Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Although the last chapter of Ephesians provides practical guidance on the household relationships, the emphasis today is on the spiritual battle with evil forces. We’re urged to be obedient and stand strong in the Lord and put on the full armor of God. What is the full armor of God? You’re about to find out. Ephesians chapter 6.

Stand firm, then. Throughout this podcast series, when I’ve mentioned Satan, I usually do so by calling him the enemy. I hope that hasn’t been confusing to anyone wondering who I’m calling the enemy. I don’t want to give Satan any more airtime than absolutely necessary, but he does get quite a few mentions in the New Testament, as here in Ephesians chapter 6. And so, since our goal is to explore all the big ideas in the New Testament, what we should know about our enemy, the devil, Satan, is certainly one of them. And so he gets his day in the spotlight today, or better, maybe gets exposed by the spotlight today.

I know that in some places in the world, I wouldn’t need to spend any time convincing anyone that Satan and the powers of darkness are real, because in many places they are very obvious. They are not hidden. I’ve had missionary friends tell me stories that raised the hairs on the back of my neck about encounters with demon activity. But in a more sophisticated society like the one I live in, demonic activity is rarely in your face. The forces of darkness use whatever methods work best where they are to achieve their ends, I think. So whether obvious, as in some more primitive cultures, or stealthy and hidden in more sophisticated cultures.

Their objectives, though, remain the same. They want to turn people away from God. They want to thwart His purposes in the world. They want to create dissension and embarrassments among believers and so blunt the effects of the gospel. They want to destroy families. They want to capture the hearts and minds of young people.

They want to trap and bind people in sin and drag as many as possible to hell with them. Ephesians is one of the epistles written while the apostle Paul was in custody awaiting trial in Rome, one of the prison epistles, as we call them. This is the place Luke leaves off the story of developing Christianity in the last chapter of Acts. Paul had been taken to Rome and legally confined to a private house as he awaited his hearing. This situation, though, dragged on for approximately two years, and all throughout that time, Paul remained engaged by letter, by emissaries, providing guidance to the growing Gentile churches. It may hardly have seemed like an imprisonment if you visited him then, except for one fact: a Roman soldier or two were always on the premises.

As a writer myself, I know that he was always looking for metaphors and illustrations to clarify ideas for his readers and listeners. As he was thinking about a way to help his readers get the big idea that he goes to in this chapter, he must have glanced over at the ever-present Roman officer, let’s call him Bruno, or whatever his name was, and it was that soldier and his attire particularly that inspired Paul’s metaphor, memorable metaphor here in chapter six. A light went off in his head, and he put his pen to parchment and wrote this challenging closing to his letter. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you will take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the whole 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. Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, and the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words will be given to me that I can fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I ought to. That last comment, asking for prayer for himself, specifically prayer that he would be bold in proclaiming the gospel when given the chance to speak. I’m pretty sure that’s a glance forward in hope and expectation that he would soon stand before the Emperor Nero and soon have the opportunity to appeal his case, which as a Roman citizen he had asked for and been granted. This is why he was in Rome.

The big idea in this section is in Paul’s challenge to stand, to stand firm. That’s what he’s challenging the Ephesians to ready themselves to do in light of what may be ahead for them, but also what he himself must do. If and when he was called before the Roman tribunal, he did not want to shrink back like a self-protecting coward. When that opportunity came, he wanted to stand boldly in the imperial court of Rome before the most powerful people in the world at that time and clearly proclaim to them the gospel of Christ. Stand. That’s a frequent challenge from Paul to the early Christians in all of his letters.

To the Galatians, it was about standing up against false teachers, the Judaizers who were trying to intimidate them, remember? He wrote to them, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. To Corinth, he wrote, Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous.

Be strong. This is a familiar refrain in his epistles, but nowhere more emphatically made than here to the Ephesians. Stand firm in the Lord and in his mighty power. 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, stand firm. So as I imagine it, this is just my imagination, Paul interacted with the Roman soldiers who were watch over him during that two years.

He chatted them up. They exchanged stories. Paul shared the gospel with them, I’m sure, and some of the crazy situations that came up during his missionary journeys. As for the Roman soldiers, no doubt they told him some war stories, you know, what it was like fighting the barbarians in the central Europe. Why do I think this? It’s just what men do.

And I’m 99.9% certain this is what inspired the metaphor about the armor of God here, and Paul’s challenge to stand at all costs against the onslaughts of the enemy. In our case, he’s not talking about fighting with people. It’s the devil and his army of demons, the unseen spiritual forces. That’s what he means by, Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. He’s absolutely talking there about satanic forces which operate around us in the unseen but very real spiritual dimension. We aren’t given a great deal of information about Satan and his forces in the New Testament, maybe because God doesn’t want us to be too fascinated by them.

But we’re told enough to know that Satan is a real enemy. He was apparently at one time a very high-ranking angelic being. Old Testament passages sound like Satan fell from that lofty station because of his own pride and jealousy, that he imagined he should be as God, and so led a coup of sorts against God Almighty. Isaiah 14, verse 12 says, How have you fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn? You have been cast down to the earth, who once laid low nations. Coveting the honor and glory that belonged to God alone, Satan was cast out of heaven.

Jesus once told his apostles, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. This one we now call Satan, which means adversary or enemy, is a very powerful spiritual being. And when he fell, a third of the angels in heaven who had joined him in rebellion also fell with him. These are the evil forces whose schemes Paul is telling the Ephesian Christians they need to recognize and stand firmly against. But don’t imagine that Satan is as powerful as Jesus, as some false religions teach, that he’s another Son of God just like Jesus. No.

Jesus’ power and authority is the very power of God himself and far surpasses Satan’s. Paul wrote earlier in Ephesians chapter 1, I want you to know God’s incomparably great power toward us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his own right hand in the heavenly realms, far above—listen to this—far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in this present age but also in the age to come. Those are the very same terms—powers, authorities, dominions—as in our chapter, and they refer to the array of demonic forces. Jesus is far superior, far above them, Paul writes. Remember that time when he took his disciples across the Sea of Galilee to a Gentile district?

We discussed this in Luke chapter 8. And just as they were disembarking from their boat, this naked wild man came running down the hill at them, right at them. We’re told he was demon-possessed and lived among the tombs, cutting himself, screaming all night long. People were terrified of this person. No one could ever control him. Now he was coming at the disciples and Jesus, wild-eyed, stark naked, and shouting, What are you doing here, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

Have you come here just to torture us? Who are you? What is your name? Jesus calmly asked, and the demons from within the man said, Legion, for we are many. He was possessed by a horde of demons. And what was Jesus’ reaction to that?

Ooh, I’m scared. Hardly. Not even a legion of demons were any match for him. He cast them all out of that man into a herd of swine, which then ran off a cliff, drowned in the sea. The point is, Jesus’ power is far above all the powers of darkness, and that’s why Paul urges us, Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. The metaphorical pieces of armor he lists are all things God has equipped us with, not things we cobble together for ourselves.

So here was the challenge. Stand firm then with a belt of truth buckled around your waist, the breastplate of righteousness in place, your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. And in addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Can you picture a Roman soldier like Paul saw every day? He wore a wide leather belt on which his breastplate sat. That belt also held his weapons, his sword and probably a shorter dagger too.

When it was time to fight, he would pull up the ends of his tunic and tuck them inside the belt and cinch it tightly. This gave him freer mobility. The belt buckled around the soldier’s middle. It was his center. Paul said we need to take the belt of truth as our center. That is, knowing what God says is true, because the devil is a liar.

When he attacks believers, it’s often with lies. Lies like, God will never forgive all the things you’ve done. Remember when you… and then he goes on to remind us, as he brings up failure and past sins. Or, God doesn’t really love you, or He would never allow the stuff that’s happening to you now happen. Or, God’s ways are far too narrow. You work hard.

Life is brutal. You deserve to let loose and break the rules once in a while. What would that hurt? Lies, lies, and more lies. We recognize the lies of the enemy by knowing God’s truth, and we resist the lies by standing in God’s truth. This is the idea Paul is driving at as he lists the armor and armaments of a Roman soldier.

The heart and vital organs are protected by the breastplate. Paul says our breastplate is Christ’s righteousness. It’s Jesus’ righteousness that God accepts, and that righteousness becomes ours only when we put our faith in Christ. His righteousness then protects us and saves us, not our own. So Paul is challenging, stand strong and confidently in Christ’s righteousness. Then he describes our feet as being shod with the gospel.

A Roman soldier’s shoes were foundational. In warm weather, they wore leather sandals, and in colder weather, a kind of boot. But in either case, they had short spikes or studs on the soles for traction, so that when they were in battle, they would not slip. If you slipped and went down, you were dead in battle, hand-to-hand combat. The gospel gives us peace with God, gives us security, a sure foothold and a slippery world. When the enemy attacks and tries to knock us off our foundation, create doubts about God and our relationship with Him, dig in, Paul is saying.

Stand firmly on the promises of the gospel. Roman soldiers carried a serious, rather large shield when in battle too. In the wars with the barbarians, they developed this technique of the shield wall. Using their shields in tight formations, they could defend themselves against much larger enemy forces, as with the testudo formation, as it’s called. Testudo means turtle in Latin. This required the soldiers to be in a tight formation and move as one unit.

Those in the front line, those on the sides, all locked their shields together. Then those in the interior held their shields over all of them overhead. Can you picture that? The effect was like a turtle shell. They were covered from all angles. Even raining down arrows could not penetrate as they advanced.

Paul is picturing the temptations that come at us like flaming arrows here. I like this image. When we stand fast in our confidence, our faith in God, we also stand strongest when we are united with other believers. We’re stronger together than we are alone. Raise your shield of faith, yes, when the enemy assaults, but I’m also suggesting enlist your Christian friends to unite with you and support you when you need to weather Satan’s fiercest attacks. Next, there is the imperative to put on the helmet of salvation.

Roman soldiers’ helmets were heavy, hot, uncomfortable, but in battle, they were absolutely necessary to protect their heads. I think Paul is thinking about the attacks Satan can bring against our minds. He can mess with our minds, producing doubts, producing fears. But a believer is protected by the helmet of salvation, a salvation that is secure because of Christ and what Christ has done for us. Our security in Him is a fact. Our sense of assurance?

Now that’s a feeling. It can rise and fall depending on how close we feel to God at any given time. But thank God, our salvation is not based on feelings. God is a lot greater than our feelings, the Apostle John reminds us, and He is able to keep that which we have committed to Him, Paul reminds us in another place. So stand in that promise of eternal salvation. And finally, we’re told to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

This is the only both offensive as well as defensive weapon. When temptations come at you like those flaming arrows, raise the shield of faith and thrust back with that sword. Jesus taught us how to answer the enemy with Scripture during his temptation in the wilderness. Satan cannot overcome the Word of God. So keep learning the Word of God as you are now. It’s our best weapon.

You get the picture here, right? We have armor, the wherewithal to stand. We stand in truth. We stand in Christ’s righteousness. We stand in God’s grace. We stand in our faith.

We stand in the assurance of ultimate salvation. We stand with our fellow soldiers together, shoulder to shoulder, and we answer the enemy’s attacks with the Word of God. Without the armor God has given us, though, the best of us are very vulnerable to spiritual attacks. Alone, we’re no match for the spiritual forces of darkness. So don’t kid yourself into thinking otherwise. Our adversary, the devil and his minions are very deceitful, very clever, very resourceful.

I’ve had them come at me from angles I never imagined possible. If we let down our guard, the enemy will find a way to get at us. The New Testament warns about giving him any opportunities, any doorways through which he can successfully attack us. For example, through wrong anger or holding on to bitterness. That’s one way we disarm ourselves and give him too easy access into our hearts and minds. It also happens through jealousy, as it did to Satan, and through pride, or through toying with sexual temptations when we should flee from them, or through isolating ourselves from others when we’re weakest and really need others’ help.

If we’re not armored up and prayed up, chances are high that we will get ensnared in some serious sin sooner or later, and fall into stymieing doubts and discouragement sooner or later. You know, for some reason, Satan has been given wide range to do his thing during this era. He’s called actually the god of this world in the epistle of 1 John, where the author is describing the world system in opposition to God’s kingdom. But the Bible is clear: the enemy has confines. God is much greater. Boundaries are defined for how far God will let him go.

We’re given a couple times in the Bible a peek behind the curtain to see that, as in Job’s case, and again in Peter’s case, where Satan had to have permission to come against one of God’s own. So, he has limitations on what he can do here and now, and limitations on how long he can do it. In the book of Revelation, we’re told there’s an end to his troublemaking coming. He will make one more desperate attempt at taking control of everyone and everything in the future tribulation era, but Christ will decisively put that down at his second coming. And then Satan and all of his demons will be bound in chains and thrown into a bottomless pit. If you’re a thoughtful person listening to all of this, you might be wondering, so why does God give him such a long leash?

Why is Satan permitted to wreak the havoc that he does? I’ll be honest, I do not entirely know, because the Bible doesn’t give us a very straightforward answer. But as I was thinking about that hard question this week, something popped into my mind. Someone, actually. Hamilton Burger. Who?

That name probably means nothing unless you are around my age. He was a character on TV’s original legal drama back in the 1960s. The show was called Perry Mason. Ring a bell now? Perry Mason was a brilliant defense attorney who never seemed to lose a case. And Hamilton Burger, yeah, he was his foil.

He was the L.A. district attorney that never could beat him. It was the classic hero, anti-hero, protagonist, antagonist tension in every episode. I honestly don’t know why our enemy, the evil one, is given the latitude he is given, but I imagine it has something to do with good versus evil in the grand scheme of things. For faith and goodness and righteousness to exist, there must be an opposite force for them to be defined against. So as long as this age goes on, we have to contend with that. When Paul wrote this challenge at the end of Ephesians, he sensed, or maybe God had shown him, the intensity of the battles coming ahead.

Within a few years of this, only a few years, Paul and Peter were both martyred. Christianity was declared an illegal religion, and an intense spiritual battle ensued. Paul challenged Timothy, who became the overseer of these Ephesian churches, to be ready to endure hardness with him as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. And the believers there, as we’ve just read, to put on the full armor of God so they could withstand the onslaught. Most of them must have heeded that challenge because Christianity not only survived, but flourished in the decades ahead. If we’re trying to take ground from Satan’s kingdom in our generation, we too must be prepared for the battles, for the evil days.

Stand firm in the Lord, therefore, and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that when the evil day comes, you will be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul, and thank you all for tuning in. The full armor of God includes truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God.

And here’s the challenge: look at your life and see if you’ve implemented the full armor of God. What’s missing? Remember, Satan is the prince of lies, and he twists those lies just enough to make it look like the truth. And the best way to know whether it is or not is take out that sword. That sword is the Word of God. Study the Word.

Keep listening, and while you’re at it, share the podcast with others and fulfill the Great Commission.