Ephesians 6:1-18 • Fighting with All His Might
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you look in your Bibles with me this morning at Ephesians chapter 6, Ephesians chapter 6,
as we will be looking at verses 10 through 18, familiar words about the armor of God.
Before I address those words, I want to address you as my church family. It is not often that I'm able to stand before you more regularly. I'm in different parts of the country talking to other congregations, and it is truly a privilege to be able to talk to you. Let me tell you one of the reasons George already mentioned in introducing me that recently, just last week, we took my son to college and dropped him off. And as part of that process of comforting grieving parents, the pastor was talking to us on different occasions, and he just said to me honestly at one point, "Do you ever miss the fact that you have not been able to preach to your own children regularly, to pastor them?" And there was a time in my life in which I was my children's pastor, but that has been some years ago, and I have very much missed being able to preach to them.
But one of my great comforts has been where they have grown up here, not only because of the one who does regularly preach to them who I respect so much, but also that I feel so much that this church family has been a family to my children, has enfolded them and surrounded them with Christian love, with youth leaders who have cared for them, with Sunday school teachers, with choir members, adopted grandparents. So many ways you have been God's family to my family and raised them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And as we kind of reach this next stage of life, it's a privilege to be able to be here in this moment and say thank you for all of your care for what you have done in God's ministry to my family. I want to be a part of God's ministry to you today and read to you this portion of God's promises to support us in times of spiritual battle. In Ephesians 6, 10, the Apostle Paul says, finally, "Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.
Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,
and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace."
In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Do pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You promise to be our shield and fortress. For the day of evil does come. And so we would pray not only for Your protection of us individually,
but also for those about us who are part of our nurture and support of Your very Spirit, this community, made in Your purpose to raise Your people to know Jesus. Help us, we pray, Father, to rejoice even as we are strengthened by Your Word this day. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
I have actually seen the place where the ink stained the wall. That place where Martin Luther, in translating the New Testament into German, felt so intensely the reality of Satan's presence that he took his inkwell and flung it at Satan.
You can still go to that place where Luther is reputed to have thrown his inkwell at Satan, and the vividness of the story will still capture you. But it's not the vividness of the story that I want to focus on today. It is how real that story can be in our experience, that Satan can still be very real, spiritual assault, very present, and it really doesn't matter at what stage of life you are in. Luther, after all, was translating the New Testament. He was in a fortress. He had already took a marvelous spiritual stand for the Lord. He had been courageous already. Already there was a level of spiritual understanding and wisdom and development in him that was quite mature,
and still the assault came. I think of how you already expressed it in your prayer of confession this morning that we confess to God sins of early, middle, and advanced years in yielding to Satan's wiles and opening hearts to temptation and being unwatchful when we knew him near. It is this great confession that no matter what stage of life we are in, no matter how great the spiritual victories we have experienced, spiritual struggle will still be there. In an age of great personal freedom, we know it deeply as we listen to our own prayers and we say, "God, please help me stop this.
God, please change me. God, I don't want to do this again. Can't there be any spiritual victory?" And against that heart cry comes verse 11, where the apostle says to us, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." Where does the victory come from?
The apostle tells us by an explicit detail, telling us what our enablement is, but also the nature of our enemy, who he is, and finally what weaponry we must have against him. What is the enablement? How do we stand? The opening words begin to reveal it to us as we are told, "Finally be strong in the Lord." Even just that little connecting word finally is saying something about our enablement, that we are unable to stand against Satan because of godly patterns that we are following. This finally, the apostle is saying, "As to the rest, what else I want you to remember is assuming that he's already told us some things." Most of you know much about this familiar book of Ephesians, that in the first two chapters, the apostle is telling us that God has loved us eternally. In the next two chapters saying that because he has loved us eternally, we should be loving each other in corporate life, serving God together, recognizing our differences, and yet unified in the spirit despite differing gifts. And then the next two chapters telling us that that corporate life before God has also lived intimately in family relationships, that in serving one another and sacrificing for one another, we learn more of the nature of Christ in our lives. It's a godly pattern that's preparing us and the importance of that is saying it's really no mystery. What helps us to grow in Christian maturity, we're to be under sound teaching about the nature of God's love for us, we're to be in corporate fellowship with one another, we are in our family lives to be in relationships where we understand and help others to grow in Christ. But while it's no mystery, it can still be absent from our lives these important features of the godly pattern that God is calling us to. And so we are also implicitly called to accountability. One of the most important trips I ever took in my life was where I was preaching in another church and an elder just picked me up from the airport and in the course of conversation with him, he just made this little statement. He said, "Brian, I discovered in my life as a Christian,
I am always either moving toward accountability or away from accountability."
And what God is reminding us here is that the Christian pattern of being under sound instruction, being in corporate fellowship, and being in families where we are challenging one another to live for Christ is a form of accountability that we're all held to. We are to be immersed in these features that are giving us strength and acting in integrity with them.
Now all of these are the things that we do and I haven't told you a thing new.
And that's worrisome in itself, isn't it? Because we may begin to think, "I've done these things, I've done some of these things perhaps for years, and still the struggle is here and it's still real." And so the apostle turns somewhat from speaking about what we are doing to what God does in order to strengthen us. Finally he says, verse 10, "Be strong in the Lord
and in His mighty power." You know those words in the Lord are the great reference to our union with Christ, that we are in Him, robed in His righteousness, covered by His blood, in His family. We are in Him. And in that embrace there is strength that is beyond anything that we can do. We're to be reminded of it over and over again. A few thanksgivings ago my youngest daughter Katie was playing soccer with her older siblings and cousins. And you know it was just inevitable, she's so much smaller than the others, that she would get bumped and knocked over and want to get out of the game. And seeing her kind of removed from the fun, what I did was I kind of picked her up in my own arms and said, "If I hold you, will you play again?" And she said, "Yes." And so we entered the game again with her in my embrace and she just began to shriek with glee and vengeance because she knew she was in my arms and we played the rest of the game that way. It renewed something in her, a zeal for battle, knowing that she was in my embrace.
And the apostle is saying here, "Now you be strong, but be strong in the Lord. Remember your relationship." And he says even more, not only that you're in relationship with him, you're strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Some of you remember it from the King James, in the power of His might. We've heard this language before. What does it mean to be strong in the power of God's might? You have to know what the might is that's being referred to. And actually, the previous reference is in the first chapter of Ephesians beginning at verse 18. Why don't you look there with me? Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 18. Here the apostle is praying for the Ephesians that the eyes of their hearts might be enlightened so that they would know something. And what he wants them to know is in verse 19, "God's incomparably great power." For us who believe, that power is like the working of His mighty strength. It's actually the same phrase in Greek, the power of His might, that we would know that, verse 20, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms. Far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given not only in the present age, but that is in the age to come. Weird to be strong in the power of His might. But what is the power of God's might? It is that same resurrection power that brought Christ from the dead, that took something that was dead and made it alive, that changed its nature entirely in God's Son. And now we are being told that we are to be strong in that same resurrection power. What does that mean to you? The apostle takes a whole chapter to explain what it means, how we have been translated, changed, made new, by this resurrection power that is ours. He says in the second chapter that once we were dead,
but now we are alive, dead in transgression and sin, but made alive by the power of God so that we can respond to His word and to His grace. Once we were under the dominion of Satan, he says, but now we are under the reign of Christ. Once we were objects of wrath,
now we are His glorious inheritance. Once we were separate, but now we are brought near. Once we were foreigners and aliens, now we are fellow citizens of the kingdom of God. What are we being told?
You're different. You're changed. You are a new creature in Christ Jesus. Our hearts cry out, "I can't resist Satan. I am too weak. I'm not able. I'm just a fallible human creature." And the apostle is saying, "No, you be strong in the power of his might. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world." No temptation will now come upon you that is greater than you can bear. How can that be? Because we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. Satan works with our conscience and say, "Oh, that can't be true. I feel weak. I feel unable to resist." And so the apostle says, "No, you must know your real nature. It is what gives you strength to know that you are in God's embrace, but you are also energized, made new, changed, strong because the resurrection power of God is in you." How does knowing who you really are change you and make you strong in the face of struggle? I think of it in terms of a conversation of sorts that my wife was having with one of our children a few years ago. The conversation was over a struggle with algebra. And one of my children was crying, "I can't do this. I'm so dumb. I'm so stupid. I just can't do this." And my wife, with a voice that was somewhat stern enough to cut through the tears, said, "Now you stop that.
You are not dumb. You are one of the sharpest students I know. You can do this. Now review back a couple of pages, but I want you to remember something. You are not dumb, and I want you never to say that again. You know what my child did? Turn back a few pages, knowing that that child was not dumb, smart, equipped, able, and had to be reminded so that the struggle could be met with strength and courage in the ability that really was there. God says to you, "You don't feel you're able at times, but you remember who you are. You are a child of God made new by the resurrection power of Christ, and you're different." Of course, being able to face that difference gets greater when we face the real nature of the enemy that works against us. And the apostles take some care to describe that enemy, who he is, his nature. We are told in the 11th verse that he has schemes. We are told in the 13th verse that he will come, put on the formal armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, not that it might come, he's coming. And when he comes, he is vicious. Verse 16, "In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one." When Satan comes, his nature should concern us. He really will work against all the things that God has said are true of us.
And so that we will recognize truly what he is doing, we are told something of how he works. Verse 12 of chapter 6, "For our struggle says the apostle when we fight is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world." That's important for us to recognize that when we are struggling with sin, often we characterize it either in terms of the weakness of our flesh or the evil of another person that we are dealing with. I'm facing some of that right now. Tomorrow I will go to deal with a very serious church problem in our denomination. And my ability often is limited by simply focusing on the persons with whom I'm dealing with, thinking that I'm wrestling with them. But the apostle is lifting our eyes to say, "You must recognize it's not just flesh and blood that you're dealing with. Don't do this in your own strength. There is something greater than flesh and blood and you must recognize what it is." He talks about it being rulers and authorities and powers of this dark world. Now there are various kinds of hierarchies that you will see that people try to do with this particular passage, to say that there are the different kinds of demonic beings. And I will just tell you most of that is very speculative. The apostle is saying, "Listen, there are dark forces beyond just flesh and blood in this world that's before your eyes. You must recognize how great is this adversary. I think of it as our church through the leadership of our pastor and other people like Roxanne Niphere try to war against something in our society like the evil of abortion." And you think, "Is it just a matter of passing legislation? If we could do that, if we could just convince a few people to do something different, would that change everything?" Well, think of that for a moment. Of how involved are the rulers and the authorities and the powers of this world in promoting such an evil industry. I mean, it's not just that there are political forces at work, but even the way the entertainments of our whole culture push people toward promiscuity, young people in particular, the way in which dress and language and entertainment and music are all a great force to push toward immorality. And then how that great push toward immorality is economically supported by a movie industry and by an abortion industry and by a drug industry.
If you think of not just people, but politics and economics and entertainment,
you think, "This is a vast, vast war that we're in." You're not just going to by talking to somebody change all of this. There are greater forces at work and they are in the world before your eyes.
But it's curious, the apostle doesn't stop there when he talks about the rulers and authorities and powers of this dark world. He said, "We're also warring against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." You know, we're not used to thinking about evil in heavenly realms, but it's the apostles way of talking about the spiritual world as well. They're not just dark forces in the world that's before your eyes. There is true, real, supernatural, spiritual evil.
And that means Satan is not limited just to dealing with economics and politics and entertainment. He can deal with our spiritual lives as well, truly tempting us in the inner person.
These are large, horrible forces. Kent Hughes tries in some measure at one point to say, "What are we really facing?" He says it this way, "I am no genius at mathematics,
but even with my limited capabilities, I would be terrific at math if I had 100 years to work on a problem." Well, maybe he says. But he said, "If I worked for a thousand years and read all the learned theories, I really could be a Newton or an Einstein. Or what if I had 10,000 years, given that time any one of us could become the world's greatest philosopher or psychologist or theologian or linguist?" But Satan has multiple millennia to study and master the human disciplines. And when it comes to human subversion, he is the ultimate manipulator. He is. He knows what tempts you. He knows what tempts me. He knows where our weak spots are. He knows our spiritual, soft underbelly, and will attack there. And it is scary. It's supposed to be that Satan would work in the world that we see as well as in the spiritual world as well. We're to be confessing our helplessness before God, or we're not equipped to fight him at all, because you know what's happening? When we begin to see how great is our adversary, it is true that we say at times, "I'm weak." But God then comes again and says, "As great as he is, you now know you need me so that you will not turn to your strength, but to God's strength." Not only is God describing, see, what enables us and what our enemy is, ultimately he wants us to know clearly what our weaponry is as we enabled Christians begin to fight this great enemy. Those are the words that you are familiar with starting at verse 14 and forward, that we are to stand firm with the belt of truth buckle about our waist and the breastplate of righteousness at place and feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. We know all of these things, but I want you to back up just a little bit and think how we are prepared to hear these words, because what often happens, particularly in evangelical circles, is when the armor of God is described, what we think of is the things that we are supposed to do to be armed to fight Satan.
And ultimately the battle hinges on how, "Well, I do those things," which is exactly the opposite argument that the apostle is making. Remember what he has said. Go back to the beginning of verse 10. "Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power." Verse 11, "Put on the full armor
of God." Verse 13, "Therefore put on the full armor of God." The emphasis is always back upon what God has provided, and the reason that you have to hear that is the misinterpretation we'll put on verses 14 and following if we don't recognize that what the apostle is saying we must depend upon is what God provides. "Stand firm then," verse 14, "with the belt of truth buckled around your waist." Now, what do we often think of that as being? That means you have to study real hard so that you know the truth. With the breastplate of righteousness in place, and you have to work real hard to be a really, really good person so that you can resist Satan. And with your feet fitted, verse 15, with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, and you have to share the gospel with lots of people.
Well, if it's all depending on you, the place you'll get in trouble is in verse 17. And you are to take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. Salvation is not something you do, and the Spirit's not something you provide. What is the apostle doing here? He's reminding us of the armor that God supplies so that we won't stand before the great adversary, Satan, and say, "I've studied long enough. Now I can resist you. I've worked hard enough. Now I can resist you. I've shared the gospel with enough people. Now I can resist you." The whole point is God has provided the armor. It's His armor, already ours. You may be interested to know those who are seminarians. These aren't even imperatives. It's not saying something you are to do. These are participles. These are declarations of what we already have. So what is being said is that now stand firm because you have the truth.
With the breastplate of righteousness in place, not your righteousness, the righteousness that God has provided you. With the salvation that God has, stand firm. He says it four times, stand firm. It's not that the fight against Satan has no human effort in it, but the human effort is expressed in confidence in what God provides. I think of it, if you'll forgive it, it's just with the analogy the apostle himself is making. As though I am standing on a battlefield,
and coming toward me is the great army of Satan. The dark clouds and all the spiritual forces of evil, and as that great army of Satan approaches, I tremble. But then looking out through the face plate of the helmet of salvation that God has provided, the apostle begins to speak to me like a captain on the battlefield. Steady now. Stand firm. Remember your armor. You have Christ's righteousness as your breastplate. You are, though you tremble before Satan,
your feet are fitted with the gospel of peace. God has already made you right with him. You may buckle and fail in your strength, but Christ is still yours. You're strong in the Lord.
And the whole focus is on what God is providing. How do we be strong in this armor? It's really where the apostle leaves us, as he says in the 18th verse, remember, and pray in the spirit. That's the final thing he says. Pray in the spirit. On all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests, with this in mind, be alert and always keep praying for all the saints. Having made clear that we are in God's armor, that the strength is in him so that we can stand, we're told to pray. Now, what do you think that's all about? We've heard that language before actually praying in the spirit in the third chapter of Ephesians in the 14th verse. It's the last place I'll ask you to turn. Look at Ephesians 3.14. The apostle is praying for the Ephesians. And Paul says in Ephesians 3.14, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being." This is the prayer in the spirit for something, for strength. Verse 17, "So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith," remember that faith that extinguishes the fiery arrows of the devil,
"so that he may strengthen you through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power. Together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." What is the prayer in the spirit that we are being asked to express? Yes, it is that prayer that the spirit would stir in us a great love for God so that we would have the will to stand. You see in the spiritual battle the problem is not that we don't have the strength to stand, it is that we do not have the will at times to stand. We want to be rid of the sin, but until we are rid of it, we want it. And so the apostle prays for the work of the spirit in our hearts to revitalize those hearts with a compelling love for Christ so that the great comforts of the gospel, the knowledge of being in Christ would change our wills, would change our affections, so that now we desire truly to stand because we can stand, but now we want to stand as well.
And we're not only to pray about this for ourselves but for other people.
So the church as a whole would be desiring Christ. You know, I will say to you as some apologetic, some defense for the work of Covenant Seminary that one of the things that we have pressed more and more in recent years is an emphasis that all students, that the people all around us, would know fully and deeply the wondrous grace of God. And there are people who get concerned about that. If you talk too much about grace, you won't be concerned about really standing for God, that you won't really be concerned for fighting the evil one, for resisting sin. But the point is that when people drink fully and deeply of the knowledge of God, His mercy in Jesus Christ, what happens to them? Their hearts begin to fill with love for Him, to throb with a desire to serve Him, and the ability that they already have they will now begin to employ. What I love for us, what I delight in you, what I delight in this church about is what we are about above all things is developing a consistent adulation of the mercy of God in Christ, knowing that when people see over and over again how wondrous is the Savior, they want to serve Him, and they will actually take advantage of the armor that they do have, because their hearts are so in love with the God who has saved them so tenderly and strongly. When God does that work, we stand because He loves us so,
and we begin discerning how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ begin to be filled with all the measure of the fullness of God. What does God require of us in the spiritual battle? I saw it visually a few years ago when I was watching one of those TV stories on the triathlons that some people engage in. You remember the Iron Man competition? All of us kind of in middle age watched the Iron Man competition believing that if we just had a little more time and different bodies, we could do that. And it wasn't the great names that I was impressed with. The story that captured my attention that year was of a father-son, Dick and Ricky Hoyt, who had raced in over 800 competitions together. Amazing. But even more important than their fellowship was Ricky, the son's condition. He was born with cerebral palsy. He had to be pulled or pushed or carried by his father in every race that they entered. And on this one particular race, there was rain and there was cold and ultimately an equipment failure. And I saw something of what God is calling for in this passage as the father leaned down to his son and asked him a question. "Do you want to keep going?" Now you'd say there's a sense in which it was a foolish question. I mean, after all, it was the father who would carry or push or pull his son through the whole race. But the father gave to the son the privilege of desiring to go on. I know it's not a perfect example, but it is in some measure what God does with us. He has given us ability. He has given us his armor. We can't stand. But now he wants us to have the heart to stand as well, to carry on. And so he gives to you and to me and to all the saints this charge. You pray and pray for others
that all would know how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ. For when you have grasped that, you will stand even against the evil one when the day of evil comes because you are so in love, so in love with the things of God because it gave you his son. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, when the day of evil comes, help me and all these people to stand
because we have known how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ for us. May our love be great, we pray.