Just a little over a week ago on August 8, Russia invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia and it is quite apparent that Georgia just doesn’t have the ability to stop the Russians. While this action by Russia certainly has some very interesting implications for Biblical prophecy, especially Ezekiel 38 and 39, it also points out the importance of having the right armor to defend against the attacks of others.
As we’ve seen for the last four weeks, all of us who are followers of Jesus Christ are in a war against an unseen, but very real, foe. And if we’re going to be able to hold our ground against the devil and his schemes, we need to make sure that we put on the right armor and use it properly. We began by discussing the need to put on the belt of truth by putting on the one who is truth, Jesus, and by living that truth. Then we focused on the breastplate of righteousness, which primarily refers to practical righteousness which requires us to live in accordance with the righteousness of Jesus that he has given to us. And last week, we saw how we need to be fitted with the shoes of the gospel of peace so that we can be at peace with God and with others. This morning we’ll continue our study as we look at the fourth piece of armor. Let’s read our passage out loud together:
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Ephesians 6:16 (NIV)
Once again, Paul is certainly influenced here by the picture of the shield of the Roman soldier, but I’m convinced that his primary influence came from many of the passages that we included earlier in our worship service today that pictured God as a shield who protects His people. So, just as we’ve seen with the other pieces of armor, putting on the armor of God requires us to put on God Himself.
But understanding more about the shield of the Roams soldier will help us to be more effective in taking up the shield of faith in our lives. The Roman soldiers actually used two different types of shields. They had a small, circular shield that was primarily used for ceremonial proceedings, but could also be used in close in fighting to ward of the blows of the enemy. But the shield that Paul describes here is a much larger shield. In fact, the Greek word for this shield came from the root word which meant door.
The shield consisted of a 3 layer wood frame with linen sandwiched in between the layers. Then there was an outer skin of several more layers of leather. And the whole thing was then held together by a bronze strip around the edge. A typical shield measured about 2-1/2 feet wide and 4 feet tall. Since the average soldier was only about 5’-5” tall, you can see how the shield would protect almost the entire body.
As we examine the shield of faith in more detail this morning, there are three important questions we need to answer:
1. Why do I need the shield of faith?
2. What is the shield of faith?
3. How do I take up the shield of faith?
Let’s begin with our first question:
WHY DO I NEED THE SHIELD OF FAITH?
It’s interesting that this is the only piece of the armor for which Paul describes exactly how it operates. He exhorts us to put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness and to sandal our feet with the gospel of peace and to take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. But he never explains exactly what their purpose is or how they work. But with the shield of faith, he makes it very clear exactly why we need the shield and how it operates in our life. The last phrase of this verse describes why we need the shield of faith:
...with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
The shield of faith allows us...
• To extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one
Let’s take a look at each of those key words and phrases:
o The evil one is a real foe
When Paul refers to Satan as “the evil one”, he is making it clear once again that our adversary is not just some principle, or some force, or some philosophy. He is a real being who’s goal is to do everything he can to separate us from God. He is a real foe, so we need real armor to be able to stand firm against him.
We’ve already seen that Satan primarily attacks our minds and our emotions, using deceit as his main weapon. But now Paul gives us some more detail about how he operates with another picture, that of flaming arrows. So what exactly is Paul describing for his readers with that picture?
o Flaming arrows = temptations
The word translated arrow in the NIV refers to any kind of pointed projectile used in warfare. In Paul’s time these most commonly would have been javelin-like weapons or arrows. The tips of these weapons would be covered with an absorbent material and then dipped in pitch and set on fire. These flaming arrows would be launched in large numbers at the beginning of a battle. The purpose was not just to injure the enemy, but also to cause confusion and panic.
So just what are these flaming arrows in the life of a believer? It seems pretty clear from the context, as well as what we know about how Satan operates, that these flaming arrows are the seducing temptations that Satan fires into our lives. He fires shafts of selfishness, doubt, fear, lust, greed, and pride into our lives, at times literally bombarding the follower of Jesus with them.
As we’ve discovered in our journey through Ephesians, we live in a world that is right now under the control of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. And so Satan and his demons use the things of this world to continually bombard us with temptations. Our newspapers, radios, televisions, movies and the internet are filled with these flaming arrows. And the reality is that we can’t stop the devil from firing them.
In fact, it’s very instructive that Paul never even implies that we ought to try to do that. Perhaps one of the reasons that the church has become so impotent in our culture today is that far too many believers are spending their time, usually very unsuccessfully, trying to stop the arrows from being fired, rather than putting on the armor. How many high profile Christians have we seen who have publicly campaigned against some form of immorality, only to fall to some similar temptation in their own lives?
I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t stand firm against immorality, but based on this entire section on spiritual warfare, I think that the more critical issue is to make sure that we focus on putting on the armor in our lives since that is the only way we can stand firm against a powerful foe.
o The shield is effective against all of Satan’s arrows
The flaming arrows were designed so that when they hit the enemy’s shields the fire would bounce off the shield and spread. So before a battle in which flaming arrows might be shot at them, the soldiers would soak the leather covering of their shields in water.
Then they could actually use the shield to catch the arrows and extinguish them so that the fire would not spread. Paul writes that the shield of faith not only protects the believer against these flaming arrows of temptation, but it intercepts and extinguishes every single one. I think that is the principle Paul had in mind when he wrote these words in another letter:
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
1 Corinthians 10:13 (NIV)
Even when we face seemingly insurmountable temptations, God has promised that his shield of faith is adequate to extinguish every single one. So the next question we must answer is...
WHAT IS THE SHIELD OF FAITH?
Oliver Wendell Holmes said:
It is faith in something that makes life worth living.
That sounds good but it is only a half-truth and when it comes to our spiritual life there is really no difference between a half truth and a lie. I’m reminded of this rather well known story:
Once the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. "What did he find?" asked the cohort. "A piece of the truth," the Devil replied. "Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?" asked the cohort. "No," said the Devil, "I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it."
The fact is that everyone has faith in something or someone. There is a sense in which almost everything we do in life is based on our faith. When I get up in the morning and I go into take a shower and I turn the handle, I have faith that somewhere there is a pump that is pumping water into a water line that eventually leads to my house and I have faith that my hot water heater is functioning and that I’ll eventually have some hot water. When I get into my car and turn the key, I have faith that all the parts of my car will work together properly so that my car will start and get me where I need to be. When I come to a green light and go through the intersection, I have faith that the people on the other street have a red light and that they will obey that red light and stop. When I go to the doctor and he prescribes medicine I have to have faith in the doctor’s judgment and in the claims of the drug makers that the medicine will actually make me healthier.
But the kind of faith that makes life worth living must be faith in something that’s worthwhile. It’s like the little leaguer who told his mom, “I think we’re going to lose the game today” to which she answered “No son, think positive!” His reply was “I’m positive we’re going to lose the game today.” She wanted him to put faith in faith itself. But faith in faith, or in some other person, or in my shower or my car or my prescription medicine, or in a creed or even a local church is not going to protect me against the temptations that the evil one sends my way. So exactly what kind of faith is it that Paul is writing about here? There are three key aspects of faith that are taught consistently throughout the New Testament:
• Faith is belief
The word that Paul uses here, and which is used consistently throughout the New Testament is a word that means “to have a firm persuasion”. It is a form of the word that means “to hold onto something with confidence.” The writer of Hebrews describes that aspect of faith:
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see...And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Hebrews 11:1, 6 (NIV)
That is a really great definition of faith. It makes it clear that faith is being sure of what we hope for and confident in that which we cannot see. And without that kind of faith, it is impossible to please God. That definition also gives us a clue about what we are to believe. Obviously the kind of faith that is described here and which Paul refers to in Ephesians cannot just be any belief. I’m going to come back to that issue of what to believe in just a moment.
But even though faith requires us to be confident about that which we cannot see, it is not, as some people would claim, “blind faith”. And that brings us to the second aspect of faith:
• Faith is belief that is confirmed by historical evidence
In another of his letters, Paul wrote:
We live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV)
But that does not mean that he expected his readers to place their faith in Jesus based on “blind faith.” In fact, in his earlier letter to the church at Corinth, he had pointed out the historical basis for their faith:
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 (NIV)
The faith that comprises the shield of faith is based on historical events that have been confirmed by a large number of eyewitnesses to those events, as recorded in both in the Scriptures and in extra-Biblical writings. And in this passage, Paul does a real nice job of summarizing both the facts and the significance of those facts. In essence, he outlines the basics of what we need to believe in order to put on the shield of faith:
o Jesus died for our sins
o He was buried
o He was raised on the third day
o That all happened according to what God had already revealed in the Scriptures
So faith is belief that is confirmed by historical evidence. But there is one more crucial aspect to the kind of faith Paul is writing about here in Ephesians.
• Faith is belief that is confirmed by historical evidence and which results in action
If you think about it, faith is never really faith without action. I don’t really have faith in my car until I turn the key in my ignition. I don’t have faith in my doctor until I actually take the medication he prescribes. And the same is certainly true when it comes to the faith that makes up the shield of faith. Although Paul makes that point throughout his writings, Jesus’ half brother James expresses that concept in a much more detailed manner in his epistle:
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder.
James 2:14-19 (NIV)
As James points out, even the demons believe in God and they are certainly aware of the historical evidence that confirms the death and resurrection of Jesus. But it is quite clear that they do not have the kind of faith that makes up the shield of faith because their actions are not consistent with their knowledge. Our faith is not a result of our deeds, but it is certainly revealed by our deeds.
Let’s see if we can’t make this all even a little more concrete. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Tom Requadt, one of the missionaries that we support. He asked for prayer because in translating the words “love” and “worship” in Genesis 22 into another language, he and his team were having a hard time coming up with the right word or phrase that would adequately express the Biblical meaning of those two words.
When the great 19th century Scottish missionary John Paton was translating the Scripture for a group of South Sea islanders he found himself in a similar situation. There was no word in their vocabulary for believe, there was no word in their vocabulary for trust or to have faith. He had no idea how he would convey it to them since they had no word for it. One day as he was in his hut translating, a native came running and running hard and fast, ran up the stairs and in and just flopped himself in Paton’s study in a chair. And then he said, “It’s so good to rest my whole weight in this chair.” And John Paton said, “I had my word, faith is resting your whole weight on God.”
That’s’ what the shield of faith is all about – resting our whole weight on God. But I think that John MacArthur actually put it in even more practical terms with his description of the shield of faith:
The shield of faith is the consistent application of what we believe about God to the issues of life.
That definition not only describes to us what the shield of faith is, but it also leads us into the last question we need to answer this morning:
HOW DO I TAKE UP THE SHIELD OF FAITH?
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith...
When Paul writes “in addition to this” he is referring back to the first three pieces of armor – the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness and the shoes of the gospel of peace. Unfortunately some translations render this same phrase “above all”, which implies that the last three pieces of armor are somehow more important than the first three. But Paul is just switching gears a bit here since the last three pieces of armor are used in a different manner than the first three.
A soldier never took off his belt, his breastplate and his shoes while on duty since they were attached to his body. So Paul uses verbs that indicate that these are more permanent. But the last three pieces of armor were weapons that the soldier would take up only as he was preparing to go into battle. That’s why Paul uses a different verb when he writes of “taking up” the shield, the helmet and the sword. And, as we’ve seen with the other pieces of armor, the form of the verb there indicates that taking up these last three pieces of armor is something that each believer must do himself. No one else can do it for us.
As we look at the Scriptures, there are three key things that we must do if we are going to be able to take up the shield of faith:
• Get into God’s Word
In Romans, Paul tells us where faith comes from:
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
Romans 10:17 (NIV)
Ultimately, faith comes from the message that is contained in the Word of God. There we find both the message, so that we know what to believe, as well as the historical evidence that gives us the confidence to believe.
This first principle is not a surprise to any of us. It’s a point that you’ve heard from me over and over. God’s Word is where we find truth, it’s where we find out how to live righteously and it’s also the basis for our peace with God and with others. So I’m not going to belabor the point.
But getting into God’s Word – hearing it, reading it, studying it, memorizing it and meditating on it – is only the first step. I must also...
• Get God’s Word into me
John provides us with this important insight into how to take up the shield of faith:
..I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
1 John 2:14 (NIV)
How are we to overcome the evil one? By making sure that God’s Word lives in us. The word “live” in that verse could also be translated “abide” or “remain”. The idea here is that the key to overcoming the evil one is not just spending time in God’s Word, as important as that is. But we also need to make sure that His Word lives in us. But how do we do that?
It’s actually quite simple. I allow God’s Word to live in me when I obey what it says. Every one of the flaming arrows that Satan sends our way is intended to get us to believe that God doesn’t know what is best for us and that he won’t keep His word. He tries to deceive us into thinking that we can take up the shield of faith without obeying God. But as we saw earlier, even the demons believe, but they don’t obey.
When we claim that we have taken up the shield of faith while overtly disobeying God, all we have really done is to toss aside the genuine shield and taken up a shield of our own making. And then we wonder why we’re hit with those flaming arrows. We can’t be deceived by any teaching that separates faith from obedience.
But here is the heart of the issue. When we don’t trust God enough to obey Him, I’m convinced the real issue is that we just don’t know God well enough. If we really know Him, we will trust Him. And if we trust Him, we will obey Him.
Let me give you a practical example, maybe one that a lot of you are struggling with right now. God has made it clear in His Word that His people are to give willingly, joyfully and sacrificially. And there is ample Biblical support that a tithe, or 10%, is a minimum starting point for a follower of Jesus Christ. God has also promised that he will provide for all of our needs. But in these tough economic times, I know just how much of a burden it is for many of you to give a tithe of your income. But the real issue here is do you trust God enough to obey Him? Do you really believe that He will provide for all your needs if you are obedient to Him?
Getting God’s Word into me, having His Word living in me, won’t just happen by coming to church for an hour or two each week. In fact, even adding in some Bible reading each day won’t do the trick either. The only way that I can get God’s Word into my life is by making His Word the love of my life. It means reading God’s Word, not just because I’m supposed to, but coming to the place that I can’t wait to get into His Word so that I can know Him better and learn more about His purposes, His plans and His ways.
That’s why it’s really exciting to see what’s going on here at TFC and how many of you have really developed a deep desire to dig deeper into the Scriptures. Which leads me to our final principle.
• Participate in the body life
One thing that is very apparent about the soldier’s shield is that it can only protect from the arrows that come from one direction. A lone soldier can only protect one part of his body, normally his front, at one time. So in order to provide adequate protection, the Romans would use what they called a testudo formation in which the soldiers on the outside of the formation would protect the exterior of the formation with their shields and the solider in the middle of the formation would hold their shields overhead to protect from attacks from above.
That picture is very instructive for us. I’ve continually made the point that the armor is most effective when it is used in conjunction with that of other believers within the body of Christ. But that is even more apparent when it comes to the shield of faith. When any member of the body lets down his or her shield, it not only exposes that person to the flaming arrows of the evil one, but it also puts the rest of the body in danger, too.
The writer of Hebrews certainly understood this principle as well. He wrote:
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:23-25 (NIV)
I want you to notice the phrase “the hope we profess”. Does that sound familiar? It’s very close to the definition of faith that we looked at earlier which appears just a few verses later in this letter. And what is really interesting here is all the references to “us” and “we” in these verses. The shield of faith just isn’t effective when we try to wield it on our own. We need each other if we’re going to be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one and stand firm.
