The Whole Body, Part 13: Beautiful Feet

Well, this morning we, of course, have come down to the very foot of our series, quite literally, as we've worked out this series on the whole body, the idea of the sound or healthy body and what a healthy body looks like, how a healthy body is able to interact with the various members, the joints and the ligaments and all that they supply, all that causes us to grow up into him who is our head.

And this whole body being joined and knit together by this love and this up -building, this energy, every part taking its share, taking its burden, performing its function.

This is the idea of a whole body and that's taken us from the head to the eyes and the ears, the nose, the mouth, the heart, the spine, the shoulders and hands, the stomach, last week the knees and then this morning the feet, beautiful feet.

And next week we'll conclude and there's not a body part so much as we'll just have an overview of the whole, what these past 13 messages in this series have brought us to conclude.

But this morning we're looking at beautiful feet and here I'm taking the feet as shorthand for a body that bears the good news, beautiful feet as shorthand for a body that bears the good news.

This is really taking out of Romans 10 beginning in verse 13 and following which we just read.

Of course we read from verses 14 and following that the larger context of Romans 10 is really important to make sense of what's taking place in this passage, a little bit different than our purposes this morning but just to understand this is part of a larger context in the letter of Romans, chapters 9 through 11 and it begins with this perplexing question, why is it if Jesus is the

Messiah to Israel that Israel seems to have rejected her Messiah? And Paul begins to answer this question.

Very importantly in Romans 9 verse 6 he says, well to begin with they are not all

Israel who are of Israel. He radically re -identifies and reconstitutes what it means to be true

Israel and garners that around faith in the Messiah, faith in Christ.

Those who have the faith of Abraham are truly the children of Abraham. This is an argument stemming all the way back from Romans 4.

So in Romans 9 he's laying out the sovereignty of God, God's purpose in election. In Romans 10 he's saying that the

Israelites, the nation of Israel stumbled at the stumbling stone as even

David prophesied, Lord blind them and bind their backs forever and he's taking out that indeed this message has gone out, the report has been heard.

And yet in the very place where God said you are my people, there in that place you shall be called not my people.

And in that very way, in that very place, those who are not my people shall be called my people. This is prophesying of the

Gentiles now coming to faith in Christ and as we begin in chapter 11, Paul's argument is well if Israel's rejection meant riches for you

Gentiles, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? And it goes into this analogy of the olive tree.

By the time you get to verse 26 he's pointed out indeed this inclusion of Israel which is so mysterious is going to be the finale of the time of the

Gentiles being fulfilled. So that's largely the argument spanning Romans 9 through 11 and here in chapter 10 we have this beautiful little illustration of how the report has gone out.

Indeed they have heard it but they did not have what was necessary, that by which we are brought into the kingdom of God, that by which we are constituted as the circumcision, as the true

Israel which is having faith in the Messiah, believing the proclamation, believing in God even as Abraham believed in God.

And so the whole context from verses 14 and following is really in a nutshell there in verse 13, whoever calls on the name of the

Lord shall be saved. I don't believe we should think of this as some initiation, something initial, a one time act of calling on the

Lord. Sometimes we speak of salvation in that way, it's not necessarily wrong but it may be woefully incomplete.

Those who are calling on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Those who continually put their trust in and depend upon the

Lord shall be saved. Whoever is calling on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And this leads Paul to ask, well how then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

They don't believe, they're not calling on the name of the Lord. How could they? How could they believe in Him if they haven't heard of Him?

And how can they hear of Him if there's not a preacher? I don't think that's necessarily a formal office of a preacher, it's certainly at least that but I think it's far more.

Remember Jesus said to all of His followers, all of His disciples, go therefore into the world.

This is a proclamation, this is a preaching that every believer does. It may not be formal, it may not be with respect to an office, but we are all proclaimers of Him who died and rose again.

Therefore we all have these beautiful feet. So Paul's dilemma is, how shall they believe if they have not heard?

How shall they hear if there haven't been proclaimed, if there hasn't been a preacher? And how can one preach unless one has been sent as it is written?

And he's quoting here from Isaiah 52. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things.

And then in line of this larger context of Israel's rejection, they have not obeyed the gospel.

Isaiah says, Lord who has believed our report, so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

So again, this is the passage that Paul is using to explain Israel's current rejection of the

Messiah, which he understands is part of God's sovereign purpose and election, that there would be a time of hardening, of blinding, until the fullness of the

Gentiles has come in. If I could simplify it in this way, in redemptive history, God uniquely discloses

His presence to the nation of Israel, and there's only a smattering of Gentiles that actually enter in by faith.

Rahab, Naaman the Syrian, in the very way that Jesus explains this in Luke 4 to great effect.

You have a smattering of Gentiles, but largely God is not concerned to draw in the Gentiles. He's uniquely disclosed

Himself to the Israelites. But then in the fullness of time when Christ has come, that now reverses, and now it's only a smattering of Israelites, some like Paul would say.

Even I am an example of one who has come to faith in the Messiah, but largely, as Romans 9 says, the nation has rejected

Him. This is heartache for Paul. I wish I could trade my own salvation for them. I wish they would have the faith that I have in the

Messiah. Now it's God uniquely disclosing His presence and calling Gentiles to faith in Christ.

And at the very end, debate about how to understand the all in verse 26, but all

Israel will be saved. And so this is the perfect and inscrutable wisdom of God.

Paul breaks out into doxology. He understands the bookends of God's sovereignty throughout redemptive history.

God has a purpose in election. But the apex of that stands where we are in Romans 10.

Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Don't let

Romans 9 or Romans 11 throw you off from the simplicity of this. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Well how can they call if they haven't heard? How will they hear if there hasn't been a preacher? And he says, listen, even

Isaiah said, beautiful feet came proclaiming this good news. Have they not heard? Indeed they have.

But it didn't cause them to call upon the name of the Lord. Isn't that what Jesus said in Matthew 23 when

He wept over the city of Jerusalem and He said of the city that stoned all the prophets that were sent to her, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. Now the church, the whole body is this treasure within a jar of clay.

Beautiful feet. And why are feet beautiful? Think of an ancient traveler. Beautiful feet?

I don't think so. The average mileage that an ancient traveler may have walked, something like 8 to 13 miles a day, depending on what your profession was, even just in agriculture, tending to your land.

If some of you have smart watches that tell you how long you've walked, it'd be all green. Green circles all the way through.

But when you came in at the end of the day, you wanted slaves to take some olive oil and some sponges and scrub your filthy, disgusting feet.

These are not beautiful feet because of how they appear. These are beautiful feet because of what they bring.

When you read of some story of a sailor lost at sea, there's this

YouTube channel every now and then I watch these little 20 -minute episodes. It's called Scary Interesting.

It's all true historical stories and it's usually people that have been marooned on an island or shipwrecked. Every time

I watch it, I'm like, note to self, never take a cruise. Never go on a sailboat. And you can only imagine what it's like if you've been lost at sea for something like maybe three weeks or four weeks, baking in the sun, shark -infested waters.

What's the first thing that happens when you set foot on land? You get down on your knees and you kiss it.

Ah, terra firma, you kiss it, I love you. You never felt that way about the land before, it was because of what you didn't have that now you do have.

This thing that you've taken for granted, that's the feat here. Why would the feat be beautiful?

Well, in the context as we'll see in a moment from Isaiah, if you've been living in the wasteland, if all you know is destruction and desolation and ruin and decay, if you're under the very wrath and judgment of your

God, dragged out of exile, what makes feat more beautiful than feat that have this good news that the warfare has ended?

That God is now going to redeem his bride, that the waste places are going to become the paradisical gardens of grace.

Those are beautiful feat. And Paul describes the gospel ministry as this kind of message, the good news, the good tidings of the gospel, that which

Isaiah preached to them even beforehand, which they rejected even then, and they still continue to reject it, even though the fullness of Isaiah's prophecy has been realized.

That's fine. So I want you to see, again, all that we've discovered about the whole body up to this point really is a result of the beautiful feat, because the whole body begins with the beautiful feat.

The body is birthed by the message that these beautiful feat bring. Whenever a church is becoming a whole body, it began its infancy somewhere, somehow, by receiving the good news of the gospel.

And as others were converted and brought into this glorious good news and sang and celebrated in response to what

God has done in Christ by his spirit, this body began to form and to grow.

And so the whole gospel ministry is this ministry that begins with beautiful feat. Paul's ministry began with beautiful feat.

Paul raises up churches to send out others who will bring glad tidings of good news. It's the proclamation of the gospel.

And so the whole body begins with beautiful feat. And in some ways, the whole purpose of the body is what the body bears.

It's not the love we have for each other, though that's a part of it. That's a part of bearing it. That's a part of showing it.

That's a part of realizing it with each other. But the whole purpose of the body is actually to behold, to receive, to display the gospel.

That's the whole body. That's the beautiful feat. So we're going to look at this in three parts.

The proclamation of beautiful feat, the purpose of beautiful feat, and the promise of beautiful feat.

Let's start with the proclamation. Paul in Romans 10, he's quoting Isaiah chapter 52.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, your

God reigns. Your watchmen lift up their voices. With their voices, they sing together.

They'll see eye to eye when the Lord brings back Zion. Break forth into joy. Sing together.

You waste places of Jerusalem. The Lord has now comforted his people. He's redeemed

Jerusalem. The Lord has extended his holy arm in the eyes of all of the nations and the ends of the earth will behold the salvation of God.

So this is the gospel. This is the good news. And notice what Isaiah is saying. The feet that are beautiful bring good news, proclaim peace, bring glad tidings of good things.

Do you see the adjectives there? Good, good, glad, beautiful, peace, good. It's this whole string of the wonder of God now redeeming in the very place he had sent judgment, of God turning to a garden what had been a desolate ruin.

And this is the joy. This is why the watchmen now can break out into song. They've been yearning.

They've been waiting. They're under the wrath, under this desperate sense of pressure. And now

God has brought comfort and relief. Now, if this is the good news of Isaiah, where does this exactly fit in?

Is this good news fully realized when Jesus becomes incarnate, when the

Son of God takes on flesh and is born as Jesus and lives and ministers and then is faithful to the end?

Is this how we're to understand the beautiful feet, the glad tidings? Well, maybe in some remote sense, yes.

But if we're going to be very particular, I would say no. Of course,

Jesus is the harbinger of all that is held in this good news, in this proclamation. He is the presence of the kingdom.

But there is this now and not yet aspect that runs through the whole of his ministry. He has to live as we must live.

He has to walk in perfect obedience to his Father. And though tempted in all ways as we are yet, without sin, he has to be faithful all the way to the end as the last

Adam, actually heeding the voice of God, discerning rightly and walking in wisdom to perform all that God has willed for him.

And as the Christ hymn says from Philippians 2, to be found faithful even to the point of death, even death on the cross.

But all of that is still not the glad tidings and joyful song.

Even all of that is still waiting for something to happen. And that happens not at the crucifixion, but three days later at the empty tomb.

The good tidings, the glad news, the full gospel is the gospel not of a crucified

Savior, full stop, but a crucified and risen Savior.

That's the fullness of Isaiah's message. That's the glad tiding in the good news. That's proof positive that what has been the curse upon man ever since the fall, this condition of death and decay and corruption of the flesh has now been overcome by the

Holy One. That's the victorious good news. Jerusalem really does have redemption.

And so it begins, if we just take Mark 16 as an example, it begins with three women,

Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome. They're the first ones to receive this glorious news of Christ rising.

When they come to that tomb only to discover it empty, the angel tells them, you seek

Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here.

Look, see where they laid him. That little statement is the beginning of all that Isaiah is holding out as the glad tidings, the good news.

You can see that even in the disciples and even in these women. Was it glad tidings and good news when the Savior was laid in the tomb?

No. The disciples locked themselves in the upper room, buried their faces in their hands, and were struck with absolute terror about what was going to happen now.

That's not glad tidings. That's not good news. Something must happen.

They were too dull, too slow of heart to believe. The good news begins with this angelic proclamation.

He is risen. Now, these three women are the first to have beautiful feet.

In the whole chain of the gospel, in the 2 ,000 years since this occurred, you have this chain of beautiful feet, beginning with Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of Joseph, and Salome.

They're the first beautiful feet as a result of this good news. He is risen is the claim.

Go and see that empty tomb. The mere empty tomb doesn't prove anything. It only invites the question, what happened to the body of Jesus?

That's still the burning question for a lot of skeptics, especially this time of year. They ignore divine revelation,

I think ignore just the obvious rationalization of how this kind of faith could endure for 2 ,000 years across all tribes and tongues.

It only invites that question, what happened to the body of Jesus? Well, the Jews and the Romans were as concerned about this as well.

The challenge has always been there. And the answer is simply what the angel stated, he is risen. We know 40 days later, he ascended.

If Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead, plain and simple, Christianity is not true.

Plain and simple, there is no good news. Which is another way of saying the glad tidings, the good news is uniquely bound to the resurrection of Jesus.

That is the purest distillation of what it means to have the good news, the glad tidings.

Death no longer holds us in sway. This last enemy has now faithfully been defeated.

There is now a hope that lies beyond the grave. God has taken this covering, this veil of darkness over the nations and removed it for those who have faith in his son.

Truly, as Paul says, those who now call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And so this is how Paul, as he received in this beautiful chain of beautiful feet, these women, then telling the disciples and telling others until you have thousands being converted in that little corner in Jerusalem.

And it begins to spread out into Samaria, in the fringes of the Roman Empire. And eventually on this road to Damascus, Paul himself has the beautiful feet.

In this instance, it's the presence of Jesus Christ himself saying, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

And then he goes to dwell with others who have received this glad tidings, this good news, and he's discipled with them, even as he's being called and prepared to be an apostle.

And when he relates this beautiful cascade of glad tidings, he puts it in this way in 1

Corinthians 15, Brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, the good news, which you also received and in which you are now standing, by which you are saved, if you hold fast that word which

I preached to you, unless you believed in vain, because I just gave to you what I also received.

My feet have come to you in the same way faithful feet came to me, that glorious good news I'm now transmitting, even as I received it, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures.

That's the full gospel according to Paul. It's not that he was crucified, certainly not that he was buried.

It's that he was crucified, buried, and rose again. That's the good news that Paul received.

So the empty grave is the basis of all of our hope.

You look upon it and the reality of the resurrection, it's not just confirming a mere historical fact.

This is the basis, this is the glory of the gospel that we believe. It's not just that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected from the tomb.

It's what that means for us who have faith in him, the risen Savior, of what that means for us in terms of facing down the reality of death and the life to come.

And this doesn't just set the seal of approval on the work of Christ as an acceptable sacrifice, the empty tomb declaring that indeed, as Paul says, he has been raised for our justification.

We truly know we can be justified as a result of Christ's resurrection. If death cannot hold him who loved us and gave his life for us, then death can no longer hold us either.

So it's not just the seal on Christ's finished work for his sake, it's the seal of Christ's finished work for our sake.

This is a picture of God's salvation and power. Again, death, the ultimate result and condition of fallenness.

Jeff Thomas had this great little saying where he said, you think of this Artemis crew, astronauts can define gravity, but not a man can define death.

Humans get pretty creative about defying all sorts of odds and things. Natural forces and physics in the world, but no man can define death.

You've heard of these tech billionaires who are investing all sorts of money into research and development to find ways to become immortal.

I remember going out to a conference in San Antonio and taking an Uber. And it was one of those experiences like,

I think I'm done with Uber for a while. I'm just, I'll take my chances on the subway. But I was in this

Uber and this driver was going around and was ranting about, you know, we are the last generation of humans to die.

I think there are currently those who will be immortal by the time we are elderly. And I was going, I don't know about that one.

I don't know about that one. Death comes as that great moment in Braveheart where the princess leans over to Longshank.

Death comes to us all. You realize this is the ultimate condition of fallenness.

This is the unavoidable, inescapable bad news that plagued humanity all the way up until the dawning of Christ.

The good news of the gospel is that because of the resurrection, this ultimate condition of the curse, this ultimate result of sin, in the day you eat of the tree, you shall surely die, has now been broken.

In me, if you eat of my flesh, you shall live forever. We're going to be beginning a whole series in Ecclesiastes.

We're going to be thinking and talking a lot about death. And it's a good thing now, as the preacher would even say, it's a good thing for the youth to bear that yoke.

It's a good thing to be confronted by our mortality. It's something that's becoming increasingly rare in our culture, in our society.

We're becoming very immune, very ignorant to the reality and the prospect of death. You have some cultures where when loved ones die, they don't get taken away quickly to a funeral home, only to be encountered for half an hour.

They're put out on like the living room table for about a week. You're just spending the week in the presence of the body of this loved one.

For most of human civilization, you would have been surrounded by the presence of death. It would have been inescapable.

The prospect of your mortality was always pressing upon you. You just think of the mortality rates.

Think of the average lifespan. Think of conditions that modern medicine, by God's common grace, has brought alleviation to.

I was reading this article by Matthew McCullough, who was pointing out a sociologist named

Gorer, who wrote an article saying, if you look back in the 1950s, movies, film, literature was far more willing to confront the audience or the reader with the reality and prospect of death, just dying of natural causes, dying of old age.

When we start getting toward the 70s, 80s, and now even the early 2000s, that becomes more and more rare.

Gorer describes death as the modern taboo. The things that in the 19th century would have been taboo would have been scandalous to Victorian sensibilities.

If we think of S -E -X, right, that would be shocking to a Victorian society. Well, now that's

D -E -A -T -H. That's death. Death is now the scandalous taboo. No one wants to be confronted with that.

Sure, we have no problem watching the fantasies of zombies or gladiators or maybe some murder mystery, but if you want to actually show us what it looks like to get old and die, no way.

We can't stomach that. We won't be here for it. We live in a society that does not want to brace itself for the reality of death.

This, I think, is a result of sin and the evil one dulling and blinding us and losing the

Christian worldview. Now, in a society that does not want to confront death, does not want to be around death, doesn't want to even think for a moment about death, wants to claw its way out of the funeral parlor, how can the gospel of good news of the resurrected

Christ mean anything? The good news is a story of victory over the grave.

It's a story of new beginnings, a story of a fresh start, a story of a new purpose, a revived faith, a restored hope.

If anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation. All things have passed away. All things have become new.

That's the gospel. That's not something that neatly fits into the compartment of our life.

That is something that requires us to die and have a whole new life in Christ. That's resurrection language.

Because Christ has risen and has an entirely new life on the other side of the grave, I can begin to have an entirely new life now.

I no longer have to live in the way I once lived. I can have a newness of life and walk in the newness of life.

What does that newness of life look like? It looks like living by faith in the Son of God who has risen and ascended on high.

This is the argument that Peter makes. We were walking in the newness of life.

Think of what Paul says in Romans 6, beginning in verse 1 and following. He says, what shall we say?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How could we? How could we who died to sin live any longer in it?

This is resurrection language. Paul, Paul, when did

I die? It's like that when

Mark Twain, there was an aberrant news article that Mark Twain had died, and he said that the news of my death,

I think it's something like that, the news of my death is grossly exaggerated. It was a mistake. He hadn't actually died. You can feel like that.

Paul, I think you misunderstand. I haven't actually died. Still me, the same old me.

Just I have a little bit of Jesus sprinkled on me right now. Paul says, no, you don't understand anything about this good news, this glad tiding, this gospel of a resurrected

Savior. You died to sin. You have a newness of life that you're walking in now.

Do you not know, Paul says, that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried with him through baptism into death. This is why the

Christian walk, however it begins, intimately and secretly in communion with the

Father through Christ by the Spirit, formally and publicly, it begins with baptism. You're saying,

I really have died to my old way of life, to my old man, to my old self, to my old sins.

I now proclaim by faith that I have a life in Christ, that when he rose out of the grave, that newness of life began to capture and conquer by an irresistible grace my life.

And now as I come out of the water, I profess I'm no longer who I was. I belong to him. My faithful Lord and Savior.

I was buried with him in his tomb, this radical union. This is what Paul is describing.

Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.

You see, that's resurrection language. That's resurrection gospel. We've been united together in the likeness of his death.

Certainly, we shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin would be done away with, that we would no longer be slaves to sin, because he who died has been freed from sin.

And if we died with Christ, we believe we'll also live with him. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.

Death no longer has dominion over him. The death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he now lives, he lives to God.

So likewise, you, brother, you, sister, reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

This is Paul's gospel. This is glad tidings. This is good news. There's a new life on the other side of the tomb.

And that new life can become a power at work in your life by faith. All who call upon the name of the

Lord will be saved. Peter writes it in this way. Blessed be the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

What have you been born again into? What does it mean to be born again? It's the fullness of the gospel of a resurrected

Savior. What is your newness of life? Is it a memory of something that happened 2 ,000 years ago on the cross?

No, it's an active power by the Spirit who rose

Jesus Christ from the dead. That is your newness of life. That is your new birth. It's that same

Spirit. So let me ask the question, just even at this juncture.

Are we a church that has beautiful feet? Do we have beautiful feet?

Do we proclaim, do we display this kind of newness that comes through the resurrection?

A newness of life. A new hope. A living hope. Something that is radically different because we somehow were in communion to Christ when he died.

And therefore, now that he's risen, what does that mean for us? But life from the dead. We're no longer dead in our trespasses and sins.

We're alive to him. One of the questions we ask about beautiful feet is, is the resurrection central to my thought?

It's certainly central to Paul's thought. Certainly central to Peter's thought. It's certainly central to the gospels.

It's the very heartbeat of Isaiah 52. This is the good news. This is the glad tidings. So the resurrection is the birth of our living hope.

Is it central to the way we even think about the gospel? What I'm asking is, can we have beautiful feet if our gospel doesn't have the resurrection as its burning center?

Think about Jesus, John 6, 44. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

And I will raise him at the last day. Whether in large passages or in short statements like this,

Jesus is pressing upon what it means to believe in him who will be crucified and rise again in three days.

What does he say when he comes to Mary and Martha and Lazarus is there rotting away in the tomb?

Martha runs up and says, you know, it didn't have to go this way. I know there's going to be a resurrection.

All the Jews believed in that. We know at the end, but it didn't have to go down this way.

You could have been here. Don't you, I mean, feminism is not really a new, any ladies here, would you imagine going up to Jesus with that kind of guff?

What is it really showing? Is it this kind of cranky attitude? Is she that belligerent? No, it's showing the depth of her grief, isn't it?

She's saying, I thought you loved Lazarus. We know what you can do. Why wouldn't you have come here?

You could have stopped this from happening. He didn't have to die. And what does Jesus say to her?

Right before he goes to the tomb to weep himself, which is very important for us to understand. What does he say to her?

I am the resurrection. I am the life.

You think about it as just some abstract thing that randomly happens. You need to understand that I am the resurrection.

I am the source of life. Lazarus being in the grave is not going to mean anything different than what you would hope for and long for.

If you're looking to me and trusting in me, you'll be with Lazarus. You don't have to wait it out in sorrow.

You can actually experience it as a joy, as a promise. This is the resurrection that we proclaim. Let me put it bluntly.

Without the resurrection, the cross means nothing. The cross means nothing.

Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of prisoners and criminals and fugitive soldiers and slaves were crucified on Roman crosses.

If Jesus had not been raised, we're fools. The cross is meaningless.

Death still has victory over us. The grave still terrorizes us. This power that sin uses to shackle and keep us in bondage and pain our conscience, none of that is dealt with if Christ did not rise from the grave.

The work of Jesus, his whole ministry, all of his teachings amount to simply nothing without the resurrection.

Fortune cookie statements. Some system or way of life. Is that what the three women ran to the twelve to say?

No. They didn't come running with these beautiful seats saying, we have a philosophy.

We have a philosophy of life. They didn't run saying, we found a worldview.

It's really great. If you homeschool your children in the worldview, they'll have really good, balanced lives and they'll be successful.

No, they ran and they said, he's risen. He is risen. He lives.

That's the gospel. It's not some abstract system that we buy into. Jesus said,

I am the resurrection. I am the life. It shows the priority of the resurrection.

You think again of our practice. This is a significance even of the Lord's day.

Why do we gather on the Lord's day? It will show us if we believe the resurrection is central to the gospel, won't it?

Why do we gather on this day? Why is this called the Lord's day? This is the day he conquered the grave.

This is the day he burst forth victorious. Now, as the hymn says, now in that tomb,

I can bury every thought of unbelief, every lingering shade of gloom. However, my week has been slogging through a microcosm of a weary life.

When I come here to gather in joy and song and praise and prayer with my brothers and sisters, I'm reminded death is not the end.

This weariness, this petty pace that goes from day to day is not the end. There's a living hope.

So the 1689 confession as it frames it, this end, the satisfaction of rest, the

Sabbath from the beginning of the world until Christ was the last day of the week and from Christ until his return is the first day of the week.

We could be a little more specific than that. What does it mean from Christ? The end of the work of creation from the beginning of the world until Christ's resurrection.

It was the last day of the week, but now this Sabbath, this rest, this glorious picture of the forthcoming new creation, the rest that Christ has entered into now seated at the right hand of the

Father, having completed all of his work, this rest that we have in him when we gather together on the first day of the week, the day he rose from the grave to worship him.

Let me tell you how weak our theology of resurrection is as Christians today. Churches think it's hip to have their morning service on a

Friday, on a Wednesday evening. Like, oh, we're so cool. We don't do church on Sunday mornings.

We're doing something different. We have a lot of commuters and people like to have their weekend. We're doing church on a Thursday. It's like,

I don't even know what to say. Not a church. That's not church.

What do you believe about the resurrection? Who are you to compete with the apostolic imprimatur of gathering on the

Lord's day? That was, of course, the day to do it. There's a reason we disagree with this practice, but there's a reason why in the apostolic days, as the church began to see the beauty and the glory and the hope of the resurrection, that they began to say, we won't actually baptize anyone until Easter, until resurrection.

This will be the day that we do that. What a glorious day. It's the perfect day to do that. Do you see?

I think Acts helps us understand that we shouldn't approach baptisms in that way, but you can understand the early church was wrestling with the magnitude of the resurrection as the centerpiece of the good news.

No wonder there's such a shallow, narrow gospel preached in our country. The gospel becomes something about my own personal journey, how

God became my, you know, Jesus took the wheel of my life, and now I'm just doing a little better than I was doing a few years ago.

It's like, what? Is the faith just your self -discovery? Is that the Christian faith? Somehow God becomes a slightly bigger version than us, and he's always, incidentally, an approving life coach.

There's nothing objective. When you remove the objectivity of the empty tomb, of a risen

Savior, who is the way, the truth, and the life, the resurrection to come, that is the good news.

That's beautiful feet. It touches to the very core of who we are as human beings.

What is my life? Who am I? Where am I going? What is this all for? It's cosmic.

Death and decay, curse touches everything. Ecclesiastes is going to help us meditate on everything

I love in this life will turn to dust. Everything under this sun is vanity.

Is there anything beyond the sun? Is there victory beyond the grave?

Is death the final word? Of course, we understand the significance in this way.

The gospel becomes disconnected from creation. What does it mean to be a human being?

What does it mean to be an image -bearer? How does the resurrection factor into that? We could never be what we were made to be as image -bearers of our holy and good

God, the wise and fruitful and blessed conditions that he made for us to flourish in the midst of his glorious creation that was calling for praise and wonder at every turn.

And death and sin corrupted and decayed all of that, turned us in upon ourselves, flooded our minds that would once apprehend the glories of God into becoming worshipers of idols, idolizing ourselves, servers of self, lovers of the flesh.

Our God became our belly. The resurrection punctures and pierces through all of that.

Grace now restores nature. We actually can look at the resurrection and understand the purpose of God for humanity.

So we can, like Jesus, go to a tomb and we can grieve. But as Paul says, we don't grieve like those without hope.

How could we if we have heard the glad tidings, the good news of the gospel?

The whole church has beautiful feet. Beautiful feet proclaim the gospel, the gospel of peace, the glad tidings, the good news.

What is the good news? It's that Jesus was crucified for our sins, according to the scriptures, was buried, and three days later rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

That's the good news. The centerpiece of that all is the resurrection, the resurrection.

What is good news to a despairing world that sees no point in life?

What's the point of living? Where is this all going? Look at the economy. Look at the market. Look at my career and look at all that's broken.

I don't even feel like getting out of bed in the morning. There's no purpose to life. There's just nothing but despair.

And you can use a few crutches and get by for a few decades, but that despair just begins to haunt the corners of your mind, the corners of your affections.

Everything loses its glamor and its joy soon. You're only halfway through life and you have no purpose in life.

And there is no purpose to life. What does a church having beautiful feet mean for a condition like that, for a society like that?

Martyn Lloyd -Jones put it this way. What is life? What is living? What does it mean to us?

What is it all about? Is it not one of the major tragedies of life?

Indeed, is it not the greatest of all tragedies that amid all of our concerns about life, all of our intellectual activity, all of our discussions, the one thing which men and women are never concerned to face is the first, the most obvious thing of all, life itself, living.

But here we stand face to face with the most thorough test we can ever encounter of our profession of the

Christian faith. What is your life? You can't answer that question unless you answer the question that comes with it.

What is death? Why is death? You can't answer what life is for, where life goes without answering the question of death.

We all distinguish between living as the thing we do when our hearts are pumping and when we're existentially present and life becomes some great energy or purpose.

You need to live a little, we say. Get out and live. But this isn't the life that we're talking about.

Again, people in our society are filled with constant despair, not because there's anything new, but because there's a hollowness and a bankruptcy that must always be true with life under the sun, with life in a world under the curse of the fall.

So people wonder, what is the purpose of life today? What am I here for? It's a whole body with beautiful feet that has a gospel, has a good news, a message to speak to that.

Again, death is the reality. Despair comes from death. Most of the things that people use to escape and find joy, they're just doing that to escape the reality and the prospect of death.

Scripture says Christians are to look death square in the eyes, to live life with a view towards eternity, to love not our own lives nor cling to them, but to be willing to lay our lives down because death no longer terrorizes us, no longer holds sway over us.

That's not the end. Whether you want to or not, you have to settle your own stance toward life, toward death, grief, sin, guilt.

In short, toward God. And if you're wrestling through that and you don't understand the resurrection, you don't have good news.

You haven't heard glad tidings. You're like the Israelites in this condition that Isaiah says.

They've heard, but they haven't believed. So that's the proclamation.

Of course, the largest part. Just two brief comments about the purpose and the promise.

The purpose of Beautiful Feet is simply this. Beautiful Feet are running with the good news.

Beautiful Feet are going somewhere. They're not just going into the world with the message of the gospel. They're also going through the world unto glory.

Beautiful Feet are going somewhere. The gospel that we preach, the gospel that we live out is also the gospel of our hope of glory.

That means our Beautiful Feet, we're proclaiming as we go. And where are we going? We're going to glory.

We're going to the celestial city. We're going to Zion. We're looking for the city whose builder and maker is God. Beautiful Feet are going somewhere.

That's why Abraham called himself an alien and a stranger when he was among the Hittites. Hebrews 11 puts it this way.

By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out of the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith, he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

He waited for the city which has its foundations, whose builder and maker is God. I love what

Hebrews 11 says about, on the one hand, he knows where he's going. He's going to the promised inheritance of God.

But in this life, he doesn't know where he's going. It would be very helpful for you to grasp the faith of Abraham in this way.

You don't know where your feet are going in this life, but you know where your life is going.

If you're a Christian, your life is going to glory, to the promised land, to be with him who loved your soul.

We don't know exactly what steps we must take. We don't know who we'll run across or what will come.

We don't know when that day of trouble will begin to press upon us. All the things that Ecclesiastes will cause us to ponder.

But I don't need to know any of that to know the ultimate arc of my life is to be with my savior and hear his words say, enter into the joy of your master.

Well done, good and faithful servant. I don't need to control the steps along the way.

I just need to proclaim and live out the reality of that message as I seek the message's goal.

The message's goal is this hope of resurrection. So dealing with death, facing the prospect of our mortality, it shows what we believe about the promise of God.

It shows what we believe about eternity. Are we going somewhere? Are we living for something beyond the sun, beyond this life or not?

And it doesn't take a lot of powers of observation for any of us to see the difference between the lifestyle of someone who thinks this life is all

I have and I've got to clutch and grab everything I can within it. It's the YOLO mindset.

I know that's like 15 years old now. You only live once. I've got to get it all now. The Christian's mindset is

YLF. It doesn't ring off the tongue, but you live forever. It's a martyr's mindset.

I don't have to grasp and clutch. In fact, it's only if I'm willing to lose everything that I'll find my life.

If I try to grab on and seize it and make it happen, Jesus says I'm going to lose it. That's resurrection logic.

It means I have a higher purpose for living than the purposes of the world. It means I'll invest in life in an entirely different way.

I plant for things that I may never see the fruit of. Some of us were talking about last week, praying for things you don't live long enough to see the answers for.

So why pray? Because you're just here for a little moment, but your life with God is forever.

This is why the Puritans used to pray across generations. I have a cousin who's now, he was a pastor for some time.

Now he's the president of a seminary. We both kind of came to reform faith around the same time.

Both were ignorant and ignorant fools in our early days. And we used to see each other at family reunions.

And our thought has been, we must have had someone, some family ancestor that prayed for future generations.

And God has answered that prayer long beyond them. Pray for people you don't know the names of. Pray for situations and circumstances that you won't see the end of.

This is resurrection logic. I don't know where I'm going in this life, but I know where I'm going beyond this life.

And therefore, how I live this life, how I use these beautiful feet makes all the difference to me.

That means I'll plant for things I can't see. I build, I labor, I serve, I sacrifice,

I lay down. I have gratitude and contentment. I know that it's not even worth comparing. The tribulations and troubles of this life to the glories that are coming.

And this life is just a vapor. Again, what is that but resurrection logic?

Someone who's understood the real goodness of the good news and therefore has beautiful feet everywhere they go.

That's the kind of person that, as we said months ago in Matthew chapter 6, that's the life of a contrast person.

Why do you live like this? How could you live like this? Where does this come from in you?

This purpose, this peace, this vibrancy, this joy. Peter would say, been begotten again to a new and living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That's where it comes from. Paul would put it this way. I'm hard pressed between staying here because I have a hard desire to depart and be with Christ.

That's far better. Far better is resurrection logic. How many of us think the far better is actually here below?

As a comic said, you know, I'm terrified of death. I don't want to see the black hood and the scepter come to me.

Even if I'm 89, I'll be saying, oh, please take my grandson. He has fresh blood.

Spare me a little bit longer. That's saying there's this far better down below.

The far better is here and now. Make of it what you can. You don't have long. Paul says, no, far better to be with him.

That's my desire. There's work to do here. And I plant and I build and I pray and I labor, but it's not even worthy of comparison.

I know it's far better to be with him. That cuts against the earthly mindedness that we have, doesn't it?

It says a lot about our view of the gospel. The resurrection has not taken the place, does not have the power that it should have in our thought.

It's not a controlling factor in our lives. Show me the

Christian who ponders the life to come, who thinks about if the small gifts and good glimmers of God's faithfulness can give me such warmth and joy in this life, what must the new life be like on the other side of the grave?

Show me the Christian who has his thoughts with his mind and his heart in the heavenly realm, where Christ is seated in the heavenly places with him.

Show me the Christian where Paul says a little bit later, our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait for the

Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body so we'll be conformed to his glorious body.

Isn't that what he's saying in Romans, in Romans 7? Who's going to deliver me from this body of death? This isn't far better.

That's far better. When he comes, the one I'm eagerly waiting for, he transforms this into that.

He's the first fruits of what I'll become. Why would I want to delay that? The early church, the beginning centuries, why would they want to delay that?

Is that not why they all cried with common tongue? Maranatha, Lord, come. They were eagerly waiting.

I've noticed among reformed circles that that is a prayer we don't often pray. I'm not just saying that uniquely of us as a church, but just other places

I go, reformed congregations. I don't hear many reformed Christians praying, Lord, come quickly.

That says a lot about how little we think of the resurrection and the state of glory and the one that we ought to be eagerly waiting for, when instead we're praying,

Lord, give me more time. We don't pray, Lord, come. We say, Lord, wait. I'm not ready yet.

So much I want to do in this life. C .S. Lewis described that as a child who refuses to get into the car to go to the beach vacation because he's too obsessed with playing in the mud puddle.

He thinks nothing could be better than this. Notice that Paul's hope and eager waiting is for this transformation that's going to take place.

And Christ's resurrection is the paradigm for that. His glorious body is what my body shall become.

When he comes, or as John says, when I see him, I'll be like him. I don't think of my savior in his life up to the tree and nothing beyond.

When Paul is preaching a savior, when Paul is talking about Jesus Christ, he's talking about the risen and ascended

Lord of his life. He can't think of communing with Christ without thinking of the resurrection.

This hope of glory. Lord, you are glorious now. Your body and your soul joined together, ascended at the right hand.

When I see you, I'll be just like that. When will you come? How long, O Lord? What a stirring hope that is.

Paul's longing not just for his body to be transformed, but the groaning cosmos around him to be transformed. He's tired of the headlines, like we're tired of the headlines, the turmoil, the violence, the bloodshed, the greed, the corruption.

We don't just say, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will deliver me from this society of death? I look at the heartache and the sorrow and the brutality.

I know that God's wrath is waiting in the wings. And I just say, Lord, when will you just come? Put justice and righteousness over the earth.

What is that but resurrection logic? And when the

Lord says to his disciples, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He was reminding us there's a day that's fixed when your flesh will never be weak again, when your flesh and your spirit will be one and we'd be perfected in the glory of God.

Is that not something we ought to yearn for, encourage each other, stay in the fight, keep your eyes fixed on what's to come?

Remember what you've been born again into? Remember your baptism that you in this new likeness you have to Christ will one day be in his resurrected state as well?

Do we say that to each other? Do we think of that with each other? Do we have beautiful feet with each other? When we see someone really going through it in just bodily pain or in weakness or in despair or in depression and the things that are really hard and embarrassing to open up and speak to each other.

Do we just say, brother, take heart. It won't be like this for long. Have you been meditating on the glory of what's coming lately?

What mind could possibly wrap its mental fibers around what is to come? Brother, don't lose heart.

This is just a drop in the bucket of what God has prepared for you.

Do we encourage each other when we're stumbling in sin or struggling with temptation and we're heavy in spirit and weary because we're buckling under that pressure to say, don't you know these things will never happen in glory?

God is using them now. He's sanctifying them to you now. But keep your heart fixed on this reality.

There comes a day when no temptation, no snare, no evil will be found in your body.

Brother, think about this. What will it be like when your desires are pure, as pure as God is pure?

That day is coming. That day is coming. So weep and mourn over your sin now. And like Paul say, who will deliver me from this body of death?

And then like Paul say, I thank God for Jesus Christ, my Savior. So much more

I want to say about beautiful feet, but I want to at least say this. The church that has beautiful feet will not only proclaim beautiful feet, but will have a purpose with those beautiful feet.

As I've said, we're living in despairing dark days. If we haven't thought through the logic of the resurrection, the centerpiece of the gospel, we won't have good news to offer.

The good news that we offer is the good news of life beyond death, of grace beyond sin, of glory beyond the grave.

But as we see in Romans 10, not everyone welcomes beautiful feet. And so another thing a whole body has to do is shake off dust from their feet.

Some of you this afternoon are going to be with unbelieving family members. And as you're even trying to work up the nerve and, okay, all right, we're going to tag team this.

All right, you bring up something and then I'll compound and we'll see if we can start talking about a sermon or something. And you do all that strategizing and all that mental praying while you're there just to find it falling on dead and deaf ears.

And you're just where Paul is in Romans 10. And it reminds you that your feet are no less beautiful.

It's just that you have to shake the dust off of those beautiful feet and go to the next time or go to the next place.

Just because your feet are beautiful does not mean they'll be received. Not every watchman will respond with song and joy.

But that does not mean you should not have your feet prepared and braced for every opportunity that comes your way.

Ephesians 6 .15, Paul using this beautiful King James English says, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Sometimes we just think of that as having shod or shooed your feet with the gospel of peace.

But he doesn't say that. Having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. What he means is, always be ready.

Keep your sneakers on, to put it that way. Keep your sneakers on. You never know when you'll have an opportunity to testify of Christ or to witness to someone.

So have your feet prepared for that gospel of peace. You may never know when your feet will be beautiful. It may be in the most inopportune or inconvenient time that the

Lord intends to make your feet beautiful to dying and withering souls. So the purpose is that we're going somewhere.

A whole body has a purpose to put this gospel of glad tidings on display and that comes with the promise.

Paul says, Jesus Christ will transform our lowly body. It will be transformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he's able even to subdue all things to himself.

So reminded, there's nothing that can overwhelm or overtake those who have faith in him. Because we have faith in him, we know that power by which he subdues even death itself is the power that we have access to.

The power that is present with us by faith. And so the same way he subdued you by his grace, that same power he's going to use to transform you at the end.

And he's using that power even now to transform you from one degree of glory to the next. So take heart.

Think of the logic of the resurrection. You will not be like Christ until you see him and your faith becomes sight.

But you will grow to be more like Christ every day until then. If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh.

He is able to transform us in this way. Though we in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed but further clothed, that mortality would be swallowed up by life.

And he who prepared us for this very thing is God. He's given us his spirit as the guarantee.

So now it is God who works in us to both will and to do his good pleasure.

That's the promise of beautiful feet. As we come to a close, again,

I ask these questions. Does our church have beautiful feet? Are we a whole body?

We cannot have those beautiful feet without the resurrection. Do we think enough about this transformative power of the resurrected

Christ? Do we think about what that means for us? Do we think about what that means for each other?

Do we think about what that means for a lost and dying world around us? Are we going to have beautiful feet that preach good news and glad tidings to those who have ears to hear?

Are you trusting in God's promise to such an extent that you have a bright hope for tomorrow and strength for today?

I would argue you never have strength for today unless you have a bright hope for tomorrow. What is a bright hope for tomorrow but the logic of the resurrection?

It's saying that the brightest hope is the last tomorrow, the final tomorrow actually being realized and fulfilled.

That's the brightest hope, which means we can have strength every day if we understand the gospel of a risen savior.

Amen. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him in whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher?

How will they preach unless they're sent? It's written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things, but they have not all obeyed the gospel.

Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.

Lord, give us beautiful feet. Give me beautiful feet, Lord. Forgive me that I often don't come off the mountain with glad tidings, but more stumbling and sombering along with a lot of sorrows.

Lord, help me to not lose sight of this glorious hope, this bright tomorrow, the promise of the resurrection.

Lord, the reality of that already at work in my life, already at work in many lives here this morning.

And Lord, we ask that it would be at work in even more lives, both young and old, that are not hearing this report of glad tidings and responding with faith or calling on the name of the

Savior. May today be the day of their salvation. Don't let them numb themselves or turn away from the reality of death.

But Lord, with your own nail -scarred hand, turn their face to ponder you, to ponder what you've done to overcome death.

In your death, swallowing up death forever, that in your life we would have a newness of life everlasting.

Lord, give them the joy unspeakable and full of glory, this intimate communion with the risen and ascended

Savior. Not to think Christianity is some system, some abstraction or philosophy, but to recognize it is a relationship forged by trust and intimate communion with the

Son of God, who by the Spirit brings us to the very Father. Lord, may that be true of all of us today.

And as we go our way this afternoon to various living rooms and dining rooms and family members, make our feet beautiful.