The Pierced Feet of Our Lord Jesus — Ian Paisley

The Fall and the First Promise of Christ’s Bruised Heel

Pick up the authorized version of the Holy Scriptures you will find before you in the pew and turn with me to the book of Genesis, chapter 3. We are reading from verse 1 to verse 15. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. The woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was present to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden, and the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree? For off I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat.

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field, upon thy belly shalt thou go, and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Ending our reading at verse 15, and God will stamp his word to our hearts.

In the third chapter of the book of Genesis at verse 15, we read these words. The words of God to the devil. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

There we have the first reference in the Bible to the feet of Jesus. I want to speak tonight on the feet of Jesus Christ. I have seven things I want to present to you about the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ’s Feet Bathed in Baptism and Devotion

First of all, they were bathed. If you read the story of our Lord's entering into his public ministry, you will know it commenced with his baptism. He went to the river Jordan, and when he presented himself to John the Baptist, to be baptized in the river, and John the Baptist said, I am need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me.

And the Savior said, thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. And he went down into the Jordan River, and was baptized by John the Baptist. The first part of his body, his feet, touched the Jordan River, which is a type of death.

So Jesus Christ entered his ministry with bathed feet. But when we go through the Gospels, we discover two other occasions when the Lord's feet were washed. A sinner, a woman that was a great sinner, a woman of the streets, met the Savior in one of the houses where he was eating with Simon, who was a Pharisee.

And she wept over the feet of Jesus, and she poured her ointment out upon those feet, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. A great contrast between the bathing of his feet in Jordan, and the bathing of his feet by the woman.

But then as we come to the latter part of John's Gospel, we find another woman. This woman was not a sinner. By the way, of course, that woman that was a sinner that washed his feet with her tears, that woman became a sinner saved by grace.

Because Christ said to her at the end of his discussion of her case with the Pharisee, God said her sins were forgiven. So there was a transforming of grace for the woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears.

But we come to another woman, Mary of Bethany, and she washed and bathed the feet of Jesus with the precious ointment, with the ointment that she had stored by her and kept, because she had heard that he was going to die from his lips, when she sat at his feet.

And the Lord had told her he was going to die. And so she anointed the Savior for his burial. How did she anoint him? She poured upon his feet this ointment. So the feet of Jesus were prepared in this way, in the mystery and the unveiling of what would happen at Calvary, this way of baptism, this way of the sinner's contrite tears, and this way of the saint's contrite consecration.

Christ had bathed the feet. But secondly, Christ had busy feet. I was struck today as I opened my New Testament and traced the places the Lord visited. He started off at his baptism. He went from his baptism into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

He came back from the wilderness in all the power of the Spirit of God. And he went from there back to his native Nazareth, and he never stopped having busy feet until he came to Gethsemane. And then the busyness of his feet finished, because in Gethsemane he was bound, and he no longer could go where he wanted to go or visit where he wanted to visit, the busy feet of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Think of the people that he visited, the sick, the palsied, the lepers. Think of the evil spirits he cast out in all his long travels. For three years, Judea heard his voice. For three years, Samaria heard his voice.

And for three years, Galilee heard his voice. Christ had busy feet. What evil men did was to stop them, to keep them from healing the sick, to keep them from cleansing the lepers. And today, evil men in the mask of religion would keep the blessed Savior from the job that he has appointed himself to do.

Isaiah’s Beautiful Feet That Proclaim Salvation

But he not only had bathed feet, and he not only had busy feet, but he had beautiful feet. How do I know? Because in the book of the prophecy of Isaiah, and perhaps you should lift your Bible and look at this text, we find there something that is said about our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the 52nd chapter, it says something, Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion, put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city, from henceforth there shall no more come unto thee the uncircumcised or the unclean.

And then we have in verse 7 these words about the Savior. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, and publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings to the good, that publisheth salvation, and saith unto Zion, Thy God realest.

How beautiful were the feet of the Lord Jesus. Now you'll notice that that is linked with the mountains. Go you through the Gospels and look at every mountain that Christ stood on. On every mountain he stood on, there was a manifestation of the beauty of his feet.

You just study that. And of course the greatest manifestation was at Mount Calvary, where the Lord Jesus Christ's feet were bruised by the devil himself. But there was a beauty in the blood shedding. It was the beauty of the purchase of your redemption and my redemption.

Yes, we have the beautiful feet of the Savior. I always covet those people who met the Lord after he was risen from the dead, and they held him by his feet. They held him. Oh, what a day it will be when in the glory land, every one of us will be able to take the Lord's feet, and we'll be able to kiss them and hold them.

Those feet that carried him to the cross, carried him to the depths of the outer hell that we deserve to be in for all eternity, carried him to the place where he broke the power of hell and death and delivered all who were subject to bondage, who believe in him.

The Bleeding Feet and the Blood of Atonement

But that brings me the bare feet, the busy feet, the beautiful feet. But that brings me to the bleeding feet. They pierced, Christ said in prophecy, my hands and my feet. Blood naturally drains down at the lowest part where the body is wounded.

The lowest part of Christ's body on the cross were, of course, his feet. So the fountain of blood that started from his feet as soon as he was uplifted on that cross, opened the taps of atoning blood so that you and I might wash ourselves in a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins.

Flowing blood is not a pleasant sight, but it is the flow of that blood alone that can wash you and make you fit for heaven. None but blood-washed ones are there, the ransomed and forgiven. The blessed feet of Christ were beautiful.

They were bathed. They were busy. Well, thank God they were bleeding. It is interesting to note that when the Lord rose from the dead, we read that he showed the disciples three things. He showed them his hands, he showed them his feet, and he showed them his son.

Why in that order? Because the feet of Christ was first prophesied a way back in Genesis. The first announcement of the incarnation of God is in this 15th verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis.

And it says, the one, the seed of a woman, incarnate God, shall bruise the serpent's head. But in the bruising of the serpent's head, his heel will be bruised. That brings me on to the bound feet of Christ.

Christ’s Bound Feet and His Voluntary Suffering

Those blessed feet of Jesus were stopped after they first were touched. With the blood he shed. We were singing about Gethsemane tonight. And in Gethsemane, the blessed son of God did something. He swept great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

The first time that blood was in the feet of the son of God was in Gethsemane's garden. But immediately after that, he was bound, John 18 and verse 12. He was robbed of his freedom. He was robbed of his visitations of preaching and bringing healing and life with his touch to men and women.

For three years, he had pursued his work of preaching the gospel. But now he's bound. He's on the road to prison. He's on the road to appear before the judge. He's on the road that's leading to dark Calvary.

My friend, Christ's feet were bound. Bound by men, bound by men who didn't understand that Christ himself had chosen to have bound feet for the souls of men. He said, I have power to lay down my life.

I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my father. But the feet of Jesus were not only bathed feet and busy feet and beautiful feet and bleeding feet and bound feet, but they were bruised feet.

The Bruised Heel and Satan’s Failed Assaults

Here we have Christ and he's being led to Pilate's judgment hall. He's been led to stand before that hateful person heard who has all the might of Caesar's power behind him. Wicked man decided to put him to hang naked on the tree of the manufacturers.

But at the cross, there was more wickedness than the wickedness of Pilate. There was more wickedness than the wickedness of Herod. There was more wickedness than the wickedness of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians.

The wickedness was a wickedness of the devil himself. And he was there. He was going to bruise Christ, not in the heel, but on his head. He wanted to destroy him. But long ago in the shadow of the trees of the garden of Eden, the God of heaven spoke.

And said he'll only bruise his heel. I was very interested this afternoon as I was reading and preparing this message for you to think of what the second temptation was. The devil took him to the pinnacle of the temple and he said to him, cast yourself down.

And then he said to him, and if your foot slips, God will support you and you'll not be hurt. Why did the devil mention the foot of Jesus? Because the devil remembered what God had spoken in the garden of Eden.

And he tried to tell Christ that his foot would not be touched. Christ well knew that he was going for the bruising of his foot. All through Christ's life, the devil attacked Christ to kill him. He failed to kill Christ as a baby.

He was saved by Joseph taking him and Mary down into Egypt. When he preached his first sermon in Nazareth, the crowd gathered to throw him down the cliff base on which Nazareth is built. But they failed.

They couldn't kill him. They failed to kill him with the stones they gathered. On three occasions, I think you'll find they gathered stones to kill him. But those stones remained unthrown in their pockets.

He set his face as a flint to go to the cross for only by his blood shedding at Calvary voluntarily offered without resistance could he obtain a pardon for your sins and mine. If he wasn't the Savior with bruised feet, he could never save us.

But he endured the power of hell and took your punishment that you might go free. And then seventhly, the feet of the Lord Jesus are blessed. You remember that the woman hastening from the grave that was emptied and the sepulcher that had no occupant, they met him on the way to tell the apostles and they fell at his feet and gripped his feet.

Can you imagine the excitement, the emotional tenderness of those women that caught the feet of Jesus? I tell you that every time a sinner is saved, they grip the feet of Jesus and they have the same experience, an emotional experience, yes, a spiritual experience, yes, but an eternal experience that links them to Christ forever.

For we become then part of the mystical body of the precious Son of God. And you will remember when the Lord Jesus Christ appeared before the twelve, he showed unto them his hands and his feet. The last witness to the Lord's total and absolute atonement for sin was the showing of his feet.

One day we shall be privileged to see what a day that will be. When we'll sin and sigh no more, behind us all of sorrow and not but joy before, the joy in our Redeemer as we to him draw nigh, the crowning day is coming by and by.

If you have never gripped the feet of Jesus, you're a lost soul. But I present to you Christ who had beautiful feet, feet that were bathed and were busy, feet that were bleeding and bound, feet that were bruised but were blessed.

Finding Peace and Forgiveness at the Feet of Christ

Oh, make peace with God by seizing tonight by the tender, bruised feet of Christ and find in his death your life, in his sorrow your joy, in his sacrifice your sins forgiven. May it be so for Jesus' sake.

Let's bow our heads. Father in heaven, we commit ourselves to thee and we pray that those in this meeting unconverted will be converted, those who are backslidden will be restored and that thy people will rejoice in the Lord with all our heart and soul.

And mind. And everybody said, Amen.