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Finally, my brethren, be strong
in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole
armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles
of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness
in high places. Wherefore, take unto you armour
of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and,
having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your
loins gait about with truth, and having on the breastplate
of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of
the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield
of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery
darts of the wicked. and take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying
always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto
with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. And for me that
utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly
to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an
ambassador in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought
to speak. Amen. So we come today to a very familiar
passage that have been innumerable sermons preached On this, I'm
sure you've heard a few. Many books as well. It's the
armour of God, is it not? Armour. So Paul is speaking here
metaphorically. Now I know most of you will remember
what metaphors are. Some of you maybe haven't, it's
been a while since you were at school perhaps. Your similes
and your metaphors are a bit hazy, so you'll forgive me for
just explaining again that the metaphor just likens one thing
to another. It's a sort of literary device. And so I might say, for example,
Holywell Church is a hive of Christian activity. Of course,
what I mean by this is that you folks are as industrious as bees
in your work for the gospel. And these metaphors are seen
all throughout literature, including the Bible. So here, Paul says
that a full range of Christian characteristics can be likened
to a suit of armour. And we are encouraged to, as
it were, put on that armour each day because of the battles that
we find ourselves in. To use one of them as an example,
the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, well, we
don't take that literally, we don't try to use this book to
hit people with, like it's some type of weapon. Of course, what
does it mean? It means that we read the thing,
we listen to it being read, we listen to people explain it to
us, we take it on board, and we employ that in different aspects
of our lives. And so that's what it means by
wielding this sword of the spirit. Because you are no doubt familiar
with this passage, hopefully not overly familiar, I planned
to approach this from a slightly different angle today. I thought
I would like to show that man, in his natural, unconverted state,
could also to wear some kind of suit of armour. This, friends,
is not the armour of God. But instead, it is a suit of
armour he made himself. And the one in the background
helping him on each day with that suit of armour is none other
than Satan. Because during a person's life,
Satan makes subtle suggestions to us Every one of us has heard
Satan's voice, but I'm betting and hoping that no one here will
say they've heard an audible voice from Satan. But he certainly, he has that
ability. He has that ability to influence
the minds of people. How he does that, I cannot say.
But he might say, he might whisper to somebody Are you going to
let her speak to you like that? She needs telling, she needs
telling. Answer her back and Satan will gladly even provide
the content of your reply and if he can get you to reply with
something vicious, then he has his victory. So I want us today
to imagine Satan whispering into the ears of man about a different
suit of armour. Just as Paul encourages believers
to put on the armour of God, so we can think of Satan encouraging
a man to put on the armour of Satan. Of course, one of Satan's
greatest strategies is to hide himself. He doesn't make known his involvement.
in our lives or in the creation of this faulty armour. He convinces
people that they've invented this themselves from their own
great wisdom. So if you'd like to follow me
again in the same passage, and this time I will present to you
a version that perhaps Satan might whisper into the ears of
one of his. Finally, my brethren, Be strong
in yourself and in the power of your own might. Put on the
whole armour of your own, that you may be able to stand against
those and hold you back from pleasures. For we wrestle against
flesh and blood, not against so-called spiritual wickedness
in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the
whole armour of your own making. that ye may be able to stand
proud every day, and having done all, to stand prouder. Stand
therefore, having your loins girt about with your own truth,
and having on the breastplate of self-righteousness, and your
feet shod with the preparation of rationalism, above all taking
the shield of unbelief, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all
the fiery darts of an accusing conscience, and take the helmet
of false religion and the sword of the flesh, which is the word
of your own wisdom. The man or woman who trusts their
own wisdom is fully kitted out in the useless armour of rebellion. And whether they like the idea
or not, they've agreed to be in the army of Satan. And if
we could inspect the ranks of that army, we would see people
we know. We would see friends, best friends,
relatives even. And we'd see them all there in
their suits of armor, battalions of them. But that, my friends,
must be the most unfortunate, tragic army in the history of
this world. You see, in the long, long war
against God, this army is fighting in a war whose end has already
been determined. they are doomed to lose. Now, they may outnumber us, they
may outnumber the church of God 100 to one, they may have a captain
over them who is more powerful than us. He no doubt tells them
that subconsciously perhaps, you know, we can get rid of this
king of kings and you can rule with me and there'll be unbounded
pleasures What Satan will never reveal to those who belong to
him is that this Lord he hates, he does not merely involve himself
in history. This is the God, my friends,
who creates history. All events that have occurred,
all events that will ever occur, fall out according to the wise
purposes of the Lord God Almighty. And they always will. Satan's army is not something
that people join. They don't consciously sign up. This is something they're born
into. And they grow up in it. And then there they are, standing
with all the others. So picture, if you will, this
army of his as a big enemy camp, and then someone Someone in this
enemy camp hears a noise. We'll call him William. There's bound to be a William
in this room, but what else can I do? So we got this William, and it's as if he hears someone silently
calling his name. And he leaves the camp to investigate. And he finds himself on a path
It's quite narrow. As he turns around bent, he sees
something rather unexpected. Standing in the path blocking
his way is the great captain of the armies of God. And William
sees that on the outside of this warrior's leg, something is written. It identifies this fearsome warrior
as the word of God. And the Lord stands in a state
of battle readiness with his sword drawn. And William realizes
that the Christ that he's mocked so often is more fearful than
he ever imagined. Where, he thought to himself,
where was the smiling, hippie-type character who just loves everyone
unconditionally? Where was that man? William was facing a God of war. And it's clear, even if he had
the backup of his entire army, this enemy cannot be defeated.
This champion is undefeatable. And William can see that this
Word of God in the flesh is threatening to destroy him. And he's forced to admit to himself
for the first time that this Jesus Christ, the Lord of hosts,
will come after William in fury because of his rebellion, because of his allegiance to
that army. And in just a few brief moments, William is made
aware of the full extent of his rebelliousness. He spent his
whole life fighting on the wrong side, And now he stands utterly
defenceless in the presence of the Lord. And he knows he's guilty,
and he knows he has no hope of being delivered. Well friends,
what else can a man do in this situation? He begs the Lord not
to destroy him. He acknowledges his faults. The
Lord of Hosts tells William he must surrender. He must lay down
his arms. he must approach the Lord empty-handed
and vulnerable. This he does. And to his great surprise and
joy, he finds as he approaches the Lord that he has sheathed his sword,
removed his helmet, and he stands with arms open wide now, waiting
just to embrace William with an embrace of forgiveness, absolute
and eternal forgiveness. William has changed sides and
his new master beckons him to go and join the ranks of the
army that stands behind him. Several of those soldiers of
Christ show William a new piece of military kit. And so now he's a member of the
Lord's army. William now has the right and the ability to
put on the whole armour of Christ. That little allegory brings us
to today's theme, which is the armour not of man's own making,
but the armour of God himself. Armour he provides for me and
you, for our Christian warfare. The younger me would have tackled
these scriptures differently. I'd hate to listen to sermons
I used to preach, but I will tell you what I would have done.
I would have scrutinized each part of the armor and I would
think of as many qualities of the armor and its materials and
everything and try to find some connection with those and where
they exist on the body. But I've come to learn that the
scriptures are not meant usually to be put under the microscope
in that fashion. These pictures provided, these
metaphors, they're not meant to be over-analyzed. And people,
meaning me, have in the past gone too far in trying to find
things that were not meant to be found. I'll give you an example, shall
I? I could have spoken about the breastplate of righteousness,
And of course the breastplate, well that protects a man's torso. And so I could have tied in righteousness
with the heart or something to that effect. Well here's the
thing, when Paul uses the same armour imagery when he writes
to the church in Thessalonica, he talks about the breastplate
not of righteousness but of faith and love. So that throws a great
big spanner in the works, doesn't it? So in mixing up the pieces
like this, Paul shows he didn't really intend for us to create
doctrine by matching pieces of kit to parts of the body. A sinner
needs the righteousness of God, but we cannot restrict its importance
to just one aspect of our being. In any case, I'm sure he doesn't
want us to focus on the bits individually so much as as a
whole, the whole armour of God. We're to instead think about
the armour as signifying God's complete protection in our warfare. What I'd like to do now is look
at who our enemy is. I want to think about the armour
that God has provided for us and then finish by thinking about
how we put it on. So, a few things about the enemy
then, first of all. The armour's neat because we
have an enemy. In the first place, we have an
enemy. You could say we have three enemies. We don't use the Book of Common
Prayer, but most of you are familiar with it, and it helpfully describes
our enemies. as the world, the flesh, and
the devil. I thought that was in the scriptures.
It's in the book of common bread. But the world, the flesh, and
devil. So the world obviously refers to other people. They're
all enemies of God. Then you have the flesh. And
so that refers to our own sinful nature. And so until we are clothed
with our new heavenly dwelling place, tabernacle and our new
bodies, then man remains, the Christian man remains a danger
to his spiritual self. And then finally, there's the
devil, also called Satan, and the dragon. Now usually, friends,
when the Bible talks about Satan, it includes all the other fallen
angels as well. And all those wicked spirits,
they just prowl around trying to get people to think and act
in ways which bring dishonor to God. Verse 12 there, verse 12 it is, it tells us that
our fight is really against a world of unseen spirits. We perhaps don't talk about this
much. Maybe we don't want people to
think we're charismatic or something. But this is what it's all centered
around. They're called principalities,
powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritual hosts of wickedness. As I understand it, different
descriptions of the same creatures. So out of the world of flesh
and the devil, Paul's talking about only the devil here. And maybe he just wants to emphasise
this one, on this occasion. Or maybe he thinks that the principal
power behind the other two, sin in the world and sin in us, is
Satan. In other words, he's the number
one enemy. But he works through other people, including God's
people. But whatever Paul is thinking,
we can see an important point. It suggests that our primary
focus in our warfare should be on the unseen enemy rather than
the people and organisations of this world. Now that comes
as a surprise for some people. We might think our duty is to
oppose the Church of Rome or things like that. Our primary
focus in the warfare should be on the unseen enemy. If we are
going to enjoy a victorious Christian life, surely the first thing
we need to know is, well, who the enemy is, where he is. So first, we need to understand
the tactical advantages Satan and his angels have over us. Firstly, these evil spirits have been
around for thousands of years. They've had thousands of years
to fine tune their tactics and they are very good at bringing
people down. There's not a single person who's
ever lived who they haven't had victories against. Just think
about that. The second advantage they have
is that they are invisible to the human eye. It allows them
to go about their business 24 hours a day, unseen to us. They can keep us all under 24-hour
surveillance. They can watch us. They can watch
us in our homes. in college or school, in our
jobs, in church. They can watch us and then they
can use this intelligence that they've gathered and they can
learn how to better tempt each one of us. Or they might simply go to God.
They might go to God with a list of your sins and just accuse
you before the throne of God. That's one of yours. Look what
she's done, look what he's done when no one was watching and
accuse us. So they're invisible, they have
that advantage. And thirdly, these evil spirits
are also powerful. Their activity is not restricted
to the heavenly realm. We know that surely. It takes
place, their activity takes place in our material world also. They can influence us psychologically, making us say or think sinful
things. They can, I believe, make us
ill. They can make us disabled. They
can kill us. They can affect the weather.
They can cause natural disasters. Now, it's important to always
remember Not a single one of these beings can lift a finger
against us unless it's been given to them by God. No matter how
victorious they seem to be, no matter how much we panic in the
week because it seems as if the battle is going one way, we need
to remember our God still reigns and always will, and things are
never out of his control. Here's a few verses to describe
Satan's activities then. 1 Thessalonians 3 and 5 says,
For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to
know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted
you, and our labour be in vain. 2 Corinthians chapter 2, Lest
Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant
of his devices, plans. And Revelation 12 says, I heard
a loud voice saying in heaven, now is come salvation and strength
and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ. For
the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them
before our God day and night, tempting us, deceiving us, and
although greatly restricted, still slandering us. So we've reminded ourselves about
how dangerous an enemy Satan is and all the different ways
he can wage war against God's people. But the Lord, in his
mercy, provides for each one of us an effective suit of armour
for us to wear. And so I will briefly go through
some of these, all of these items. As I said earlier, I don't wish
to find connections between the helmet of salvation and the mind,
or the breastplate and the heart. So that being so, let's have
a look at the first one in verse 14. That is the belt of truth. The belt of truth. And so, in
our story earlier with William, he had to remove the belt he
had on. It represented his own carnal
wisdom. Throughout his life, he thought
he knew best, but he had to abandon that and get rid of the belt
of his own making. And following his surrender,
he was presented with a belt of real truth. And so in coming
to God, the sinful man or the sinful woman must acknowledge
it's God who knows best. He is all wisdom. Then there's
also the breastplate of righteousness. Now the sinner thinks he's a
good person, I think without exception, because generally
they look at the people around them and they, well, they consider
themselves at least as good as all those people there. But if he comes to repentance,
he must throw down the breastplate of his own goodness, He's to
understand that that is nothing but a piece of rusty old metal. And then the Lord presents him
with a shining new breastplate, and it's Christ's very own righteousness. We also have in verse 15 the
shoes of the gospel. The soldier in Satan's army always
marches to the beat of Satan's drum. And in all their journeyings
throughout life, they neither share the gospel, nor understand
it. They have, always have an opinion
on something, but they never have anything which can help
the soul eternally. But when the gospel comes to
a man, in a saving way, he kicks off his worn out shoes, and he
accepts these new ones. And then he has an ability and
a willingness to then take that gospel and share it with other
people. The very gospel by which he was saved. We also have the
shield of faith in verse 16. The shield of faith. The people
of this world are filled with unbelief. Now, they may believe
in God. They may even believe Jesus Christ
died on a cross. They may believe in a religion
of atheism. Their god might be some celebrity,
some singer, or some other such thing. And we have cults and
all kinds of things. Everyone, I think, can be described
as having It's all unbelief though. And
so the person, the person like the guy in our story, who's being
persuaded to lay down his arms, has to drop that thin, ineffective
shield of unbelief. And instead, they are presented
with a steady new shield of faith in Christ. In verse 17, We have the helmet
of salvation. The helmet of salvation and I
was reminded of all the cults around today and false religions
that there are and all the things people put before God and when
God converts somebody, they remove that offensive helmet of theirs
and they throw it away. and then through Christ they
receive salvation full and free like a stunning new piece of
headgear. It's all coming together now
and finally there's the sword of the spirit. The one who's being made an object
of God's grace stands. Stands there before the captain
of their salvation and they have nothing on them but this sword
called the flesh and now they see a total worthlessness And so that possession that they've
had all their lives is suddenly flung into a ditch. And the general
of the hosts of God presents them with a new sword, the Word
of God. And then the same man or woman,
they not only benefit from this Word of God themselves and their
own souls, but they are able to have a desire to share it
with other people. And so, So the new soldier in
Christ's army stands there fully kitted out in the best possible
gear. And while I imagine there's nothing
angers Satan so much as losing one of his to the army of God. I thought that some of you might
be wondering why Paul would be telling believers to put on this
armor if it's about things which are already theirs. Think about this. If they belong
to Jesus, they already have salvation. They already possess righteousness
and faith. How can they put them on? We
need to know what it meant if this passage is going to be any
use to us. And I'll take just one piece
of this armour to use as an example, and I'll do my best to make this
clear. And we'll look at righteousness.
An example first. Imagine someone is in court,
because of tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid council tax.
And in our country, strangely, you can go to jail for getting
in trouble financially with your council tax. And then anyway,
someone's in court, and just at when the proceedings are about
to start, the clerk of the court stands up and announces to the
judge that all that person's debts have been paid. In other
words, All the demands of the law on that person have now been
satisfied. The debt has been paid and the
person heading for jail finds himself declared innocent. He's
told he's free to go. And this is how it goes in some
way with the sinner who comes to God in repentance. Since Christ
paid the penalty for their sin, the judge of all the earth, God
himself, pronounces the sinner innocent. They're declared to
be righteous. And this is the very righteousness
of Jesus himself. It's perfect. It can't be added
to, it can't be minimized in any way. But, friends, in the
Bible, Righteousness is used in more than one way. In the
scriptures, it's often spoken of to describe godly behavior,
and that changes. If you've been a believer for
more than a fortnight, then you know that we fall into sin. And
even though you repent of that sin, what do you do? You turn
away, and a day later, you commit the same sin that you've been
forgiven of, and you have to go back again to confess the
same sin. And we don't even do it twice.
We do it continually to our shame. Well, this brings us to the point that
Paul is making. You have the righteousness of
Christ, if you're a believer today, you have that as a possession. It describes who you are now,
the righteous. You'll always be accepted by
God because of that, okay? But God urges us to fight hard
to make sure our lives reflect that perfect righteousness. Listen
to what the apostle John said to his fellow believers. Little children, let no man deceive
you. He that doeth righteousness is
righteous, even as he, Jesus, is righteous. So, not sure if
you've got onto that, but the apostles are effectively saying
that if you've been declared righteous, act like it. Act like it. And I said I'd mention about
how this armour is put on, and so towards the end of the section,
it reminds us that prayer is central to all this. Prayer is
central. And I don't know how many times
you've heard people encourage you to pray, but I, without apology,
do it again. Because I think we need reminding
all the time the importance of this type of communication with
God. And so it is as we put on this armour, we put on the armour
by praying to God that he would deepen your understanding of
spiritual things. You put on the armour of God
by asking to help you live a Christ-like life, to act like the righteous
person you are. You put on the armor by seeking
courage from God, to be bold in telling other people about
what Jesus has done for you. You put on the armor by begging
God to increase your faith. You put on the armor of God by
thanking God for the blessings and salvation which it represents.
And you put on the armor by praying as you approach the Word of God
that you'll not only be familiar with it yourself, but will do
all you can to spread the truth of it. And having the armour on, you
can fight the unseen enemy. You can better resist temptation.
And you can march out into this world
as a better witness for Jesus Christ. The victory, friends, The victory
in this war has already been secured. These glorious emblems
of the bloody cross and the empty tomb, they, together, they represent
the great victories that Jesus won over Satan and his kingdom. Christ, friends, has, if you
like, taken the high ground. and your job and my job is to
defend it. If you're not a Christian today,
if you're not sure that you're a Christian today, if you have
no confidence that you are a follower of Jesus Christ as the captain
of your salvation, I urge you today to Surrender to him. If you are not for Jesus, you
are most certainly against him. Everyone who fights against him
faces nothing but everlasting destruction from the face of
God. And so I urge you to surrender to what I did. God saved me. Lay down your arms. Remove all
that useless armour that you made for yourself. Admit your
rebellion and see just how quickly Jesus and that great man of war
embraces you as a brother or a sister, assuring you of an
eternity in God's paradise. when all the war is over, assuring
you of his great delight at the thought
of spending eternity with you. Friends, thank you for listening.
Amen. We're going to sing now, hymn number 867.
The Armour Of satan
| Sermon ID | 101622115683941 |
| Duration | 40:45 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 6:10-20 |
| Language | English |
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