Horses are amazing animals. They are created for special purposes such as transport and war. Their hooves are probably the most amazing part of their anatomy. Until recently, very little was known about horses’ hooves, but scientific research has produced some amazing statistics and relevant information that are important both to owners and farriers. For instance: the hooves of horses can adjust to extreme temperatures because of the many blood vessels contained in the hooves. That is why horses can walk in the icy snow without getting frost bite! Listen to this sermon

The Good Farrier
10/7/2006
Andre Pelser

Ephesians 6:15
15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
The New King James Version

I spent two days with a Farrier in Toddington near Cheltenham in England recently. His mother owned many horses and used to teach riders how to do show jumping. He used to be one of the riders. When he grew up he chose to become a farrier and went to do his apprenticeship. He owns his own business as a farrier and designed a Portaforge, which is a portable oven used to shoe horses. This portaforge is built into the back of his van. The secret of this invention is that the gas oven only takes 3 minutes to get white hot!

Another friend of mine and I spent one morning driving around with the farrier, from village to village, homestead to homestead, watching him shoe horses. He would tell us about his trade as we drove around. I made copious notes and at one stage Old Robert, a hunting horse, tried to grab my notebook with his teeth!

The verse in Ephesians has always had very little significance in sermons preached about the armour of God, because it is normally interpreted as getting your shoes on to go an preach. But the word ‘shod’ has taken on an entirely new perspective to me since I have been instructed by a good farrier about the absolute necessity of shoeing horses on a regular basis. The spiritual techonology gained from the evidence of shoeing horses can be applied to any believer’s life. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will greatly benefit from these lessons I learned from a good farrier!

1. The owner chooses the farrier, not the horse
2. The owner pays the farrier, handsomely!
3. The horse cannot shoe itself!
4. The horse needs to be shod every six weeks.
5. The iron horse shoe needs to be shaped to suit each hoof.
6. The horse shoe is softened in a white hot fiery oven.
7. The horse shoe is beaten on an anvil with a hammer.
8. The heated shoe is applied to the hoof to make it sit better.
9. The shoe is cooled down in a bucket of fresh water – within seconds.
10. The shoe is nailed to the hoof and the edges filed off.
11. Without proper horse shoes the horse is imbalanced.
12. Horses that aren’t properly shoed experience stress and causes lameness.
13. Hooves adapt to any temperature and to any surface.
14. The blood supply to the hooves is the secret of adaptability.
15. Horses have wonderful memories: they even know where to deliver milk!
16. Hooves continually grow and need to be shaped and fitted with shoes.
17. Hooves expand and contract when hitting any surface, hard or soft.
18. You can read a horse; not a camel!
19. The weakest spot of a horse is the knee; a camel’s strongest feature.
20. Horses can kick forwards or backwards and also bite.
21. The naked eye cannot see the hooves hitting the ground.
22. Farriers are indespensible to horse owners.
23. A farrier works extremely hard.
24. A work horse is shod differently than a race horse.
25. It does not hurt a horse when it is being shoed; it’s like clipping nails.

A horse instinctively crosses its legs when jumping hedges. It knows that its knees are the weakspot and protects them by crossing the legs and also realizes that two legs make it easier for it to break through the hedge!

Each of the above 25 points has a spiritual significance if you care to look for it. But the main idea that surfaced in my learning experience is that you actually need someone else to put the shoes of the Gospel of Peace onto you. You cannot shoe yourself!

This changes the whole concept of going to church because it is Sunday! You go to have your feet shod by the Gospel Farrier! He gives you the iron shoes to travel on hard roads to present the Gospel to whomever you may encounter.

The nails used in the business are four sided nails, like the ones used to crucify Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary (Place of the Skull, outside Jerusalem). My farrier friend made a thoughtful present to one of the priests of the local parish: a cross made of three nails, significant of the three nails that nailed Jesus Christ to the Cross. The priest wore it around his neck.

In a sense we all die a little when we present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people wherever we go, for the first reaction of most people is normal anti-Gospel or anti-Christ. Most people have had just enough religion to be immune against God. They have been force fed by religious institutions of education and felt that they had no choice but to complete the confirmation course so that they could have a place to be married and buried and where there children could be christened. And that became the only times that you would ever see them in church again!

But if they had been properly shod…their shoes for the preparation of the Gospel of Peace would not have hurt so much!

The amazing adjustment of horses’ hooves to climatic changes is an indication of how flexible we ought to be in presenting the Gospel. Jesus was able to speak to a lawyer, a scribe in the synagogue, a woman with a hunchback, a leper, a prostitute, a fisherman, a centurion, a wealthy young man and to a tax collector on a level that made sense to every single one of them. He did not have a little evangelistic method that he stuck to. He did not approach people on the street and said, ‘can I tell you about myself: here are the four spiritual laws!’

Jesus lived such a wonderful life that people approached him for help. The news that he was actually able to help people out of difficulties spread around and people were drawn to him. This is what made the religious leaders mad, because their church members began to follow the man from Galilee.

Perhaps Christianity needs to come back to its original purpose: the life of Christ in us, not merely a church growth method or system of religious practices that controls and manipulates people with guilt and condemnation. Jesus brought liberty wherever He went and those who believed in Him knew they had truly been set free.

I think its time that we stop playing our religious games, whether traditional or charismatic, and become real people who believe in the Son of God who died for the sins of all humanity and allow His Spirit to invade us in such a way that people will begin to see Christ in us, the hope of glory!

We need The Good Farrier to shoe our feet again! We need a touch of the Master Farrier’s Hand! We need our worn out religious shoes to be removed and we need our hooves clipped again. We need balance restored again! We need our weak knees strengthened so that we can once again kneel down and pray with sincerity and without hypocrisy! We need to know that the labourer is worthy of his hire and that those wh