Talk 13 - Ephesians 6:10-24

0:00 Okay, let's get into this amazing climax to this letter to the Ephesians, reading from verse 10 then of chapter 6. Finally, or another translation says, from now on, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 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. 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. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with 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.

1:15 With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Pray also for me that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will 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 should. Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. I'm sending him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are and that he may encourage you. Peace to the brothers and sisters and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. Peace, love, grace.

2:09 That's how Paul started the letter and that's how he finishes the letter. One of my little joys in life is spending time in a car and listening to, and you can pigeonhole me all you want with this, listening to the Rest is History podcast. It's just a lovely thing to do. Anybody else agree with me on that? Or am I totally on my own, totally pigeonholed by myself? One or two are prepared to sort of put their hand up on that. But a couple of weeks ago, if you haven't listened to it, it's well worth a listen. But a couple of weeks ago, they did a story, they recounted the story of Wojciech.

2:51 And I'd never heard this story at all before. This is a story that comes from the Second World War. It is a story of a Syrian brown bear who was adopted by the Polish Second Corps sometime in the 1940s and basically brought into their regiment and adopted by them. He thought one of them, a guy called Peter, was his mother. And he basically just imitated and copied everything they did. And he became one of them. He would march. He would salute.

3:24 He would wrestle. He would drink beer. He would eat cigarettes because he thought that's what they were doing. He would do any of those sorts of things. And then, actually, he was made a private, believe it or not, in their court. And he had his own paybook and number and all of that sort of thing. And then, in the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, he actually played his part. He carried these 100-pound, 45-kilo boxes, crates of shells back and forward behind the front line.

3:58 And supposedly then, he was actually promoted from a private corporal. But here was this brown bear, Syrian brown bear, who thought, was absolutely sure that he was a Polish soldier. And I recount that story simply because that's a very heartwarming story. But just thinking about reality, because that's what we're thinking about this morning. And in a sort of cute way, Here was a situation where this bear thought he was a human soldier when actually he was a Syrian brown bear. In our context, a lot more serious than that, we are actually enlisted soldiers. We are enlisted warriors with Christ in a spiritual war that is going on.

4:56 But we often act as if the reality is that we are peacetime civilians. and so as a result of that we are drastically underprepared drastically under readied for what it is that we are facing the spiritual attack that is that we are facing paul wants his readers here and wants us to have a firm grasp on reality on the way things really are that's what this whole letter has been about who are you in christ who is the church in Christ, all of these sorts of things. And now he continues that, this picture of reality. And he reminds them what he's already alluded to through quite a bit of this letter. Here's the way things are. This is not peacetime. War has been declared on God and his people.

5:47 We are under attack. We are engaged in a struggle for the remaining time until Christ's return. That's the way things are, Paul says. So three quick questions to help us grasp that reality. And what he's saying here, who's the enemy? Where are we in the war? What does victory look like? Very quickly.

6:11 First, who's the enemy? Well, it's not, Paul makes clear here, other people. It is not flesh and blood. And that's really important that we grasp that to begin with, To know that those who we engage with, whose worldviews are so at odds with ours, who conflict so much with ours, that they are not our spiritual enemies. We're not to treat them as such. We're not to hate them as such. No, our enemies, as God's holy people, are these rulers, these authorities, these cosmic powers over this present darkness, these spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, all under the rule and authority of the devil, of Satan. Paul tells us that the existence of these spiritual powers of darkness in the heavenlies in a distinct realm from our own under the rule of Satan is a reality.

7:13 I know we know that we would be laughed out of lots of other rooms if we actually said this in them. But this is the reality that the Bible and Paul here declares. He, Satan, and they are working the levers. They are pulling the strings. Evil cannot be reduced down simply just to some sort of combination of psychological or sociological or educational dysfunction. Before that story of Wojciech, that podcast was looking at the Nazis going into Poland and going into Czechoslovakia. It's a horrific story. And the idea that the evil perpetrated there

8:01 just happened because of something that happened to one of those people whenever they were seven or something like that. It doesn't add up intellectually. But the problem is, without cosmic evil and a picture of that, we don't have the intellectual resources The world doesn't have the intellectual resources to actually explain the level of evil. The way things are, the Bible teaches, is that there are malevolent spiritual forces behind evils out working in the world under the authority of the evil one, under the authority of the devil. So it's important that we get that, and it's important that we know that, and we live in the light of that, but we also need to see that Paul doesn't spend a lot of time here going into detail about the devil, about these forces of evil. That's not his purpose here. His purpose is to help us see the reality and then give us the resource we need to keep standing in the face of the hostility of that reality. He wants us to know that Satan is real, yes.

9:06 He wants us to know that the spiritual powers of darkness are real, yes. But he doesn't want us to preoccupy ourselves with them. He doesn't want us to obsess about them. and many of us will know the the well-known c.s lewis quote at the beginning of screw tape letters where he actually helps us grasp this balance he says this there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils one is to disbelieve their existence the other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them we know people or that that can be the case for as well. And they themselves are equally pleased with both errors and hail a materialist, which is so much of the world that we live in, or a magician with the same delight. Old language, but you get the idea. Let's be balanced in our perspective here. And what helps us in our balance then is the answer to the next question.

10:06 Where are we in the overall war? I've talked about World War II, 1939 to 1945. In terms of this cosmic spiritual war that we are part of, where are we in the timeline of that? That's important for us to know. And passages like Colossians 2 tell us exactly where things are at. Paul says to them, When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross and having disarmed the powers and authorities, the same powers and authorities he's talking about here in Ephesians, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

11:02 Again, a common analogy that is often used from World War II again is the analogy here of D-Day. D-Day 1944 was the decisive victory in the war it made the result inevitable there was still a lot of fighting to take place for nearly a year after that as victory was completed but that was a decisive victory in the same way Christ's death on the cross has made victory inevitable we are on the winning side there's still time to be played out until Christ's return as the devil is in his last throes trying to do everything he can to knock us off our feet to reduce the glory of God to do whatever he can but victory is inevitable and we need to remember that the reality of that truth.

12:09 That is part of the reality that we need to know. And then thirdly, what does victory look like for us in these ongoing spiritual battles? Because we can get this wrong as well, but Paul is so clear here, so repetitive, and it is that word stand. He uses it four times just in this little small section. It's all about standing our ground. This isn't Onward Christian soldiers marching on the war. It's Christian soldiers stand where you are. Stand on the ground.

12:42 Stand on the freedom that Christ has already won for you at the cross. Don't abandon it. Don't retreat. Don't run away. Don't capitulate. Stand your ground. Stand firm. Stay upright.

12:58 Winning is standing. Winning is standing. And you stand today, that's victory. And you stand tomorrow, that's victory. And you stand the next day, that's victory. Remembering that that's the situation for the remaining time until Christ returns to judge the world, to bring about Satan's destruction, to make all things new. That's where we're at. So that's the way things are.

13:36 And often our eyes aren't open to that. We don't live in that reality. But if that's the way things are, then how do we stand? How do we stand? Well, in the time we have remaining, we're going to look at three connected elements of being able to stand. First of those is being alert to the devil's tactics. That's such an important thing. then to stand we need to be strengthened in the Lord and then we need to being strengthened in the Lord the expansion of that is putting on God's armor which includes praying in the spirit so let's just take these in turn let's start with that first one to stand we need to be alert to the devil's tactics we know that in any contest never mind a battle think of a football match or anything like that,

14:26 it's vital that we understand the tactics of the opponent or the enemy that we have. That's important even at that level. It's important at the level of battle or war as well. And so we need to, while not obsessing about the devil and those powers, we need to think through and we need to be aware of and alert to the tactics that he employs. And when it comes to his schemes, when it comes to his strategies, the key attacks we need to be on the lookout for are lies. The key thing we need to be on the lookout for are lies. In John 8, Jesus describes Satan in this way. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.

15:10 When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and a father of lies. Lies originate with the devil. That's his main tactic. So what sort of lies? What sort of lies does he tell? Well, he will tell anything that works. Anything that works. Anything that might push us back, knock us down.

15:45 For one, as we've already thought about, he'll seek to trip us up with his lies about himself. And especially, he will try to, as much as possible, cloak his existence even. Not quite up there with C.S. Lewis, but here's another quote. It's from Kaiser Sose and the Usual Suspects, slightly different. But he says this, nobody believed he was real. That was his power. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

16:18 He's quite happy for people to think that, or he's quite happy for people to minimize him through comical interpretations with red tights and pitchforks and horns or whatever. Doesn't bother. He'll lie about himself. He'll lie also about God, about the word of God, as he does as the serpent in the garden with Eve. Did God really say? taking a truth twisting it a little bit they're the best lies of course the most convincing and using that

17:03 to stop someone standing he'll lie about the character of God about the love of God about the grace of God he'll do all he can to deceive us into thinking that God is some sort of cosmic capricious killjoy do all he can to misrepresent him spread disinformation about him Tim Chester in his book You Can Change says this we sin because we believe the lie that we are better off without God that his rule is oppressive that we will be free without him that sin offers more than God so he'll lie about himself he'll lie about God and he'll do all he can to knock us off our feet with lies too about ourselves, about our identity, our worth, our salvation, our joy, our satisfaction. And these lies then come at us in two main forms and we'll all know all about these. They'll come in the form of an accusation or they'll come in the form of a temptation. So accusation. You did that.

18:17 You said that. You said those words to your son, to your daughter. You behaved like that to your wife, to your husband. And it won't just be stuff from that day. He'll bring up stuff from a year ago, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, if it works. He does keep records of wrongs, and he will use them against you as much as possible. How could a holy God accept you after that thing from 25 years ago? How do you think you have anything to offer him?

19:00 How do you think you have anything to offer his church? You are a fraud. You are an imposter. Realizations aimed at our hearts, they are in temptation. I know God said, it won't, but this is going to actually make you happy. You are going to be missing out if you don't. It's just you being who you are.

19:29 It's just natural. Sure, you're good in so many ways. surely you can just keep this one little thing as a sort of guilty pleasure. I'm sure nobody will find out. It won't have any impact on you. All sorts of temptations coming at our minds. Disinformation about himself, disinformation about God, disinformation about who we are and what will lead to a flourishing life. the tactics of the father of lies to stop you standing.

20:09 And that's what we need to be on the lookout for. That's what we need to be alert to. And one other small point on that, I think many of us here, and we're talking here about spiritual warfare. And I think many of us hear that term at times, and when we think spiritual warfare, we only think of big stuff. We only think of dramatic things. We only think of things that happen a couple of times or three or four times in your lifetime. Those big moments of spiritual warfare. And I'm not denying that those things don't happen.

20:42 Absolutely they do. And something of that is captured in that idea of the day of evil. Of course there's a further day of evil to come at the end of time at Christ's return. But our own do happen. But that as well, if we think like that, if we think this is only big stuff, is it possible that that could also be part of his tactics of lying? That we don't see the small stuff because we're looking for the big. We don't think of spiritual warfare being anything to do with our doom scrolling on our phone. We don't think of spiritual warfare being anything to do with the mundane life relationships that we live out with each other every day.

21:33 I wonder, is it a coincidence that Paul says all this straight after he talks about relationships between parents and children, between masters and servants, between wives and husbands, between people within the church? Because where does most destruction happen? what happens when he gets in with lies and rips apart marriages tears apart the unity of the church all of those sorts of things let's be careful not to just be looking for the big stuff but be preparing ourselves every day secondly then we need to be strengthened in the Lord if we're to stand. We need to be alert to the devil's tactics and to his schemes, yes, but we need to be strengthened in the Lord and in his mighty power. And really, I think what Paul's getting at here is that we are not to arrogantly think that we've got this in our own strength.

22:42 We're not to think, oh, I'm an experienced Christian. I know my Bible, I'll be able to do all this in my own power. As Martin Luther said, don't get too daring. Satan has had thousands of years of practice and we do not know a hundredth of what he knows. Don't delude yourself that you'll ever be able to stand in this battle on your own. I think of those words in Romans 12 here, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment. And sober judgment is acknowledging this, that trying to engage in a conflict on our own strength, well, we need to actually properly see the level of our strength. And sometimes we automatically think we're stronger than we are, but the reality is, and I'm not trying to make a joke of it, we're more like this guy.

23:40 Some people of a certain age will remember this man. Some people of a certain age don't have a clue what this advert is. But we are puny. We are weak. We are useless in the face of the spiritual attack that is coming our way on our own, in our own strength. And one of the biggest dangers to standing is delusional arrogance. We need to turn that into dependence and throw ourselves daily under the strength of the Lord and onto his power, the power that Paul's already talked about in the opening chapter of this letter. Remember this, that power is the same as what?

24:23 The mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. This is the power that is available to us, on offer to us, the power that raised Christ from the dead, the power that's already made Satan's defeat inevitable. and so what we're told to do is start to put it on put it on don't just look at it don't just think about it put it on and that's what paul's talking about here when he talks about putting on god's armor and that's our third point isaiah 59 presents us with a picture of the lord god as a warrior. It says this, he put on righteousness as his breastplate and the helmet of salvation on his head. He put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. There's no doubt this picture would have been in Paul's mind as he was writing it. And we've talked a lot over the last few weeks from this letter about imitating God, about imitating Christ. And what Paul's calling us to do then here is to imitate God, imitate Christ as a warrior and put on his armor, actively stand in God's empowering.

25:50 And you can imagine, of course, where this image came from if you remember that Paul is chained, as he's writing this, by the wrist to a Roman soldier. Now that soldier wouldn't have been wearing his full armor, but it certainly would have been an obvious metaphor for Paul to pick up. And that's what he does. He uses this imagery that his readers would have been so familiar with to help them grasp what it is they need to put on in readiness for the spiritual war that they're engaged in. And the thing about it is this, they're all really different aspects of the same thing. They're all different elements of the gospel. They're all different ways of appropriating it, of allowing the message of Christ, in the words from Colossians, to dwell in us richly and so protect us from the lies of the father of lies.

26:50 And I'm not gonna go into all of these individually. You'd be glad to know that. But I actually think that's okay because I think that that's best done in personal reflection or in conversation with one another. Because we all have different personalities. As I prayed at the beginning, we all have different weaknesses. We all have different stories, frailties, susceptibilities. And so we need to be asking ourselves individually, what sort of lies am I most susceptible to? What are the tactics that have worked on me in the past?

27:30 What are the weaknesses the evil one goes out of me? What are his common tactics with me? Are they those lies of accusation at my heart where he drags up old sin to hit us with guilt? Of being an imposter, an unrighteous fake. What then in that situation does it mean for me or you to put on the breastplate of righteousness, Put on the truth of my, our righteousness in Christ. As Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. How do we put that on? So that whenever those lies come, we have a defense to them.

28:21 Or with the way you're wired maybe, does he go after your mind more with temptations or doubts? What does it mean then to put on the helmet of salvation? Or when those fiery darts, that sudden ambush of a barrage of thoughts that we didn't even think we were capable of thinking. Or that raining down of a cumulative temptation in a particular area of our lives over and over and over again with a ferocity that we've never experienced before. Maybe in the area of greed or of anger or of lust. Just these darts coming at us. What does it look like there to take up the shield of faith, to be able to deflect the fire and the heat and extinguish the fire and the heat of those arrows that are coming our way with the truth that our life in Christ is worth far more than those temptations that are firing in.

29:33 That the promises that God has given us are far greater than the promises of these lesser things. And I think too there's something corporate in that imagery as well. you can picture the Roman soldiers with these big shields I think they were like four feet by two and a half feet but them all going up together and forming an impenetrable wall not just defending yourself as an individual but defending the whole group it's so important for us to recognize that our shields are not just for ourselves but for all of us together at the center then of this imagery is the belt of truth that is an important one to mention the belt in a roman soldier's uniform was far more than our modern belts it was the central foundational piece of kit it was actually believe it or not more like a piece of underwear than it was a piece of armor. It held you in, it held you up. It held you all together.

30:49 Other things got attached into it. And the reality is, it would have been worn every day by a Roman soldier. Wouldn't mean we know we're going to battle today. It would have been in case battle arrives. Every day in readiness, putting it on just in case. And what Paul is getting at then is that what provides us with fight readiness, what holds us up and together, what allows us to gird up our loins and fight unencumbered is truth. And of course, when the main tactics of the enemy are lies, of course, it makes sense that it's truth that we are meant to put on first, that we're actively to put it on every day. at the beginning of every day?

31:37 What does it look like for us to put on that truth in the same way as a Roman soldier would have put on his belt? Truth of the gospel. The truth of this letter. The truth of the person and the work of Jesus Christ. The way, the truth, the life. The truth that is found in Jesus as Paul talks about in chapter four. Letting that dwell on us richly. It's the truth that's found in him.

32:10 The truth of who we are in him. That's what will hold us together. That's what will hold us up. That is what will keep us standing. And so we come to the last two. Take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray on the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests, here are the two central weapons that God gives to us by his spirit. The revealed word of God, the source of all the truth that we need, the truth about our righteousness in Christ, the truth about our salvation, the truth about our peace with God, the whole gospel, the source of that is in God's revealed word. And then combined with that, praying in the Spirit at all times.

33:06 The powerful means of working that truth into our hearts and our minds day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Making his word the basis for our thinking in the seemingly small and minor little skirmishes of everyday life. So that when particular seasons of evil or temptation come, as was the case with Jesus in his encounter with Satan in the desert, that we're practiced, that we're ready, that this is something we take up every day, that we're adept at using it, and that in those fierce times we can stand the onslaught of whatever the evil one has to throw at us. Now I know, as I finish up, that could sound suspiciously like I'm saying, read your Bible more and pray more.

34:21 And I am. That's exactly what I'm saying. but read it more and pray in the spirit more with that grasp that today and with Christ you are at war that's the way things are this is not peacetime and we need to remember that attacks might well come today or tomorrow or the next day and we need to be prepared we need to be making those preparations you cannot put your armor on in the midst of a fight. We need to be putting on what God has given us. We need to be looking at ourselves with sober judgment and realizing that on our own we simply aren't strong enough to stand. And again, Satan will do all he can to stop us from putting the armor on.

35:18 He'll use whatever tactics he can. Distraction. I have no doubt he rubs his hands in this digital age at our inability to concentrate on anything for more than I don't know, two minutes, five minutes, whatever. At our doom scrolling. At our reduced attention spans. So he'll distract. He'll also try to kill you with kindness as well. You've such a busy life.

35:56 You've such a lot going on. You really don't have time to read or pray or any of that sort of stuff. You've got important stuff to do. Be kind to yourself. Don't worry about it. Or he'll tell us it makes no difference. Sure, how does reading words strengthen? them.

36:21 And in community too, he'll tell us that we will look weak if we ask for prayer. The prayer is a sign of spiritual, asking for prayer is a sign of spiritual weakness. Well, Paul flies in the face of that here. He urges them to pray for him. The apostle here says, pray also for me. It's not a sign of spiritual weakness. Whatever the devil would want to tell you, it's actually a sign of spiritual maturity. Or he'll tell us too,

37:01 yeah, going to church on Sunday, well, that's enough. Or maybe once a month or whatever. We don't really need to be deep in community. You don't really need to be deep in community. You don't need to be working out this truth in your hearts together or praying in the spirit with one another. Do everything he can to keep you away from that. Why? Because he loves an isolated target away from the formation of sheep.

37:32 Easy pickings away from everywhere else and everybody else. Away from the encouragement and the love and support of people like Tichicus, who he names here. So, let's think carefully and prayerfully and honestly about these things. Let's help each other understand what it is to put on the armor. Let's talk about our own experiences. let's teach one another how to do this let's encourage one another to do this and let's together be strengthened in the Lord and in his mighty strength putting on the armor he has given us so that we can stand together

38:35 let's pray Father, if we're being honest, the reality that Paul outlines here is stark. It is disturbing. We'd rather probably it wasn't this way, but help us to listen to your word and acknowledge your word and live in the light of your word. Help us to see the lies of the evil one coming. Help us to put on the armor that you have given us, the abundant resources for defense that you've given us. Give us the power in our lives that raised Christ from the dead. We kneel before you and ask for that sincerely. Point out to us in our lives where we are just not seeing these darts coming.

39:56 And the impact they're having on us, on our faith in you, on our relationships with one another. And Father, we pray too for those who might be here this morning who do not yet know you, who have not yet accepted Christ as their Savior and Lord. Father, help them see that in your word, they have a resource to truly understand themselves, to truly understand the depth of evil that they see in their own heart. But thankfully, and by your grace, an offer in your son of forgiveness, of freedom from slavery to this sin, and of new life in Christ. Father, strengthen us in your mighty strength, we pray.

41:06 In Jesus' name, amen.