Gabi Loveday: When I was thinking about this, I'm like, man, it's not even like teaching your crowd just like teaching a bunch of my family.
Gabi Loveday: So I just thank you guys for the opportunity to do this.
Gabi Loveday: And let's start in prayer.
Gabi Loveday: It's hard here.
Gabi Loveday: Lord, we just we thank you so much for your word, Lord.
Gabi Loveday: We know that your word is light to us.
Gabi Loveday: We thank you that it never changes, God, and that every time we open your word, it speaks to us again.
Gabi Loveday: So we just ask, Lord, that tonight would be about your word, Lord, that you would speak to us, that you would open our hearts.
Gabi Loveday: I thank you for the words that you've given me, but Lord, I just pray that my words would be yours, Lord, and that there would be encouragement spoken tonight.
Gabi Loveday: Lord, that we would all walk away, just feeling more knowledgeable about who we are in you, Lord, and more knowledgeable about how we can walk forward and really be equipped to stand in this world.
Gabi Loveday: We just thank you and we give you praise tonight in your name.
Gabi Loveday: Amen.
Gabi Loveday: All right, all right.
Gabi Loveday: So we are in Ephesians chapter six, and we are going through, like Tyler said, equipped to stand.
Gabi Loveday: And something that I love and I want to just kind of go back to is where we were in the fall and in the spring when we did our church-wide study of Ephesians.
Gabi Loveday: So we started in the fall with the beginning of Ephesians, and of course, that was identity.
Gabi Loveday: So we went through what does Paul say about who we are in Christ?
Gabi Loveday: And then we spent the spring season going through what is our purpose.
Gabi Loveday: So we once we know who we are in Christ, how are we to be?
Gabi Loveday: What kind of people ought we to be based on that?
Gabi Loveday: And so this passage in Ephesians comes at the very end.
Gabi Loveday: So now Paul is giving us the practical armor that we can put on on a daily basis that reflects our identity and is indicative of our purpose.
Gabi Loveday: And so that will kind of tie in tonight our verse.
Gabi Loveday: So we will go ahead and go through Ephesians 6, and we will start in verse 10, and we'll read all the way through verse 18 together.
Gabi Loveday: So and I'll be reading on NIV, but then I'll also be mentioning NLT as well.
Gabi Loveday: So verse 10 says, Finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
Gabi Loveday: Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
Gabi Loveday: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Gabi Loveday: 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 have done everything to stand.
Gabi Loveday: Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
Gabi Loveday: In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, which with with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Gabi Loveday: Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.
Gabi Loveday: With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Gabi Loveday: And so tonight we are focusing on the gospel shoes, the gospel shoes.
Gabi Loveday: And I will say, if nothing else, studying this passage has been such a blessing to me.
Gabi Loveday: I have found myself so many times in the past month going back over this and encouraging myself with what I feel like the Lord has shown me through this.
Gabi Loveday: So it's such a blessing to walk through this season knowing that what we present to you, I think as leaders, you know, he always says that we preach ourselves first.
Gabi Loveday: And I really think that this is a case here for me.
Gabi Loveday: Um so our verse specifically tonight is going to be verse 15.
Gabi Loveday: And so that again says, stand with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
Gabi Loveday: And I really like what NLT says.
Gabi Loveday: It's phrased, it says, for shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news, so that you will be fully prepared.
Gabi Loveday: And I want to circle that word peace, because we'll come back to that.
Gabi Loveday: That word peace here.
Gabi Loveday: Um, but in that section, how many times does Paul say the word stand?
Gabi Loveday: Anyone count how many times he says stand?
Gabi Loveday: We'll see if your number matches mine, because I might be wrong.
Gabi Loveday: So in that whole ten through eighteen.
Gabi Loveday: Yeah, any mention of stand.
Gabi Loveday: Stand, stand.
Gabi Loveday: Okay, I got four too, but depending on your version, you might have something different.
Gabi Loveday: Four, anybody have more than two, okay.
Gabi Loveday: So we know that this is an important concept, especially again, our series is called Equip to Sand.
Gabi Loveday: And so that will come into play tonight.
Gabi Loveday: But when I think of this, I have to be really honest.
Gabi Loveday: Shoes are not the first piece of armor that I think of.
Gabi Loveday: Um so, like if somebody asked me, name the parts of an armor on a soldier.
Gabi Loveday: I okay, helmet, makes sense.
Gabi Loveday: Protect your head, breastplate, got it.
Gabi Loveday: Sword, okay, shield, yes.
Gabi Loveday: But shoes.
Gabi Loveday: I don't often think of shoes as being a piece of armor.
Gabi Loveday: I think of them as being something we need, but not a piece of armor.
Gabi Loveday: So I was kind of thinking, what is the purpose of shoes for a soldier?
Gabi Loveday: If you're a soldier, why do you need shoes?
Gabi Loveday: So, what are some ideas?
Gabi Loveday: Why would a soldier need good shoes?
Gabi Loveday: Okay, hold the arch, yes.
Gabi Loveday: Oh, march, yes, yes, yes, march.
Gabi Loveday: Protect them, protect, protect.
Speaker 1: If you can't stand, you can't fight.
Gabi Loveday: Oh, I like that.
Gabi Loveday: If you can't stand, you can't fight.
Gabi Loveday: So, yes, so soldiers need shoes.
Gabi Loveday: They protect them from walking through treacherous terrain, right?
Gabi Loveday: If you're gonna be walking over something that's rough, rough surface, maybe there's debris on the ground from the battle, you have to protect your feet.
Gabi Loveday: Shoes allow soldiers to walk into enemy territory.
Gabi Loveday: It's literally the barrier between them and the territory that they stand on, right?
Gabi Loveday: It allows them to actually stand.
Gabi Loveday: It allows them to fight.
Gabi Loveday: Like you said, if you don't have the correct shoes, you can't fight.
Gabi Loveday: You're no matter what other pieces of armor you have or how strong you are, if you don't have the right shoes, you're not gonna be ready to use those other pieces of armor.
Gabi Loveday: So shoes are really, really important for soldiers.
Gabi Loveday: And think about them for us.
Gabi Loveday: Other than our clothes, what's the one thing that you guys would never leave your house without?
Gabi Loveday: Okay, right?
Gabi Loveday: So, how many of us have ever gotten to our car and we turn it on and we're like, oh man, shoes, that's what I forgot to wear today, right?
Gabi Loveday: So no one, we're not, we might leave our wallet at home, we might forget our phone, we might even forget our work badge or something we meant to bring.
Gabi Loveday: But none of us are ever gonna forget to wear our shoes.
Gabi Loveday: Even if we're just going to get the mail, shoes are something that we always have.
Gabi Loveday: No matter what our purpose is, anytime we go out to the world, if we're leaving our doorstep, if we're going anywhere or achieving anything during the day, we always put shoes on.
Gabi Loveday: That's something that we never forget.
Gabi Loveday: And also think about the not just the shoes that we wear, but think about the type of shoes.
Gabi Loveday: So if you're a runner, you know the importance of getting shoes with good arch support.
Gabi Loveday: You want shoes that are breathable and able to get you where you need to go when you're running.
Gabi Loveday: If you work in construction, you're gonna show up to your job site with some seal toe boots, right?
Gabi Loveday: Because that's important for the work that you do.
Gabi Loveday: If you play soccer, you're gonna choose shoes that are specifically designed to grip the ground.
Gabi Loveday: So you're gonna choose cleats.
Gabi Loveday: You wouldn't show up to a construction site wearing flip-flops.
Gabi Loveday: If you value your toes, you wouldn't show up wearing flip-flops, right?
Gabi Loveday: And you're not gonna put on your high heels to go play soccer.
Gabi Loveday: So the type of shoe that we put on determines our ability to do whatever task is in front of us here.
Gabi Loveday: Okay, and so what we kind of see is the type of shoe we choose matters.
Gabi Loveday: And what we choose to put on our feet really impacts our ability to be steady and to be ready.
Gabi Loveday: So there's two kinds of ideas, steady and ready here.
Gabi Loveday: And if we look back at verse 15, we kind of see these two ideas, the steady and the ready, kind of emerge from verse 15, because we see it says feet fitted with the gospel of peace or put on, right?
Gabi Loveday: So that's gonna be steady.
Gabi Loveday: And then we also see the words be fully prepared or the readiness.
Gabi Loveday: So there's two ideas here.
Gabi Loveday: And so what we'll kind of do in our brief time together is we'll go through these two ideas.
Gabi Loveday: So first we'll kind of look at what does Paul mean by the gospel of peace here?
Gabi Loveday: That's the steady part.
Gabi Loveday: And then how does that make us ready or fully prepared for what we have to face?
Gabi Loveday: So that's gonna be that readiness part.
Gabi Loveday: Sound good?
Gabi Loveday: Yeah, all right.
Gabi Loveday: So first we'll start with ready.
Gabi Loveday: And I told you guys earlier to circle the word peace.
Gabi Loveday: And that is also because when I was reading this, I really haven't focused in on that word.
Gabi Loveday: Even when I was thinking, you know, as a kid you learned the armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, okay, the shoes of the gospel.
Gabi Loveday: But in every translation, that word peace stands out.
Gabi Loveday: And in fact, again, NLT says, put on the peace that comes with from the gospel.
Gabi Loveday: So it mentions the word peace before it even mentions shoes.
Gabi Loveday: And so that idea of peace, depending on how we read this, it might almost seem ironic or like a contradiction.
Gabi Loveday: So, especially if you're thinking from like a Western mindset or maybe as a new believer, when you think of peace, what do you think of?
Gabi Loveday: So I would say peace is everything going good.
Gabi Loveday: Peace is smooth sailing.
Gabi Loveday: No one's fighting, everyone's getting along, there's nothing wrong.
Gabi Loveday: Peace means there's nothing wrong.
Gabi Loveday: And I think a lot of people in the Western world, especially like with world peace, when someone says we want world peace, what do they mean?
Gabi Loveday: Well, there's no fighting, there's no wars, there's no conflict, everyone's friends, we're all getting along.
Gabi Loveday: And so if we look at this whole section of chapter six, though, Paul is using a soldier metaphor.
Gabi Loveday: He's talking about equipping us for battle.
Gabi Loveday: So, how can that make sense if peace means that there's no conflict, but Paul is telling us to put on peace going into a conflict?
Gabi Loveday: How does that make sense?
Gabi Loveday: And so, really, what I when I was reading through this, what we have to do is we have to discover what does Paul actually mean by peace?
Gabi Loveday: What does he mean by peace?
Gabi Loveday: And Mark did such a great job on Sunday.
Gabi Loveday: If you want to hear this message, just go back and listen to his, because he basically, I love that it connected so beautifully to that.
Gabi Loveday: Um, and so here, peace, it doesn't necessarily mean outward peace.
Gabi Loveday: It doesn't mean everything is going right on the outside.
Gabi Loveday: It's a much deeper term.
Gabi Loveday: And so I'm no Bible expert, but when I looked it up, it comes, it's the Greek word, I think it's Irene, it's E-I-R-E-N-E.
Gabi Loveday: And that is going to be the Hebrew equivalent of shalom, which is what Mark talked about on Sunday.
Gabi Loveday: That's shalom.
Gabi Loveday: And so shalom is so much more than a feeling.
Gabi Loveday: In fact, it's not a feeling at all.
Gabi Loveday: One of the meanings of shalom can mean wholeness, it means completeness.
Gabi Loveday: There's that phrase, nothing missing, nothing broken.
Gabi Loveday: And so, in contrast to what we might think of as peace in the outward sense, peace isn't a feeling.
Gabi Loveday: Peace isn't an experience.
Gabi Loveday: In the same way you pick up a vase and say this vase is whole, that's not a feeling.
Gabi Loveday: The vase doesn't feel whole, it's a state of being.
Gabi Loveday: This vase is whole, nothing is broken on it.
Gabi Loveday: And so peace is a state.
Gabi Loveday: It's not an external thing.
Gabi Loveday: It doesn't come from our circumstances, it's not a feeling or an emotion.
Gabi Loveday: It is an actual state of being.
Gabi Loveday: And if we think about that in this verse, it says the peace that comes from the gospel, the good news.
Gabi Loveday: How does the peace come from the gospel?
Gabi Loveday: How does the gospel bring us that peace?
Gabi Loveday: Well, if we think the gospel meaning Jesus' work on the cross, his death and resurrection, because of his work on the cross, we can have that peace.
Gabi Loveday: We have wholeness or reconciliation with God in the midst of real external conflict.
Gabi Loveday: Because again, it's a state.
Gabi Loveday: Jesus' work on the cross changed our state of being towards God.
Gabi Loveday: At one point, we did not have peace with God.
Gabi Loveday: We were enemies of God.
Gabi Loveday: And because of his death and resurrection, he reconciled.
Gabi Loveday: One of the synonyms to peace that I had looked up was reconciliation.
Gabi Loveday: But it's not external, it's not we all get along now as a world, but we are now one with Christ.
Gabi Loveday: And so thinking back to Ephesians, if we go back to chapter two, I think Paul lays this out really beautifully in the beginning in chapter two.
Gabi Loveday: So we go to two, we can honestly read all of chapter two, but we'll just for the sake of time look at verses one through five.
Gabi Loveday: Ephesians two, one through five, and then we'll jump to 12 through 20.
Gabi Loveday: So does anyone want to read Ephesians 2, 1 through 5?
Speaker 2: And you were dead in the presentation of sin in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Speaker 2: But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
Speaker 2: By grace you have been saved.
Gabi Loveday: Yeah, and so we can see there again, in order to understand real peace, we have to understand what our standing was before the good news on the work on the cross, and what our standing was because of it or after it.
Gabi Loveday: And so that lays it out so nicely.
Gabi Loveday: If somebody else wants to read, it's a little bit longer, but 12 through 20.
Gabi Loveday: Ephesians 2, 12 through 20.
Speaker 1: That you were, I say, at that time without Christ.
Speaker 1: And we're aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and we're strangers from the covenants of promise and have no hope or without God in the world.
Speaker 1: But now in Christ Jesus, you were who we want and far off and made near by the blood of Christ.
Speaker 1: For he is our peace, which hath made both once, hath broken the stop and petition walk.
Speaker 1: Abrogating stream is flesh, the hatred that is the law of commandments, which stands in ordinances, for make the flight man in himself, so maybe peace.
Gabi Loveday: So there again we see it mentions peace several times, and it says, verse 17, he came and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to those who are near.
Gabi Loveday: For through him we both have access to the Father by one spirit.
Gabi Loveday: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners or aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as a chief cornerstone.
Gabi Loveday: And so there again is that idea of peace.
Gabi Loveday: We can see here that peace is an identity thing.
Gabi Loveday: In order to understand peace, it's not dependent on our circumstances, it is truly, it's a place of standing, right?
Gabi Loveday: We are reconciled to Christ.
Gabi Loveday: We have died and been resurrected with him.
Gabi Loveday: And so no matter what happens around us, we can have that peace.
Gabi Loveday: We can have the peace from the gospel, even in the midst of battle.
Gabi Loveday: So here, Paul is not contradicting himself.
Gabi Loveday: It makes sense when we understand what he is coming from with that idea of peace.
Gabi Loveday: We also have Philippians 4 7.
Gabi Loveday: We know the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Gabi Loveday: And I love that.
Gabi Loveday: I hadn't, you hear that verse so many times, but I hadn't thought about the verb there.
Gabi Loveday: What's the verb in that phrase?
Gabi Loveday: The peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds.
Gabi Loveday: Guard, right?
Gabi Loveday: So there he's personifying peace in that phrase, in that verse, peace is a guard.
Gabi Loveday: Peace will guard your hearts and minds.
Gabi Loveday: I think about it like someone standing outside a tomb, right?
Gabi Loveday: They're not going to let anything else in.
Gabi Loveday: So peace is a guard.
Gabi Loveday: And that is a protection for us.
Gabi Loveday: But again, it's not based on anything external.
Gabi Loveday: Like the world would say, if there's not peace outside, I can't have peace inside.
Gabi Loveday: But we're different because of the gospel here.
Gabi Loveday: And that kind of leads us now.
Gabi Loveday: That was the steady.
Gabi Loveday: So we are grounded in our identity because of the work of Christ.
Gabi Loveday: But that kind of leads us into the readiness, that kind of second part of the verse.
Gabi Loveday: Um, and another verse that I was thinking of that calls us to readiness is in the New Testament, and it's 1 Peter 5, 8 through 11.
Gabi Loveday: 1 Peter 5, 8 through 11.
Gabi Loveday: And I'll actually start with verse 7, because it's a personal favorite of mine.
Gabi Loveday: Verse 7 says, Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
Gabi Loveday: Verse 8, be self-controlled and alert.
Gabi Loveday: Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Gabi Loveday: So that sounds very similar to what Paul was saying earlier in chapter six.
Gabi Loveday: Resist him standing firm.
Gabi Loveday: There's those words again, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
Gabi Loveday: And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.
Gabi Loveday: To him be the power forever and ever.
Gabi Loveday: Amen.
Gabi Loveday: And so those words are very similar to what Paul is calling us to.
Gabi Loveday: Be alert, right?
Gabi Loveday: Because the enemy is prowling around.
Gabi Loveday: So there is a purpose for our readiness.
Gabi Loveday: There is something we have to be ready for.
Gabi Loveday: Okay.
Gabi Loveday: Specifically, we're thinking about back in Ephesians 6, the stand against the devil's schemes.
Gabi Loveday: That's what we're prepared for.
Gabi Loveday: And so we can see that we can have internal peace even when there's not external peace, which is honestly something that I've been experiencing personally in my life.
Gabi Loveday: So I think this is very impactful for me, no matter where we're walking.
Gabi Loveday: Whether we're walking to the mailbox or whether we're walking to work, whether we're walking into enemy territory, we can stand on that peace and be ready to fight the devil's schemes.
Gabi Loveday: But being ready implies paying attention, right?
Gabi Loveday: If you're a soldier and you're ready for battle, you have to be clear-headed.
Gabi Loveday: You can't be worried about anything, you can't be distracted by anything.
Gabi Loveday: You have to be an alert of sober mind.
Gabi Loveday: But if you don't have a peace in your soul, you're going to be chaotic.
Gabi Loveday: You're going to feel like your, I guess, energy is off, right?
Gabi Loveday: Like you're not ready.
Gabi Loveday: You're going to be distracted.
Gabi Loveday: And so you're not going to be fully prepared.
Gabi Loveday: And that's how the peace connects to this idea of preparedness, is that if we know where identity is in Christ, we can walk into anything, into any situation, knowing that the outcome has already been determined and that we are strengthened.
Gabi Loveday: We are prepared.
Gabi Loveday: We can go on the offensive.
Gabi Loveday: And I like what you said earlier.
Gabi Loveday: If you're not, if you don't have the right shoes on, you can't fight.
Gabi Loveday: No matter how big your sword is, if you're distracted, it's not going to matter.
Gabi Loveday: You have a point.
Speaker 2: And no matter how many tabs are open, yep, yep.
Gabi Loveday: No matter how many tabs, no matter how busy your day is, no matter how overwhelmed you feel, you're going to stand on that readiness.
Gabi Loveday: You're going to have that peace as a center.
Gabi Loveday: And again, it's an identity thing.
Gabi Loveday: It's so much more than what the world thinks of as peace, meaning everything goes right.
Gabi Loveday: Another encouraging verse to kind of talk about where we were versus where we are is in Colossians.
Gabi Loveday: Colossians 1, 19 through 23.
Gabi Loveday: And so this kind of goes back again to our identity and then also our purpose or that idea of readiness.
Gabi Loveday: So Colossians 1, 19 through 23, it says, For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile himself to all things, whether things on earth or things of heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.
Gabi Loveday: Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free of accusation, if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.
Gabi Loveday: So there again, we're kind of seeing the idea of the steady and the ready working together, putting on those shoes in order to be fully prepared here.