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Preached in Markham Baptist Church, December 4, 2005
Ephesians 6:10-18
BECOME WHAT YOU ARE! PART 10:
WALKING IN VICTORY OVER SATAN
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.”
(Ephesians 6:10) If you were able to worship with us last week, you will
remember that this is the key verse to the closing section of the book of
Ephesians. Paul exhorts us to be strong in the Lord. We have learned that
this means that we don’t need to try to get victory over Satan and the
powers of darkness – it means that we already have victory in Jesus Christ.
We are a victorious people because of Christ.
I want to emphasize that idea of standing. Standing is not
retreating. Standing is not watching. It is actively participating in the
battle. There are some who would suggest that we need to avoid the battle,
and of course we don’t want to be foolish by putting ourselves in harm’s way
or in the way of temptation, but we are not to avoid the battle or be
fearful of the battle.
I want you to consider the idea that joining in the battle
would be beneficial to your spiritual growth. There are some who may pray –
“O Lord, ban Satan from this place. In the name of Jesus Christ we refuse to
allow Satan to have any participation in this meeting.” And that really
isn’t a helpful prayer, or a Scriptural prayer. What we need to pray instead
is, “Lord enable me/us to be strong in you and in Your mighty power.”
The truth is that when Satan attacks us and brings trouble
and difficulty into our lives and we rely on God – God is able to use those
times of difficulty and trouble for His glory and for our Christian growth.
Through those times of trouble we gain a deeper understanding of His love,
His grace, His character and our spiritual life is strengthened.
This is Paul’s experience. In 2 Corinthians 12 we read of a
thorn in his flesh. We don’t know what that thorn was, but Paul said it was
sent from Satan to torment him. And what did Paul learn as he depended on
God through that? “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) He gained a deeper
understanding of God’s grace, that God’s unmerited favour is sufficient, is
stronger than any difficulty and is able to sustain him in the midst of
difficulty. He learned that God’s power is demonstrated in our weakness as
we depend on Him.
So instead of banning Satan from our meetings, or praying
Lord protect me from all harm, what is better to pray is, “Lord I depend on
you, I look to you and your strength to sustain and help me in whatever
comes my way.”
And for our children we often pray, “O Lord keep them from
all harm, keep them from all danger.” But I would like to suggest to you
that we pray a little differently and pray instead, “Give my children just
enough trouble, give them just enough difficulty that they are made to
depend on You and they see that You are mighty to save and rescue, that You
are the ever faithful one.” That prayer moves from, “O Lord shelter them,”
to “Lord, be their strength that they may stand.”
So this spiritual armour that we began studying last week is
about depending on God, it’s about trusting God’s word as the truth, it’s
about living for Him in righteousness, it’s about knowing His peace in your
life so that you are able to stand in the midst of trial and temptation and
difficulty.
Paul outlines three pieces of armor that we are to wear all
the time, never take them off - the belt of truth, the breastplate of
righteous living and our shoes fitted with the gospel of peace. And now he
says at verse 16, “In addition to all this, take up…” – and he lists
three more pieces of armour which we are to have close by and use when we
need them. We are to intentionally pick up these pieces of armour for the
battle - it’s not a careless, random act.
So in addition to the first three pieces of armour we are to
take up the shield of faith.
The Roman soldier had two kinds of shields - the one that we
saw last week in the drama was small and meant for hand-to-hand combat.
That’s not the shield that is referred to here. The Roman soldier had
another shield and it was about 4 ½ feet in height, and 2 ½ feet wide - it
covered the whole body and was made of wood, covered with leather. These
shields were then soaked in water and when the enemy would wrap the tip of
an arrow in pitch, light it and shoot it so it became a flaming missile, the
only defense against these flaming arrows were the shields soaked in water
that would extinguish these arrows.
Can’t you see this battle in your mind’s eye? So what was
true in the physical realm is true in the spiritual realm. Satan, our enemy
shoots flaming arrows of doubt at us and what is our defense against these
doubts? It is the shield of faith.
Think of all the flaming arrows of doubt that Satan sends
your way. Satan will cause us to doubt – to doubt God’s existence, God’s
love, God’s Word – “It’s not really God’s word now is it? It can’t fully be
trusted in all areas of life now can it?” And Satan sends that flaming arrow
of doubt and what happens if you don’t meet it with faith – the faith that
says that God would not lie, God would not deceive - your inner peace gets
hit by that flaming arrow and it just burns up, you don’t have any peace.
Your joy becomes ash, because you can’t trust God’s word to be completely
true.
And Satan will send all sorts of doubts about the most basic
Christian disciplines: prayer, studying the Bible, worshiping, giving tithes
and offerings, telling others about Christ, using your spiritual gifts. Why?
Because Satan knows that if he can cause you to fail in one area of your
Christian life you will become weak. You’ll lose your joy and inner peace.
You’ll be less likely to use your faith to trust God in difficult times. And
over time, you’ll falter and begin to withdraw from the greater body of
Christ.
When you do that, you become less effective for Christ in
this world – and that’s just what the devil wants. If he can’t keep you from
coming to Christ in the first place, you ought to believe that he will do
everything he can to make you weak as a Christian, your witness a hindrance
to others rather than a help, your attitude will tear more people down then
build them up, you will cause the church to move backward rather than
forward, your growth in Christ will be stagnant and immature.
But if you respond to those flaming arrows of doubt with
faith in God and His Word, you are able to take your stand.
And make no mistake - faith is not wishful thinking or
cashing your brain in at the door. Faith is trusting God to be who He says
he is, it is trusting God to be true and right in what He says, and the
thing about faith is that it is as you exercise faith that you discover that
it is indeed reality.
The best picture of faith in the movie world occurs in the
film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In it, Indiana Jones has to
go through a series of booby traps in order to get to the Holy Grail. The
last difficulty is a great chasm with no apparent way to get across - the
only way is by faith. He has to take a step of faith. It’s not a blind step
of faith because he has the testimony of others who tell him it’s okay. He
has his father’s book that tells him it’s okay. But he still has to take the
step - he has to trust that what his father has told him is true. And you
know the scene - he takes a deep breath, and as he takes that step he
discovers an invisible bridge spanning the chasm. If he had never taken that
step of faith he would never have known fully about the bridge.
My friends you have your Heavenly Father’s book. You have the
testimony of others – and it is as we take that step of faith that we
discover that His word is true, His character is sure – and the flaming
arrows of doubt are extinguished.
Verse 17 says, “take up the helmet of salvation.” The
helmet was a vital piece of equipment for the Roman soldier as it protected
the head from injury. My sister works as a doctor for the Toronto
Rehabilitation Centre. A huge percentage of her cases are a result of head
injuries - from people not wearing a helmet while biking, snowboarding or
some other related sport. And she’ll tell you - if you injure your head it
effects everything else in your system. If you injure your head, you can’t
think straight. If you injure your head, you can’t walk straight. If you
injure your head, you can’t look straight.
So it is no mistake that the helmet is related to salvation –
that is because Satan’s blows are directed at your security and assurance in
Christ. If he can get you to doubt your salvation then you can’t do anything
straight as a Christian. You’ll always be knocked off balance if Satan can
get you to doubt your place in Christ.
In my life this is perhaps one of the longest battles I’ve
had with Satan – to doubt my salvation in Christ. He would send all sorts of
doubts in my life. He would tell me that saved people really don’t sin. Or
he’d tell me that my repentance and confession of Christ as Saviour and Lord
was a sham. Or he’d tell me that God gets tired of people who sin and
repent, sin and repent and I’ve used up God’s grace. Or he’d tell me that my
sin was too great and God did not truly forgive me.
It wasn’t until I put on the helmet of salvation and said to
Satan and these doubts, “No - Jesus said in John 6:37, ‘Whoever comes to
me I will never drive away.’ In Hebrews 7:25, “Christ is able to save
completely, forever, those who come to God through him, because he always
lives to intercede for them,’ and in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us
from all unrighteousness.’ ”
Put on the helmet of salvation. Here’s a truth we need to
learn – none of us saved ourselves. We did not cleanse ourselves from sin,
we did not rescue ourselves from death, we did not save ourselves. Christ
did all the work for us on the cross and if we did not save ourselves, we
cannot unsave ourselves. You cannot undo what Christ has done on the cross
for you and what the Holy Spirit has done in you.
It may be that you don’t feel close to God – it’s not because
He has left you, perhaps you have left Him, so turn back to God. Do the
things that move you closer to Him. It may be that you have sinned, so
confess your sin and ask God’s forgiveness. It may be that you have not
accepted Christ as Saviour and Lord. So do it. And having done this, trust
that it is done and that God accepts you when you turn to Him, He cleanses
you. When you confess to Him, God is faithful.
Put on the helmet of salvation means we live our lives
salvifically. Meaning we remember that we belong to Christ and no one and
nothing can snatch us out of his Hand. That’s the good news.
Don’t lose sight of who you are in Christ. This is what Paul
has been saying all through the book of Ephesians. You are redeemed, you
have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, you are a child of the
King, you have been seated in the heavenly realms. You are in Christ. Never
lose sight of who you are.
You know
one of the things that we pastors are privileged to do is to perform
weddings. It is interesting the change that takes place in a 40-minute
wedding ceremony. It is interesting to think of how a whole order of life
changes in the wedding ceremony.
The
wedding begins with this older gentleman walking this beautiful woman
dressed in white down the aisle. I say, “Who gives this woman away to be
married?” The older gentleman says, “I do”. I then tell him to sit down…
because he has now become irrelevant. I am absolutely, totally through with
him. I do not care that he has raised her for 21 years. It is irrelevant
that he has clothed and fed and housed and protected her – all that’s nice
but it just doesn’t matter anymore. Do you know why? Because on my left hand
side is this smooth-talking dude who just showed up a little while ago and
started whispering sweet nothings into this lady’s ear and she forgot all
about daddy and now begins to dream dreams about him. This young
whippersnapper out of nowhere comes and stands where the older man stood.
They now stand before me, “Do you take her? Do you take him?” We go back and
forth and then I say, “By the authority vested in my by the province of
Ontario and ultimately by God Himself, you are no longer two but you are now
husband and wife.”
Twenty
minutes earlier if that older man had of asked that younger woman to do
something for him she would have said, “Yes father.” Twenty minutes later,
if that older man asked that younger woman to do something for him she now
says, “Let me talk it over with my husband first.” Everything has changed.1
Listen,
Satan may have raised you for 21 years. He may have fed you, clothed you,
dominated you but you need to understand that when Jesus Christ stepped into
the picture Satan has now become irrelevant – he does not matter any longer.
Because now you have become married to another. (see Romans 7:1-6)
Don’t lose sight of your identity, you no longer belong to Satan but to
Christ and you are his child.
Then the text says take the sword of the Spirit which is the
word of God. So the last piece of armour we are to take up is the sword of
the spirit which is Scripture, the word of God. Now Paul has already told us
to put on the belt of truth. That is, we to put on God’s truth, believing in
God’s Word as absolute truth. Here Paul is saying take up specific truths to
fight the devil.
The term Paul uses for “Word” here is not logos which
refers to general statements but rhema which is more pointed and
refers to specific words or particular statements. He is saying know the
specific word of God. Learn it, memorize it and speak it.
Do you know that the devil has allergies? It’s true. He’s
gone to the clinic, he’s rolled up his sleeve and he’s had all the pin
pricks and gone through all the tests for dog allergies, food allergies,
pollen allergies – all have come back negative, but there is one allergy
that gives him the worse reaction possible. It is such a bad allergy that he
runs every time – he is scared of it and cannot stand it – it is an allergy
to the word of God. You speak the word of God to him and he goes “Achoo!”
Satan cannot stand the utterance of the word of God.
It is true - read Matthew 4 and Jesus is being tempted by the
devil and three times Jesus quotes scripture – “It is written … It is
written… It is written…” Three times and Satan was out of there.
If you are going to stand firm in this spiritual battle you
need to read the Bible, trust the Bible and speak the Bible in times of
temptation and difficulty. The Word of God is your authority and it will
send the devil running.
In spiritual warfare, it is not a matter of power – Satan has
more power than you or me. You cannot out-power or overpower Satan, but we
can send Satan packing with authority. There is a difference. Your authority
is the Word of God.
Well those are the six pieces of armour that we need to put
on.
You may
not always remember the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the
shoes fitted with the gospel of peace, helmet of faith – you may not
remember all that. That’s okay. Because all these are just different
descriptions of Christ. You see, Jesus is the truth. He is our
righteousness. Jesus is our peace. He is the author and finisher of our
faith, and He is our Saviour, bringing us salvation and He is the living
Word of God.
So if you
don’t remember truth, just remember Christ. If you don’t remember
righteousness, remember Christ. If you don’t remember peace, remember
Christ. If you don’t remember faith, remember Christ, If you don’t remember
the helmet of salvation, then remember Christ. Because guess what? He is the
consummate summation of all the armour of God. And if you have Christ you
have the armour of God. You are clothed in Christ.
Finally, you may now be thinking, how am going to put on all
this armour? How am I going to fight this battle?
One last story comes from the Old Testament book of Joshua.
Joshua was about to lead God’s people into the promised land and he knows
that his first battle with will be with the people of Jericho. He must take
it. He looks at his resources, he examines Jericho’s battlements, their huge
walls and defenses and suddenly he has a vision of a man with a drawn sword
and Joshua asks him “Are you for us or against us?” (Joshua 5:13)
Then the man identifies himself as the commander of the army of the Lord and
Joshua, realizing that he is in the presence of Lord himself, falls down to
the ground in reverence.
And from that point on it is not a question of the strength
of Joshua’s army, it is not a question of power of Joshua’s weapons – the
situation is now under the control of the Captain of an invisible host who
is able to defeat any strategy of the enemy. Joshua gladly hands over the
battle entirely to Him.
And here’s the truth, no matter what you are facing, if you
fall on your face before God in dependence and trust then you will be able
to take your stand against the enemy.
If you try to stand in your own puny self-righteousness, if
you try to create your own peace, if you have faith in the ways and words of
man instead of God’s Son and His Word, thinking that you have the equipment
to see your through to a life of victory, then you will fall before Satan
and his schemes.
But if you fall before God in prayer, repentance, dependence,
and surrender you will be able to stand before the enemy.
Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - December 2005
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Illustration
adapted from illustration given by Tony Evans in 1996, Moody Pastors
Conference.
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