Do You Have Beautiful Feet?

Rom 10:13-18

A couple of years ago, at a church party for dad’s church, the elders were called up with their wives for a beauty and identity contest. They had a big sheet going across the stage about a foot off the ground. The elders then took off their shoes and socks and paraded around the stage while their wives tried to guess which set belonged to their husbands. Needless to say it was a very comical event.

Feet are an interesting study. Young women love to run around showing off their feet, painting their toes and posing for pictures with no shoes on. On the other hand, most men put shoes on as soon as they are dressed and take them off only when it’s time to go to bed.

Then there is the whole issue on what feel look like. Are they Fat? Thin? Full of foot fungus? Callused? Arthritic? Or are they beautiful feet? Shapely? Soft? Well proportioned?

What do your feet look like? Do other’s think they are beautiful? We’ll talk about that a little more after the prayer.

PRAYER

I. A World of Bad News

A. Bad news abounds

1. I am a self admitted news junkie

2. Most of the TV I watch is the news

3. Rhyann doesn’t share my interest. One day I asked her why she doesn’t like to watch the news. She gave a well thought out 12 year old reply. “Because it scares me. It’s always about war and bad people.”

4. She pretty much hit the nail on the head. You can’t hardly watch the news without coming away scared or depressed at some level.

5. Some have claimed that this world is so much worse than what it was even 20 years ago. It was a claim that has been heard so often, someone actually did a study on this claim, what they found out was that crime is actually about the same as it was 20 years ago, but with the advent of cable news 24 hrs a day, it’s just beamed into everyone’s house at a much greater volume.

6. Bad news means better ratings for TV, that’s why even good news is turned into something bad, because people tune into what is going wrong and don’t get excited by what’s going right.

B. Really bad news

1. Much of our bad news today gets blown out of proportion, but much of it is very real.

2. We live in a world where evil is all around us.

a) There are the bad people who do terrible things.

b) There are corrupt governments.

c) There are wars.

3. But there is even worse news than all of that.

a) Most of the world is going to hell

b) Even if you say that all those who claim to be Christian are Christian, only 1/3 of the world would fall into the category of Christian.

c) That means 2/3 of the world doesn’t know Christ.

4. In the movie, “Super Size Me.” Children were shown a picture of Mickey Mouse. Almost every kid knew who he was. Then a picture of Ronald McDonald was shown and ALL the children recognized him. Then a picture of Jesus was shown them. One you would normally think of in a church or Sunday School class. Not a single kid recognized him.

5. We are living in a generation that doesn’t know God.

a) Less than 20% of 25 and younger go to church.

b) Church attendance is decreasing every year.

c) Less and less families even own a Bible let alone study it.

6. You notice it in mission areas, but you don’t even need to leave Rochester to see that truth.

7. As religious as this community is, there are far too many who know little or nothing about the good news of Jesus Christ.

8. There is enough really bad news, souls dying without knowing the gospel of Christ, to break our hearts every day.

II. Good News

A. The Good News

1. There is good news; news that every single person needs to hear.

2. The good news of the gospel

B. The gospel

1. In our text, Paul is writing to a group of Christian in Rome.

2. This group have been struggling with doing what is right as Christians and have got caught up in everything but the one thing that matters the most; the gospel.

3. So Paul goes back to the basics and reminds why they became Christians and why they need to get the message to anyone who will listen to them.

a) He reminded them of how destructive sin is.

b) He told them of the victory Christians have in Christ.

c) He showed them how Israel had forgotten the promise they gave to God and God had given to them.

d) He reminded them that the Jews had rejected the very savior they were supposed to be longing for.

e) He told them to confess the Lordship of Jesus and that God had raised him from the dead.

f) That’s the good news of the gospel, that sinful man was given grace by God through the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins and the power he had over death and Satan was the only thing that could set us free from the slavery of sin and Satan.

4. The gospel is as simple a thing as simple can be. Getting people to believe that God would freely offer grace for our sins after paying such a high price isn’t always so simple.

5. People either can’t believe they need the savior or they can’t believe the savior would want them.

6. Both of those concepts are absolutely true, however.

7. We need grace more than anything and God wants to give us grace more than anything.

III. Beautiful Feet

A. Where to find the good news

1. You won’t find the good news that really matters in a newspaper or on TV.

2. The REAL good news comes from hearts that have been transformed by it.

3. Many Christians want to believe in the Risen Lord without confessing the Risen Lord.

4. We want to keep it a private matter and hope it leaks out in our daily lives.

5. That’s all good, but it was never meant to be a private matter.

6. Look at Matt 5:13-16

a) We are expected to influence the world.

b) God never meant for the gospel to be hidden in our hearts. He meant it to be a beacon to a lost and desperate world.

7. Our text tells us in verse 9 that we need to confess with our mouths as well as believe in our hearts.

8. It is good news that is meant to be shared by all to all!

B. Sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

1. A friend of mine in college was gushing over his new girlfriend and how beautiful she was. By his description, he had somehow landed Miss USA. When I met her, she was sweet and all, but even the description “pleasant” would have been a big stretch to describe her physical appearance.

2. Yet, for my friend, she was a beauty queen and that’s how he saw her.

3. You may be thinking you have the ugliest feet in the world, but to the person you have gone to in order to share the gospel, your feet are more beautiful than anything.

C. Getting beautiful feet

1. I’ve been told that it takes some effort to have beautiful feet.

a) For women to love to go barefoot all the time, they have to care for those feet.

b) They use special lotions to keep them soft.

c) They use scrubbing brushes and other things to get the calluses off the bottom of their feet.

d) They get their toenails shaped and painted.

e) The older you get the more work you have to do to have beautiful feet.

2. It’s the same with spiritual feet. We have to put some work into creating those beautiful feet.

3. First and foremost we need to start getting the message out to a lost world.

4. Jesus main mission on earth was to save the lost. In Jn 14:12 He tells the disciples that those of faith will do what he has been doing. Trying to save the world!

5. We can invite people to worship with us.

6. We can invite them to study with us one on one or in a small group.

7. We can talk about how God had done incredible things in our lives.

8. We can talk about how God has done wonderful small things in our lives.

9. We can leave information about the gospel with a tip or on someone’s door.

10. We can share our love for God in so many ways.

11. We can go and we can send people to share the good news with others.

D. Beautiful feet are ordinary feet

1. I get frustrated with people saying they can’t share the gospel.

a) They claim they aren’t able to talk well enough.

b) They don’t know the Bible well enough.

c) They are smart enough to answer all the questions.

2. God uses the ordinary person MORE than the extraordinary one.

3. Some Christians have a gift of sharing the gospel effectively.

4. ALL Christians have the capability of sharing the gospel with those they come in contact with.

5. Acts 8:4 tells us after persecution started in Jerusalem, “those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.”

6. It wasn’t the Apostles, it wasn’t the preachers, it was ordinary people telling other what extraordinary things God had done in their hearts.

7. How beautiful will your feet be?