Alright, the end came quicker than we anticipated, but we are here. We are going to try to finish up the book of Ephesians. really thankful for your attentiveness. And I know it gets harder the longer the retreat goes. So fight, fight through what you need to fight through. And I'll do my best to keep your attention as well. But let us turn to the word of the Lord. We're going to start, we're going to pick up in verse 17 of chapter four, and then we'll kind of skim chapter five, and then we'll read chapter six. So I would encourage you maybe on your ride home or something like that, go ahead and read through. some of the parts that we have to skim through because they are the word of the Lord as well. We're just not going to have time to cover all that. So he's joined us together as a church. He's building us up together in love. And now he begins to describe this wonderful new life that we have in grace and in Christ. And he speaks in verse 17 of Ephesians chapter four. He says, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. All right, so let's just pause there for a second. It's all of grace, it's not of works, so that no one can boast. And the temptation then is to do what? It's to presume upon grace. If it's all of God, then I don't have to do anything. But you can't encounter God and not be changed, right? That's what we just said. So that's what he's going on to say. And here's what that change looks like. If that grace is active in you, if you get grace and you see grace, it's going to do something and it's going to do something amazing in your life. And he's going to describe the ways that you're going to see that. Don't walk any longer. You're not who you were once before. Now you're in Christ. So do not walk in the futility of your mind. They are darkened in their understanding. They're alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. They have become callous and they've been giving themselves up to sensuality, greedy to the practice of every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you've heard about him and you were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through the deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on your new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, put away falsehood. Let each of you speak the truth to his neighbor as you are members of one to another. Be angry. Do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Give no opportunity for the devil. In verse 5 we then say, it says then, in this walking, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in the love of Christ as he loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering, the sacrifice of God. Let no sexual immorality and all impurity and covetousness even be named among you as it is proper among the saints. No filthy talk, crude joking. He then goes on to talk about sexual immorality again, impurity, covetousness, has no inheritance in the kingdom of God. Let no one be deceive you or deceive you by empty words for those are the things for which the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not be partners in them. Walk as children of light. He then goes on to describe in verses 22 and on the way that the grace impacts a marriage and how it undoes the curse of the fall in the home so wives submit to your husband's husband loves your wife as Christ loved the church then goes on to say I'm not really speaking about marriage I'm speaking about Christ in the church and this is the way that it functions but then he goes but do this in your marriage grace does this and then he gets to the part about you and in chapter 6 so if you look there at verse 1 He gives a command. So he's continuing to show how grace impacts our life within our home. And then he goes outside, he talks about bond servants and masters. We don't necessarily deal with that, but often it's applied in terms of the workplace as well. There still is, your job doesn't change, you're still gonna have to work for people that are not great bosses at times. Grace impacts that. Do it as unto the Lord. And then where we're gonna finally end, let's look at verse 10 and read out through the rest of it. It says, 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 rulers and against 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 as 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, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayers and supplications. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in the opening of my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak." This is the Word of God. Let us again seek Him. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for who you are. Remind us that we come before a holy God. Remind us that your word is a holy word. It is true. Help us to separate truth and lies. Help us to see ourselves in light of your word. Help us to see ourselves in light of Christ. Father, we've gone through this, and we're gonna go quickly through this, so I pray that you would give us a special attentiveness now, that you would provide what we need to see what you have spoken within your word. Give me the strength, give the hearer the strength to listen. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So we're gonna try to summarize and then I'm gonna point you so hopefully you can see where you're supposed to see it, but we're gonna look at this. One of the things about salvation, when we get saved, I find it, and maybe it's just my weird, but I find it difficult that we're not just zapped up to heaven. If the point is to save us and then we're saved and God's gonna, we just don't get, so we've gotta figure out why are we here And what are we supposed to do now that we have all this great, what's the point of all this? And he's already told us that. He's displaying something, he's displaying it. And he's not just displaying it to our neighbors, he is displaying it to our neighbors. He's displaying something in heavenly places. What's happening now has an eternal purpose. And who he's made you has an eternal purpose. So this is a big deal. We're saved, we stay here, we end up with the same family, the same job, the same school, the same work, the same finances, the same social class, after we're saved as we were before we saved, and yet we're not different, or we are different, and we're not living for the same things anymore. Same spot, but he's made a big point, right? We've gotten that, you're not living the same way you used to live. You know, I think one of the hardest parts of these retreats and these conferences for everybody is this is such a great time because we get to be in this place where God dwells in the sense that we get to spend a lot of time with people that are helping us. We get to spend a lot of time with the Word of God that is strengthening us. It's a good thing. It's a wonderful thing. And the hardest part of a lot of these things is Monday. Because we go from what seems like a mountaintop to reality hitting us in the face real fast. And Satan knows it as well, because you're going to get back home, and you're going to be great. You're going to want to tell all your parents what you learned. And they're going to ask a question. And the first thing is you're going to want to either shut down or like, why did you ask me that? Or your sibling is going to be annoying as all get out when you get home. And you're trying to do something. And all of a sudden, all that high of, wow, this is so great. We've got all this grace. I want to tell you about it, to like, shut up. and maybe you're not as evil as I am. You do that or you have to go back and you have to face school and for me it would be go to retreat and then I'd have to go back to the public school and I'd have to face all the things that I faced before I left and they're still there. So whether it's in your home or whether it's school or maybe it's work, you're going from that experience to that and reality hits in, we're not in heaven yet. Grace has an answer. It is sufficient. And one of the things I've mentioned, but grace is not nameless. It's not faceless. It's not an abstract idea in scripture. Jesus has an answer for us. The reason we are who we are is by faith in Jesus Christ. And if we have faith in Jesus Christ, Paul is saying we now are a new creation. We don't believe lies. We believe what is true and we're going to act upon what is true. So you're going back into a world filled with lies, but you're going to walk in the way of truth. And you have a wonderful example. I used to do mountain biking before my body decided it didn't want to do mountain biking anymore. And one of the things when we would mountain bike is we'd take study breaks at seminary, and we'd go, and the trailhead was just a few minutes off from where our apartment was, and we'd hit this. And most of us were pretty new. Like, we got to seminary, we're like, let's buy mountain bikes. Let's do this. So we did. We didn't know what. We'd come to parts in the trail where we'd be like, I don't think you can do this. There's no way that I can make my bike go from point A to point B and still be alive at the end of that. And you'd kind of stop and pause at the trail and we're both looking and kind of, and all of a sudden somebody who'd done this trail before comes flying along and does it and you see it and you're like, it can be done. And the first time you do it, it may not go as smoothly as the guy that went through, but you realize what to do. What we have in Christ is the power to say it can be done. He's gone before us. He is in us. He strengthens us. The Word of God works. Walk in it. The path goes the way it goes for a reason. And so grace comes and it gives us all this power and this ability to stand firm because of Jesus. And that's where we come to the huge concept in chapter 4 in verse 22. It's a truth that we cannot miss. It says, put off your old self and put on your new self. What does that mean? I mean, I know if you said take your jacket off and put a sweatshirt on, I know what to do. If you say put off your old self and put on your new self, it's still a little odd. Maybe you're smarter than I am, but I'm going to walk you through it on my slow level. So let's go through this. And that's the first point that we have. Grace is going to transform. It's going to uncurse you. Verse 22 is describing us becoming who we're already declared to be. So we are righteous in Jesus Christ. He's saying, now put on that righteousness. We go to the armor. That's a wonderful picture of that because you don't have literal armor. If you don't get a Christian, they go, here it is. But you do. You become a Christian. He said, here I am. And it's all who Jesus Christ is. So that's what's being described here. But he says to put off the old self and put on the new self is this us becoming who we are declared and who we truly are. Only in the original. This is a little bit, we have wonderful translations. I never want you, you know, if you've got an ESV Bible, it's great. This is one of the advantages of learning some of the languages and so forth. And you've got a lot of study tools. You can look at this, but they have to translate certain things, but it doesn't say self. It tells you to put off the old man. And then later in verse 24, it says to put on the new man. The word is anthropos, anthropology is the study of man. So put off the old man, put on the new man. Why is that a big deal? Well, it goes back to the very beginning. The first man is Adam. In Hebrew, that is literally the word for man. So man sins against God. Man, then what happens? We'll keep you awake. What happens after man sins? What happens theologically? God gives a curse. Okay. So man goes under the curse. And the whole world that we live in, the fallen world, we live under the curse. Cursed because of sin by God. Man that was good is now not good. Man is rebellion to God. We used to walk in that way. That was our former way of conduct. We believed those lies. You remember where lies the first originated? It was also in the garden. Hath God really said? Satan's saying can his word really be trusted? Will the pathway really work? Will God really do what he says he will do? Is it really wrong to not eat of the fruit? Will you really die from it? Is it really wrong to have sex outside of marriage? Is it really wrong to be rebellious to your parents? All these different things are all lies. Will it really hurt you that badly? The wages of sin is not really death. You can go your own way and be okay. And so we walked according to our lusts as Adam walked according to his lusts. It looks good. I want it. I'll do it. I'll follow it. That was the old man we share in that old man. So we share in Adam and we share in his condemnation. We walk under the family curse under the family destiny under rebellion. What does it mean to be cursed? You know, so much, you know, you got all the different books on magic and stuff, and Scripture warns us a little bit about why some of those things are dangerous, because if we don't take those things seriously, and I don't know that all of them, there's some, you know, Chronicles of Narnia, things like that, where we see some wizards, different things, and it's kind of imaginative, but there's a reality of the spiritual war. There's a reality of the spiritual world. And there's really such a thing as a curse. And it's not something that witches do, there's the real curse of God. What does it mean to be under a curse? When my wife would play basketball with her dad, I always forget, I get it mixed up, but anyway, like, you'd play a game and you'd have to hit the last free throw to win, and he'd be like, Bo Cephas and Joe Duncas, or something like that, and like, wave his hands, and then she'd miss the free throw, and, oh, Dad. I didn't get to see it, because we didn't know each other back then, but that's what she tells us. So we kind of think superstitiously about cursing, but the curse that's given in the garden in Genesis chapter three is very real. And he's gonna put enmity between Satan and the woman. And the woman, her desire will be for her husband. That's not a good thing. It's a jealous thing, and it's a reversal of the roles between male and female. And the man is going to sweat, and work's going to be hard. All of the goodness of life is cursed, and what we find to be the greatest blessing, may the Lord bless you and keep you, and His face shine upon you, now has become a curse. And it says, may the Lord curse you, and abandon you, and hide His face from you. And when he does that, he gives us over to the rebellion of our heart. He gives us over to the hardness of our heart. But God. He saved us from that curse. He's redeemed us. He's adopted us. We have a new representative. We have a new hero. We have a new father. We have a new master. We have a new name. We have Jesus who is a new and better Adam. Everywhere that Adam failed, Jesus obeyed the Father. And Jesus obeyed and we get his name and his reputation. We're now his followers and his way. So in Christ, he is in us and we are in him. We didn't clean ourselves up. Jesus uncurses us by taking our curse and our sin and our shame by giving us his life. It is a wonderful thing. When you think about that, the curse that we were under, may the Lord curse you and abandon you and turn his face from you. How could that ever be lifted? Because Christ stood in our place and what happened after this perfect obedient son and our sin was placed upon him and he was placed upon the cross. He was despised and rejected. And he cries out, my God, my God, why hath you forsaken me? What was happening? He was taking the curse so that we might have the blessing. And Paul's saying, you who know that, and you know that you didn't deserve that, and you know that grace, you can't keep walking the same way after you know that. Curse has been lifted, walk like it. It sanctifies you. It sets you aside for the works prepared beforehand for us to do. We're created in Christ Jesus for them new creations. Paul says put those on. And here's the good news of this because you live in a fallen and broken world. I get that. I think that's one of the most difficult things and I know you hear it from your parents and I know you hear it from your grandparents and I know they're not wrong. We say things like the world's going to hell in a handbasket and different things like that and you hear about all the politics and all the, it is as bad as they say because it is under a curse. But Jesus is as strong and mighty as the scripture says and you can stand firm. If you are in Christ, You are no longer a slave to sin, but a slave to righteousness. Christ has more power over you than sin ever did. He has uncursed that which was cursed. What a joy to get to put on the uncursed. to know that that is the power at work within us, and we can stand even in a fallen world. Jesus was not obedient in a vacuum, not just in heaven. He came to earth, our broken, fallen world. He faced Satan in a garden. There's beautiful pictures, and I know we're pushing everything together, but there's this beautiful picture where Adam fails in the garden, Jesus obeys in the garden. And then He crushes the serpent's head on the cross, and the curse is broken, and the reign of sin is broken by Christ, and for any in Christ. And so we love Him, and we walk in Him, and we love Jesus' obedience. Then we should want to walk in Jesus' obedience. We're not free to do whatever we want. That was the old man. We're freed from our sin. We're free now to please our Heavenly Father, to have his smile upon us, to walk in the ways of Jesus. We're free to walk. in that new man. So we look at the things he says to put off lying and anger and stealing and speaking unwholesomely. Words are so important to God because Jesus is the word. The word became flesh and dwelt among us and fallen man even shows his nature in his words. How you use your words as a new young Christian, it should change. Something so pure and so life-giving, men use it to tear down and destroy. I think we can have some fun at times in sports with trash-talking. We do it to try to do what, though? We try to tear them down, lose their confidence. That's the way the old man uses words. But we don't just use it when we're playing sports that don't matter, we use it in real life. That's why you go home and your little brother or sister is annoying and you want to go, you're stupid. You don't know all the things I just learned this weekend. I think you need to go back and learn again. You need to see grace. You need to put on that grace. The thing that God used to create the world is destroyed by sin, and the fall, and rebellion, and the curse. God has now even given us those words to now build up again. He says, are you a new creation? Are you a Christian? Are you born again? Are you born of the Spirit? Are you in Christ? And put them on, live in them, keep them on, live uncursed. Be free not to sin. And then he goes on, and this is a part we'll try to speed through a little bit, but he says, Grace is then going to, and this changes from your outline a little bit, so we're gonna mesh two and three if you've got it on your paper, but Grace transforms and uncurse how you live in this fallen world. So, In this fallen world, it's going to change how you live in your home. And this is for adults, if you can begin to look at that new man, old man, and putting on and the undoing of the curse. In Genesis 3, so God says to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you among the livestock and wild animals. You'll crawl on your belly and you'll eat dust all the days of your life. And I'll put enmity between you and the woman. and between her offspring and yours, you will crush his head, or he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. To the woman, he said, I will make your pains in childbirth very severe. With painful labor, you will give birth to the children, and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." And I know that's a lot, but that is, in simplifying it a little bit, this is, In light of living like Adam and in light of living like Christ what he's describing here is what we experience on a daily basis and that's our spiritual battle. There is a battle going on every day. And I think we mistakenly understand where the battle takes place. We put it all out there. So when I say that the world has fallen, the world is cursed, you're like, yeah, so let's just completely stay away from the world. The problem is you can't completely get away from the world if you understand where the curse is. Where is the curse? Where's this battle taking place? It's taking place between Satan, and Christ, but it's also taking place between a wife and a husband. It's taking place out there and it's taking place inside the home. But Christ has come to redeem and undo the brokenness out there and the brokenness in here. So in our home, in our marriage, in our family life, even in our work, because when Adam gets the curse, his is work by the sweat of his brow. Thorns are going to come and the festival is going to be really hard. What does Paul then say? What does a Christian life look like? He goes, you're going to work differently. You're going to work as unto the Lord. It's going to transform and it's going to change even the way that you work. It's going to transform and change for you young people how you do your schoolwork. Instead of always looking at it like, I don't want to do this, this is stupid, do it as unto the Lord. We have the commandments of God. The first table is often talking about loving the Lord your God, but it's kind of odd because in the first table, it also lists children, obey your parents. It comes with a blessing, not a curse. Isn't that funny how we view the curse, right? Because that's where he gets, okay, we go from the home, and then he gets to you personally in the home, children, obey your parents and the Lord. And since this is a youth retreat, we'll focus there. Come back to me when you get married, we'll go there a little bit more. Go to your pastor, all right? He'll help you. We look at children, obey your parents as a curse. It keeps us from doing what we want to do. But God says, no, obeying your parents is not a curse, it comes with a blessing because it'll go well with you and you'll live long in the land. That may be one of the areas, and that's why when he says that people aren't going to inherit the kingdom of heaven are murderers and thieves and adulterers and sexually immoral and people who are disobedient to their parents. And you're like, well, what? I was doing really well till we got to that part. But that's where you begin to see part of the curse that may be in your life. You want your own way. It goes back to that spiritual battle. But Christ undoes that curse. And part of that is you begin to understand that and you begin to see that. I think it's very helpful because we like to think, well, I just had a fight with my parents or I just had a fight. It wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. No, it's really bad. Why is it really bad? Well, when you look, the reversal of roles in marriage, I know maybe not something you're really worried about, but it's a problem in our society. But it's a much deeper problem than, it's not just something that happened now, it's something that happened in Genesis chapter three. It's part of the rebellion of men against God, the whole feministic movement. It's not a postmodern problem, it's a Genesis three problem. men lacking and leading in their home and being real men and doing it in a way not lording over but in a way that serves the home. It's not a product of sitcoms where they're just belittled all the time. It's a Genesis 3 problem. It's an old man problem. The problem in your home with your parents, it's not a 2025 problem. I think we like to go back to those, your grandpa's like, wasn't that way in the 50s and 60s? Yeah, we didn't have Rebel Without a Cause movie and all these other things being made at that time, did we? No, there was no James Dean from, yeah, there was. We just find new ways and advanced ways and different ways to work out our sin and our problem. It's a fall problem. But the bad news and the severity of that is redeemed by the good news of grace that Jesus took the curse. and he crushed Satan's head so that you and I might live amongst that fallen world that you might live and you have a neighbor who's completely rebellious to the parent and you can walk in accordance with the ways of the Lord not because of your own strength but because Christ is at work within you. And if you get grace, you realize this world doesn't revolve around you and your desires and your schedule and your ways. And all of a sudden, when your parents have to tell you you can't go to a certain place or be with certain people, they're no longer killjoys. But even though it may sting a little bit, you begin to see it as a gift of God's grace. All the world may rebel, all your friends may rebel, but if you're a Christian, Paul says you're different. You're not under the curse. Put off the old man and put on the new. Who didn't come to do his own will, but the will of the Father. So if grace is so amazing and the curse is reversed and it's reversed not just theologically but very much so, we're free from the curse, it's reversing things within homes, it's reversing the way even we operate in the fallen world, there's still a question, why is the Christian life so hard if we can put off the old man and put on the new man? Grace changes your relationship with God completely. Why isn't everything just easy? Right. Why is Monday going to be so hard after this retreat? Because grace has changed your relationship with God completely. Grace has changed your relationship with the enemy completely. Satan is still under the curse and he hates God because of it. We were once in cosmic treason against God. Now the devil views us as if we've switched sides. We have. We've been switched over to sides and now we're in treason against him as his depraved way of looking at it. And so as our sin was great and our enemy was great, the father of sin is very great. And so that's where we get to chapter six, where Paul reminds us and he leaves us, he says, finally, that's what you wanna hear from every pastor, right? Finally, because you know that we're about done, all right? So he says, finally, but he's not just trying to sum things up, he's given us the power again of everything that he said, of all the spiritual blessing that we have in Jesus Christ. He's saying, there's gonna be a reason you're gonna need it, but you got it, so use it. you're going to be in a battle as you come into the Christian life, you're going to be in a battle with the devil. Now, I don't believe, not every one of us is gonna face the devil. The devil is not God. So he's not omnipresent, he's not all-knowing, he's not all-powerful, but he's the father of it, right? He's the father of sin, the evil one. We're not messing with somebody who's weak in evil. But I do think you have to know when it comes to this battle, you have to know that one, he's not God so that you don't despair. But two, he is the devil so that you don't be prideful. He was so good. He took the first man and the woman in the garden where there was no sin around and it was all good and work was good, relationships were good. twisted God's word to them and they believed his lies over God's after all the fellowship they'd had with God. One third of all the angels in heaven in the presence of God followed him. Those are his demons, his minions. We do face those. I mean, it is real, and I think we've got this wonderful grace, and everything's just gonna be, oh, it's just gonna keep getting better and better, and it does get better and better, but as it gets better and better, we face bigger and bigger battles many times. I think Martin Luther probably did. If anybody faced the devil, it was probably Martin Luther when he was bringing down the pope and the lies of the devil and the Roman Catholicism. And here's this mighty man that seems to be brought to his knees. I can tell you as a minister of the gospel, I've been brought to my knees and I'm just facing the minions. I found myself in a place where I don't, I physically couldn't make my legs walk. Satan was attacking me in all the ways where the curse is found. But then you find that Christ has come to redeem us in all the areas where the curse is found. So we have a great enemy. Take him seriously. But we have a great savior. He the devil is such a great liar. Then this is part of the problem before Christ is part of the problem as we are going through this even after Christ is a great liar that caused David a man after God's own heart to fall into sin. You see, the fight that we have, it's not against a political party. It's not against liberalism. It's the power behind that party. You see, I'm not saying that there's not evil political parties. The Communist Party, all these, they're evil, I get it. But our real problem in this world is not a communist dictator. Our real problem in the world is the power behind all that, the one that's using that to try to do something that's even greater than just raise up a country or destroy a country. Our problem is not Hitler or some other world leader, but the powers behind all those world leaders. And why does he do that? Why does why does Satan do that? And I don't think he cares that much about you and me. He's a terrible master. He doesn't care about you. Those of you that are under his reign, he does not care. It's not about you. He hates God. And now we love God, and we have Him as our enemy. I mean, you think about Job. In the book of Job, it says that the Lord said to Satan, as Satan is trying to figure out, men don't really love you, God. I mean, I'm summing this up in my own words, but that's what's taking place in Job 1. Men don't really love you. And he says, have you considered my servant, Job? He only loves you because you've given him a bunch of children and money and land and goats and camels. And if you took all that away, Job would not worship you. It's just skin for skin. He tries to appease you, so he gets what he wants in the world. That's what's going on, God. All right, God says you can have him. Stretch out your hand, strike his flesh, strike his bones. Satan all but ruins Job. Why does he do it? Just to try to prove God wrong. just to display and try to display, God, you are not as worthy of worship as you think you are. And that is what he wants to do in every one of us as Christians. And what God is doing in us is undoing that curse in order to display the fullness of the grace of God and his power and his love and his worthiness of worship. When you go out into the world after we come back from this retreat, that's the battle you're in. You're facing an enemy that wants you to sin, not because he cares about you, but because he wants to put it on display in God's face that God, you are not worthy of worship. They only worship you to get the things. But we have Christ who loved us and gave his life for us. that ought to say to us every day, he alone is worthy. But I'm still going to warn you, every day you're going to have that battle. And too many of us go out into the world as if we're going to summer camp. The best we take is a raincoat. You need armor. You need to guard your heart. You need to guard your head. You need to have your feet ready. You need to have truth in your hand because you are about ready to face one who is after not you but the glory of the God who saved you. And the thing about that, and I still, I want you to get this and grasp this. I know it's gone on long, just keep with me. Some of this, we're not ready because we don't understand where the battle is taking place. So if you think you're gonna go off to college, yeah, you've gotta be ready if you're gonna go off to college. But where's all this curse taking place? You've gotta be ready every day in your home. I mean, those of you that are married, you've got to be ready. Satan's gonna attack your marriage. Children, he's going to attack your relationships with your other siblings. He's going to attack you with the relationship with your parents. He doesn't care if you fall in the streets or you fall in the home. He doesn't declare. He doesn't care if God gets less glory out in the streets or less glory in the home. He just wants God to get less glory. And it's guerrilla warfare, you know, this is not the Revolutionary War where we line up in the streets and I always look at that. That was the dumbest way to do war. We figured it out in the Revolutionary War. We're like, well, we're gonna hide in houses. And we beat this wonderful military army. Satan, that's a playbook there that Satan uses, guerrilla warfare. We're gonna go in the homes. We're gonna hide where they are. We're gonna fight them on the turf of their own hearts. I'm gonna try to get them to doubt God at every place that I can. Is it really that important that children, that you obey your parents? Is how you treat a woman as a man really that important? Women, is it really important? Feminism, not feminism, different, is it really that important? So he's going to attack us in their church life, in our marriages, in our homes. And we are going to have to stand against such a great enemy. But grace, and this is the last point that is not in your outline, is going to keep you from all evils. God does not lose. We're given this armor and it'd be fun to go through it and break down each piece with you and you can. And I don't know that we can get lost in that sometimes too. My New Testament professor, he's written on this and he's talked about this and I agree with him in the sense that all Paul's doing is going back through Ephesians chapter one. The armor as he goes through the pieces I think it's important for what all needs protected. But he's just saying you have a great salvation. You have a great savior. Live like it. Satan is going to come and he's going to tell you you're not good enough. He's going to he's going to tell you on Monday like you messed up again. God cannot love you. And you better put on that breastplate of righteousness. What does that mean? You better be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ so that you can come to Satan and you go, yeah, so what, liar? You may not lie about my mess up, but you're lying about the basis of my relationship with the Almighty God. It's not by what I do, it's by Christ and his righteousness alone. And God's love is steadfast. Because Satan wants to cripple you so that you don't keep walking in step with the Spirit. And you can look and you can go, that's a lie, Satan. Martin Luther wrote in The Great Enemy, one little word will fell him. And I've read in a number of different places, what is that word? And I think a lot of times we think the word is then Jesus, and it would be fitting in some ways. But I've read in many places that the word is liar. What we have to do is what Adam and Eve didn't do in the garden but what Jesus did when he faced the temptations and that is Jesus kept coming back with him with the scripture going, you lied. You lied. And so when Satan comes to us and goes, you're not good enough and God can't love you, you go, I know I'm not good enough, but God. being rich in mercy. There's grace for me. There's grace for sinners. And we begin to equip ourselves with that. And he's going to bring fiery arrows in and you're going to need a shield and you're going to need other Christians with shields there so that you're not bombarded with these lies and these thoughts. And you begin to think, has God really said? And you begin to look at that and you go, Is it really important that I do what he said in his word? And you're going to look at that and go, where does that thought come from? That thought does not come from heaven. That thought does not come from God. That does not come from the new man. That's associated with the old man. Devil, you're a liar. But every day you've got to put that on because every day those arrows come. But we have a great salvation. You have everything you need not to sin. You have everything you need. That's what he's saying here in this, read through that armory. He goes, you have everything, every part of your body is covered. Except maybe one. And I think this is important. find where I am in my notes. Here we go. Bunyan talks about this in Pilgrim's Progress. So Paul has in mind the Roman armor. So he says put on the breastplate of righteousness. Well I've read this in different places but Bunyan portrays it and he says this that the only thing is that the Roman the Roman armor typically didn't have anything on the back. Why does God not tell us to cover our backs? And Bunyan writes of Christian pilgrim's progress, a wonderful allegory. Some people struggle with the allegory part, but it's describing this journey of the Christian life. He says, when the Christian began to be afraid and to cast his mind whether to go back or to stand his ground. But he considered again that he had no armor for his back and therefore thought, turned him around, because if he turned around, he would be pierced with an arrow. So he's being transformed and renewed in his mind. He's like, I have a breastplate of righteousness. I have Christ. I don't have anything from my back. The whole point of it is we're not taught to turn back. We're taught to flee from the devil in terms of not to sin, but we're not told we can't face the battle. We're not told we don't have enough to face and live in a fallen world. We're told to stand firm in a fallen world. Now I'm gonna challenge you as young Christians, get this, just grasp this. You have everything you need in Christ, not just for heaven, but to stand in a fallen world. And I don't know that we're hearing that enough. Like yes, flee from the devil, flee from sin. Do not sin, but you do not have to back down and turn your back. In fact, don't. Put on Christ. Be being transformed in the renewing of your mind. Display the glory of God that the curse has been lifted. And like I said, you're gonna need one another like the gladiator. Those shields, man, be back-to-back. And it doesn't have to be you with other teenagers, but be back-to-back with people in the church. God doesn't intend for you to stand on your own. Make good godly Christian friends. Seek them out. Psalm 1. Read it. See the importance of it. We're not sent to a gunfight with a knife. You know, the other picture I have is like when David was going to fight Goliath, and that's the picture I have in the sense of me having to go to fight even the minions, the demons. How am I going to be... And Saul's like, here, you got to take my armor. Like, that doesn't fit. And we try to protect ourselves with a lot of wrong ways. We think if we'll protect ourselves by what we do and by our... And David's like, I have the Lord. I have better armor. And he goes and he stands against Goliath and Paul's describing the same. You have the Lord. You have the best armor you can have. You have the mighty champion. Lloyd-Jones quoted an older preacher when he came to this who was preaching on the verse that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. That's what you're supposed to write on your sneakers, I guess, that verse. I think you probably know well enough that that verse doesn't mean we can leap buildings in a single bound. But in the context, it does mean we can do all things that God has called us to do. We can obey whether we have a bunch or whether we have little. The old preacher, he reads through it and he reads, I can do all things. Paul, don't you think you're saying way too much? Did you really say you can do all things? Can you really fight all of these principalities and powers? Are you, Paul, equal to the devil? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And the old preacher says, oh, Paul, I beg your pardon. I didn't realize there were two of you. It's not Paul that can do all things, but Christ who strengthens me. Put on the armor of God that you may be able to stand and stand firm. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the freedom that we have in Christ by grace. We don't always feel like the curse is lifted because we still struggle against flesh, but we really battle not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and principalities. We're in a battle. I pray that you would help us to put off the old man and put on the new. I pray for these young people. They do face something very difficult. Just as every generation before has faced difficult things, we are in a battle, and Satan is crafty, and he is cruel. But Christ is gracious, and he is mighty, and he is victorious. Clothe us, armor us, that we might stand, that the devil may not be able to say, God, you are not worthy. but that our lives might declare he is worthy. He is worthy to open the scrolls. He is worthy and he saves to the uttermost. I pray for any who may still be under the curse, that they might feel their need and the depth of their sin and the depth of the despair that they are in. that they might cry out for mercy and find that Jesus truly does save, that he became a curse for us, that we might live. Make much of Christ, make much of your grace. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.