Lord, as we come before Thee this morning, we come with praise and worship—praise on our lips and worship in our hearts for the King. Lord, nothing disarms our adversary more than the praise and worship of Your people.
And Lord, we would begin this morning with a song of triumph, praise, and worship in our hearts for this mighty One who triumphed over sin, over death, over self, over the world, and over all that stands in opposition to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.
We acknowledge Thee this morning, Lord, as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Lord, we pray as we gather that we are but vessels of dust, yet created for a great purpose in Jesus Christ.
We ask that You would anoint us, Lord, that we might hear Your Word this morning. We ask that You would anoint us in such a way that Your Word could accomplish Your work in our hearts, for which Your Word is intended for this hour, for this day, for this moment in our lives.
Lord, we look unto Thee, for we have no other one to look unto but Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. So, Lord, we ask that You bless Your Word to our hearts this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Well, as we come this morning, I have been sharing a series on spiritual warfare. This morning, we want to get into the armour that we carry as Christians.
Just interestingly enough, if you read 1 Thessalonians 2:18, you will see that Paul said, “I desired to come to the Thessalonians, but Satan hindered me.” He did not say circumstances hindered him, or that he had other things to do. In this particular situation, he said, “It was Satan who hindered me.”
So, we know from the Word of God that we do have an adversary who is active and working today. In Exodus 15:3, after the children of Israel had come through the Red Sea, they sang what is called the song of Moses, worship back to the Lord. It says there that the Lord is a man of war.
Let us turn to 1 Chronicles 12. Starting with verse 23:
And these are the numbers of the bands that were ready armed to the war,
and came to David to Hebron,
to turn the kingdom of Saul to him,
according to the word of the Lord.
Then verse 32 speaks of the children of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do. Verse 33 speaks of Zebulun:
Such as went forth to battle,
expert in war,
with all instruments of war, fifty thousand,
which could keep rank,
and were not of double heart.
Verse 38 sums up all these men of war: they could keep rank and came with a perfect heart to Hebron to make David king.
We see in the Old Testament, in this matter of warfare, David representing the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Saul is really the man of the flesh, that which is opposed to God and used by the enemy against God.
These men gathered, and there were certain characteristics that they carried. They were men of valour. They were men who were experts in the art of war—expert in using the weapons of war, expert in how to use the armour. They were men tested in battle.
And, summing it up, it says these were men who could keep rank. You know, down through the history of all the wars that you can think of, this matter of keeping rank is of such critical importance in hand-to-hand battle, when you are facing your adversary face to face.
I am not by any means that knowledgeable, but I know at Gettysburg, when those men were marching up the hill, they marched shoulder to shoulder. They were being wiped out by the Northern army with cannon and weapon fire, and they just kept marching straight on into the face of battle. They were men who could keep rank.
That was true of many armies down through the ages. Keeping rank is so critical because when one soldier breaks rank, many will break rank with him. It is absolutely critical in this matter of warfare, brothers and sisters, that we learn how to keep rank.
In other words, it is standing shoulder to shoulder with your brothers and sisters, facing our adversary and standing together as one man. Once you break rank, it is very difficult. The enemy loves for us to break rank because he can pick us off one by one.
So, it is extremely important that we learn this matter of keeping rank. But what we are really focused on this morning is the armour, the weapons of our warfare, which we must learn to use expertly in battle.
Now, that is very interesting. I have been sharing that we cannot get our focus off our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the very positive—the only positive—aspect of our life: our Lord Jesus Christ.
But we know that there are negative things which must be dealt with in our lives as Christians: the flesh, the world, and Satan. Those three things are against us. They are the dark forces, in today’s vernacular: the world, the flesh, and Satan.
In the Word of God, we learn that we have to deal with all of these. Regarding our flesh, it says, “Deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow the Lord.” When it comes to the world, it says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.”
The counter to loving the world is loving Jesus Christ. It is only our love for Him that keeps us from loving the world. Brothers and sisters, we know that the world has a great foothold in our lives, and we have to be vigilant about this matter of the world working in our lives as well.
We know that the self-life is so strong. It is something that we always have to be presenting to our Lord Jesus Christ, allowing it to go to the cross in our lives. So, we have these negative things with which we have to deal, and the Word of God wants us to be aware of them.
One of the things we need to be aware of is Satan and his forces because, frankly, through the years he has been able to deceive most of the world—even to the point that most of the world does not really believe there is such a thing as Satan.
Even Christians struggle with it. We go through our lives and account for many things that happen to us personally as merely unfortunate circumstances. When we begin to look behind them, we may find that, indeed, there is something greater. There is a force behind this thing, and it is our adversary, Satan.
The Lord Jesus does not want us to be ignorant of what we have to stand against in this life. We are always to be for Him and to keep Him in focus. As I shared last week, Christ is the great subject of God. Amen. It is Jesus Christ. That is what matters.
But we must know what we have to stand against in Jesus Christ. The Lord has allowed all these things that we might learn to go to Him, be driven to our Lord Jesus Christ, learn to depend on Him, and learn to depend on His life and His strength.
These opposing forces that we face in our lives are designed to get the flesh out, to get the world out, and to resist our adversary, so that Christ can be all and in all in our lives. Christ has a marvellous plan, brothers and sisters, and He has called us to overcome all that is negative and to pursue all that is positive in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.
When the children of Israel were called to go into the promised land, they were to take the promised land. Our promised land is Jesus Christ. It is something that you must actively pursue in your life. It is not something that you just fall into because you have become a Christian. You have to be active in your pursuit of Jesus Christ.
But when they went into the land, the Canaanites were in the land. That represents the enemy, Satan. The land had to be dispossessed from the enemy’s hands and returned to God. We may get into more of that in some future subject, but that is an overview of what we are against.
Last week I shared something about the four-A plan as a matter of our protection from the enemy: alarmed, armoured, armed, and authoritative prayer, as we find in Ephesians 6:14.
Remember, as we get into this matter of the armour, Jesus Christ is your armour. It is the effectual working of Christ in your life that armours you. Never forget that.
I remember our brother from Houston. He is Hispanic, and he was in a Hispanic gang in Houston as a youth. He said he was sitting on the steps of his house one day with a scowl on his face. In the gang, you develop a certain posture and a certain scowl. They have their own little facial features that they develop.
He was sitting there angry at the world, angry at all that was around him and at what he lived in. He said a Catholic priest walked by and said, “Son, Jesus is your esquina.”
I do not know if I pronounce it correctly, but it is esquina. He was awestruck that this man of God was talking about his esquina, because in the gang, your esquina was a man assigned to you to look over you, teach you the art of war, teach you how to fight, protect you in a fight, and, if necessary, give his life for you in that gang.
You were really protected. Your esquina was that special one assigned to take care of you, watch over you, and look out for you in battle. If necessary, as I said, he would lay down his life to protect you.
He was awestruck that this man of God would say, “Jesus is your esquina.” He said, “I had to know who this Jesus was.” Praise the Lord, the priest shared with him who Jesus was—his esquina.
I share that testimony of our brother because he was touched by the Lord Jesus Christ that day to realise that he had an esquina, a corner man. That is what it means: the corner man.
For the men—and perhaps some of the ladies—in the group, a corner man refers to boxing. In a boxing match, you always have a corner man in the corner. After you get beat up for a while and come back at the end of the round, you sit in your corner, and your corner man begins to take care of your cuts and bruises.
He begins to say, “Look, you have to step to the left when he throws that right hook. You cannot stand in front of it.” He is the one advising you in the battle you are facing. He is the corner man.
Praise the Lord, our brother found his esquina, his corner man. Jesus Christ is truly our armour, and we need always to keep that in mind as we go through these truths about the armour of God.
Let us turn to Ephesians 6:14:
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth.
The girdle, or belt, is having your loins girded about with truth. If you read that Scripture and look into the word there, it does not mean merely doctrinal truth; it means truth made real in your life.
Not just holding on to doctrines—that is not your defence in battle. It is experiencing the truth, knowing the truth of what you see and hear. There is truth that we need to experience in our Lord Jesus Christ.
For example, He is the Saviour of the world. He is the truth, and He is the Saviour. In other words, He is everyone’s Saviour because He has already paid the price at Calvary’s cross. That is true. That is doctrinal truth.
But one day, somehow, the Holy Spirit touched our hearts in such a way that we believed it. We believed this thing that we had heard perhaps all our lives, perhaps having grown up in the church—or perhaps we had never heard it before.
But somehow, the truth touched our hearts and we accepted the truth. We accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. At that moment, what was true because of the work of Calvary became true personally in your life.
That is the kind of truth that girds up our lives. That is the belt. It is the truth that has been made real in you. Now, you need to know about the truth in order for it to be made real, so I am not saying that we should ignore doctrine at all.
But at some point in our lives, these doctrines have to become truth. To me, truth is reality. There is a reality, and we need to be prepared for warfare.
I was thinking of some truths. In Galatians 2:20, it says that we have been crucified with Christ. I said that one of our great enemies is the flesh—the flesh, the world, and Satan.
Well, the flesh has been dealt with on the cross of Calvary. As far as our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned, when He went to Calvary, He took the old man to Calvary with Him. He said, “I have no use for the old man. In fact, he is no use to Me, regardless of how much energy he has, how much doctrine he holds, or how many good works he may perform.”
“He is no use to Me. I need a new man.” So He takes the old man away that He might put a new man in you. Crucified with Christ—it is the truth in Christ.
But one day, the reality of our crucifixion with Christ has to become real to us. We know that somehow, fundamentally, God has done a tremendous thing in our lives, and we have been crucified with Him. That is our doctrinal position, but it also has to become reality in our lives, brothers and sisters.
That is why we can deny ourselves. Without what Christ has done, there is no way you could deny yourself.
Colossians 2:12 says that we have been raised with Christ. Not only must the old be put away, but we must have a new man. In resurrection, we are raised up as a new person in Jesus Christ.
So, in Christ, we find that we have been crucified with Him. In Christ, we find that we have been raised with Him as a new person in Jesus Christ. We spend so much of our time dealing with the old stuff when Christ has provided a new person.
That is why He says, “Put off the things concerning the old man, and put on the new man.” It is an act of will, as we talked about last week. “Lord, thank God You have done away with the old, and I take my place there. Lord Jesus, I agree with You.”
You may say, “Well, Jerry, my experience does not correlate with the truth.” But you stand in the truth, and the truth will stand for you. We need to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to believe in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what our belt is.
In Ephesians 2:6, it says that we have been raised up with Christ into a new position, ascended with Him into a new position, seated with Him in the heavenly places.
Interestingly enough, you cannot fight spiritual warfare from this earth. God has to get us to the place where we are above the situation looking down, as opposed to being under it looking up.
When we are under it looking up, we need to pray, “Lord, help me. Lord, save me.” But He has made provision in Jesus Christ. He says that we have been ascended with Him and are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. That is where spiritual warfare takes place, brother.
That is why our position is so critical in spiritual warfare. If we are fighting to win the battle, we have already lost. If you are fighting to win the battle, you have lost. The battle has been won.
Once you get in that place of authority, seated with Christ in the heavenlies, then you see that the victory has already been won. That is what is declared from the throne: Christ’s victory.
It is a different kind of warfare. We are seated with Him. In other words, there is authority because we are in our right place with Jesus Christ. If we are defeated in our lives, then we are obviously, in practical reality, not seated with Him in the heavenlies. It is very difficult then to enter into spiritual warfare.
So, our position in Christ is very critical to us, and it is the belt to our spiritual life.
In thinking of spiritual authority, being seated with Christ, and prayer, as we begin to pray and come to the place where we know God’s will for a situation, we know it is time to act. Then we can speak an authoritative word in that particular situation.
In Isaiah 45:11, the Lord says, “Command ye Me.” That is authoritative prayer. It comes only from knowing the will of God, being seated with Him in heavenly places, knowing His authority, and being able to implement His authority on this earth.
So, we need that belt. It is a preparation for our battle.
One of the best illustrations of what I am trying to share is when the people of Israel went across the Jordan River to enter into the promised land.
What did they face? When they came to the Jordan River, it was full. It was a raging river at that time, and it represented spiritual death. It was what separated them from Christ.
The priests came and stood at the edge of the water with the ark on their shoulders. When they stepped into the water, the waters parted. That is tremendously significant. What does it mean? It means that they willingly took the place of death.
The Word of God says that we are crucified with Him. The Word of God says that if we will take the place of death, we will bring life to others. That was their priestly ministry.
What were they doing? They were holding the ark on their shoulders. It was the presence of the ark that made the difference there, but it was the priests’ responsibility to hold up Christ in that situation.
In the face of overwhelming spiritual power, they stood in the Jordan River without fear. As they stood there in faith, the river parted and the rest of the children of Israel could pass over. These were priests, but these were God’s warriors. That is the point I am making this morning: preparation for battle.
After they passed through, the Lord told them to take twelve stones out of the midst of the river and set them up. When the children of Israel asked about those stones, they could be told, “The Lord delivered us through the Jordan River.”
Then they had to take twelve stones and put them back in the river. When the priests came through, the waters returned. What is that? It is the exchange life—exchanging the old for the new.
They could not truly possess their possessions in Christ or enter into spiritual warfare until they had their belt on. This belt is truth, and the truth is that they had to live by an exchange life.
We as Christians often think, or perhaps if we are not Christians, that all we need are some adjustments in our lives. “All I need to do is overcome this one sin,” or, “All I need to do is correct this one situation.” But the Lord says, “No, I am after an exchange life.”
After that, the Lord brought them to Gilgal, before they came to Jericho. At Gilgal, He commanded that all the males be circumcised. What was that? The cutting off of the flesh.
That was the practical application of what happened with those stones being put in and taken out of the river. In other words, it was real to them: the cutting off of the flesh, the cutting off of the old man in your life.
That is the belt you need. That is the preparation we need for spiritual warfare. As long as the old man is very active in our lives, brothers and sisters, and as long as we allow our flesh, our own wills, wants, and desires to prevail in our lives, then the enemy has his foothold—his beachhead.
There is a sense in which, throughout all our lives, we are dealing with the flesh, the world, and Satan. I am not proposing that before there can be any spiritual warfare in your life, or any hope of overcoming, you have to be totally dealt with in this matter of the flesh and the world. That is not true.
But there has to be a fundamental event or action in your life that has made this truth real to you, so that when you face your enemy, you can remove the ground he has in you by taking up the cross.
“Lord, I am in a difficult situation. I know the enemy is at work, and Lord, I want You to remove the ground in me that he has, that I might fight the fight.” All that ground was removed as a result of Calvary’s cross. That is where the truth is made real in your lives, brothers and sisters.
This matter of truth is absolutely necessary for the Christian in spiritual warfare. You may say, “Well, Jerry, I do not think there is any hope for me.” The Lord has great hope for you. He never gives up.
Our sister read the verse this morning:
Neither principalities, nor powers,
nor any other evil force,
can separate me from the love of Christ.
And it goes on to say, “Neither life nor death.” Brothers and sisters, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. Even our failures, though they slow down and stall the active work of Christ in our lives, can never stop the Lord. He is dedicated to bringing you to completion, to maturity.
What you need to know today is that Jesus Christ stood in that Jordan River for you at Calvary’s cross. All the spiritual forces of wickedness were aligned against the Lord Jesus Christ, because they knew that if they could take our Lord Jesus out, we were hopelessly lost forever.
They were all aligned against Him, and He stood there in the midst of death for you and me. He took death on. It says that He even became sin, that God’s wrath might fall upon Him rather than us. He took that place for you and me.
That victory has been given to you and me today because He was our High Priest, standing in the Jordan River at the cross of Calvary. I hope you can see those two connections.
He has done a tremendous work, and it is true. It is real. But that truth and reality has to become your experience in Jesus Christ so that the truth might be real and we might have a girdle, a belt of truth.
Jesus said:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
It is not merely truth about you that sets you free. Once you learn the truth about yourself, it can discourage you. It says, “I am guilty.” In a sense, we do need to know the truth about ourselves—that we are unable—but that does not set us free.
It is not until we come face to face with Jesus Christ that we are set free in any situation in our lives. He is the truth that sets us free.
At Calvary He set you free forever, yet as we work these truths out in our lives, we find ourselves in bondage to different things. Then, one day, in that particular situation, somehow we meet the Lord in the midst of it and we are set free.
We are set free because at Calvary’s cross every enemy, every sin, everything was dealt with right there. He has that capability. We need this belt of truth.
The Lord Jesus said that He is the bread of life. Has that been made real to you? Has He become your life? He says, “I am the way.” Has He become the way for your life?
The promised land is ours, but we have to apprehend it.
Let us continue in Ephesians 6:14:
Having your loins girded with truth,
and having on the breastplate of righteousness.
The breastplate protects an extremely vital organ: your heart. What our Lord is getting at here is that, after all, it is a heart issue.
Guard your heart above all things,
for out of it are the issues of life.
The breastplate of righteousness: we know that when we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, we were unacceptable. What He did was say, “You will never be righteous in yourselves. I am going to give you a robe of righteousness so that when you stand before the Father, what He will see is this robe of righteousness upon you.”
“It is a gift from Me, that you might enter the Holy of Holies, that you might enter before God.” It is His gift. We have a righteousness, brothers and sisters, that can never be taken from us. It is in heaven.
But this righteousness here is a practical righteousness. It has to be worked out in our lives. We do have a robe of righteousness, but Philippians 1:11 says that we are to be filled with the fruits of righteousness.
In Revelation 19:8, it says that the saints had on fine linen, garments of fine linen, which is the righteousnesses of the saints. In other words, we have the righteous life of Christ in us.
Hopefully, as we go through our lives, that righteous life begins to prevail and is manifested in us. Righteousness is manifested very practically in your life.
We thank God that we have this robe of righteousness because we are always flawed in some way. But the queen who will be the bride of the Lamb has two garments. One is the robe of righteousness, and the other is this needlework of fine linen—the righteousness that has been generated out of her own life through her life with Jesus Christ.
So, brothers and sisters, once again, it is a heart issue. When we speak of righteousness, let us make it very simple: it means being right with God.
If our hearts are right with God, we can be bold in battle. But, brothers and sisters, if there is something in our heart that is not dealt with, it is very difficult. It is difficult to worship. It is difficult to pray. It is almost impossible to enter into spiritual warfare because we have this issue with the Lord.
We are not right with Him in our hearts. We have to have our hearts right with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The heart and the conscience are very closely related to one another as spiritual organs. We can be fearless and strong if our consciences are clear, but we all know how difficult it is when our conscience is wounded in some way.
It is difficult to do anything—to pray, to worship. The first thing we want to do is get away from all our brothers and sisters. When we get near them and touch Christ in them, we know there is a wall there because there is a controversy in our heart with the Lord.
Your controversy may not be with your brother or sister at all. It might be with the Lord. But because you are touching the life of Christ in your brother and sister, a wall develops. We need to have a good conscience before the Lord.
In Revelation 12, it says that they overcame the accuser of the brethren by the blood of the Lamb.
Our enemy is always accusing us before God. When you do something wrong, accusations come at you: “You have done wrong. You have done wrong.” However, the Holy Spirit pricks your conscience and says, “Your heart is not right before Me.” There is a difference.
When the enemy accuses you, it is as if it is coming from the outside. It is a heavy force that comes against you, and you are under it. You cannot pray or do anything else.
But when the Holy Spirit convicts you, it is from the inside. As you begin to respond to that conviction and respond to the Lord, your spirit is lifted. The heaviness lifts.
We need to know the difference in this warfare. There are times when we can be right with the Lord. We have responded to the Holy Spirit pricking our conscience, we have made things right with the Lord, and the enemy says, “No, you are not right with the Lord yet. You need to do a little more penance in your life. You need to do a little more groaning and grieving.”
We do this, do we not? Come on—I am not the only one who does this. Self-flagellation. We feel as though we have to do it in order to gain entrance back to the Lord.
That is foreign to our Lord—totally foreign. Why? Because we are denying the blood of Jesus Christ at that point. We are denying that His blood has taken care of those sins. We are denying the power of the blood.
Therefore, the accusations only get stronger and stronger, heavier and heavier. You cannot break out until one day you come to the realisation that the blood of the Lamb avails for all sins, and that once you confess them to the Lord Jesus Christ, they are gone.
Out of sight—not only out of sight, but they just do not exist anymore. That is how you can be clean, brothers and sisters. Our sins may be as scarlet, but they can be white as snow.
We keep having this remembrance of sin, but God wipes it out and He does not remember it. God knows all things, but it is gone.
So, brothers and sisters, we need to have confidence in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in this matter of our conscience, or the enemy will continue to pound you.
One of the enemy’s greatest tricks is to compel you to confess when you should not be confessing. Now, let me help you a little here, because I cannot afford to be misunderstood.
I said that the enemy comes as an outside oppressor. There are times in our lives when we may do something, and we feel compelled to confess this thing openly before everybody or before somebody. There is this compelling force: “You have to confess that. You have to confess.”
Often, what the enemy is trying to do is get you to confess something outwardly and openly that he wants to keep before others. Not everything should be openly confessed.
The Word of God says that we should confess our sins to one another that we might be healed. There is a place for that. But if you feel as though you are being compelled to confess something outwardly and openly, do not do it.
All the enemy is trying to do is get you to place something before a brother or sister, or a group of brothers and sisters, that will always be an attack on the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life. From that point on, whenever they come to you, all that may come to their mind is the thing you have confessed.
Now, there are times when we need to confess to one another. Usually it is because of offences we have had with one another. If you have sinned against your brother, you need to go and confess it to him. If you sinned publicly and everybody knows, then a public confession is good.
But to be compelled to confess is meant to damage your life, so that the enemy always has his weapon against you. Beware of being compelled.
God does not compel. He convicts through the Holy Spirit. That conviction is from the inside. I have never known the Lord’s conviction to be heavy—pointed and sharp, but not like a bludgeon.
Our adversary wants to keep you under a cloud of accusation that you can never escape. Sometimes there are serious sins in our lives that we have committed, and we just want to unload them.
It is right, under conviction, to take those things to the Lord and have Him deal with them. They are gone forever by the blood of the Lamb. But your faith and trust must be in the blood of the Lamb, not in your confession.
Sometimes we feel, “If I just confess this thing, I can get it off my chest.” Well, brothers and sisters, go back to the Lord Jesus Christ. Say, “I only want the conviction of the Holy Spirit,” and respond to that. Take up the blood of the Lamb. Accept the work of the cross for that situation, and you will be set free in your spirit.
Our God is different from us as men. I think, as men, we would like to beat things out of one another. You can laugh. But our Lord Jesus is always very gentle.
He does not want to dwell on sin, neither does He want you to be under the trap of sin. That is why the Holy Spirit convicts you. But neither does He want you to be under this load of accusation.
If you have confessed something honestly before the Lord and asked Him to forgive you, brothers and sisters, please have enough faith to believe that He has forgiven you. The enemy will say, “He has not forgiven you. You really have not repented,” particularly if you fall into that sin again.
The enemy says, “I told you. You did not repent last time, because if you had repented, you would never have done it again.” Unfortunately, we do sometimes sin the same sin many times. I am not advocating that we should, because the Lord died to set us free from sin and from the power of sin.
We need to say, “Lord, I need You to take that ground out of my life. I have this weakness in my life, and I need to be delivered from that weakness. I trust You to do it.” That is the Lord’s way.
May the Lord touch our hearts: conviction, not compulsion.
One other point: do not accept the enemy’s accusations, even when they are right. You only have to deal with the Lord.
When it comes to your sins, you have only one ground on which to stand, and that is Calvary. The Lord has died for your sins. He can cleanse you, and He will, because He has already died for that sin.
There is no sin—I am telling you, there is no sin that we have committed that the Lord will not forgive you for.
There are times when we sin in our lives and afterward the Lord, under His discerning eye, disciplines us in different ways. But His discipline is not punishment as we would normally think of it.
He disciplines us sometimes because of our sin, but it is to deliver us from falling into that sin in the future. I am not saying the Lord just forgives and forgets. He does forgive and forget, but sometimes He must discipline us so that we will not fall into that sin again.
Our Lord is always merciful. Please, brothers and sisters, take it to the Lord. Get on the ground of the blood. Do not continue to accept the accusation of your enemy.
As long as you let him, he will do it. As long as you open that door and say, “Oh yes, you are right”—no, I do not care if he is right. He has no right or part in your life.
You belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and to Him alone. Thank God.
Brothers and sisters, do not let the enemy do it to you. He will destroy you if he can, and he will destroy you with simple accusations: “You are wrong. You will never be right. You are always this way. You will never be able.”
Brothers and sisters, we are unable, but He is able. Look off unto Jesus. Accept the work of Calvary’s cross for your life. It is a tremendous work, and we should not belittle that work by our lack of faith in what He has done.
We always run out of time. Let us go on to Ephesians 6:15:
And having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
I have heard many different thoughts on this matter of the preparation of the gospel of peace. I realise it is talking about the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, but this really deals with our walk in the Lord Jesus Christ because it is our shoes.
It is really saying, “Get some shoes on your feet.” Actually, if you are in combat, you want combat boots. You do not want just tennis shoes.
Now, tennis shoes are wonderful things. They have gone from ten dollars a pair to one hundred and thirty dollars a pair in my lifetime. We used to have three cars: Fords, Chevys, and Plymouths. They had two colours: black and white. Look how complicated our lives have become. We have all these options.
I only say that to say, brothers and sisters, God wants us to live a peaceful life in our world. We are so complicated, and we live in an extremely complicated world.
This gospel of peace—the Lord Jesus is God’s peace. In Colossians 3:15, it says:
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts.
I believe this has much to do with our walk. Let the peace of God rule in your heart. It is another way of saying that your heart has to be right with the Lord. In your daily walk, you know that your heart is right when your heart is at peace.
This matter of the Lord’s peace ruling in your heart is extremely important. I do not mean that you are at ease, as though nothing is going wrong for the moment.
There may be many things going wrong. Circumstances may indeed be against you, and you may be in the middle of the greatest warfare of your life, but the peace of God is there in your walk. In other words, there is peace in your heart.
You can be at peace in the midst of the most tremendous warfare. It is amazing, and it is only true in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, as you walk in your daily life, if you are approaching certain situations, decisions you have to make, and matters you have to deal with, if you cannot come to peace in your heart, the general rule is: do not do it until there is peace in your heart.
Often our souls get so stirred up over things we want to do that it is hard to let that still, small voice speak to us. But we do have to calm our souls. It is important in spiritual warfare.
We need to come to the Lord and say, “Okay, Lord, I need to give this thing to You. This is what I want, and I want it so badly I cannot stand it. But Lord, I have to get to the place where I know whether it is Your will.”
Somehow, in that working, the peace of God comes and you know what you need to do. Our daily walk needs to be ruled by the peace of God in our hearts.
In James 3:17, it says that the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable. In other words, if it is God’s wisdom coming to you in whatever situation you are in, in whatever battle of warfare you may be facing, then the action He wants you to take will be peaceable in your heart.
You just know, “That is the Lord. That is what the Lord means.” Then it says that it is gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy, full of good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
This matter of peaceableness—the wisdom of God—is so critical in the great warfare we are in, as we are assailed by our own flesh, assailed by the world, and assailed by Satan. This daily walk in peace is critical.
Peace comes from full dependence and confidence in Him as we walk in His will. You can be in an awful situation, as some of us may be even this hour, yet if we simply say, “Lord, I trust You in this. I am not going to be upset because that is counterproductive. I trust You.”
“Lord, I believe in You. I believe You are my Lord. I believe You are going to take care of me. Even though I may have to suffer in this thing, I still believe You are taking care of me.”
Job said:
Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.
I do not know, brothers and sisters, if I had been in Job’s situation, how trusting I would have been. But he did. He trusted the Lord. Full trust and dependence—that is what brings peace to our hearts.
Interestingly enough, in Romans 16:20, it says:
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.
The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. I said, “Lord, those two do not seem to go together, do they?” The God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly.
That is a great truth, brothers and sisters, which we sometimes need to declare in our spiritual warfare with the enemy. We know that Satan has already been bruised, but the Lord desires that he be bruised and brought under our feet as well in these situations.
But it is the God of peace. The Lord’s warfare is so different. We think of blood flying everywhere. I saw the movie Gladiator, and there was a lot of activity and action. There was no peace there.
But let us think about the battle of Jericho.
You remember the battle of Jericho. We learned about it as children. Did the Lord rush at the city with burning oil, rocks, spears, and arrows, trying to assault the wall of Jericho? No.
This amazing thing happened. The Lord said, “Here is what we are going to do. I want you all to line up, and we are going to march around Jericho. You are not going to say a word.”
That was probably one of the most difficult things that happened to God’s people. I do not know how large Jericho was, but they were to march all the way around Jericho without uttering a sound.
The ark was carried by the priests, and they blew seven trumpets. That was the only sound—the sound of the trumpets. What were the trumpets doing? They were announcing the presence of the ark around the stronghold of Jericho.
Brothers and sisters, it is the God of peace. The people said not a word. The only thing that could be heard was the trumpets announcing the presence of the ark, the presence of the Lord in that stronghold.
That is all that could be heard. You see football players banging their helmets against lockers and doing all these things to get revved up for battle. Here were the people of God just walking around very quietly, listening to the ram’s horns announcing that the Lord was there.
The Lord was surrounding the stronghold of Jericho. For six days they marched around in silence.
On the seventh day, they marched around seven times. They blew the horns again, the people shouted a shout of victory, the walls fell, and they went in and took Jericho.
Brothers and sisters, it is the God of peace. Often our souls are so stirred up in our battles that the God of peace is not working. We need to settle down. Be quiet. Be still before the Lord Jesus Christ.
Listen to the ram’s horn and say, “Lord, it is Your victory that is going to pull down this stronghold, whatever it may be.” It may be something in you. It may be something in your husband or wife, your children, your work situation, the church, or whatever.
There may be a stronghold that the enemy has built up, and you know that is what it is. How do you deal with it? You announce the victory of Jesus. You announce His presence.
“Jesus, I am bringing You into this situation. Lord, You are all that matters. You are the victor. You defeated the enemy at Calvary, and he can never regain his victory. That is the victory I announce here.”
As you begin to pray and lift the situation before the Lord, what happens? For six days they marched in complete silence. What was happening in their hearts? Faith was beginning to build.
Faith grows. It is not merely a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Faith was growing in their hearts. As you pray about a situation, the Lord may give you more and more light, teach you how to pray in certain ways, and give you more avenues of prayer.
Then one day, you know it is time to shout the victory of the Lord. Faith has been built to the point where you know, “This is God’s will. This is the hour. This is the time. His victory is here, and I announce the victory of Jesus.”
Then the stronghold falls. The God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Brothers and sisters, this is the way we need to handle so many things in our lives as Christians. It is the God of peace who gives the victory.
His ways of warfare are so much different from man’s ways. But you need to pray. As we pray, as we lift up Jesus in the situation, He begins to build faith in your heart.
Then one day the victory is there, and all you have to do is declare it, and the walls come down. I have seen some walls come down brick by brick, and then just fall flat. But the Lord begins to work as you begin to pray.
I want you to know that your prayers are not in vain. He listens to prayer, and we will talk more about that later.
Well, I think we should end there for today. Next time we will talk about the shield of faith and prayer.
Brothers and sisters, as I shared in the beginning: the flesh, the world, and Satan. May the Lord’s victory be prevalent in our lives today. May our hearts be focused on Him.
May we learn to be priests, holding the ark and blowing the ram’s horns; standing in the place of death for our brothers and sisters, as the priests did in the Jordan River.
Death worketh in us, but life in you.
That is what Paul says. May we be willing to stand in battle. A few weeks ago, I think John shared from Nehemiah:
Fight for your brethren,
your sons and your daughters,
your wives and your houses.
They held the sword in one hand and built the wall with the other. They never stopped. They kept on building, but they were aware that they had an adversary.
Brothers and sisters, I believe as we begin to put on this armour in our lives—the truth, the belt, the ground that Jesus Christ laid at Calvary’s cross; the breastplate of righteousness, our hearts being right with God; our conscience being clear because we have taken the appropriate ground of the blood and refused the accusation of the enemy—
—and the gospel of peace, our feet shod in our daily walk with the peace of God ruling our hearts. Brothers and sisters, even in warfare, may we be able to wage a peaceful war in the sense that it is Jesus Christ who matters. That is where the victory is, and that is our announcement.
May the Lord encourage us that He is doing a great work in you individually and in us corporately. He uses the world, He uses our flesh, and He uses the enemy to bring us to Christ, to make Him our whole and total resource.
Oh, He is a wonderful God.
Lord, we just come to Thee this morning. We worship and praise Thee for this armour that has been provided. Lord, we want actively to take up this armour. Lord Jesus, we want to be aware of what You are doing.
Lord, we want to stand with You, that Your will might be done. We want to be those who can stand in the place of death, that others might be set free.
Lord, we want to be those who are warriors, who can march silently around the walls of these strongholds until they crumble. Lord Jesus, we look to Thee.
Oh Lord, You are the great God. We want to possess Jesus Christ. That is our goal. In Jesus’ name, amen.