Could we please, this evening, turn to the letter to the Ephesians? Again, as our brother read from this morning, from Ephesians 6. We want to read verses 10 through 20.
We begin then reading in Ephesians 6:10:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints,
and on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
But we unite our hearts together and ask the Lord for His help this evening.
Lord, again, our hearts are overflowing this evening with much thanksgiving to You. Lord, if we left now, we would have to say it has been a good time to be together with one another, but to be together in Your presence.
We thank You for what You have already spoken, for what You have done in our lives. But, Lord, we are not here for ourselves. We are here because we believe there is something that You are accomplishing in terms of Your eternal purpose.
And so we just ask You tonight that, as we continue in Your presence, Your Holy Spirit would once again take Your written Word and the spoken word and make it a living word to each one of our hearts. Lord, You know better than we how much we need to be prepared for this battle of which we are a part.
So we are asking tonight, as we are before You and in Your Word, that You would do the work that would better prepare us for the days and weeks and months ahead. Lord, we bless You. We just trust ourselves fully to You.
Lord, we acknowledge before You that without You we can do nothing, for only You have the words of eternal life. No man has them. But, Lord, we choose tonight to put ourselves in a place of dependence upon You, that You would take spoken words and use them to speak to our own hearts.
And we would ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Before we actually get into these verses in Ephesians, I would like to mention a couple of things. First of all, I think all of you, if you have given any thought at all to this matter of spiritual warfare, realize the severity of the matter. This is a very, very important issue.
It is not a coincidence, as we have already discovered, that this matter is before us during this weekend. It was put on the hearts of various ones back a year ago. So we can see how timely, severe, and important it is.
When you begin to read the Scriptures, what you discover is that this is a very big topic. There is no way that we can hope to adequately cover all that needs to be covered in this matter of spiritual warfare.
Yet we have to submit to the fact that the Lord has put us together for these couple of days, and He wants somehow to speak things to us. Maybe, first of all, to stir our hearts up in terms of interest in this matter. Maybe this has not been uppermost in our thinking and concern, both individually and as assemblies of the Lord’s people.
So maybe this is a way in which our hearts will be stirred, while also introducing us to a very, very important topic.
Now, by way of encouragement, our brother mentioned this afternoon that there are a couple of books available by our brother T. Austin-Sparks, entitled Our Warfare and In Touch with the Throne.
If somehow you find it in your heart that you want to go further in this matter, I would encourage you to get those books. We are not in the practice of mentioning books, but since this is such an important issue, I would encourage you to give some thought to getting them. If there are not any copies left, order them on your own.
The Lord willing, tomorrow evening we will have some thoughts concerning the matter of prayer, as far as spiritual warfare is concerned. Perhaps at that time we can mention a couple of other books that may be helpful along those lines. But I would encourage you to get these books, read them, meditate on them, and may the Lord use them to further equip us for this hour that we are presently in.
As our brother mentioned this morning, there is something behind this matter of spiritual warfare that is of utmost importance. I would like us to begin tonight by looking at Psalm 2. I think here we can get a clear picture of what is really involved when we begin to fellowship about spiritual warfare.
Psalm 2, beginning at the very beginning:
Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying,
Let us break their bonds asunder,
And cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet I have set My king
Upon My holy hill of Zion.
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Now therefore be wise, O ye kings:
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way,
For His wrath will soon be kindled.
Blessed are all they that take refuge in Him.
As I mentioned, we do not have time to delve into much of what is here. But I think it does put in perspective for us the issue at stake. Why is there a spiritual battle being waged?
As I understand it, it is over one decision that was made by God Himself: the decision to make His Son, the Anointed One, King over the universe. This decision has been challenged.
What we heard this morning helps us understand some of the dynamic involved when this decision—to make God the Son the sovereign Ruler of the universe—was challenged by none other than Lucifer, an archangel. This resulted in God’s judgment upon him, upon a third of the angels, and upon the sphere of his leadership. The earth has come under that judgment.
My brothers and sisters, I hope that at some point in your meditating before the Lord you have gotten clear about our God. As our brother mentioned this morning, our God could not create an imperfect universe.
You do not have to look very far to see that the world in which you and I live is imperfect. We are imperfect. So something tragic has happened. Some kind of catastrophe has entered in and taken that which was created perfectly and made it imperfect.
Not only can our God not create anything imperfect, but He cannot rest while there is imperfection, because of Who He is. My brothers and sisters, He is an eternal perfectionist. I hope you are glad that He is. Are you glad that He is?
Would you like to remain the way you are tonight? I hope not. But He is a perfectionist. You know what He has determined in terms of us personally? According to Romans 8, He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. What does that mean? It means perfection.
When we talk about His universe, God cannot rest until His universe perfectly displays the beauty that is found in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As best I have been able to discover in reading the Scriptures, from the Bible’s perspective all of God’s efforts are set forth in the restoring of this planet upon which you and I are presently living. As far as we know, there are no other human beings on any other planet, even though there are those who would try to tell us otherwise.
The Bible seems to focus its attention on this planet. It does not say in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the universe.” That is true, but actually what it says is, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
For some of you who know a little about astronomy—you realize, and I know nothing—that the earth is a very, very small planet by comparison. Why is it that God’s focus is on this little speck of dust in His massive universe? Because it is out of harmony with Himself and with His will.
He has made a decision that His own Son would be the One through Whom, it seems to us, ultimately everything would be reconciled unto Himself—the whole created order.
When our Lord Jesus was there on the cross, experiencing death on the cross, it was for forgiveness of our sins, hallelujah. But it was not just for forgiveness of our sins. God was reconciling everything to Himself through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
So He has made His Son to be in this position. He has decided, “I have installed My King upon My holy mountain,” in a position of absolute rulership and sovereignty over God’s universe.
It seems that Satan would not accept this decision, and so he has become God’s adversary. This seems to be the reason why there is a spiritual conflict taking place.
What we see are kingdoms in conflict: the kingdom of darkness, ruled over by God’s archenemy, Satan, and the kingdom of God. Ultimately, the conflict is over these two matters.
God will not rest until His kingdom is completely displayed in His universe. When we look at these verses in Ephesians 6, we need to understand that we are involved in something bigger than our personal salvation.
Preachers have bad habits. One of the bad habits they have is saying “finally” and not meaning it. They say “finally,” and then they go on for an hour.
But you will notice here in Ephesians 6:10, Paul says, “Finally, my brethren.” Now, it is not that kind of a “finally.” The “finally” that Paul seems to have in his heart brings everything to its proper focus.
Everything that Paul has written up to this point, he is now going to make an additional application of. In chapter 4, he has made applications with “therefore” and “therefore.” But here he seems to say that all of this is cast in a bigger picture.
We are involved in something bigger than our personal salvation. It is bigger than just having joy and happiness in our family lives. All of this is included, but there is something bigger. He wants us to understand that we have been brought into this battle.
As to the degree we will be involved in the battle, it depends on what has happened in our lives. But the reality is that you and I, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, have been born into this battle.
You can get into a battle in a number of different ways. You can volunteer. When I joined the United States Navy in 1955, I volunteered. Sometimes you get drafted. There is an emergency situation, and they need a lot of people to go to war.
But in this battle, you were born into it. You are a part of it. It is in Paul’s heart that every one of us would find an appropriate way for us to be a part of this battle, so that the battle can be completed and everything can be brought to a place of fullness. You and I have a part to play in all of this.
In Ephesians 6:13 there is a little phrase that caught my attention: “having done everything.” Some translations say, “having done all.” Paul’s encouragement seems to be for us to realize that there are things that you and I, as believers in the Lord Jesus, need to do.
We need to be diligent in doing them. They need to be done in a complete fashion. This is something of great significance. So he says, “having done everything.”
We have already seen that we have been born into this battle. The battle has to do with two kingdoms: a kingdom of darkness and a kingdom of light, or the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
Originally, we were part of a domain over which Satan is the ruler. He is not sovereign in the absolute sense, but he is the ruler over that domain. When you and I were born naturally, we were born into that kingdom.
But Paul tells us in Colossians 1:13 that God has transferred us. He has taken us from this kingdom of darkness, this domain of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of His dear Son.
Brothers and sisters, our salvation is a kingdom matter. It is not just a matter of forgiveness. It is not just a matter of living forever and ever. It is not just a matter of going to heaven. It is all of these things, but it is a kingdom matter.
You and I were living under the wrong government prior to our experience with the Lord Jesus. Now that we have come to know Him, we are to be living under a new government: under the Lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the issue: Who is the boss? When you and I, by the grace of God, put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we were brought into another kingdom—the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, the kingdom over which our Lord Jesus Christ is sovereign.
Sometimes we do not realize that we are a part of a battle because some of us have not really wrestled with this issue of Who is going to be Lord in our lives. The dangerous thing, in my estimation, is that we call Him “Lord,” and we do not mean it. It is merely an empty title we have given Him.
If He is really Lord, what does that mean, my brothers and sisters? It means that we have bowed our knee and given up all our rights to Him. That is what it means.
God has decided that His Son is the Anointed One, seated in the position of absolute authority in the universe.
The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 28:18:
All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.
God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name that is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.
There is no question, my brothers and sisters, if we carefully read the Word of God, that our Lord Jesus is sovereign. I do not know what this does for your heart, but it ought to make it leap. There is a Man seated at God’s own right hand at this very moment, and He is the sovereign Ruler of the universe.
You and I have been brought into a relationship with Him. It ought to be a relationship in which He is the Lord, we are the servants, and we are seeking to be obedient to Him.
In this spiritual battle of which we are a part, the headquarters is not here. The control centre, the command centre, is in heaven.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the Commander-in-Chief, if we could put it that way. He is the One in charge of the whole responsibility of taking this chaotic world and bringing it back under His full rulership and domain.
The amazing thing to me is that He has chosen to use people like ourselves as His representatives here. But heaven is the control centre, the command centre. This is not something that we have been given liberty to take up on our own.
We do not have the right to make decisions regarding this whole process of spiritual battle. The Lord Jesus Himself is the supreme Ruler over this whole activity of spiritual warfare. We need to get that clear.
Do you remember what He said in Matthew 16, when the Lord Jesus for the first time used the word church? He said:
Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Why did He add that? Because He wanted us to understand that there would be a challenge to this matter of building His church. It was not just going to go easily. Someone would challenge it, and it is none other than Satan himself.
But then He went on to say:
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
In other words, heaven does the binding and loosing; we execute it here with the keys. We are not free simply to go around binding and loosing.
I remember back in the early seventies, this was a very popular thing to do—to go around binding and loosing. I remember going one day with a brother in the Lord. We stopped at a coffee machine, and the thing took his money but did not give him any coffee. You know what he did? He bound it in the name of the Lord Jesus.
People were going around binding and loosing all kinds of things. But, my brothers and sisters, we are not free to bind and loose on our own. It has to come from heaven itself.
The church has the keys. The Lord has the keys of death and Hades, but He has given us the keys of binding and loosing here because He is up there and we are down here. We are here to be His representatives.
Let us never forget: the command centre is in heaven itself. Our Lord Jesus is in that position of ruling over this great spiritual battle of which we are a part.
Another thing important for us to consider is that our enemy is a defeated enemy. He is a defeated foe. We need to be very, very clear about this.
If he were not defeated, there would be no hope for the battle ever to be won. Do you think you have the capacity, even as a born-again child of God, to overthrow this enemy? Do you think the assembly you are a part of can do it? Do you think all the Christians on the face of the globe tonight can do it? I do not think so.
There is only One Who was capable. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters, it has been done. It has been done.
In John 19, when our Lord Jesus was being crucified, at the very end He spoke one word. It gets translated by three words in English, but in the original it is only one word: “Finished.”
What was finished? Everything was finished that was necessary to bring God’s created order back into perfect harmony with Himself. That is what was finished. Part of that work was to crush the enemy’s head.
When He was there, He undid the enemy. He crushed his head. He won the victory. So we need to come into this battle with an understanding that the enemy we are up against is a defeated enemy.
That makes a difference in the way we wage the warfare. You do not have to be afraid of him. That does not mean we become foolish.
Some of God’s dear people have been very foolish in this matter. They think that just because the enemy is defeated, they can go around saying anything they want to him or treating him any way they please.
He is the wisest created being the universe has ever seen. We need to pay the kind of respect to him that he deserves, while remembering at the same time that he is a defeated enemy.
Do not go around calling him names. Some people delight in calling him “Slewfoot,” or something like that. Brothers and sisters, do not do those things.
As our brother Dana was sharing with us this afternoon, when our Lord Jesus was face to face with this enemy, did He use that kind of language? Did He show disrespect? No. He simply and clearly spoke what needed to be spoken. He used the Word of God.
Neither should we forget that the enemy with whom we are face to face has been defeated. The Lord Jesus is the Commander over all that is going on here.
I want to say another thing about this spiritual battle. It seems to me that it is a defensive matter, because the victory has already been won. Basically, it is a defensive battle.
When you think about going to war, most people think in terms of being offensive—going after the enemy. That is very popular in our country right now: going after terrorists. But they are not defeated yet.
Our battle is against a defeated enemy, and therefore it makes a difference in the way we approach it. Notice in Ephesians 6 that Paul says, “Stand. Stand. Withstand. Stand. Resist.”
That is our approach in this battle because we are standing against someone who is already a defeated foe. Even when we talk about the sword of the Spirit, we will see that it is a defensive weapon and not an offensive one.
It makes a difference in the approach we take and the strategy we use in spiritual warfare if we understand that our enemy is already defeated. What we have been called to do is to stand in that victory—to stand in the victory of Calvary.
At Calvary the enemy was crushed; his head was crushed. The Lord made a public display of the principalities and powers. Some of us are militant by disposition. We like to fight and to be aggressive, and we bring that into this whole matter of spiritual warfare.
I think we find ourselves engaging in a battle in a way that is not wise. We need to stand in the victory already won by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me say one more thing before we move on. As I read the Ephesian letter, it seems to me that the emphasis is more corporate than personal.
Brothers and sisters, even though we have individually been born into a battle, when it comes to actually engaging in the battle, it ought to be a matter of the corporate and not merely the individual.
You remember in Matthew 18, the second time our Lord Jesus mentions the church, He talks about two or three:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
When we come and gather together under His name, under His authority, and two or three agree concerning anything they may ask, it shall be done for them.
It seems that the Lord has established a certain way in which He wants things to be done. In order for Him to act from His position, He needs at least two or three people who are harmonized—not only with each other, but with Himself.
Some of us have acted as though God handed us a blank cheque and said, “Write anything on it that you want.” The Lord is not going to do that. Our Lord is the One in charge of this battle; He is overseeing the whole process.
In order for us to be effective in the battle, we have to be not only in harmony with each other, but in harmony with Him. Therefore, spiritual warfare needs to be waged primarily in the realm of the corporate and not merely the personal.
All of the Christian life is a battle in one sense. We fight against the flesh, against the world and its influence, and against many other things. But in Ephesians 6 we have been transported into another realm, another dimension of things. We have been caught up together in something bigger than ourselves personally.
There needs to be a corporate dimension to this matter of spiritual warfare. This is a big problem because it means something very important has to happen in us: we need to be harmonized.
If there is no harmony here on earth, in a sense we can say it ties the Lord’s hands. I hope you hear what I am saying. He has set up a way in which He is going to execute His authority, and it is by two or three agreeing together, being harmonized with each other and with Him.
Then it allows Him, through this harmony, to manifest His will and do His work in and through the two or three gathered together.
I would encourage us to think about spiritual warfare along the lines of the corporate and not merely the individual. It has been popular for years to take the individual, dress him up in all this armour, and focus entirely upon him. I am not saying there is nothing to that.
But Paul, when he says “finally,” is moving us into a different dimension of things. This dimension requires that we be in fellowship with others of God’s people. It is not an individual battle.
When we find ourselves face to face in this spiritual battle, we need a group of people who will harmonize with our Lord Jesus and harmonize with one another. Then they can function under the direction of the Holy Spirit in such a way that they can engage in this battle knowing there will be victory.
It seems in these verses that Paul is issuing a call to these believers: a call to be ready and a call for action.
Being part of an army, if we could put it that way, and being engaged in spiritual warfare requires that we get ready and that we be willing to get involved.
It has been quite a few years since I went to basic training back in 1955, but I remember those days. They were not days you particularly want to remember.
Some of you who have been in the military remember those weeks of basic training, where they did everything they could do to de-identify you and re-identify you. They wanted you to forget what had been part of your past and bring you into a whole new way of thinking, getting you ready to be a good military person.
Something of this has to happen in us too. You do not simply fall into being one of these spiritual soldiers who can be used by the Lord. What we find in these verses are appeals by the Apostle Paul for us to get ready and become active.
Listen to some of the language: “Be strong.” “Put on.” “Stand firm.” “Take up.” “Resist.” “Having done.” “Stand firm.” “Having girded.” “Having put on.” “Having shod.” “Take up.” “Take the helmet.” “With all prayer.” “Be on the alert.”
This is rather serious language calling us to get ready. This is not a sleep-inducing meditation. This is an appeal on the part of the apostle for you and me, as God’s redeemed people, to see that we are engaged in spiritual battle, that we need to be ready, and that we need to be actively engaged.
Since we are talking about spiritual warfare, it would seem to me that in order to be successful in waging a spiritual battle, we need spiritual equipment.
Paul calls our attention to what he identifies as “the whole armour of God.”
Put on the whole armour of God.
This helps us first of all to see that the armour we are to use has its origin with God. It may also mean that it is the armour God Himself uses in His battle against the enemy. I do not know whether that last part is true, but we certainly see that God has designed this armour in such a way that it can be effectively used in this battle into which you and I have been born.
Paul may have been in prison, watched over by a Roman soldier. Day after day he could see the armour that this soldier wore. He begins to show how something in the natural can be applied in the spiritual realm.
Notice what the armour is: truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God. In a normal army, that is not what you would consider armour. But here we are talking about something spiritual.
This whole thing is being fought in a realm that cannot be seen with these eyes. The greatest victory ever won in this battle was won by One Who had no natural armour. He had no sword, nothing in the natural. But Who He was in Himself—the Lord Jesus—defeated the enemy, destroyed him, overthrew him, and never lifted up a finger against him.
This is the kind of battle into which you and I have been called. It is not easy. In fact, it is easier to fight the kind you can see. But this battle is a spiritual battle; therefore, it requires spiritual armour and spiritual methods in order for victory to be gained.
Paul begins in a wonderful place:
Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Someone mentioned today—perhaps Brother Dana or Brother Stephen—that what we need to know in this spiritual warfare is that we are in union with our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a progression in our understanding of what has happened to us when we believe in the Lord Jesus. In the beginning, we are thrilled to know that our sins are forgiven. The peace that floods our hearts is almost indescribable.
Then, as we go on reading and hearing the Word of God, and through different experiences, we come to understand that we have been placed into the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, we have everything we will ever need in this life and in the one to come. He is our all in all.
When it comes to engaging in the spiritual battle, we need to discover that in Him are the resources we need to stand firm, to be faithful all the way to the end, and to be used by the Lord in the working out of His victory at Calvary.
Paul says that, as a way of being ready for this battle, we need to discover that in the Lord Jesus is the resource and strength we need in order to engage in this battle.
The enemy wants to weaken us. But if we are in a place of union with our Lord Jesus Christ, there is an unlimited supply. Brothers and sisters, there is supernatural strength available to us, so that we can engage in the battle, stay in the battle, and see victory.
It is interesting what Paul says in the Ephesian letter about this matter of strength. Notice, for instance, Ephesians 3, where he is praying for the Ephesian believers.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man.
This power is not only power that enables us to live the kind of life we should live. It is power that enables us to be in the battle, stay in the battle, and stay with the Lord until the victory has been won.
Notice also Ephesians 3:20:
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.
What is this power? Look at Ephesians 1:19–20:
And what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead.
What kind of power is Paul referring to? He is talking about resurrection power. Brothers and sisters, this resurrection power means that there is an unlimited supply. There is no limit to it. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished, because it is God’s life and God’s power being expressed through the resurrected life of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When Paul says, “Be strong in the Lord,” he is talking about us experiencing this kind of power. God wants to give us power to live our lives, power to live with each other, power to be a testimony, and power to stand against the onslaughts of the enemy.
There seem to be many signs indicating that we are in the end of the end days, and that evil is being set loose in ways that seem different from before. Perhaps my understanding of history is not correct, but it is a time when you and I need to discover personally, and as an assembly of the Lord’s people, how to be strong in Him and how to know His strength.
Remember Acts 1, when the disciples asked, “Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said:
It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority.
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
It is that power—the power that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, the power that, after He ascended to the Father, He poured forth on the day of Pentecost. This power is available for every individual believer, without exception.
There has been a tremendous emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I do not in any way want to belittle that. It was a wonderful thing that God has done.
But the baptism of the Holy Spirit can be best understood when you read the book of Acts. What happened on the day of Pentecost was that the Lord Jesus, through His resurrection life, filled the lives of those brothers and sisters and thrust them out into their situations. The life of Christ enabled them to overcome.
I need to read the book of Acts from the perspective of spiritual battle—the spiritual warfare waged when the Holy Spirit came down upon those believers in the upper room, and then the gospel went everywhere in the known world.
It is very, very important that you and I discover in practical ways the empowering of God in this matter of spiritual warfare. May I encourage us to give serious thought to this in terms of our corporate meetings.
One concern I have in my heart is that, after we have been together over a period of time, we learn how to do things without the Holy Spirit empowering us. We might say, “It happened before, but it could not happen to us.” We are not different, brothers and sisters.
It costs. It is expensive—very expensive—for us to know the empowering of the Holy Spirit on a regular basis. Do you know how often we should know that? Every time we meet.
We should know it in our own lives individually, but every time we meet, brothers and sisters, the reality ought to be that our exalted Lord Jesus Christ is imparting this power through the Holy Spirit into that meeting.
The meeting ought to be a meeting with Him—a meeting of Himself in His people, doing the works He wants to do. Sometimes He wants to call us to a specific battle. We need to be in a place where we can be empowered by Him to engage in that battle.
Paul tells us to put on the whole armour of God. Something interesting came to my attention as I was thinking and meditating about these verses.
The first three pieces of armour Paul mentions are things he speaks of as already put on, whereas the last three are things he speaks of as taking up. I do not want to make a big deal out of this, but there may be some significance here.
The first three pieces of armour are something we are to have, whereas the last three are something we take up. He begins by saying, “having girded yourself with truth,” “having put on the breastplate of righteousness,” and “having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”
Perhaps he is saying that these are things that ought to be permanently with you. They ought to be part of your life. You do not want to be running into battle and saying, “Where did I put my girdle? Where did I mislay my breastplate? Where are my shoes?”
No. He says you need to have these things. Spiritual armament needs to be a permanent part of your life. Then you can take up the shield of faith and the other pieces.
So let us consider these first three: the girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and the preparation of the gospel of peace.
First of all, the girdle of truth. Girdles are not very popular. I suppose they were popular with women for a while, but I do not think they are very popular anymore. Men usually do not wear girdles.
But soldiers wore girdles—not the way we use the word today. They had a wide belt around their waist. Perhaps some of you have seen motorcycle riders with wide belts that support their backs while riding. In recent years, employees in stores such as Home Depot have worn supports around their backs.
It was something like that. It had the purpose of supporting them and giving them strength during battle. It was also a place where they could place other pieces of armour so that they were readily available.
Paul says that, as he looks at the Roman soldier and sees this girdle around him, it reminds him that the Lord’s people need to do this with truth. Truth needs to be their girdle.
What is truth? Truth is a spiritual reality. It is something spiritual. We are not talking about facts; we are talking about truth.
We could spend much time talking about the different dimensions of this, but let us think first of all in terms of truth and falsehood—that which is true and that which is untrue, that which is true and that which is a lie.
When the enemy decided that he wanted to destroy and disqualify God’s agents of recovery, what did he use? When he found Adam and Eve in the garden, what message and device did he use to get them into a position where they were no longer qualified to be the agents of recovery God wanted them to be?
He lied to Eve. He deceived her. Sometimes we speak of a half-truth. Is there such a thing? You might call it a half-truth, but in reality it is a lie, because truth is true.
The enemy seeks to take things that have some credence to them, but he puts a turn on them that makes the whole thing a lie.
The proposition brought to Eve was that the fruit of that tree would make her wise. Basically, she would be in a place where she no longer needed God for living life the way God designed it. He lied to her: she would become as God, knowing good and evil.
What is the possibility of you becoming God? If you stop and think about it for a little while, you will realize that you cannot be God.
We want to be God because something has come into us. The same poison that got into Satan has gotten into the human race, and we all want to be gods.
There is a book entitled The God Players, by Earl Jabay, which would be good to read sometime. It is an eye-opener about us as human beings and how we want to be God.
Truth is over against a lie; truth is over against unreality. When the Lord Jesus spoke to the woman at the well in John 4, He spoke to her about worship. He said that the worshippers the Father seeks are those who worship in spirit and in truth—in spirit and in reality.
It is possible for us to go through the motions of worship and not really worship. Have you ever sung a song and not sung it to the Lord? It was not an act of worship. We are all capable of doing that.
Truth is that which is real, as over against that which is unreal. When Paul says, “Gird yourselves with the girdle of truth,” our relationship with the Lord needs to be real. It needs to be based on spiritual truth found in the Word of God.
It is this that enables us to stand in the face of so many things that we encounter. Remember what our Lord Jesus did when Satan came to Him. What did He do?
It is written.
It is written.
He spoke only truth to him. Truth, in a sense, disarmed the enemy. He had no way of getting to the Lord Jesus because the Lord Jesus simply spoke truth.
I think the greatest truth that you and I can get clear about is the truth about God Himself. It creates so many problems for us as God’s people if we are not clear about Who God is.
According to our Lord Jesus in John 17:3:
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
It is important for us to know that the God Who revealed Himself in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God Who has come into our lives and provided us with a great salvation, is the only true God.
What does that mean about all the other gods? They are false. They are unreal. They are the imagination or creation of men, and they cannot fulfil the promises they make to you.
It is very important, if we are going to stand firm and still be standing at the end, that we know the God we have come to know is the only true God.
Any group of people will say their god is a true god. But the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of truth, has to take this truth and put it in your heart, making it so real that you will be willing to give up your life, no matter what, for that truth.
The God you have come to know is real. He is the only true One, and you have come to know Him.
How about God the Son? You know what He said:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
Not merely, “I reveal the truth.” He said, “I am the truth.” It is in Him, in a Person, that you and I come face to face with and experience truth in its fullest manifestation.
When our Lord Jesus was comforting His disciples in John 14, John 15, and John 16, He referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth.
Truth is very necessary for this spiritual battle. It needs to be something inside us. We have this Book in our hands to read and meditate upon. The Lord Jesus said:
Thy word is truth.
In these sixty-six books, ranging over a period of thousands of years, God has chosen to place truth. If we are going to grow, there must be an increase of truth in our lives.
We need to become more disciplined in our reading, meditating, and considering this Book. Every generation and every culture has its strengths and weaknesses, but I would say that American Christians are greatly lax, brothers and sisters, in reading and knowing the truth contained in this Book.
May the Lord encourage us to be more diligent and more disciplined in reading and meditating on His Word.
Having put on the breastplate of righteousness. Language is not an easy thing. It creates a lot of problems for us, and therefore we need to make a concerted effort at times to get clear about what words are saying.
Especially in so-called religious circles, we use language when we have no idea what we are talking about. We want to impress people with our theological understanding, so we throw around words such as righteousness. What does it mean?
Certainly it means something very special when applied to God Himself: He is a righteous God. What does that mean? It means that it is absolutely impossible for Him ever to do anything wrong.
Put it positively: He always, without exception, does everything right.
So He is a righteous God. But now it can be applied to us as human beings. In what way are you righteous? What does Paul mean when he says, “Put on the breastplate of righteousness,” protecting the vital area of the body where, if the organs are not protected, you become a victim in the battle?
It seems to me that the Bible means at least three things by righteousness when it is applied to us.
First of all, righteousness has to do with our condition before God. When you and I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and His shed blood at Calvary, how does God now view us in terms of sin? How many sins does He remember? How righteous are you? Who is your righteousness?
When you stand before a holy, righteous God Who expects righteousness and will settle for nothing less, how does He see you when He sees you in His Son? Perfectly righteous. How righteous? As righteous as the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is our righteousness.
I know this requires thought and meditation, because when you look at yourself honestly, you have to say, “That is not reality.” I know that. But in terms of your standing before God, there is no more record.
Hallelujah, brothers and sisters, there is no more record of the sins you have committed. It is as if you had never committed any sin at all. That is how righteousness is to be viewed concerning ourselves, because it is the way God views us.
He has made provision in the Lord Jesus so that He can say to us, “You are righteous. You are forgiven. You are totally forgiven.”
But God does not stop there in terms of righteousness. He wants us to become righteous. He wants us to be righteous people.
He wants to look at us as we really are—not merely as we are in His Son, but at our inner being, at who we are in the inner man—and discover righteousness there. He wants your thoughts to be righteous and your feelings to be righteous.
How is this possible? The Lord Jesus has to become our righteousness here too. We need to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to have Him formed in us, His character formed in us, so that our character is seen by God as righteous.
This does not happen overnight, and it does not happen easily. That is why He takes everything that happens in our lives—everything—and uses it for good. He uses it as a way of producing righteous character.
Do you think that the God you have come to know in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ is satisfied simply to have your sins forgiven while you go on sinning and sinning and remaining the same old sinner? No, He is not interested in that.
Part of His great salvation is to transform us and make us like His Son. Do I hear any hallelujahs at all tonight? Yes, brothers and sisters, this is something to get excited about. I do not have to go on being the same old sorry person I am.
He can change me. I cannot change myself. I can make myself worse, but I cannot make myself better. He can make me better. That is good news. It is to me. It may not be to you, but it is to me.
It ought to be to you, because you are still going to live with me forever. You had better hope that God changes me some.
We are righteous in terms of our standing and in terms of our character, but it does not stop there. We need to be righteous in terms of our conduct—the way we live.
The way you live needs to be viewed by the Lord as right. The things you do need to be right in His eyes.
Paul says, “Take this breastplate of righteousness.” Take it as being righteous before Him in terms of your sin—no more sin. Think what it does inside you, brothers and sisters, to release you from all guilt.
But then know that the Lord is at work inside us, building into us the very character of His own Son. The result is that we live out of that character. Our conduct, the way we live every day, flows from it.
In the Ephesian letter, the first three chapters take us into the heavenly realms and help us see the marvellous things God has done. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Then Paul comes to chapter 4 and says, “Therefore,” and he begins to speak about the things that need to be done, including the way you live your life and conduct yourself in everyday living and in your home.
Why, when Paul has taken us into the heavenly realm, is he concerned about husbands and wives, children and parents, servants and masters? Why? Because this is part of spiritual warfare.
The kingdom of God needs to be a reality in our homes. Would that make a difference? Please forgive me, brothers and sisters, if this sounds harsh, but it is true. We can come to our meetings and play our games, but what about when you go home?
What about when you are face to face with the people you live with day in and day out, seven days a week? Is there some reality of Jesus being Lord there? This is spiritual warfare.
That is why he is saying, “Do not be a phony. Be real.” Do not act one way at home and then come to the meeting and act like you are Mr. Holy Joe, praying all these great prayers while your children are listening and thinking, “Is that coming out of my dad?”
Oh, brothers and sisters, He wants us to be a righteous people who live in a righteous way.
Lastly, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. I have been reading the Ephesian letter for many, many years. In fact, when I open my Bible, it opens automatically to the Ephesian letter.
There are brothers and sisters on Long Island who do not think I have any other book in my Bible. I can read the book of Ephesians, and we will be there next weekend. Guess where I am going to speak from? So you can get ready.
But, brothers and sisters, this matter of shodding our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace has been something in the background for me. I have never fully understood what Paul was talking about.
Certainly it takes our minds back to Isaiah 52:7:
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation.
But what does it mean in terms of spiritual warfare? Let me share what came to me. I think it was the Holy Spirit. It may not be, but I think it was.
When Satan rebelled against the throne of God, what was the result? The perfect peace that was in God’s original creation was shattered. There was no longer perfect harmony in God’s creation.
God seemingly has chosen that the way He is going to restore this peace is to do it here on earth through His covenant people.
When we think of the gospel of peace, we usually think of the gospel in relation to people who have never heard. I think the gospel of peace has to do with us, brothers and sisters, who are already the Lord’s.
Why, when Paul gets to Ephesians 4, does the first thing he encourages them to do involve walking worthy of the calling with which they were called, being diligent to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?
One of the things I intended to mention in the beginning regarding spiritual warfare has to do with the Person of the Lord Jesus. But here on earth, it has to do with His testimony—the testimony of the Lord Jesus.
Why was John on the Isle of Patmos? Because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. What does that mean? It means that the world ought to be able to look at our corporate life as the people of God and see the reality of Jesus and His kingdom manifested.
Why does He want a church? He wants a church so that He can display His kingdom and use them as an agent of recovering this spiritual reality of the harmony of God.
When Paul says, “having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace,” I think he is speaking more about our relationships with each other.
My question for us is this: If we are not one with one another, if we are not living in harmony, if there is not peace among us as God’s people, what kind of testimony do we have?
It is not hard to see Christians divided in every possible way. You name a dimension of human life, and we have divided over it. We have set up our own little systems of accommodating ourselves to that division and put the Lord’s name all over them.
But where are those who, at any price, will live in harmony with one another?
I need to be careful. There are legitimate reasons for us to disassociate ourselves from one another at times. Sometimes there are doctrinal issues. Sometimes there are issues having to do with our conscience. I am not talking about those major things.
I am talking about the minor things, the little things that we allow to get into our corporate life and divide us against one another. There is no peace. There is no oneness. There is no harmony.
The Lord Jesus made it clear in Matthew 18 that if He is going to manifest His authority in the church, there has to be a oneness there. There needs to be a harmony, a symphonizing of hearts, so that He can manifest His will.
Someone mentioned or prayed tonight from Psalm 133:
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
I do not want us to think merely in terms of what is happening in so-called Christianity. I am speaking about what happens among those of us who, for whatever reason, have felt that the Lord wants us to gather in a simple way around Him.
How about us? Have we shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace? Is it our mission to do everything the Holy Spirit enables us to do in order to maintain our oneness in Christ?
It is a reality, brothers and sisters. It does not need to be produced. That is why Paul did not say, “Produce the oneness.” He said, “Maintain,” “guard,” “keep” the unity of the Spirit—the oneness we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is part of our spiritual warfare. Very simply, if the enemy can get us divided against each other, he does not have to do anything else. He has already won the battle.
It costs. It is expensive. Why do we divide? Very simply, my brothers and sisters, somehow we get our focus on ourselves: mine, mine, mine.
We get our little petty things mixed up. We get agreement with certain people, then we have little cliques and groups, and before you know it we are hopelessly divided.
The enemy has whispered in our ears and told us all these things. Oh, my brothers and sisters, how we need to learn to bring things out in the open and ask the Holy Spirit to judge whatever is going on, instead of having all this stuff going on behind the scenes.
We need to shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. This is a real war, brothers and sisters. The equipment, the armour that we are called upon to use, is armour that God Himself supplies to us.
When we have put it on and it is actively being used, it produces the kind of results God is looking for. May the Lord be merciful to us.
May we keep our focus on the fact that the issue has to do with the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ and the position He presently holds. Our testimony here on earth is that He is Lord—not merely Lord of my own life, but Head over all things to the church, which is His body.
That is our testimony. Our words can be backed up by our life—our life together as the Lord’s people. Let us pray together.
Lord, we are so grateful tonight that we can look off to Calvary and, by the help of the Holy Spirit, see that when You were being crucified there, You were once for all winning this battle that we have been born into.
Lord, our cry to You tonight is that You would make that even more clear to us and get it deep down inside of us, so that we can wage this warfare in a way that is really right and not something human.
Lord, teach us in very practical ways—not only for us individually, but when we gather together under Your name—how we can know how to be strong in You and how to have Your strength manifested in our corporate life together.
Then, Lord, these different pieces of armour that are mentioned here—the truth, the righteousness, the peace—oh Lord, please, in Your mercy, help us in these days to understand this. May it get deep inside of us, and may we act according to what we have been granted in terms of revelation.
So we bless You. We thank You. We do not know what else to do, Lord, except to come back to You and give ourselves to You. Lord, we are so ill-equipped for this task, but You are full of mercy.
We come back tonight and ask You, Lord, take us in the condition we are in, but do not leave us there. Move us on into a realm, into a place, where we are better equipped, more ready, and engaged in this warfare into which we have been called.
Lord, we want to stand very clearly for Your testimony, for the reality of Your lordship. So, Lord, please, even behind all these words, read our hearts, that we would be those who are actively and effectively engaged with You in these most difficult days.
And we ask it in Jesus’ name.