Because guess what Greek word is used there for peace? Irrene. That's right. So if we look at these different verses, we see that God is a God of peace.

Once he's crushed his enemies, he establishes peace. Oh, do you see that? Real peace doesn't come from not getting in the fight. Real peace comes through real strength.

And for us today, Christians, real strength comes from knowing who we are in him. Real strength comes from you knowing who you are in him, who has made you to be, who has transformed you into being. Come on, are you hearing me? And don't miss this.

It's so easy to just read past this, right? It says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under his feet. I think I read that wrong on purpose. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

Come on, somebody say your feet. Somebody say my feet. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your and my feet. Amen?

God willing power you and I to do so. First John, first John chapter five, verse four. For whoever has been born of God overcomes the world. Come on, if you are born again believer, you are born again to win.

You are born again to overcome. Part of your birthright as a born again believer is to overcome the world around you. It's not just a ticket out of hell and a ticket into heaven, but you are born again to overcome this world. Romans 5 17, those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life.

Stop right there. We read a verse like this and we're like, yeah, I wanna get to the reigning in life part. That's great and that's a wonderful promise. Who wants to reign in life, right?

But there's conditions there. There are two things that we need to receive first. What are they? And the gift of righteousness, that's right.

So have you received these in your life? What does that mean to you? See, receiving those to me means that I'm living in those every day. The abundance of grace, we have this 12 part series on grace.

It just unpacks it, it's amazing. But a lot of Christians, they equate grace with mercy. Mercy is something completely different. Mercy is God not giving us the punishment that we deserve.

Grace is God's power. Grace is God's strength, his ability working in us to help us overcome, to help us conquer, to help us be successful against temptation and sin and attacks from the enemy and attacks from this world of whatever we face, right? That's God's grace and he has not just given us grace, he has given us grace upon grace, he's given us an abundance of grace to an unending supply to make sure that we are ready for anything that could happen in our lives. Do you believe that?

Okay, if you believe it, do you live in that? Have you received that? That's what I'm talking about. The gift of grace, but also the gift of righteousness.

You are righteous because of what Jesus did on the cross. Have you locked these down in your life, right? I used to work with this guy and he was just funny, and he used to walk up to me and he'd say, hey, Beth, lock it down. Lock it down, man, we're in sales, right?

Makes me think of him. Has nothing to do with this message. But do you have the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness locked down in your life? Have you received both of these and are living in the reality of these on a daily basis?

Because if you have, and notice, I didn't say do, do, do, do, I said receive. Isn't that wonderful? If you have received those, you're living in those every day, you will reign in life through Jesus Christ. The shoes of peace, irane, that relationship that God restored for us so we can receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness and experience God's power in our lives to overcome.

And I believe that I'm righteous and I believe that I'm gonna be reigning in life. No situation or circumstance is gonna overcome me. Every situation and circumstance I'm gonna overcome. We're gonna close with this great quote from a great author.

One of my favorites, David Chilton, wrote Paradise Restored, wrote Days of Vengeance. He's a big, great teacher on End Times. And this is him summing up Revelation. If this doesn't get you fired up, then take a picture of it and read it 10 more times later today.

Eventually it will. Here he says, The Book of Revelation was written to show those early Christians that Jesus is Lord, ruler of the kings of the earth. It shows that Jesus is the key to world history, that nothing can occur apart from his sovereign will, that he will be glorified in all things and that his enemies will lick the dust. Its message to us is the same as it was to the early church, that there is not an inch of neutral ground between Christ and Satan, that our Lord demands universal submission to his rule and that he has predestined his people to victorious conquest and dominion over all things in his name.

Somebody say all things. Somebody say all things. Somebody say my things. Come on.

There must be no compromise and no quarter given in the great battle of history. We are commanded to win. Y'all stand with me and pray. We understand what peace is.

We understand the purpose of the shoes. And we understand what God being that God of peace really means. It's peace through strength. The Bible says blessed are the peace makers, not the peace keepers.

How do we make peace through real strength? Men, y'all pray with me.