TEXT: Ephesians 6:10-20

SUBJECT: Ephesians #12: Christian Warfare

Everyone in this room, I think, is one of seven things: you are a husband, a wife, a parent, a child, a master, a servant, or some combination thereof. Whoever you are, the Lord wants you to love Him enough to be the kind of person He wants you to be at home and at work. This is what it means to be a disciple: not to say, ‘Lord, Lord’, but to do the things He says, and not only when they’re easy to do, but especially, when they’re hard.

This is what today’s topic is: serving the Lord when it’s hard. How hard is it? I cannot give you a number, such as ‘on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 7.5! If I cannot give you a number, I can give you a picture, in fact, three of them.

In I Corinthians 9, Paul compares living the Christian life to running a race—and not just ‘running’ it, but winning. If those men—he says—put in the time and effort and focus and desire to winning an garland that wilts and goes to pieces, how much more must we discipline ourselves to win a crown that endures forever? Some athletes take their games lightly. But not the ones who win. Changing sports, think of Michael Jordan, standing up to the pressure of big games and willing his team to six NBA titles. What he won was impressive, but nothing compared to what we have to win. Or lose. This is the first picture.

The second is wrestling. In I Timothy 6, Paul tells his young friend to fight the good fight of faith, laying hold of eternal life. If there’s a sport harder than wrestling, I don’t know what it is. What makes it more demanding than the others is, it allows for no rest. If a man running a marathon is two miles ahead as he nears the finish line, he can slow down and enjoy the moment. If a football team is up 48-0, it can run out the clock by kneeling on the ball. Even boxers will sometimes ‘take a round off’. But there’s no time off in wrestling, for the simple reason: if you relax, you’ll be flipped over and pinned. In this picture, it’s not ‘training hard’ that Paul has in mind, but ‘making a constant effort’ or ‘never letting up’ until the match is over.

The third picture is even more intense than the first two, because, unlike the others, it is a matter of life and death. Runners lose, and that’s bad. Wrestlers get hurt, and that’s worse. But in war, what happens? Men die.

We are in a war, but it is not the Culture War we hear so much about in the media. Our true fight is not with the people who support Gay Marriage; or with the people who keep Intelligent Design out of our public schools; or with the people who make movies in Hollywood. Because they are made in the Likeness and Image of God, they ought to be respected; and, because they have souls that will live forever with the Lord or burn in everlasting fire, they ought to be loved, and prayed for, and witnessed to! Lord, forgive us for hating or despising or ignoring the enemies You loved and told us to love, too.

It is sometimes said, ‘God is not a Republican or a Democrat, an American or an Iranian’. That’s right, He is not. And neither is the devil. He and his servants are at work everywhere and in every way. If they’re telling schools to teach Atheism in the science classes, they’re telling the churches to preach conservative politics instead of the Gospel! If they’re seducing some men with adultery, they’re congratulating others for not being as other men are.

The war is serious. The devil can be faulted for many things, but nobody ever said he didn’t mean business. He does mean business. His first goal was to destroy Jesus Christ, which he worked at from the time he got Cain to kill his brother to the day he got the Jews and Romans to crucify the Lord. But then his plans—so well thought out—went wrong (for him) and right for us. God raised His Son from the dead and seated Him in Highest Glory, and worlds beyond the devil’s reach.

Having failed to destroy the Head, Satan turns to the Body. His obsession is to drag us down to hell and for us to drag down as many with us as we can. When I say, ‘we’, I mean Christians in particular. If you’re a king, why keep conquering your own country? The people are already loyal to you, more or less, and a small police force will keep them that way.

Kings bent on conquest look outside their borders, and this is what the devil is doing—glancing at his servants once-in-a-while, of course—but peering long and hard at the people in the other Kingdom.

If you’re a disciple of Christ, this means you and if we’re a church of Christ, it means us. Will you survive the devil’s attacks? Will Grace Baptist Church get through the war to the victory that lies beyond it?

Before I offer an answer, let’s have a look at the tactics of hell.

In the First Century, Satan’s deadliest weapon was…Judaism. This was a masterstroke on his part because so much of it was in the Bible, and to many at that time, turning away from the customs of Israel felt like rejecting God.

But it wasn’t, of course, for the Law, as holy and God-given as it was, was never meant to be a Savior. It was designed to keep Israel close to God until He sent the Savior to bring them the blessings the Law had no power to convey.

Today, Judaism poses little threat to Christians, except perhaps to the few who are of Jewish descent and feel the tug to come back to the old ways.

If the details change with time, the devil’s strategy remains the same. He takes the gifts of God and twists them to his own use.

Take love as the prime example. If anything in the world is from God, love is the thing. God is love, the Bible says, but what crime has not been committed in Love’s Name?

Patience is a second example. Ought we to be patient? Of course we ought, for God Himself is patient and commands us to be like Him in this way. Patience is so important to Him that He calls it the first quality of love—love suffers long. But patience, like every other good thing, is open to abuse and is abused.

Think of church discipline. A brother is in gross sin, everybody knows it, but nobody says anything. After a year or two, the pastor hints at it so subtly the man doesn’t know it was hinted at. Later, somebody gets up the gumption to tell him his fault plainly, but the man is not the least bit sorry for what he’s up to, we all promise to pray for him. ‘Be patient’ we all say, and we ought to say it. But when does ‘patience’ become ‘leniency’ and how long can it go before it comes off as pure disobedience?

And then we have liberty. The Bible teaches Christian liberty and warns us to not pass judgment on others in matters of indifference and on things that are not black-and-white. We must not draw up a set of rules outside of the Bible and make obedience to them a term of fellowship or of respect. But having said this, has liberty no limits except on things that are spelled-out in the Bible as sinful?

For example, we all know there are movies we shouldn’t watch, but how close to these movies should we allow ourselves to get?

The same is true with spending your money. Except for things illegal or unwholesome or you can’t pay for, the Bible nowhere tells you to not buy things you like. But aren’t they’re better things to do with your money than spend it all on stamps or clothes or…even books.

Finally, on this point, I have to say something about hating sin. The Lord wants us to do this, Psalm 97:10—

It is good and necessary to hate sin. But the devil can twist the hatred of sin into something he can use to promote sin. How? In two ways I thought of. First, by making us hate sinners and not just the sins they commit. And, secondly, by making us hate everybody’s sins but our own. If you need an example of this perversion of a good thing, I point you to the Pharisees.

Self-righteousness and bitterness toward sinners can be either personal things or church things, as the Body of Christ becomes less and less like its Head and more and more like its diseased and malformed members.

How do we stand up to the cunning and violent plots of the devil? We don’t have to wonder, v.11—

This ‘armor of God’ is the armor He gives us. Observe His wisdom and generosity. What kind of King leaves His soldiers to fight without the supplies they need? One of two kind: a stupid king or a poor king. Jesus Christ is neither. He has all we need to fight through the battles of life and to come on top. And, because He wants us to do both, He gives us all we need.

This means we don’t have to give into temptations—even if they’re amazingly clever and strong. The weakest Christian—fitted out with the whole armor of God is well able to—

This arming doesn’t make the battle easy; it makes it winnable. We don’t have to live in despair, saying, ‘That’s just the way I am’. Or, if it’s someone else we care for, we must not say, ‘He’ll never change’. The late George Carlin’s best know routine was, The Seven Words You Cannot Say on TV. I won’t say the words from the pulpit either! But I wish there was one word you could never say in Church—

The victory over sin is not in us, or even in our armor. It is in the Lord who loves us so blesses the armor that we cannot fall as long as we wear it! Lose a battle? Of course. Take a wound or two or three? Definitely. But the war is ours because our King is God!

The Puritan William Gurnall wrote a huge book explaining each piece of armor; Dr. Martyn Llloyd-Jones preached through the pieces for six months. I’ll be closer to six minutes!

To stand up to the devil’s onslaught we need, first of all, truth. This means we need to know and remember that God is true to us, and that He cannot fail us. The opposite of this truth is unbelief and what goes with it, despair.

The second piece of armor is righteousness. This means knowing and believing God is righteous and that when our consciences torment us for what we’ve done or not done, we answer them—‘Yes, you’re right, I have done these things, and I’m sorry. But I will stay in the fight because, for Christ’s sake, God is righteous enough to stay with me and bless me despite my ill deserts.

The third piece is the Gospel. The Good News of what God has done for us in Christ is so good that temptations seem bad by comparison and giving up is impossible for if God did all this for us, He’ll provide everything we need, even in the hottest conflict.

Next comes faith or loyalty to God. Loyalty is consistent with sins and weaknesses of every kind, except for disloyalty. As long as we remain loyal to the Lord, we cannot be disappointed.

Then the helmet of salvation, or the assurance that we truly belong to Christ and cannot be snatched out of His hand.

Finally, the Word of God, which helps us see through Satan’s cunning ways, or get through the temptation if it cannot be seen through.

All the pieces are put on through prayer, which reminds us that our strength is not in ourselves but in our Savior.

Paul adds a P.S.—while you’re praying for your own success, don’t forget mine. Paul’s temptation was to shy away from persecution by not speaking up for Christ boldly. But feeling his own weaknesses, he asked his friends to pray the Holy Spirit to supply his every need.

This brings us back to the main message of Ephesians: the unity of the Church. Paul is an Apostle of Christ with gifts second to none. But he does not feel sufficient, he feels dependent on his brethren and in need of their prayers.

If we are lesser persons that he was (and we are), let us not be embarrassed to depend on each other and seek each others’ prayers.

Brothers and sister, we’re at war with enemies who are far smarter and stronger than any one of us is on his own. And there’s the rub: Assuming you’re a Christian, you’re not alone. God is on your side. And so is the Church. Let us live, then, with confidence in Christ and with a deep respect for His Church.