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The scripture reading of the morning is from the book of Romans, the tenth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered nine. "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says,

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no one who believes in him will be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. The same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But how are men to call upon 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

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to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Of all of the accusations and charges which are leveled against

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the Christian faith, it has always seemed to me that the most ridiculous is that faith is some kind of crutch for the weak. That it is nothing more than a collection of sugary sentimentalisms designed to comfort those who are not able to confront life. The fact of the matter is exactly contrary. Anybody who has tried to live the life in Christ knows that it's much harder to be a

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Christian in this world than it is to be a non-Christian. It's much harder to carry a cross in this world than not to carry a cross. The martyrs, those whose blood is the seed of the church, were not killed because they went along with the crowd, but rather because they stood against it. And the more you try to do good in this world, the more you're going to be battered

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for it. There is a price to be paid in Christian discipleship. That's the reason we're talking in these weeks about a faith for tough times. The Apostle Paul knew exactly what we would be confronting. It was the same challenge that was confronted in his own day, and so in his letter to the Ephesians, at the sixth chapter, he outlines some items of Christian armor which may be worn

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in the battle of faith. Today I want to think with you about what he has to say about the Christians' footwear. Our text is from Ephesians 6. Paul says, "Stand, having shod your feet with the equipment of peace." Now footwear is very essential to any soldier. The Roman sandal, to which Paul is referring here, was a hard sole strapped to the foot with leather, and on the

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bottom of the sole there were studs or hobs designed to enable the sandal to grip the turf on which the wearer was standing. So the sandals gave, you see, to the soldier who was wearing them not only a firm place on which to stand, but also protection from any booby traps of that day which might have been laid to injure him, and it also gave him the ability to be on the move. In

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other words, the sandals were a matter of grip and a matter of grit and a matter of gumption. They concerned your traction, they concerned your protection, and they concerned your mobility. Now look first at this matter of grip, how the sandals of the gospel of peace enable us to stand assured of our victory in Jesus Christ. A few years ago now I was flying to Chicago to address the Golden

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Key Banquet of Trinity College. Now the chairman of the board of Trinity College is George Beverly Shea, a great baritone who has sung for so many years with the Billy Graham organization, and when I arrived at the banquet and was taken up and seated beside him, for he would introduce me later, he said to me, "My, you look tired." I said, "I am tired. I've spent all day today battling with

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college kids who told me that everything they were telling me had been given to them directly by God." We said, "I know what you mean. People are forever sending me songs and they say, 'This song was given to me by God and so you ought to sing it on the radio.'" Now he said, "I keep all of those songs. Some of them are bad and some of them are even worse, but I keep them all anyway." And just about

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two weeks ago a woman called me and wanted to know why I hadn't sung her song. She said, "You know, when I sent you that song, I told you that that song was given to me by the Lord. So why haven't you sung it?" He said, "Well, give me the title of the song and I'll get it out and we'll discuss it." She said, "All right, but I want to tell you something else. When the Lord gave me this song,

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he told me that this song would be a greater song than 'How Great Thou Art.'" "Well," Bev Shea said, "that's pretty remarkable. You give me the name of your song and I'll get it out and we'll discuss it." She said, "All right, the name of my song is 'His Grip Don't Slip.'" Now laying aside the fact that the perfect Lord does not speak in butchered grammar, there is still some meaningful theology

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in that title, "His Grip Don't Slip," because the fact of the matter is when God grips us in his saving grip, he never slips. He never does lose that grip. Jesus speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd said, "No sheep is ever taken from my hand." Now when you know that to be true, when you know that the faith is yours and that no one will be able to take you outside of the

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love of God, that gives you a lot of strength. You can take an awful lot of bashing if you know that in the end you're sure to win. You can lose a lot of rounds or a lot of yardage or use whatever other metaphor comes to your mind. The fact of the matter is when you know that finally you can't lose, that gives you something very firm to stand upon. My question to you this morning is, do you

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know that? The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, "I do not write to you as a man of the world, speaking out of both sides of my mouth." The fact is, he said, God is faithful and his response to us is not "Yes, one moment and no the next." His response to us is "Yes," and that "Yes" is sealed with the perfect "Yes" of Jesus Christ. It's sealed in us, his Spirit is given to us,

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and the guarantee of our salvation is offered so that we cannot lose. Now when you know that, that gives you a lot of courage for the conflict. The question becomes, do you know that? Do you have the kind of confidence which would enable you to stand in the tough time because you know you're ultimately going to win? Is that kind of trust alive in your heart? Do you have the strength

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that comes from that conviction? Well, you say to me, "I really can't tell how I'm going to stand until the time of testing comes," and that's true. We may say a lot of things, but when the actual time of trial comes, well, the results may be different from what we expect, and we may not be as brave as we think we'll be. This is also true, that if we're collapsing before little

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challenges now, you can rest assured we'll collapse in front of greater challenges later. But the point is, you see, that our standing or our collapse is not what is essential here. What is essential is that God does not lose his grip. If we are in the gospel, if we are wearing on our feet, on our spirits, the sandals of the faith, then we can stand no matter what the terrain.

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About two years ago, two men were working on a chimney in Gary, Indiana. The chimney was made of metal, and it was 600 feet high. They were working at the 500-foot level. That's about 50 stories off the ground. They were in a small cage that went on tracks around this chimney, which was 24 feet in diameter, replacing ribbons. Two men were in the cage, one named Nick, and the

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other was called Preacher because he was a Christian, and he was pitted a lot by others because of his faith. He didn't curse and swear as they did. He didn't go out and do some of the things that they did, and so he was nicknamed Preacher. Well, as these two men were working in this cage, suddenly there was the sound of tearing metal, and one of the tracks on which

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this little cage rode tore away from the side of the chimney, and they were suspended there, 50 stories off the ground, by one small track. And Nick cried out, "We're goners! We're goners!" And the Preacher, as he was called, replied, "Don't worry. God will take care of us." "You're crazy," said Nick. "You're crazy. We're gonna die!" And the Preacher responded, "Don't worry.

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Whether we live or die, God will take care of us." They were rescued, and Nick later wrote the story which appeared in Guideposts magazine, that 500 feet up on the side of that tower, with nothing under them but a lot of open and empty air, still the Preacher found firm footing. He found a place to stand. Why? Because he knew that God would take care of him. That's the first function of the

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sandals of the gospel of peace, to give us a rock on which to stand. The second thing has to do with grit, and grit means being alert to the tempting attacks that are visited upon us. See, in those days, they used to try to hurt soldiers by taking thorns and dipping them in poison, and then strewing them on the road, and as the soldiers would come along, they would be stabbed by these

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thorns and would be unable to fight in the coming conflict. Or, they would take sticks and sharpen one end, and they would bury the stick in the ground so that the point was just above the surface with dust covering it. And as the soldiers would come, they would step upon those and be hurt, unless of course, they were wearing sandals. If they had on the sandals, you see, then they were

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protected. That's the second function of the sandals, to protect us from those things that can wound us and hurt us from the temptations we encounter. I want you to come with me this morning to East Africa. The sun has not yet risen, it's quite dark, and we are camped on the very edge of the Ngorongoro crater. We slept in tents. They wake us up very early in the morning, we get

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out, we breakfast on zebra steak, hash browns, rolls, bread, butter, and fruit. Still quite dark, we get into our Land Rover and start down the steep descent into the Ngorongoro crater. That's the crater of an extinct volcano. Twice we have to stop on the way down. The first time, because a large buffalo is standing right in the middle of the road. Now those buffalo weigh about 7,000

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pounds, and they're very dangerous. He stands and looks at us for a while, then loses interest and wanders off. We stop a little later in our descent when seven giraffe look at us to find out what we're doing out so early in the morning. Then they hurry on. Just as we reach the bottom of the descent and move out into the floor of the crater, which constitutes and which includes one of the

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greatest collections of African animals to be found in all the world, all kept, you see, within the confining walls of this huge crater. As we get down there, we find there are no roads. The Land Rover rides over the rough grass. We move ahead very slowly. We can see the shadows of animals about us in the morning mist, which has not lifted yet because the morning sun has not yet come. As

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we move out, we stop, and the driver, who is armed, holds up his finger to his lips. We don't see what he's looking at, and then just ahead of us we see a small herd of oryx. An oryx is an animal like an antelope, only larger, brownish-gray in color, very beautiful. They're standing there very alert with their heads up. One of the members of our party says, "Are they looking at us?" And without

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responding, the driver points over to the right, and looking over to the right, we see, moving through the grass ever so slowly, two lions. A moment later, they attack. The oryx run as fast as they can, but one, a very large one, stumbles, and in the moment that he stumbles, one grabs him by the throat, and the other grabs him by his soft underbelly, and they pull him down, and for a

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while his feet are jerking back and forth, and then they begin to quiver with the quivers of death, and then they become absolutely still. Fifteen seconds. And six other lions come in, and they begin their morning feast, and they rip him from one end to the other, and in just a few moments, the heat from the innards of the animal, meeting the coldness of the air, condenses so that it

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looks like the whole animal is smoldering or on fire. Our driver, to our amazement, brings our Land Rover up to within 12 feet of where they are. In the lights of our headlights, the eyes of the lions are gold. Their chops are running red. Some take pictures, others look away. Now, keeping that in mind, hear this word of Peter delivered to us, "Be sober, be watchful,

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for your adversary prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." The secret of being safe and not sorry is to have the assurance of Christ in your heart, that firm ground underneath, but it's also to be alert to those things that lie in wait and seek to destroy us. Sometimes they are as overt and violent as those lions. Other times, as we all know,

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they are very subtle and quiet. The New Testament talks about this, too. It says, "Beware of the cunning craftiness of those who lie in wait." Sometimes we're attacked with a blow, and sometimes with a word of flattery and compliment. Sometimes the scriptures are attacked. Sometimes our faith is belittled. Sometimes our health is weakened. Sometimes

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our lust is excited. Sometimes we enter into an intellectual debate and find ourselves being defeated. And about that, by the way, so many times people come and tell me how they got into some debate with some person who doesn't believe, someone who was trying to pull them down in the faith, and they say, "You know, I tried to hold high the flag of faith, and I went down to utter

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defeat." My first question to them always is, "Well, what was the discussion about?" And many times I find that these people are trying to defend aspects of the faith that they don't understand themselves. Don't let somebody sucker you onto their territory where they're familiar and you're a stranger. How can you argue about evolution if you've never read Darwin's "Origin

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of the Species" and "The Descent of Man"? How can you intelligently defend Christianity against communism if you've never read Das Kapital or, at the least, the Communist Manifesto? The Bible says that we're always to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in us. That speaks about our own personal testimony and what it means to life. But don't let yourself be pulled into situations

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where you don't have the knowledge or the experience or whatever is needed and is necessary to win. It's imperative that we have on our feet the sandals that keep us alert and save us from the booby traps and the thorns that are laid about us, whether those traps come in the form of lions or snakes in the grass. This is the way to be safe, not sorry. Now what's the third function of the

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sandal? It's to make us mobile, to enable us to be on the move. All great military tacticians have been masters at the art of moving their troops. This was the great secret of Alexander the Great with his phalanx method of attack. Napoleon would sometimes fight two or three battles in the same day in different places. He had so mastered the movement of his men. Lee kept the North on edge

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for three years with a much smaller army just because the North could never figure out where he was going to be next. You remember how many troops we had to send to North Africa to try to catch Rommel, the Nazi general who moved his tanks, his Panzer Division, so rapidly. Patton did the same thing with the Third Army and captured much of Europe for our side because of his ability

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to move troops. And Eisenhower's great military genius was summed up in the D-Day adventure when so many were moved in such a short time to undertake such a large task. The Christian soldier is mobile. She's on the move for two reasons. First of all, it's harder to hit a moving target. And secondly, because a good offense is often the best defense. Go back to the Old Testament with me. Do

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you remember the scene when David is battling Goliath? David says he's going to fight Goliath. And King Saul says, "If you'll fight him, I'll give you my armor." Now, David was just a shepherd boy. We don't know how big he was, but we do know he was quite young at the time. We do know the size of Saul because the Bible says that Saul stood head and shoulders above every other one

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of the Israelites. So this heavy armor of Saul is put on to David. And David stands there in it and says, "I can't wear this. My whole secret of success is going to be two things, my dependence upon God and the fact that I can move quickly. Goliath is a huge blundering man. He's going to come stumbling out there like some dim-witted dinosaur. And me, I'm going to float like a butterfly and sting like

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a bee." So he takes off that armor, and with this increased mobility and enthusiasm and vigor, he goes into the attack. A lot of Christians are mowed down because just when they get into the middle of the battle, they say, "We ought to sit and rest a while here," when what they ought to be saying is, "Charge! Charge! Charge!" So many allow themselves to be caught in the bondage of

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despondency. Things go the wrong way, and so what do they do? They quit. That's the most serious thing that can happen in any defeat, you know. A defeat is only ultimately significant when it leads you to quit. And what we're told by this reference to the sandals and their mobility is that we're to be out there saying, "Hit him again! Harder! Harder! Hit him again! Harder! Harder!"

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That's the way to be safe and not sorry. Now, of course, we're not hitting people literally. We're not going after them to defeat them. What we take as we go is the gospel of peace. All of this armor you'll notice is the armor of love. First Paul said, "Put on the girdle of truth." We rely on the Bible, which is the great testaments of love. Then he talks about putting on the breastplate

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of righteousness, that coat of mail. It's not our righteousness, remember. It's the righteousness of Christ, which forgives us of all of our past and enables him to grow within us so that we as branches receive strength from the vine and become stronger and stronger and more fruitful and more fruitful. And then Paul speaks of these sandals. And the sandals speak to us of firmness and of

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protection and of mobility. But again, it's not to defeat other people, but to bring to them the gospel of peace. That's our task in our ministry, to tell every person on this planet that that person can have peace with God. Paul puts it this way, "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Our task is to go to every person on

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this planet and to tell them that they can have inner peace and calmness and control. And Paul speaks of that. He says, "Be anxious about nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." And we're to go out to every

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person on this planet, not with warlike expression and cry, but instead in peace and in love. We are to be the agents of peace on this plundered planet of ours. And Paul speaks of that, too. He says, "And above all things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness, and the peace of God will rule in your hearts." My friends in Christ, if we will go forward with the gospel of peace, then

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someday they will say of us what Isaiah said of those who loved God long before us. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace." Let us pray. Our Father, give us the courage of our convictions. Remind us that we are held always by you. Make us alert to what goes on about us, to temptations, overt or covert. And, O Lord,

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send us out into the world with a sense of urgency, preaching to all who will hear, demonstrating by our lives, not only with our talk but with our walk, that thou dost will peace. Peace on earth to all those who are of goodwill. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [Music]

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