Please turn to Ephesians, chapter six, we're going to focus on verse 17 today, the second part of verse 17. But as I have been doing since the beginning of this little mini series on the armor of God, let's start back in verse 10. Be reminded as you turn there that this is God's word. So in every single turn of phrase, God, the Holy Spirit is addressing you this morning. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. Stand, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and his shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is a weapon that it has divine power and that you give us the Holy Spirit to rightly discern your word. And we trust now, even as we hear these words, that your word is discerning us. It's cutting down and is discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. We pray that you would do that great surgeon's work on us and prepare us for battle, not in our own power, not in our own wisdom. But in your strength and wisdom. We pray that your son would be magnified. By these words. We pray it in Jesus name, amen, amen, you may be seated. This is part six of six in the armor of God. And this one is called the sword of the spirit. Well, if you know anything about ancient myth or folklore, you'll know that in almost all of it, there's a central place reserved for a sword. In the legend of King Arthur, very early in its development, there was an old Welsh word for hard clef. that the English called caliber, which was combined with the Latin word X, which means out of or from. And when you put it all together, you get a sword needing to be extracted from a hard, stony thing. And so in one retelling of the story. The legend said that whosoever pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is right-wise king born of all England. Now, Arthur was a myth, except for a few scattered details known to historians. But the principle is true about God's Word. The principle is this. The right sword in the right hand and in the right place makes or breaks the kingdom. And of course, Paul didn't have Arthur in mind here. or any of those other war movie images that we've been using throughout the series, but he did have a very particular blade in mind here. And he had a very particular use for that which it symbolized. And so in our outline today, we're going to ask a question at the beginning, very similar to the way we've been talking about all of the other pieces as well. We're going to ask, what kind of a sword was this? That's our shortest section. And then we've got that now, we've got two theological propositions here. We're going to first of all ask, what's the relationship between the Spirit and this sword? The Spirit's relationship to the Word, and then finally we'll get to the real, meatiest section, the practical section, and we're going to see that this is the piercing power of the Word. When Paul talks about the sword of the Spirit, he's going to be meaning a piercing power. of the word of God. And the big idea, if you get lost in any point, just come back to this, that the word of God is the piercing power that divides human souls from demonic strongholds. So if you haven't caught that imagery throughout of people being captive, even people that we have to fight against from time to time. that we are on a search and rescue mission for them as well. We're fighting against them for them, because ultimately, Paul's already said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against these spiritual beings. So that's our big idea. The word of God is the piercing power that divides human souls from demonic strongholds. The way Paul says it in this last piece of armor is the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God, in verse 17. So the first question has to be, what kind of a sword is this? Just on the most basic, cultural, historical level. Well, this particular sword, Mechaira in the Greek, is something more like a dagger than a long sword. We've mentioned the long sword, the broad sword before. This isn't that. This is a narrower, sometimes shorter, sometimes it's long. It could range anywhere from 6 inches to 18 inches. And it was double-edged, but the purpose of it being double-edged was so that you can inflict multiple forward and backward slashes against your opponent. But the key is this, the purpose of this sword is for one-on-one close combat. It was carried in a sheath or a scabbard attached to the belt. And we see this exact kind of sword being carried by the guards who arrested Jesus. Matthew, chapter 26, verse 47, this word is used. And it was the sword used by Peter a couple of verses later to cut off the ear of that servant of the high priest in Matthew 26. And in Acts, chapter 12, when Herod, the king, laid violent hands on some who belong to the church, it says that he killed James, the brother of John, with the machiare. He used this narrow, double-edged, sharp sword to pierce James, the brother of John. Now, of course, it's significant that this is the only offensive weapon that is mentioned in this passage, whereas the rest of the pieces are defensive armor. And that's a point that's been made again and again in teachings about this passage of Scripture. And it's right. I agree with it. It's an important point. But I think next week, Josh is going to have something to say about the offensive dimension of prayer from verse 18. So I don't think we want to take that in a one dimensional way to say that this sword is the only offensive weapon that there is. But I think it's significant. that Paul only gives one offensive weapon in this place, only one offensive weapon, a place of prominence in this central warfare imagery in Scripture. And I think there's two basic reasons for that that are closely associated. First of all, think about this. Paul is describing a weapon that every individual Christian, every single Christian, is equipped with this weapon. And it's true that we are equipped with prayer as an offensive act as well. But secondly, the truth of God's word has a place of prominence in the whole Christian life so that even in prayer. So that you're not a relativist praying, so you're just gushing out your own subjective feelings, even in prayer, the truth from the word of God. is what we might call the atomic formula, even in the explosive power of prayer. Even when we're on the offensive, taking heaven by storm, as one Puritan said, even there, it's the word of God that informs us. And so this is significant. But don't miss this about the sword. The main thing you're to take from this opening section about what is this? Is this just sort of a music? Oh, that's neat. That's neat that it was that kind of a sword. No, it's practical. The one-on-one close range function of this combat blade is going to immediately spell something for every single Christian. In other words, this is not a weapon that is wielded merely by preachers of the gospel. It is not a weapon that is wielded merely by teachers of theology or by street evangelists. As much as I love those things, This is the sharp incision making, demon slashing duty of every single Christian soldier. So if at any point you get to a place where you say to yourself, well, that's that's not me. No, that is you. He is placing this sharp weapon in every single one of our hands. In fact, you often hear that all the time. People will sort of chumily say, I've got my sword with me today. We've been around the church a lot. And I think that's true. I wish we believed it more. I wish we understood it more. So let's get into the theology of this, our second point. What is the spirit's relationship to the word? Because he does call it the sword of the spirit. Well, interestingly here, the word that's used for word when he describes to you what he means, the word of God, the word that he uses for word is the Greek word rhema. It's the more present sense of the word of God. The other word that's used for the word of God in scripture, the logos, has a more eternal connotation. So think of John chapter one, verse one. Christ is called the word. That's the logos. That's where we get the English word logic from. But here the word is rhema. Here's the distinction. The difference between those two is not that one is personal, the rhema. Oh, that's the personal one. That's the one I can get my heart wrapped around. And the other is the impersonal truth, the logos. Well, that would be nonsense because the logos, as I've just said, is a divine person, Jesus. Rather, the distinction is that the logos word deals with the universal truths of Scripture. The whole thing as an eternal truth. Whereas the Rhema word refers to those particular truths in the word, and not coincidentally, that mirrors the difference between the great broadsword that Christ is seen. It's coming out of his mouth, in fact, in Revelation chapter 19, he comes back to strike the nations and a sword. The Lagos is coming out of his mouth. That's the broadsword. to clear the threshing floor of planet Earth of all of his enemies. That's Revelation 19, verse 13 and 15. And on the other hand, there's this close combat sword that's given to every single Christian. Now, in this letter, in Ephesians, the word rhema has been used by Paul one other time in chapter five, verse 26, for the washing of water with the word. In its other usage in Paul's letters, he always keeps it closely related to the gospel. And it's especially poignant in Romans, where faith comes through hearing in chapter 10 and hearing through the rhema of Christ, through the word of Christ. So what's he talking about there? Paul's talking about something that every Christian has the power to communicate, something that he's given to us to wake up the dead. The particular words of the gospel meeting us right where we are proved to be the most powerful weapon. And so it's no coincidence Paul opens that letter to the Romans talking about the gospel that he's not ashamed of in chapter one, verse 16. That is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. In fact, if you've done any evangelism or forget about that, if you've done any witnessing in your life, if you're honest, you would acknowledge that all of the success that we've had in witnessing or evangelism is entirely the Holy Spirit speaking through the word. As Peter knew in his own life in Acts chapter two, it says about his sermon at Pentecost that when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? That's going to be crucial imagery today. Cutting to the heart. A group of people, enemies of God, you say, well, they were they were the family of God. These are the people in Jerusalem. Right. But they were enemies of God who had crucified Jesus. And what the scriptures are saying is that Peter, something he said, cut them to the heart so that they were just transfixed and said, brothers, what shall we do? But this word doesn't just cut sinners out of this world and place them into the kingdom. This sword also resists the attack of the satanic swordsman. Think of Jesus in Matthew chapter four in the wilderness. He used this word in one on one combat with the devil. When Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8 3, Jesus countered the devil saying, you know, the scripture says this. Jesus saying in Matthew 4.4 that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every rhema, every particular word that comes from the mouth of God. We might remember that when Jesus was baptized, he was anointed by the Holy Spirit in a special way later on in Luke 4. It tells us to preach the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. To what? Because he's anointed me to preach. And he was thus filled with the spirit right before he was led by the spirit into that showdown with the devil. The scriptures actually make the point to say that Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to have that showdown with the devil, where the spirit gave him this sword. And so what is the relationship? What's the root? What's the real biggest reason that Paul says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Is there a deeper theological reason that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God? Well, there is. In John's Gospel, we especially get a picture of this. In John 14 through John 16, in so many ways, Jesus connects the Spirit and the Word to the point where they're absolutely inseparable. Can't have the Word without the Spirit? And you can't have the spirit without the word. And why is that? Because Christ is the word. So in John, chapter 16, 14, Jesus said that when he comes, he will glorify me. The Holy Spirit lives to draw attention to Jesus Christ. To draw attention to the son of God, and just as surely as the Holy Spirit lives to glorify the word. So the Holy Spirit lives to tell the truth. He's called in chapter 14 of John's gospel, the spirit of truth. And so when we go on that battlefield of life, nobody is faster. No one has more explosives on the battlefield than God, the Holy Spirit. And it was the Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus. to outstrip the devil's false use of scripture with the pure sword thrusts of the right view of scripture in Matthew chapter four. And so Paul is clear to qualify himself here. He is not saying that this weapon is God himself. If you're confused about that, you don't have to know any Greek. When you get to this part of verse 17, Paul clarifies. He said the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Think about what it would mean if the sword of the Spirit was God Himself. That would have us wielding God. Now, there's a lot of Christian groups that think they can do just that. But Paul is very careful to do what John did in his Gospel. You can't separate the Spirit of God from the Word of God. You cannot wield God as if He were your own power. So that the Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit means that it belongs to the spirit, that the word of God is a manifestation of the spirit's power in some way. First of all, that means that the Holy Spirit is the source of the inspired word of God. But we don't want to make the mistake of building this blade or burying it too far into its sheath, which is what we could do by assuming that this is all that Paul means by the spirit's ownership of Scripture, his authorship, We don't want to say just that. That's true. That's an important doctrine. But if that is all that Paul means here, well, then how exactly would this be a present and ready weapon for our spiritual use? This would be the opposite error of supposing that the spirit is the word here and that man is just wielding God. Well, the opposite error, if you're afraid of that. On the other extreme would be using the word in a way that is divorced. from the spirit and there man would be wielding his own powers of intellect, the powers of our will, our willpower, our decision, something we do would be what Paul means. But that would be wrong as well. So let's be exact and let's summarize it in this way. The Holy Spirit. Presently. Actively, immediately, instantly empowers The wielder of the word of God. Jesus said it like this in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 20. And this is a promise to every single Christian, not just to those disciples. He says when they deliver you over. Not if they deliver you over. But when they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say. For what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your father speaking through you. Now, by the way, deliver you over there can have a broad connotation. You don't actually have to be physically bound to the governing authorities. It can be people who are persecuting you or simply discarding you, people you know, but people who are giving you an opportunity. They're giving you a platform to defend the hope that is within you. And in that, we constantly need the Holy Spirit to give us this sword, to draw it with the quickness of a samurai, so as to make all the right cuts into the enemy's defenses. I know maybe you don't, you see, again, let's rewind a little bit, probably fell out of a lot of our heads here, but it's not like warfare's over here and evangelism's over here, or warfare's over here and parenting's over here. Every time you speak the words of God and Jesus is saying, you need the spirit to do that. There's a war going on. There's someone you're rescuing, but there's also somebody you're cutting. And we'll see that more and more as we go on, you need the spirit to do that. And this is done by a combination of two spiritual disciplines, being in the word. And being in a state of prayer, you cannot expect to wield that sword. If you're not practicing those spiritual disciplines, could you expect a soldier to be effective with a sword if he's not always practicing his craft? It's just like anything else, which is why Paul has the word of God in mind to Timothy and second Timothy four, two, when he tells us all to be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. So that's the relationship of the spirit to the word. It is from him. It is his authorship. It is his power. You cannot expect to have power with the word without the Holy Spirit. But you cannot have you cannot expect to have power of the spirit by some dreams that he's giving you off on your own or some power that he's invested you with. It's now resting on you apart from God's means of grace. Well, thirdly, let's ask the question, OK, great, that's the intro. What does this really mean? Great image. I hope you've seen throughout that when Paul selects imagery, he's not just saying, well, that would be a cute piece of imagery. I think they're used to that. And I think if we can put those together, because again, that would be human wisdom. God himself, through Paul, is selecting each piece of armor in a way that's perfectly natural. A soldier naturally puts them on in this order. to this final place of grabbing the sword. But not only that, but each piece of armor has perfectly gone with the thing that it's representing spiritually. So have that expectation as we get into this last section. This is the meat. This is, okay, what does that mean? This is the piercing power of the word. In a way, this might be my even more concise, big idea. I'm claiming I think this is what Paul's getting at. This sort of the spirit, which is the word of God, is the piercing power of the word. And the classic passage in the whole New Testament is Hebrews chapter four, verse 12, which says this. For the word of God is living and active. sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Now, I have to resist doing an exposition of that because that's not our text, but look at that. Spiritual imagery, soul and spirit. physical imagery, marrow. He really makes it picturesque. But the idea there is of a sharper, not just a two edged sword, it's sharper than any two edged sword. The imagery Paul's using, the author of Hebrews is saying, is actually a faint piece of imagery. The sword, sharpest one you can even think of, is a faint image of this divine thing. It always works better than anything all the time. We'll look at that imagery. The parallel stacking by the author of Hebrews of the words piercing. And discerning, what does this word do? It's piercing. What do you mean, author of Hebrews? It's discerning. The piercing is a discerning. The piercing is the imagery. The discerning is the unpacking of what he means by that. The discerning is literally what is meant by the piercing. Now, since in this imagery as soldiers, we're all lunging this blade at unbelievers. That's going to immediately present us with a difficulty, maybe maybe you've already caught it and you're combining imagery and you're saying, ah, I'm a surgeon, but I'm but I'm a soldier. They're an enemy and a patient. Am I going to just butcher them? If I talk like this, I will be a butcher. Not an evangelist. I'll be a I'll be a bad surgeon. I won't be a parent and so on and so on. But there's an even deeper, maybe a more theological resistance you might have to this. You might look at this and say, wait a minute here. Aren't unbelievers positively resistant to God's word? Won't all the people that were thrown this at and slashing at Just reject God's word, no matter how sharp that blade, no matter how far down the word is capable of going. Yes. But. What the spirit is saying about the word here in passages like Hebrews 412 is that the efficiency of the knife. The sharpness of the blade, the depth that it goes down to. does not depend at all upon the willingness of the patient. The sword of the Spirit, in other words, will always instantaneously strike down to the depths. Which incision will produce God's ordained effect every single time? The use of the Word of God will Make the incision all the way down to the depths, whether in a believer or in an unbeliever. You might have the assumption that God ought to be accomplishing something that you expect him to accomplish in that incision. And maybe that might be your hang up. But the sword of the spirit will always, always produce God's ordained effect. Either the hardened heart will recoil like a vampire, as if you were stung by a bee or a child getting a shot at the doctors. And you probably run into that all the time when you present the gospel or when you just live the Christian life, maybe from family members, maybe from friends or co-workers or else. The heart will be stunned into a trance and recognize the light of the sword as true light, and maybe they'll begin to hold still for the surgeon's blade to continue its work. But either way, this is what God says about his word in Isaiah 55 verse 11. He says, So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Unless or until you didn't see the results. That's not what he says. Every time this double-edged sword goes down, it's the sharpest thing in all of reality. Now, why does it work to Pierce? Why does this work? It's because the Scriptures have a self-evidencing light. The same God who wrote the Scriptures made the audience. The same God who made the reason of every single person and constructed the conscience of every single person When God, the Holy Spirit moves his searchlights to expose the reason and search the conscience, the design always recognizes the designer, no matter how much they may wiggle, no matter how much we may fear or they may claim to the contrary. The design always recognizes the designer. The distorted design may not like it. But the design must recognize its designer. The barcode dutifully exposes itself to the beat of the piercing laser. Now, it's true that in sin, in a lot of examples that you may have in your mind, it's true that the barcode is eroded. It's broken. Its ink is running away from the light of the laser. But even the deadest plant in the driest desert does not escape the gaze of the sun's light. Even if it doesn't respond with life, the light pierces down to the root. As C.S. Lewis once said the same thing in different words, he said, a man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell. And so in the same way, the rebellious flesh of the rebel can never resist the piercing of the Word of God. Every demon inside that sinner may wriggle and writhe and lash out with blasphemies and desperate arguments and pay professors to give them good ammo to make it. But he only ever does so because the sword of the spirit has planted its sharpened flag into its foreign soil. And what do we do? We don't believe that the word of God is this kind of a blade. And so we go to other things that are rusty and dull and broken and pretend that it has more effect. Now, one more piece of imagery within this piercing power. Let me just mix metaphors a little bit, because the Bible, I'm going to take a metaphor from the scriptures. Within this piercing power, one more thing that it means, we have to include a demolishing power. So, by piercing power, I meant a discerning power, searching down to the depths. But I'm going to show you in another scripture that we also mean a demolishing power, the ultimate smart bomb in the form of a sword. Just play with the imagery. The ultimate smart bomb. Demolishing. what it hits since every demonic captor represents what the Bible calls a stronghold. Consider this passage by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians, chapter 10, verses four and five. We're going to see that we're going to be on the offense here in our spiritual warfare. Second Corinthians 10, four and five. Paul says that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. So trivia question, time out. What is our offensive spiritual firepower for? Answer, to destroy strongholds. No, God does that. Angels do that. The Holy Spirit may do it through us. Paul says we have this to destroy strongholds. Yes, God is the firepower. But he is granting to us the life of blowing up things, destroying things. The Bible uses the word demolish in one translation. We, Paul continues, destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. and take every thought captive to obey Christ. I can hear a voice on my shoulder right now. The voice on my shoulder says. Argument that is so unspiritual. What's argument got to do with prayer? Paul's taught. In fact, he's just treating argument as the negative here. Wrong. He is having us enlisted in this great crusade in a constant state of prayer engaged in argument, destroying argument. Hold on to that when we get to our application section. But let's think about what we're destroying here. So we're destroying people, if you mean by a person, a demonic person, namely a fallen angel. Yes. But if you assume in that that this is going to be bad for human persons, the Bible would disagree with you. But this is a really critical passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. It interprets for us what this offensive weapon is. If we keep in mind that the physical imagery is showing us a spiritual reality, we can see that a stronghold should have put this up there. But here's my and I think it's a biblical definition of a stronghold the way that it's talked about in Scripture. A stronghold is any position. deception slavery so of course it's an invisible thing it's talking about like it's a physical fortress but that's just imagery there's a more real spiritual reality a stronghold is any position of deception slavery into which human beings have been captured by Satan or his servants so think of Colossians 2 8 don't be taken captive Oh, that's such great poetic imagery. No, he means actual captive, what, with chains, like from Home Depot? No, more real. You're an atheist. You're a naturalist. Physical chains are not more real than these things. Other way around. You're thinking like a naturalist. It's part of what the Bible does. It's cleansing us out of our irrational, illogical, naturalistic categories of thought. In fact, that thought you had is a captivity. Those are some of those chains we're talking about. OK, so let's have those blasted away. A stronghold in the Bible, and it's anybody, Colossians 1.13. He has transferred us from that domain of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved son. A stronghold which you are all in. And what you can get your foot caught into as a Christian, which is why Colossians 2 8 is in the Bible talking to Christians. Do not be taken captive. Don't get caught in one of those bear traps. Any position of deception, slavery, into which human beings have been captured by Satan or his servants. Now, because these slave cells are made of the chains of deception, it's going to be the truth that will set the captive free, as Jesus says in John 8, 32. Who's Jesus talking to? To the church. I feel dirty. No, to the church leadership. Jesus is talking to the church leadership and he has his fiercest language. to church leadership, just like the rest of the Bible. And he's saying that we need to be freed from these strongholds. Truth is what does that. The power of the sword of the spirit. Is that it is not a truth of our own making, it is not arguments we devise out of our own reason. It is divine truth with divine power. Last piece of the puzzle. Consider for a moment what the word sanctification means. And if you're a Christian, part of us being saved is being sanctified. That just means made more and more holy, made more and more like Jesus every day. Consider what sanctification is and how it relates to the word of God as a divider. as a separator, the word of God, the sort of the spirit as a slicing, separating agent from this world. Think of it like this. Jesus prayed to the father in John chapter 17 about his own people. And he prayed for us in John 17, 17, sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. Now, what did that prayer mean? Jesus is asking God, separate them from the world, make them and the word holy is the same Greek word as sanctify, make them a cut above, cut them out of this world, slice them out, sword them, sword them out. Really? You get that? Yes. Because then he says your word is the thing that will do that. The root meaning of sanctification is separation. Because to sanctify is to make holy and to make holy is to be separate or to be removed from the common things of this world by God for his own special use. Well, this violent separating action is absolutely inseparable from salvation. If you are a Christian, this is what's happening to you. How is it happening to you? Jesus is praying. Jesus is under the impression that the thing that's doing that to us, the thing that's cutting out that stone from this world is his word. In salvation, God is literally cutting us out, you might say, if you want to make it less warfare like surgically removing the new you and the new me. from the rotting rebel corpse that the world can see out there on the battlefield. And Jesus knew that it was the truth embodied in the word of God that makes that sanctifying slash. Ultimately, it is Christ the King who wields the real Excalibur and makes us the knights of his round table. And what does he do? He gives us each a sword to wield his word at hearts of stone, extracting the soul from the demonic stronghold. And so what are we doing here through us as instruments in the Redeemer's hands? He is placing in our hands this word that we are aiming at strongholds. We're aiming them at people, right? We're destroying people. We're separating people from a demonic stronghold. Now, the demons going to get the edge of that blade that kills. But the other edge of the blade is for a surgery or think of it like this. A rescue from a hostage crisis, the ultimate hostage crisis, however small it may be. Be it a stronghold over one person. A one demon to one man hostage crisis. Maybe for your kids, maybe for your spouse, maybe for somebody else in your family. Maybe it is a street evangelism thing, but however small. A one demon to one Christian hostage crisis, as if the demon's knife were held as a threat to us as we have this word at the throat of the loved one or the acquaintance. That acquaintance or that friend, who is nevertheless playing the part of God's enemy. And we have to speak God's sword at them. However small of a walking stronghold they are, the sword of the spirit is their only hope. They need to go under the knife. It's the only thing that's going to take them out of that stone. There's that intense scene, one of my favorite scenes in any movie, really, in the Patriot. Where Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson, is going to rescue his captive son, played by Heath Ledger. When the Swamp Fox of South Carolina and his other sons had already taken out all those other British soldiers who were guarding him, except for that one last soldier, that one last redcoat who grabbed his captive son. He knew what to do to intimidate his father. And he put the knife to his neck. and stared down at his father with his son in that grip. And what does the father do? He takes that tomahawk from his belt and with an assassin's precision, plunge its blade into the forehead of that red coat. And sharper than any two-edged sword, the captor was separated from the captive. And that is exactly the imagery that Paul has in mind. Paul never watched that movie. No, I know that. But it is perfect. It's the perfect imagery for what Paul has in mind. Let's apply this to three areas of our life, and you'll see that there's a lot of overlap here. First of all, if you're worried. The human opponent gets the surgeon's knife. The demon gets the mortal wound. Now, we can't control the outcome or the trajectory of that blade. But if you're wondering, the human opponent gets the surgeon's knife. The demon gets the mortal wound. This is crucial imagery. There's a demon or two on the backs of our human opponents, and though we may still have to fight our human opponents with the words of truth, Ultimately, we are in a search and rescue operation for them at the same time. And that means that this sort of the spirit is both dagger and surgeon's scalpel. We are swordsmen and medics in the same slashing motions. And immediately that might produce some other objections in your mind, thinking to yourself, listen, we're just going to start slashing as if we have any alternative. as if something besides the Word of God could ever separate them from their own heart of stone. But the key is this. The key is that the burden of this genius work is not on us because we are not genius enough for it. Its wisdom is not from us. But just recall that passage from Hebrews 4.12. And you'll see that this very sword of the Spirit is what does all the discerning that you need. We don't have to know the identity of the elect, for example, nor do we have to know the exact spiritual maturity, the exact point of progress that somebody is on somebody who the spirit is leading toward the kingdom. And we don't have to discern all of the ways. That that separation is going to go all the way down between the captor and his captive. We don't have to play chess with the devil here. The word does that for us. Our job is to be faithful to what the word of God says and to let him make the incisions where he wills. The Christians particular swords must never, ever contradict Christ's universal sword. So now I'm going to bring a little application from the meaning of those two Greek words for word. It's pretty instructive that when Christ ascends to his throne and when the devil is thrown down to the domain of earth in Revelation 12, 11. That what makes the victory for the Christian soldiers, once we get to heaven and we have this imagery that John had in the book of Revelation. Revelation 12 tells us that what makes the victory at the end of the day for the Christian soldiers is said to be the blood of the lamb. And the word of their testimony, and in that place, the word that is used for the word. That we spoke in our lifetimes. Now shifts back to the logos and not the Rhema. In other words, this place in Revelation is a more general statement. about the character of our words, the words that we fought with, the words that we conquered with our particular words are meant to mirror Christ's eternal word. Or to say it another way, our minor swords are meant to reflect Christ's major sword. Our words of witness, our Christian conversation with people is always supposed to glisten with the gospel, is always supposed to come back to the cross. And what that means in the practical movements of day to day battle is that the sword of the spirit is not some magical mantra book where we're putting hexes on hell. Like Simon, the magician. Or like the sons of Sceva thought that they can do. This is not the random firing of fortune cookies at the devil. We have to be learned, skilled swordsmen and swordswomen. We're to rightly divide the word of truth. Jesus did not randomly match the devil in the wilderness with Bible bombs. Jesus was Jesus. Jesus is the word. He didn't even have to be arguing with the devil. And yet not only does he quote Scripture, but he doesn't do so randomly. He discerned the specific fallacies in the serpent's misuse of Scripture, and Jesus swung his sword to meet the exact place where the devil's sword was headed. That's a picture of us as skilled swordsmen. using the word not randomly, not superstitiously, but to see the whole truth as it is in Scripture. Finally, at the center of the whole Word of God is the Word of God, with a capital W. The Word made flesh and His flesh on a cross. One little word shall fell the devil. That word above all earthly powers. Those are the words of the song that were penned by Martin Luther. Mighty fortress is our God. And of course, he came up with that song at the height of the Reformation. But what was that one word that he was talking about? What is that one word that drives a dagger into the darkest, stoniest heart? But the gospel. Dr. Morton Lloyd-Jones, in his commentary, retells the story of how Luther came to these conclusions. And he said, Luther was held in darkness by the devil, though he was a monk. He was trying to save himself by works. He was fasting and sweating and praying, and yet he was miserable and unhappy and in bondage. superstitious Roman Catholic teaching held him captive. But he was delivered by the word of Scripture. The just shall live by faith. And from that moment, he began to understand this word as he had never understood it before. And the better he understood it, the more he saw the errors taught by Rome. He saw the error of her practice and so became more intent on the reformation of the church He proceeded to do all in terms of expositions of the Scriptures. The great doctors in the Roman Church stood against him. He sometimes had to stand alone and meet them in close combat. And invariably, he took his stand upon the Scriptures. He maintained that the Church is not above the Scriptures. The standard by which you judge even the Church is the Scriptures. And though he was but one man, at first standing alone, he was able to fight the papal system and twelve centuries of tradition. He did so by taking up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. This is not about an earthly fight. In the Gospel, the sword of God's justice, the broadest broadsword that you can imagine, that can take off the heads of the most enemies of this king that you can possibly imagine. The sword of God's justice fell upon the one who is coming back with that same sword to judge his enemies. And centuries before, by the Holy Spirit through David, In Psalm 22, 16, Jesus said, they have pierced my hands and feet. The cross of history was a real weapon of Roman cruelty. It's something that a historian can know things about. But there's a way for us to receive that story. In a sense, there's a way for us to receive that piercing. with absolutely no effect to our hearts of stone. But there is a good, surgical, good, spiritual piercing from the Great Physician. There's a good news from the One who was pierced there that cuts to the heart of all of us rebel sinners. Isaiah 53.5 also foretold about Christ and said that He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds, we are healed. Let's pray. Our Father, we trust that there is no heavy sword and no physical weapon ever devised for man's warfare that ever came down with as much brutal force as the punishment that the Romans' force could only be a depiction of. We cannot imagine the physical pains that pierced your son. But we also know that we will never scratch the surface of that spiritual crushing. The weight of your justice required and that still awaits any here who do not trust in the perfect sacrifice of Your Son. So I pray that You would send Your Spirit now and join Him to Your Word to pierce the hearts of any heart of stone for whom this does nothing and has never heard and never seen and never tasted that you are good. You are righteous and true and therefore must punish sin, but you are kind and full of grace and mercy. And we thank you that you sent your son to meet the demands of your justice, to be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. And we thank You now and we praise You now that by His wounds we have been healed. Bring that healing now through faith and pierce us yet again and make us feel Your incomparable love. We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen.