“Beautiful Feet”

TEXT: Romans 10:14-15 – Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee – January 16, 2005

REVIEW

1. Confess: You need to confess the truth of Christ by calling on His name together with all the repentant worshipping assembly of God’s people.

2. Believe: Your confession needs to be genuine, springing from a true heart of faith. While false professions of faith easily fool men, God knows the heart, and is not fooled by hypocrites.

TODAY’S PASSAGE:

Romans 10:14-15 ¹⁴ How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? ¹⁵ And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!"

People Need to Call on the Name of the LORD

The locusts were everywhere. God’s judgment on His people came in the form of massive numbers of the swarming insects. God heard the cry of His assembled people, took care of their immediate needs, and told them of the blessings of the gospel era to come. That is where Joel’s great book is headed, but here is how it begins:

Joel 1:1-5 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. ² Hear this, you elders, And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this happened in your days, Or even in the days of your fathers? ³ Tell your children about it, Let your children tell their children, And their children another generation. ⁴ What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten. ⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you drinkers of wine, Because of the new wine, For it has been cut off from your mouth.

Joel 1:10-14 ¹⁰ The field is wasted, The land mourns; For the grain is ruined, The new wine is dried up, The oil fails. ¹¹ Be ashamed, you farmers, Wail, you vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field has perished. ¹² The vine has dried up, And the fig tree has withered; The pomegranate tree, The palm tree also, And the apple tree -- All the trees of the field are withered; Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men. ¹³ Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; Wail, you who minister before the altar; Come, lie all night in sackcloth, You who minister to my God; For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of your God. ¹⁴ Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the elders And all the inhabitants of the land Into the house of the LORD your God, And cry out to the LORD.

So many years later both Peter and Paul would quote from Joel’s prophecy in order to explain the blessings of the coming age, when the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. Paul uses Joel 2 to reinforce the necessity of calling upon the name of the Lord for salvation. Peter preaches from the same text at Pentecost.

Acts 2:16-24 ¹⁶ "But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ¹⁷ 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy. ¹⁹ I will show wonders in heaven above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. ²⁰ The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD. ²¹ And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.' ²² Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know -- ²³ Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; ²⁴ whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it."

Acts 2:36-41 ³⁶ "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." ³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" ³⁸ Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call." ⁴⁰ And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation." ⁴¹ Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.

Both apostles make it clear that the church is God’s chosen instrument in the glorifying of His name through the salvation of all who will repent and believe in the Messiah Jesus Christ. He is the Lord whose name we call upon in sacred assembly. The promised Spirit and the forgiveness of sins is given to us and to our children – to all those who are called by God. Families repent and are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and are added to the number of the church, the sacred assembly of the kingdom of God. There is no safety outside of Christ the Head and His body the church. Everyone must call upon His name and be saved. In the words of the resurrected Lord in John 20:23 to the apostolic elders, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The church is the congregation of the forgiven.

How Shall They Call on Him?

The Apostle Paul wants the church to think about these matters carefully. If it is essential to call upon the name of the Lord to be saved, how is that people do this. Paul works his way back one step at a time. You cannot truly worship with heart and voice unless you have placed your trust in the Messiah. To call on the name of the Lord you need to believe.

How Shall They Believe?

Let us back up one more step. If you are to call on the name of Jesus, you must have faith. But how is it that people come to believe. Paul is being very obvious here, and going very slowly. To believe you need to hear.

How Shall They Hear?

One step more now: You need to call on the name of Jesus in the worshiping assembly. Therefore you need to believe. Therefore you need to hear. But if you are to hear there must be something to hear. Someone must explain the message of Jesus – who He is and what He has done. Someone needs to speak words that call you to faith. If you are to hear someone needs to preach.

How Shall They Preach?

Finally, Paul’s concluding logical step in these verses: The church needs to send out preachers believing that God has called certain men to preach. Let’s put it all together now in the way that it actually happens. Paul has worked from the end of a public confession of faith in the worshipping assembly back to God sending out to preach from that worshipping assembly. Let’s see it in the other direction. Someone needs to be sent so that he can rightly present the message of Christ. That message needs to be preached so that people can hear. People need to hear that message so that they can believe what they have heard. They need to believe what they have heard in order to confess it by calling upon the Lord with sincerity of heart together with all the church. They need to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in faith, because there is no other name given among men by which they must be saved. They need to be saved because the wrath of God is coming against sinners, and there is no way they can be right with God except through the mercies of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Finally, mercy needs to be extended to sinners because God has determined that he will have mercy on sinners through these means for His own glory.

How Beautiful!

The message of this mercy of God through His Son is a beautiful message, and for this reason the feet that are sent out to bring that message are called beautiful feet. The announcement of the coming of gospel preachers was made hundreds of years earlier through the prophet Isaiah, who Paul here quotes.

Isaiah 52:1-10 Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion; Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean Shall no longer come to you. ² Shake yourself from the dust, arise; Sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion! ³ For thus says the LORD: "You have sold yourselves for nothing, And you shall be redeemed without money." ⁴ For thus says the Lord GOD: "My people went down at first Into Egypt to dwell there; Then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. ⁵ Now therefore, what have I here," says the LORD, "That My people are taken away for nothing? Those who rule over them Make them wail," says the LORD, "And My name is blasphemed continually every day. ⁶ Therefore My people shall know My name; Therefore they shall know in that day That I am He who speaks: 'Behold, it is I.' " ⁷ 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!" ⁸ Your watchmen shall lift up their voices, With their voices they shall sing together; For they shall see eye to eye When the LORD brings back Zion. ⁹ Break forth into joy, sing together, You waste places of Jerusalem! For the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. ¹⁰ The LORD has made bare His holy arm In the eyes of all the nations; And all the ends of the earth shall see The salvation of our God.

God’s observes here that His Name is being blasphemed, and adversaries are oppressing His people. He will send out messengers and speak through them so that His people will know His Name and call upon that Name and be delivered from their foes. The truth is that the God of Israel reigns, but the people of Israel do not seem to know it. He is able to save those who call upon Him. It is His will that this message of His sovereign salvation would go to the beloved through “gospelors” who are sent out for that purpose. This is how He will speak, and all the ends of the earth shall see the saving power of God!

This passage is not referring to individual Christians who are living letters and shining lights of the gospel through their lives and their words. That is a very important topic but it is clearly not what Paul is talking about here. He is talking about the church sending out apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers who proclaim Christ as the sovereign saving Lord of the Scriptures. Their feet are beautiful upon the mountains as they bring God’s good news. They run with urgency and joy because the enemy is conquered and the people have been redeemed. All God’s people will sing for joy!

How do these people with the beautiful feet accomplish their mission? What do they do when they have an audience? They deliver their message through what this same apostle Paul calls “the foolishness of preaching.” Why would Christ, who has legions of angels at His call, decide to use vessels of clay to speak this glorious message? Why did Jesus give sight to the blind with spit and dirt?

1 Corinthians 2:2-5 ² … I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. ³ I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. ⁴ And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵ that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.