Ephesians 6:10–24

0:00 So, if I were to ask you to come up with a kind of controlling metaphor for the Christian life, the Christian life is like this or that, what metaphor would be the first one that pops into your mind? What would be the kind of controlling metaphor for the Christian life? And would it be a race of some kind, some sort of athletic imagery? I mean, that's used in the New Testament a couple of times. Maybe it's a garden, that sort of thing is used in the New Testament a couple of times.

0:33 You know what the controlling metaphor is? You know what the most common metaphor for the Christian life is in the entire Bible? It's warfare. The Christian life is warfare. Now, I, you know, I know myself as a preacher well enough to know that when I start grasping about for metaphors for basically anything in life, it's pretty much going to come down to warfare. I know that's true about me. And over the years, as I've metaphorized things in my preaching and all the rest, people have sometimes asked the question, well, why do you keep using metaphors of warfare when you talk about our relationship with God and our relationship with the world?

1:07 And, you know, even the life of the church, you always use these warfare metaphors. And I'll be the first to admit that part of that is just my personality. But a lot of it, too, is because that's how the New Testament wants us to think about the Christian life. Because when you get right down to it, the Christian life is not just about a way of living. It's not just a turning over of a new leaf and deciding to live this way instead of that way. Much less is it a matter of joining up with a certain culture or a certain social subset.

1:39 The Christian life is about being caught up in a cosmic war between the creator of the universe and his royal son and an enemy who is bent on destroying everything that they do. That's what the Christian life is, and that's what Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 6. We're coming here to the end of the entire book of Ephesians. If you've been with us through this series, then you kind of know what's going on with Ephesians. It was written in about A.D. 62 by the Apostle Paul while he was imprisoned in Rome.

2:11 And it was meant as a circular letter, really, not just to one church, but to Ephesus and surrounding churches in what is now western Turkey. It was known as the Roman province of Asia. Well, we've come today to the very last section of the book, the last half or so, last two-thirds of chapter 6. This is easily, and without a doubt, one of the most famous passages in all, at least of Paul's letters, and maybe in all of the New Testament, because it is so visually sharp.

2:42 And as Paul goes through all of these different pieces of armor that the Christian is supposed to be putting on to fight the schemes of Satan, And you can see what he's describing as he describes it all. And so it's memorable and people know it. They remember what it's about. But today I want you to see not just the pieces of armor in sort of all of their shining glory. What I want you to see is what Paul is doing in this passage. So how it's functioning in the book. Like why is it here in the book of Ephesians anyway?

3:12 And therefore, once you understand that, I want you to see what it's supposed to do in the hearts of his readers. And therefore in the hearts of you and me, because we are in fact readers of the letter. So let me give you an overview of what's going on and where this particular piece of the section on the armor of God comes in. So right from the very beginning, all the way back in chapter 1, this is just a flyover of the whole book. Paul's been telling a story that goes all the way back to eternity past. So from the farthest reaches of timeless eternity, God made a decision to save a people for himself.

3:46 To give his own son, the eternal begotten second person of the Trinity, the uncreated second person of the Godhead. His begotten son to become a man and die. So that his chosen people would be released from the curse that they put themselves under with their sin. and be redeemed to enjoy for all of eternity everything that the creator of the universe is able to pour out on them. Well, not only so, but through Jesus's death and resurrection, God also decided that with this new people, he was going to put an end to the hostility, the ancient division that existed between Jews and Gentiles. This dividing wall of hostility, he calls it, through the blood, the death, the resurrection of Jesus, that wall is taken down, a new nation is created, that crosses all human barriers, then that new nation becomes the new people of the king, if you remember that.

4:38 And what God intends to do with that new nation, united under one new crown and one new king, is he intends to present that new kingdom, that new united people, to all the powers of the cosmos. So everybody in heaven and hell and above the earth and under the earth, God intends to take that new nation and hold it up and say, look at that. That is exhibit A of what I am able to do. My wisdom, my power is nowhere in the universe more clear than it is right there in that new nation united under my son.

5:16 So what that means is that that new nation and all of its sort of, you know, manifestations, the places it shows up all over the world and local churches like this one, this is God's magnum opus. This is what God intends to show to the cosmos and say, look what I've done above all. So that's the first three chapters. And in the rest of the book, after laying all of that glorious stuff out, Paul turns to us and says to us, we who are that new nation, he says, okay, so now you know who you are. You know that you're the people of the king.

5:48 You know that you are this new nation united under the crown of the Son of God. You're a people who were wrecked in your sin and yet to whom God has promised everything in eternity. So, therefore, live like it. Live a life that's worthy of this calling that you've received. In your behavior, in your thoughts, in your words, in your relationships. Live in a way that will honor your king. All right, so that's what Paul has done.

6:19 He's told this amazing story. Then he's turned to us, that new nation, and said, now you need to live a life that's worthy of that calling. That's where we got to three weeks ago when last we were in this book. Well, today, Paul gets to his final words. It's sort of like a general talking to the army, a king giving a charge to his people. And he reminds us one last time what we are actually up against in this work to live a life that's worthy of our calling. Because what Paul says at the end of this book, what we're just about to read, is that it turns out our struggle is not just against ourselves.

6:54 As much as we might think that most of the time, our struggle is not just against our own hearts, our disordered desires, our wrong passions. That's not it. Nor is our struggle just against other people or even the systems of this world that other fallen people have built. No, ultimately, Paul says, we face a fearsome, spiritual, and personal enemy that wants nothing more than to destroy what God has done in us.

7:26 What we face, ultimately, is Satan and the demons who hold power in this world. So let's see what he says about how we're supposed to face that kind of enemy. Look at Ephesians 6, verse 10. Finally, he says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

8:00 Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.

8:32 To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints and also for me that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. You know, Satan and demons and our need as Christians to fight them, to stand against them is not something that we think about much, I think.

9:05 And that's probably to our detriment because the Bible teaches us that they are real, not just some impersonal force, not just the systems of this world, but a real personal spiritual evil that is bent against us. Paul says that they're real, and he tangled against them in various cities around the ancient world. Jesus certainly knew that they were real and tangled with them at various times. And we need to understand in the same way that what we are striving to build as Christians, what we're striving to build and what we're striving to hold on to in our church, in our families, and in our own lives, in our friendships, in our relationships, those things, Satan and his demons, are working tirelessly to destroy.

9:50 So God's plan, according to Ephesians, was to create this new society under the king. Well, guess what Satan and his demons are doing? They're doing everything in their power to destroy that new kingdom. God says he's broken down, dividing walls through the work of Christ. Well, then Satan and his demons are going to work day and night to rebuild those walls. Indeed, they're going to be working to blow chasms between those God claims to have united. Because they think thereby God will be humiliated. God wants his people, as Paul says in Ephesians, to live in unity and purity.

10:25 Well, then guess what? The powers of hell are going to be constant in their work of sowing seeds of pride and bitterness and gossip and secret whispered sin. All in an effort to destroy it. It's a sobering thought, isn't it? It's a sobering, a little bit weird, a little bit foreign thought to us to think that there are actual demons. Actual demons like geographically close to us. Who hate everything that we do here.

10:58 Who seethe in revulsion at everything we stand for as Christians. and who would like nothing more in all the universe than to burn the entire thing to the ground. But that's what Paul is telling us here. And so that's what we would do well to listen to. Here's the main idea that I want to get across to you that Paul seems to be at pains to get across to his listeners. You, Christian, are at war. You are at war. Whether you like it or not, whether you realize it or not, whether you admit it or not, you are at war.

11:31 So know your enemy, put on your armor, and don't neglect your greatest weapon. Those three things. Know your enemy, put on your armor, and don't neglect or forget your greatest weapon. That's where we're going in this passage today. Number one, let's look at it. Know your enemy. Know your enemy. That's really Paul's point in the first four verses of this section. He says he just wants these people to know. In verses 10 through 13, he wants these people to know their enemy. Or maybe better yet, know that you even have an enemy.

12:05 Don't forget that there is something out there. There are some things out there that are four square opposed to who you are, what you stand for, and what God has done in you. I think you can see that point pretty clearly if you just look down through those verses. He starts in verse 10 by telling us this. Finally, he says, finally, like this is the last thing that I'm going to say to you. This is my final charge to you before I sign off in this letter. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Now, that's interesting because it ought to sound a little bit familiar to you, right?

12:38 Be strong in the Lord, that's the word power, in the strength of his might. It should sound familiar, ring at least a little faint bell, because back in chapter 1, Paul had prayed that we believers would know those very same things. In 119, he prayed that we would know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the greatness of his might. Now, those sound a little bit different in English because they're translated differently, but they're the exact same words in the Greek. Power and strength and might.

13:09 And the point that Paul is making is that what he prayed back in chapter 1, that we would know, that we would see and acknowledge the power and the strength and the might of God. He's saying, all right, you've seen it now. I've prayed that you would see and acknowledge that and understand it, well, now what I'm telling you is that it's really important that you put those things to work. The strength and might and power of God is not something just to be beheld. It is something to be deployed. Well, why is that? Why is that so important? Well, he tells us in verse 11.

13:43 Look at that. Put on, he says, this is what it means to be strong in the Lord and the strength of his night. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil and that's the whole point of the whole section this is what Paul is wanting us to do he wants us to deploy God's strength and power and might and in order to do that we need to put on he says the whole armor of God because we have an enemy who's hell-bent on doing us harm and that's the devil now before we go on we should acknowledge that it's always a bit of a balancing act to know how much we as a church, I as a preacher, you know, whatever you want to say, it's always a little bit of a balancing act to know how much to talk about the devil.

14:29 I mean, on the one hand, you can make the mistake of just ignoring him, or even as some people have done through the centuries, just try to argue him out of existence altogether. You say that the powers, and you say that the authorities, and the cosmos-crats, as that word is, the powers of the cosmos, you just say, well, that's just human stuff, right? That's powerful people among humans, it's not talking about anything spiritual and personal. It's just humans and their systems that they've built, systems of oppression, all the rest of it. You try to argue them out of existence. You can make that mistake. On the other hand, you can focus on the devil and his minions so much that you start to see a demon behind every doorknob, as they say. Now friends, neither of those approaches is correct. I mean, you start to look at it, you start to read through the New Testament, if you've ever done that from cover to cover, and you see that the New Testament doesn't spend a huge amount of time on the devil, but it also doesn't spend a negligible amount of time on the devil. And Paul and other authors of the New Testament

15:29 can write entire books without even mentioning him. And yet it's also clear through the New Testament that he is a real presence. The New Testament doesn't ignore him any more than it focuses everything on him. So I think the best way to think about it is that it's important that We talk about the devil just about as much as the New Testament does, which means exactly some, which is what we're going to do today. And if you think about it, the existence of this kind of thing, a personal spiritual enemy that was out to harm them and destroy them, wouldn't have been at all a hard or surprising thing to the Ephesians.

16:11 I mean, to us it's a hard and surprising thing. We just kind of don't think about it. Our minds are wrapped up in the things of this world and in its own way. That's probably a strategy of Satan anyway. Have you ever wondered why the Bible is full of all kinds of spiritual stuff and things that Satan is doing? At least for the last 30, 40, 50, 100 years in America anyway, we haven't seen a whole lot of that. You don't see a lot of people obviously manifesting demonic tendencies. Why would that be? Well, I don't know exactly. I've always wondered if it was a strategy of the devil. I mean, why should the devil go around doing spectacular things to wake everybody up to his presence when we're all very much asleep and ready to get slain in our sleep anyway?

16:49 Why wake us up to spiritual things? But it wasn't that way in Ephesus. Ephesus was known as a center of supernatural activity. It was the home of the temple and cult of Artemis, one of the biggest temples in the world at the time, one of the most involved and intricate cults of pagan religion in the world. surrounding that whole cult of Artemis was this entire culture that was shot through with what was known at the time as magic or supernatural arts, which really were just demonic activity of all kinds of different types. You can read Acts 19. You can see that demons attack the sons of Sceva. A bunch of new converts burn all of their books of magic. And it said it came out to like 55,000 pieces of silver. I think the value of all these magic books, it was everywhere. And so for them, it was no surprise. For us, it is. We're not used to thinking in these terms, and we often, you know, even kind of hand wave the idea of supernatural forces away as if it's more appropriate for a

17:52 cartoon or a comic book. But the fact is, the Bible emphatically and clearly teaches, without even really making a big deal of it, it emphatically teaches that Satan and demons are real, and that They are determined to and capable of doing great harm to us as believers. So it's good that we know our enemy. As far as we can gather from Scripture, Satan is a fallen archangel.

18:23 He's a being that was created by God. He was not coexistent with God. He's not self-existent like God is. He's a creature like the other angels, like you and me, as far as we can tell. And he was a creature, an archangel, who originally seems to have had great glory, and yet in that glory set his sights on taking God's place as ruler of the universe. He's a little bit open to interpretation, but I think you get pictures of that story, that sort of primordial, you know, prehistory story in Isaiah. I think you get glimpses of it in Ezekiel, certainly in Revelation.

18:56 But the result of that rebellion by Satan against God, according to Revelation, It was a great war in heaven in which about a third of the angels joined Satan in his rebellion. All of whom were then thrown down out of heaven and banished to earth. And now the result of that is that Satan and all of these fallen angels, these demons that surround him, are hell-bent on destroying everything that God is doing in the world because they want nothing more than to humiliate him. And they've probably learned throughout history that there's not much they can do to actually humiliate him or harm him.

19:28 He's too far and exalted above them. Satan thought when God the Son took on flesh that he'd be able to take him down. So met him in the wilderness and tempted him with the same temptations that he had thrown against every human. And that throughout history had worked on every human he'd ever thrown them at. He learned real quick that they weren't going to work on Jesus. And so Revelation tells us that because he couldn't get God the Father, because he couldn't get God the Son, He turned his hostility toward us, the people of God.

20:04 Thus, Satan's desire to destroy what God had created in Eden. Thus, Satan's desire now to destroy the church which God has created by his own work in Jesus. What God builds, Satan wants to tear down. Now, Paul's aware of that. And so he tells these churches to be ready for it. In other words, to put on armor so you can stand against what he calls the schemes of the devil. Do you see that there in verse 11? So that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

20:36 Schemes is a good word there. It's a good translation of that word. It means strategies or plans, but with a layer of subterfuge and deceit, like an ambush. See, Paul's saying it's not the devil's normal strategy to attack the church in a frontal assault. Now, what he does is much more subtle. It's subterfuge, it's deceit, it's secret, it's quiet, it's dark, it's an ambush. And when he springs it, you never see it coming. Older translation of the Bible is called that the wiles of the devil.

21:08 That's how they translated it. But the word kind of strikes us as a little silly. It's like Wile E. Coyote shooting us with an acne rocket that blows up in his face instead of ours. And so over the years, English translators changed that so that it doesn't sound so silly to us. But schemes gets it. Secret, underhanded strategies that are meant to catch us unaware and destroy us. Okay, so what do those look like? Those schemes that Satan is constantly putting together, those ambushes that he's laying for God's people, what do they look like? Well, I think you can look back in the letter of Ephesians to see.

21:43 In chapter 4, verse 27, it's surrounded by all the stuff that Paul says the people in Ephesus, the Christians, ought to do and not do. And he says that they ought to do and not do those things so as to give no opportunity to the devil. He's already got that in mind back in chapter 4. Well, what does that? What gives opportunity to the devil, according to Paul? Well, you look back to 4.26. It's uncontrolled anger that gives opportunity to the devil. 4.25, falsehood gives opportunity to the devil.

22:13 Verse 28, stealing and laziness. Verse 29, corrupting talk gives opportunity to the devil. You keep moving down into chapter 5. Sexual immorality, coarse jesting, broken relationships in your marriage, with your children, even with the people you work with. All of those things give opportunity to the devil. Look at other places of the New Testament. The work of Satan is connected to a refusal to forgive other people within the church. It's connected to gossip.

22:45 It's connected to loose lips. It's connected to self-focus. It's connected to greed. You ever think about those things in that way? I mean, I think it's pretty normal for us to think of all those things I just mentioned as sins, right? They're bad. They do harm. They do harm to you, and they do harm to others. But did you ever think about the fact that when Satan sees those things in the life of a person or in the life of a church, that is an opportunity for him to lay an ambush and spring it? I mean, sure, sometimes Satan's schemes involve a whole lot more than that.

23:20 Sometimes it's a sort of all-out assault on an entire society, even an entire civilization. And sometimes it's like we may be seeing today, an assault on the goodness of God's creation order in creating us male and female. Sometimes it's an all-out campaign to convince an entire nation or civilization that it's actually good to kill unborn babies. Sometimes he does that. But sometimes Satan's schemes, especially in Bible-believing churches, churches that intend to be standing on the Bible, are not so visible.

23:57 They don't look like possessed people. They don't look like magic. They don't look like soul-destroying evil. And yet they are. Because what Satan is doing through all of those things is subtly laying bombs of selfishness, anger, bitterness, and corrupting talk throughout the life of the church and waiting on an opportunity to blow the whole thing up. There's a movie that I've seen several different times, and it's got an arresting scene in it that I know I've used this illustration with you before, but I think it's so apt for what we're talking about here.

24:37 It's called The Hurt Locker. I don't know if you've ever seen that. It's a good movie, and what it's about is a bomb tech whose job in the Middle East somewhere is to find landmines that are buried underneath the sand and disarm them. And so the whole movie is about the tension of disarming these bombs. Well, at the beginning of the movie, one of the things you see is that he'll see something in the sand and sort of find it and pull on it. And in the sand, you can see a wire that snakes through the sand, and that wire eventually, as it snakes, leads him to the bomb. And so he puts on the bomb gear, and he goes out, and he disarms the bomb. Well, there's one particular time in the movie where he's out in the desert by himself, and he sees the little thing in the ground that's supposed to, you've seen it a few times by now, it's supposed to run a wire out to a bomb and he reaches down and he picks it up and about 10 different wires in every direction around him go, and you realize that he's surrounded by ticking time bombs and landmines.

25:28 You know, Satan is busy, he's busy right now laying wires and laying bombs throughout this entire congregation. And he's waiting on an opportunity to blow them up. And friends, you and I as members of this church have a choice. We can either be helping Satan lay those wires and arm those bombs. Or we can be in the business of looking around and cutting the wires when we see them and disarming the bombs when we see them.

26:03 Look, I know I've preached that before. I know that I've used that illustration before. Some of you have been around long enough that you've probably heard that illustration five or six times. And you know what it's like, therefore, to preach that illustration over and over again throughout the years, and then at a particular moment, watch the whole thing happen anyway. You warn, and you warn, and you warn, and Satan still manages to blow the whole thing up. What do you do in that situation?

26:37 What do you do when you're kind of looking at that? You're like, well, I've said that before. And, you know, Satan still managed to lay the wires. He still managed to arm the bombs. They still kind of went off, right, at a particular moment. What do you do with that as a member of the church? What do I do with that as a preacher? Well, I'll tell you what you do. You just preach it again. And you listen again. And you continue the work again and again and again. Friends, Satan does not stop, and neither should we.

27:09 In verse 12, Paul gets a little more specific here about who our enemy is. Look what he says there. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. There's a critical point to be made here. Do you see what he says there? We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. Our battle is not against human beings. It's not against flesh and blood. It's against all these spiritual forces that are trying to destroy us.

27:43 I think especially in our own day and age, it's easy to confuse demons with the people made in God's image whom the demons are using to do evil. You hear that? It's easy to confuse demons with the people the demons are using to do evil. In other words, it's easy to make people the enemy or to think that what we're to do is to have the same antipathy toward the people that we do toward the demons who are using them. But see, that's Paul's whole point.

28:16 One mark of waging spiritual warfare rightly. One way that you know you're waging spiritual warfare rightly and not foolishly is to be able to see that the people are not the enemy. In fact, when it comes to our great mission in the world, the people are our goal. They're the captives. That our whole mission in the world is to set free by the preaching of the gospel. Friends, remember that as you go through this world. In this world, you're going to find people, some of whom are under demonic influence, who are going to hate you because you are a Christian.

28:53 who are going to treat you like trash because you are a Christian, who are going to want to do and say that they want to do the most awful things to you because you are a Christian. But listen to me. Listen to me carefully. Listen to Paul carefully. It is Bush League-level spiritual warfare to hate them back. It is Bush League-level spiritual warfare to hate them back. You know what elite spiritual warfare is? Do you know what the special forces of spiritual warfare is?

29:26 Friend, it's to recognize that those people are captives. And that what will hurt the forces of hell the most is not to yell back at the people, whether verbally or on Twitter, but to love them. To tell them the good news that God saves sinners, and to rescue them from the kingdom of darkness and bring them into the kingdom of light. That's what shakes hell to its core. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Our struggle is against the spiritual forces in the dark places. In 13, Paul really just restates the main point he'd already made up in verse 11.

30:00 Look at it. Same thing. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, he says, so that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. That's the goal. When all is said and done, having done all, when the smoke clears and the battle is over, may we be found to stand. That brings us to our second point, put on your armor. Put on your armor. The next section, the second section here, runs from 14 to 17. It starts with this command, stand.

30:31 Well, by now, you're probably noticing that Paul has said that word quite a bit. He's used it several different times, stand or withstand. It's all the same Greek word, four times so far, actually. It's an interesting word for Paul to use because it's a well-known military word that means to stand your ground. In other words, to hold on to territory that you've already won. So that's what Paul wants us to do. He wants us to defend the territory that God has already given us. Now, you read the Bible, and obviously there's a sense in which the work of the kingdom of God and its people is offensive, right?

31:05 We take the gospel into a dark and fallen world. We show them the light that will rescue them from their captivity. As Jesus puts it in his image, we storm the gates of hell, and those gates will not prevail against us. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached, and hell will not stop it. But there's also a sense in which we as a church, we as Christians, have to fight defensively. We have to stand and defend the ground that we've already been given by God. So what kind of ground is that talking about?

31:37 Well, it's everything Paul's been talking about in the whole book. It's our faith and confidence in Jesus. Satan wants to weaken that and destroy it. It's this new, undivided, united kingdom that God has created in the church. Satan wants to destroy that. It's our status as these little, remember this, the sparks of the new creation in this dark world. Satan wants to snuff all that out. That's what's under attack. And Paul's command is the command to hold your ground. What God has given you in faith and unity and purity, dig your heels in and defend it.

32:11 well for the rest of this little section he goes on to tell us how we're to do that by detailing the armor of God people have often wondered as they've read through this section where Paul came up with this and you remember when he writes this letter to the Ephesians and these other churches he's in prison in Rome so it's possible that he might literally be looking at a Roman soldier and thinking about each piece of armor but I've been in Rome like physically to the prison where we think Paul was kept and it's like literally down way down in a pit and there would have there's no way for him to get out and so there probably wasn't some decked out Roman soldier standing down in the pit with him the Roman soldier would have been up on the top guarding the hole that they dropped him 20 feet down into he's probably not looking at a Roman soldier so what's he thinking about well maybe he's just recalling what they look like but let me read you a couple of verses from Isaiah 59 17 and then a couple from chapter 11 here's what here's what Isaiah says He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head.

33:16 With righteousness he'll judge the poor and he'll decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Truth will be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins. You see my point there? All that language from the ancient prophet Isaiah is the same imagery that's used here in Ephesians chapter 6. And who is it in the prophet Isaiah who's wearing all that armor?

33:48 The breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the word. Who's wearing all of that? It's the Messiah. It's the servant of the Lord who's wearing all of that armor. So you see what Paul is saying here? The Messiah has finished his work. He's ascended into heaven and he sits down at the right hand of the majesty on high. But the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the sword of the word, the belt of truth, all of that. You see what he does to it? He gives all of that now to us.

34:21 It's not a Roman soldier's armor that Paul is thinking about. It's the son of God's. We wear his armor. And what an incredible thing to think about, especially like with reference to our union with Christ, that what is ours is his, and what's his is ours, even his armor becomes ours. Let's look at it. First, he says, we're to stand, having fastened on the belt of truth.

34:52 Now, in terms of armor, the belt of the armor was what held everything together. It's what enabled you to move and to fight instead of getting tangled up in your robes and your knickers and, you know, the sword and all the rest of it. It sort of pulled everything in tight so that you could run and you could swing the sword. Okay, so what's truth? If it holds everything together, what truth are we talking about here? Well, I think it's a couple of levels that are logically connected. On the one hand, first, it's the gospel itself. That's what the word of truth is. If you look back at chapter 1, verse 13, the truth is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

35:26 but it's also the way that gospel truth begins to characterize us as a new kingdom. So you look at 425. Truth is what marks the people of God. We put away falsehoods. In other words, we're to be a people who tell each other the truth, who remind each other of the truth of the gospel, who tell each other what is and is not according to it. That's the first thing, and it's what holds everything else together. The truth of the gospel.

35:58 Second, he says, put on the breastplate of righteousness. Breastplate was the main defensive armor that, you know, it protects the vital organs. So what righteousness is being referred to here? Well, it's got the same idea, I think, as truth. There's kind of two pieces of it, but they're logically connected. On the one hand, and probably most of all, righteousness in Paul most frequently means the righteousness that is given to us that Christ earned for himself, right? It's his righteousness, his perfect record of life that is imputed to us, which fits perfectly with the idea that Christ gives us his breastplate of righteousness, right? And so there's no greater protection than being clothed in the righteousness of Christ. So that when Satan fires at you, when he swings his sword at you and tells you what a sinner you are, all that happens with that, if you're doing it right, is that that accusation clings off the righteousness of Christ and you say, I know I'm a sinner, but I'm clothed in the breastplate of the righteousness of Christ.

37:00 But the other thing that happens here is that that imputed or credited righteousness, that alien righteousness, as Martin Luther called it, comes from outside of us, that then starts to work itself out in our lives, in living and doing and saying and thinking what is righteous. We begin to live in a way that matches what God has declared us to be in Christ. Okay, so I want to pause for just a second. Truth and righteousness.

37:31 The truth of the gospel that's worked out in trueness of speech and the imputed righteousness of Christ that works its way out in doing right. How are these effective defenses against Satan's strategies? How are truth and righteousness effective defenses against Satan's strategies against the church? Well, I want you to think about it. If Satan can get people in a church to do what is wrong and then not speak or accept the truth about that, then he can destroy the whole thing.

38:13 If Satan can get people in a church to do what is wrong and then not speak the truth or accept the truth about that, then he can destroy. But brothers and sisters of Third Avenue Baptist Church, you want to know how to defend against that strategy? Do what's right. Say what's true. And then accept what is true when someone tells you you've done wrong. Let me say that again. Do what's right. Say what's true, and then accept what is true when someone tells you you've done wrong.

38:49 That's how you disarm Satan. That's how you cause his attacks to fail. Third thing, shoes. Look at verse 15. As shoes for your feet, put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. The shoes aren't really mentioned as part of the Messiah's armor in Isaiah. But I think Paul is still thinking about Isaiah. And I think he's still thinking about the Messiah being shod with these shoes. So in Isaiah 52, 7, here's where this idea of the shoes comes from first. This is what Paul is thinking about in Isaiah.

39:20 Isaiah writes, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace. So you can see all those concepts together, right? The feet that bring good news of peace. So that's where Paul is thinking about it. But who is it in Ephesians who has already spoken the gospel of peace to us? Chapter 2, verse 17. He, Jesus, came and preached peace to you.

39:54 It's Jesus who does it first. He's the one who has the readiness of the gospel of peace first, and then we follow along. What does the readiness of the gospel of peace mean? And that's what the phrase is there. It's not really readiness given by the gospel of peace. It's just readiness of the gospel of peace. So you can take that as readiness given by the gospel. And that may be the way to interpret it, that the gospel gives us a kind of readiness, right? It makes our minds sharp and ready for action. There are other places in the New Testament that tend to say the same thing.

40:27 But I think you could also read it, and I think this makes a little more sense, as the readiness for the gospel of peace. In other words, the readiness for the sake of the gospel of peace. In other words, we're ready. These shoes or sandals or boots that we wear on our feet, they're like rubber soles that are digging into the dirt and the legs are flexed and we're ready to move to share the gospel of peace with somebody who needs it. Just like that messenger in Isaiah. Just like Jesus himself.

41:01 16 to 17, you've got three more pieces. So the shield of faith there. Shield's a particular word for the big shield. You've probably seen it in movies that Roman legionnaires carried. It's square, right? It's usually about this big, right? It's square and it's kind of curved like this and it would cover the entire body, protect the entire body from arrows slung by the enemy. What was more, usually those shields were covered in layers of leather and wool or some other soft material so that when the enemy would light their arrows on fire, which could cause a particular kind of damage, When they would land in those shields, it wouldn't burn the shields up and leave the soldiers unprotected.

41:39 The arrows would be quenched. They'd be put out. And that's just an electric image applied to this idea of spiritual warfare, isn't it? As Satan shoots these fiery arrows of doubt and temptation and bitterness and sin, how do we defend against those? We defend against them by faith, by believing. And I don't just mean that in the usual religious cloudy sense. You've got to have faith, you've got to have faith, you've got to have faith. No, what I mean is the hard meaning of the word faith. It's reliance. We defeat those arrows of the evil one by relying on and believing beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will keep his promises.

42:20 I mean, think about it. Do you know how to defeat doubt when Satan shoots it into your life? Those flaming arrows of doubt that can stick in your side and then they burn sometimes for weeks, right? Do you know how to extinguish those? Do you know how to stop them? You trust God to keep his promises. You go back to the promises and you ask yourself, do I really believe what God says? Do I believe that anyone who comes to Christ in faith will not perish but have everlasting life?

42:50 Yes, I do. Do I really believe that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved? Yes, I do. Do I really believe that no one, once they've come to Jesus, can be snatched out of his hand? Yes, I do. And one by one by one, the fiery arrows go, and you find your footing again. Temptation from sin. When Satan shoots that into your life, you ask yourself questions. Do I believe what God has said?

43:21 Do I believe that sin kills? Yes, I do. Do I believe that there's great reward that comes to those who stand firm, who overcome, who, having done all, seem to have stood? Yes, I do. And they go out again, one after another. You see the point? You see the beauty of this shield of faith idea? If you believe what God says, if you have faith in him to do what he says he will do, There's your defense against the vast majority of Satan's fiery arrows.

43:58 Helmet of salvation. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul uses the same image, but he says that our helmet is the hope of salvation. He sort of clarifies it. And I think there's a similar idea here. The thing that most protects us in the fight, the thing that most gives us confidence to go into the fight and not be scared, is the knowledge and confidence that ultimately Satan will not get what he wants for us. He will not destroy you. He will not nullify your salvation.

44:29 Above all, that's what allows us to fight. That's what gives us courage. I love how one preacher put it. He said, that which adorns and protects the Christian, which enables him to hold up his head with confidence and joy in the fight, is the fact that he is saved. Amen. Finally, sword of the Spirit. When you look at that, sword of the Spirit, it's really clear, Paul's really clear that the sword isn't the Spirit.

45:00 This is not the sword which is the Spirit. It's the sword that's empowered by or maybe even wielded by the Spirit because he says in the very next phrase, the sword is the word of God. When you look through the Bible, the word of God as a sword is a common image. So in Isaiah, the Messiah judges the earth by the word of his mouth. In Revelation, he even has a sword that's coming out of his mouth with which Revelation says he slays the nations. Now, you know, word of God there, when it says that the sword of the spirit is the word of God, it's probably not the Bible, right?

45:33 I mean, there wasn't exactly a Bible when Paul was writing this letter. He's writing most of it like right here, right? So there's no exact Bible in the same way that we have it. As much fun as it is to grab your Bible and sort of wave it around like a sword. That's probably not what it's talking about. The word in Ephesians is just the gospel. That's what it is. Word is the gospel. And what's interesting about it even more is that this is an unusual word for the word word. An unusual word for the word word.

46:04 And it means a spoken word. Not just a word on paper. It means a spoken word. So the sword that we use to fight back the darkness, to go on offense against Satan, is here the spoken word of the gospel, which the Spirit wields in order to rescue captives from their slavery. Okay, friends, so when is the last time you used that sword? Well, I read my Bible last week. That is not what I'm talking about. When is the last time you spoke the word of the gospel to someone in your life?

46:39 Well, it's been a long time, but I show them every day. In the office, I show them what it's like to be a Christian businessman. That's not what Paul says here. Showing them what it's like to be a Christian businessman or a Christian student or a Christian teacher is not wielding the sword of the Spirit. The sword of the Spirit is the spoken word of the gospel. When is the last time you swung it? There's an old quote that's attributed, at least, to Francis of Assisi. Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words.

47:10 Friends, that's absolute nonsense. It is always necessary to use words. The gospel is news, and therefore it is words. And if you're a Christian, you need to be using that sword. You need to be speaking the word of the gospel to others. So know your enemy, put on your armor, And finally, don't forget and don't neglect your most fearsome weapon.

47:41 Don't neglect and don't forget your most fearsome weapon. That's point number three. So when I gave you those three points at the beginning of the sermon, know your enemy, put on your armor, don't neglect your most fearsome weapon, my guess is that more than a few of you looked down through the passage and trying to figure out, you know, where's Greg going to divide this up? And you thought, ah, yes, my most fearsome weapon that he does not want me to forget or neglect is the sword of the Spirit. And so, if you've been paying real close attention, you might be surprised that I already dealt with the sword of the Spirit.

48:13 And so you're thinking, now are we starting a whole point on the sword of the Spirit? Well, no. Look down at the last section, verse 18 to 20. Paul writes there, do all of this. Do all of this. Put on all this armor. Do all of this warfare. Verse 18, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

48:47 Now, a few years ago, a few years ago, the U.S. military had a particular type of weapon that became famous because of its enormous explosive power, and the world got to see it when the U.S. used this weapon, in Afghanistan in particular. Technically, the weapon was called a Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB, M-O-A-B, Massive Ordnance Air Blast. And it was enormous. It weighed 18,000 pounds. It was 30 feet long.

49:17 And it, I mean, think about how big 30 feet is at 18,000 pounds. And it was able to deal absolutely insane amounts of damage. More damage than anything short of a nuclear weapon. And so because of that, the massive ordnance air blast, the MOAB, came to mean mother of all bombs. And it struck absolute terror into every enemy that the U.S. ever used it against. Well, for all this armor and other weaponry that Paul has been talking about, When he comes to 18 through 20, Paul is telling us that when it comes to warfare against the devil and his minions, we also, as Christians, have a mother of all bombs to drop on hell's head, and it is prayer.

50:09 The Moab, the greatest weapon that we've got, is prayer. You see that? He says it right there. When you do all of this, he says, 18, pray at all times. Do all of this praying. It's interesting, isn't it? And you can see how he's kind of pushing it to the front. Because it's not just a part of the metaphor. It's not just another, you know, it's not the, I don't know, the eyeglasses of prayer. Or whatever you want to say. The visor of prayer. It's not another piece of weaponry. It's just the thing that runs underneath the hole. And look at the all-encompassing way he describes it here.

50:43 Pray at all times. Pray with all prayer and supplication. So all different kinds of prayer that you can think of. Pray with all perseverance. Pray for all the saints. Do you see the image that he's painting here? If you want to assault the gates of hell, if you want to see captives rescued in darkness, pushed back and defeated, the most important thing that you can do, the most important thing that we can do as a church is carpet bomb the enemy with prayer. We pray for missionaries. We pray for the church. Pray for your elders.

51:14 Pray for other churches in Louisville and around the world. Pray that Satan would be defeated in whatever he's up to today. Pray that the strategies he's building to destroy society would come to nothing. Pray that people would be saved. There's nothing, friends, there's nothing that makes a demon's blood run cold more than the saints calling out to the God of the universe to act. There's nothing they can do to stop that when God decides to act. So, a warrior of God, how's your prayer life?

51:49 How's your prayer life? That's one way to ask it, right? And preachers ask that all the time. How's your prayer life? How much are you praying? How much are you praying? And I know a lot of times it's easy to just kind of think, oh, it's not that great. I'm going to get back to it. You know, it's just spiritual discipline, God's sovereign, all the rest of it. My prayer life's not that awesome, but that doesn't seem like such a big deal. But, you know, there's another way to ask that question that's really more in line with what Paul's talking about here. And the question is this, how, a warrior of God, is the war going against the powers of hell? Because if you aren't praying, friend, you are not fighting.

52:26 If you're not praying, you're not fighting. Look, excuse me, let me say a word. We're just about to finish up. Let me say a word especially to men in the congregation. I want to say a word to you particularly if you're a man. There's a lot of talk these days about men in particular wanting a muscular Christianity. Men are saying these days, look, I don't want Christianity to be a sort of unmasculine thing.

52:57 I think Christianity is masculine. I want to fight the darkness. I want to take the sword to the enemy. And I say, okay, great. That's good. Christianity is in fact a masculine thing. and it requires men who are ready to fight. But brother, if you say you want to take the fight to the enemy, Paul's question to you is, how much do you pray? Because when it comes to spiritual warfare, that is the mother of all bombs.

53:30 You can fire the water gun of tweets all you want to. You can confront the forces of evil with the BB guns of your word and your slick comebacks. Or you can drop the mother of all bombs on them and pray that God would save and thwart the schemes of the devil. So look, here's what I'm saying to you. Make prayer your strategy of warfare. And strategize it.

54:02 Strategize your prayers. Make a plan. I mean, one way to think about it is make a target list for your bombs. Write it down. Put it in a note in your calendar, on your phone, whatever. But make a plan and a target list. Today, I'm going to drop bombs on strategies that I might not even see that Satan might be hatching in my church. I'm going to bomb that stuff. Tomorrow, I'm going to carpet bomb Satan's forces that are arrayed against our missionaries in Taiwan and in Turkey and other places. I'm going to carpet bomb those suckers. The day after that, I rain fire on what he's trying to do to my country.

54:35 And every single day, I unleash shock and awe on what he's planning to do to my children and my grandchildren. Fight and plan to fight with prayer. Brothers and sisters, this is how we wage war against Satan. We hold our ground with the breastplate of imputed righteousness and the helmet of salvation on our heads and the belt of truth around our waist. We dig the soles of our shoes into the dirt so we're ready to use the sword of the Spirit at a moment's notice.

55:10 And we never, ever neglect our greatest weapon, which is the invitation we have from the high king of heaven to call in air support against the forces of hell every single day. One last thing, then we're done. I want you to look down through there. All those things that are said, be strong, put on, that you may be able to stand. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against all these other spiritual things. So take up that you may be able to, and it goes on and on and on.

55:43 All those words, every single one of them are in the plural. It's not you as an individual, take up the armor. It's you as a church take up the armor. Every single individual one of you in it. But you're not a mercenary out there by yourself. You're a legion. It's interesting. You look back at the shield of faith in verse 16. We said that that shield is this large sort of rectangular curved shield.

56:15 You know what Roman legions used to do with those shields? And Paul would have been very familiar with this. They used to take those shields and they would interlock arms in some fashion that I don't quite understand and they would actually reach over and grab the shield of the guy beside them and what it would do is interlock all of these shields so that it formed what was known as a testudo formation or a tortoise formation. And it looked like a turtle because all of these shields would be in front and over the top and around the sides and on the back and they would march forward like a turtle and all the arrows of the enemy would clink off the shields and no one would get hit.

56:51 Well, brothers and sisters, you and I as members of a church do that very thing for each other as a church. We lock arms together and our faith together, interlocked, protects the whole. Look, you as a Christian, you as a Christian signed up for war. The day you took the microphone, whenever it was, whether there was a microphone or not, you took the microphone of the universe when you got baptized and you said, I am with Jesus now. You signed up for war.

57:24 And Satan says, if you want war, that's what you're going to get. So brothers and sisters, let's get after it. Be strong in the strength of the might of the Lord. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we praise you and honor you today as our great king, the one who has united us under your crown and under your banner as one new nation that exists in your name. and because of what you have done for us on the cross. Oh Lord, we pray that you would help us to be wise to the schemes of the devil.

57:56 Lord, we pray that you would help us to be on the lookout for those things in our church, in our families, in our own lives. And Lord, we pray that you would give us wisdom on how to fight against those things with the armor of God and with the great weapon of prayer. Lord, we ask that you would do all of these things for our good and for your glory. And in Jesus' name, amen.