The Tools For Standing Firm
CCCAG, July 18th, 2021
Scripture: Ephesians 6:10-18
When I was younger, I was into sports in junior high school and high school in addition to martial arts. I played football and did a single season of wrestling, but I didn't like that because it involved too much discipline when it came to what you ate and making weight and all that kind of stuff.
That all served me well until I went into the army. In basic training, the barracks I was assigned to were located at the bottom of Tank Hill. Tank Hill was almost a mile-long steep divided road with median in the middle and at the top was the base water tower.
Guess what we had to run up and down the entire 12 weeks of basic training.
I remember the first time we marched to the bottom of that hill and got ready to run. The whole route would be about 2 miles, just like what is requires for our graduation PT test, and we had to do it in under 16:58. Furthermore, we were told that this run would determine which group we got put into- “The Roadrunners” who would be the faster runners, The “Plodders” who would be the average runners, or the “Slowpokes” who ran so slow as to be in danger of not passing the end of training PT test.
Well, I’m thinking, “I ain’t no slowpoke. I’m one of the fast guys in my school so I should be with the roadrunners”
They place us in groups where we think we should go, and the whistle blows, and off we go. I quickly ran to the front and was putting huge distance between myself and these other guys who though they were fast. I was at full glorious sprint, feeling great and passed the first block. Well, after the first block is when the elevation kicks really kicks in. Right before the second block, I gassed out and fell down to my hands and knees, and was passed quickly by the other people I had left behind. I managed to get back up and try jogging again but I was so out of breath I couldn’t manage it and threw up.
See, I had way too much faith in my sprinting ability and tried to use it to show off for what was supposed to be a long distance run. I never had learned to run distance. In fact, as a lineman in football, our training really didn’t focus on that, but only running wind sprints up hills so I though this was the same thing. After I got a shark attack (when the DI’s gang up on you screaming), one drill sergeant took those who couldn’t make it up the hill aside and taught us how to run distance and put us with the slowpokes to learn it well.
Before you knew it, I ended up with the plodders and worked my way up to the roadrunners before basic training ended.
I was ready for the sprint, but in reality, had to train for the long distance.
Our Christian life is very similar to this concept. We come in on Sunday morning and hopefully whoever is up here gets you charged up to face the next week. You go home feeling good about things and are ready to face the week.
Then Monday morning comes, and it all goes out the window. It’s because we have a sprint mentality- if I can get enough spirituality on Sunday hopefully it will hold me through until the next Sunday.
Today’s message is going to be a practical way to face life, and it’s found in Ephesians chapter 6. We are going to look at the section of scripture that deals with the armor of God, and use it to help us to see not only how the parts of the armor work, but how we are to use them to be able to stand against a continuous onslaught of our enemy that will only get worse in the coming days.
Let’s read from Ephesians 6, and then I will break it down.
Eph 6:10-18
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Prayer
Since we are talking about armor, I’m going to stay with the military as my central source of examples today.
Anyone who has been in a leadership role in the military knows how to develop an operations plan. Op’s Plans are a structure in which you identify the mission, the mission objectives, the opposing force and what they have as far as ability and weapons, what is required for you to complete the mission.
That’s how I’m going to approach this scripture, which Paul is using military terms to describe spiritual truth, and break this down into smaller chunks to define God’s operation plan for us as soldiers of Christ who should be wearing the armor HE provided for us.
The first thing we do is
I. Identify the mission
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
We are told twice here what the mission is- to stand. Now if you are like me, you want to do something a little more active. You want to bellow “This is Sparta!” and attack, lay waste to God’s enemies.
Standing seems boring, until you understand warfare at the time this was written. The Roman Army took some lessons from the warriors of Sparta in that the first several layers of their forward forces did little other than carry large rectangular shields. When the enemies would fire their arrows or even catapults, the Roman army would “Turtle” but locking their shields together in front, and overhead, making the archery or catapult shots ineffective. The enemy would have no other choice but to try a mass attack with infantry, which is what the Roman’s wanted them to do and these infantrymen would crash into their locked shields over and over again until they grew exhausted, and then the Roman calvary would come in from a flank and run them down.
One of the hard things for us as Christians to understand is that the battle is the LORD’s. The victory is the LORD’s. How many times in the OT did God tell his people simply to go out and stand against an overwhelming enemy force bent on their annihilation and the Hebrews never even unsheathed their swords, because God HIMSELF defeated then enemies, and they were just there to witness HIS victory.
This is how we are to approach our battle with the forces of darkness- your job is to stand for the truth of the Gospel. To bear witness to the victory that Jesus has already won, and to share that truth with others so we can take people from the darkness of satan’s lies into he glorious light of God’s truth through Jesus.
That’s the mission
With that said, let’s look at our enemy
II. Identify the enemy and their capabilities/tactics
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
One of the greatest stains on the history of the Christian church was an era called the crusades. It covers the years 1094 through 1291 AD.
During that time, the church of that day had certain categories of sin- some venial which were minor sins that could be forgiven, and mortal sins which would never be forgiven. During that time, Islam was the rising power in the Middle East and was encroaching on Christian held territory. The church in Rome decided this was unacceptable, and decided to raise an army to combat his. In order to raise that army, the church then told people that if they or family members who had died in sin needed to have mortal sins forgiven, that if they took up crusade God would forgive them of that sin.
The crusades mission was to liberate the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, from the Muslims that had currently occupied it.
It was the lowest point in history during a time already called the dark ages. It was when the church used secular military might to put a sword to a Muslim’s neck and said covert or die.
This is the tragic thing about it- The church of that time used satan’s tactics to go to war against satan. It begged the question- “Shall we do evil that good may result?”
After all, what are evil’s weapons of choice? It says it in verse 16-
Flaming arrows
These flaming arrows have three names- fear, doubt, and unbelief. These are the same arrows the enemy used in the garden against Adam and Eve, the same arrows he used in Paul’s day, and fear, doubt and unbelief are the same tactics he is using today. He hasn’t changed a bit, and he hasn’t had to because they work.
We do not have a physical war to fight, but a spiritual one.
Everyone talks today about China, Russia, rise of socialists in America and holds them up and your enemy. To be sure, they are all threats to this country, but to the Christian, you need to open your spiritual eyes and see the power and principalities behind these foes.
A physical war, while being horrible, tragic, and full of death is much easier than the one we face. We have an unforgiving onslaught of attack coming against us at all times. In this war there are no rules, no Geneva Convention of fairness, and no prisoners taken. This is why focusing on the physical manifestation of the spiritual war is playing right into our enemies hands, and makes God’s armor useless to us.
And that’s one of the big take aways from this scripture- you can’t expect the armor to work unless you are using it as it was intended.
Let’s look at our kit- the armor of God.
III. The Kit- what will we need to bring with us to accomplish the mission
14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Before we get into he specifics, I want to remind you we are talking about your average Roman foot soldier when we look at this armor. In fact, Paul was probably chained to a soldier while dictating this letter to a scribe, and taking in his kit and how it relates to the spiritual battle we all face.
With that in mind, let’s take a quick look at our kit for this battle, and how it’s supposed to be used:
A. Belt of truth
Roman soldiers wore tunics, which were essentially dresses for men. The last thing you want in battle is to have this flowing garment catching on everything or blocking access to your weapons, so they would tie it down with a belt which also served the purpose of being something to hang equipment off of.
Do you know the phrase, “Tying up loose ends?” It came from this concept to be ready for battle.
In the Christian’s world, the belt represents how truth is to hold together the rest of the armor. Everything is dependent upon truth. If we had a belt of error, that would nullify the rest of the armor and make it worthless. After all, a belt of error can’t hold the spiritual clothing Jesus gives us when we are born again. It cannot hold the breastplate of righteousness in place if it is full of unrighteous error. You can’t hang the sword of the Spirit off of a belt filled with error.
That is why the truth is so important to the Christian, and why the truth of the Gospel is to be the ground we stand on. In fact, our footwear given to us in our spiritual warfare kit is designed only to hold traction if we are standing in truth. Everything depends on this.
B. Breastplate of Righteousness
I think we get a little confused about this part of the armor, and that centers around the word righteousness. We sometimes get the idea that our righteousness is dependent upon us or our behavior. This is why so many people live defeated because our righteousness is rightly described in scripture as filthy rags.
Even the best of us can’t even come close to measuring up to God’s perfection. This is why this word has to be understood and be used in relationship with another word- justification. When you see either of these words, they have to be understood within the context of relationship with Jesus Christ. A simplification of the word justification is “Just as if I had never sinned”. In other words, this breastplate that protects our vital organs, and especially our hearts is Jesus Himself.
Nothing can sway us from the will of God if it has to come through Jesus who is the guardian of our hearts. Any arrow shot at Jesus vaporizes as it touches Christ’s righteousness.
It should also be noted that the breastplate only covers the front of the soldier. We are always to be facing the enemy, and never retreating before him.
C. Footwear
One of the overlooked areas of preparing for a mission is “What kind of footwear do we need?”
The footwear is very specific to the mission. When I was in the Army, you have boots that are dependent on your job. You have jump boots for paratroopers, jungle boots to hot and wet climates, winter boots for cold weather, ect. You wouldn’t issue jungle boots if your mission involves snow and ice because they don’t provide any traction on that type of surface so you can’t stand or fight.
The same is true of the Christian and the footwear God gives us for battle. It only has traction and the ability to stand on one surface- the Gospel. Unfortunately, many of us have tried to stand on secular politics and are surprised when we land flat on our faces. We try to stand on a social issue, and end up knocked backwards when society reacts negatively.
We can’t expect to stand on anything other than Christ Jesus crucified for our sins. You can’t do battle on the enemies turf. That is why God has limited our ability to only be able to stand on the Gospel.
D. Shield
In Roman times, right before they went into battle Roman soldiers would soak their shields in water for an extended period of time. These shields were mostly covered in thick leather, and the leather would soak up the water so when the enemy tried to use fiery arrows against the legions, it would hit that shield and immediately extinguish the fire.
As part of the Christians armor, this shield represents the faith we expressed when we came to Jesus. Ephesians 5:26 talks about how Jesus washes us through the cleansing of HIS word. There are several Greek terms that are translated into English as word, in this case the Greek term is Rhema a spoken word and not the Greek term logos which is the written word. What that means for us is our shield is the spoken word of God in prayer that develops our faith and strengthens our relationship with HIM.
What that means for us is that the devil’s flaming arrows of fear, doubt, and unbelief hit that spoken word of faith in Jesus Christ through prayer and immediately extinguish.
That goes in with the next part of the armor which is the
E. Helmet of salvation
The helmet of salvation is closely linked with the rest of the armor and protects our minds from satan’s lies. It keeps our thoughts and attitudes reflective of those of our savior, and helps us to know His Mind and His Will.
Notice within the text, the helmet and the sword are spoken of in the same sentence and seem to be linked together- the helmet protecting and projecting God’s truth and word into our minds, while the sword defends us.
F. Sword of the Spirit
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
A lot of preachers have said this is the only offensive weapon in our arsenal. I disagree. The bible plainly teaches us that this sword is the Word of God. The key point is again this word is not the Greek Word Logos meaning a written word, but Rhema, which is the spoken word.
These last two parts of the armor are purposefully and intrinsically connected with verse 18 which explains exactly how they are to be used in spiritual warfare.
And this is the most important truth about the Armor of God. It tell us exactly how to use the armor that God has given us, and how we are to fight this war.
And here is the battlefield-
18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
All rise
The Armor of God is to protect what is most important to our survival- our prayer life with God.
Not only just the prayers we utter with knowledge, meaning in English if you will, but as verse 18 says, praying in the Spirit, meaning using our prayer language, also known as speaking in tongues, to effectively battle the enemies influence not only in our own lives, but in the lives of those people who desperately need to hear the saving news of Jesus Christ.
Altar call
