Friends, would you please stand for the reading again of the Lord's Word? We're reading from Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 through 17. Again, this is the Lord's Word. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness. against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Again, this is the Lord's word. Would you please be seated friends? Again, father, we thank you for your word, for the instruction that has given us here in this passage of scripture. And we pray that you would help us apply these things. What a deceptive foe we have. And so we thank you, Father, that you have written for us in your word how we are to approach these things. Bless this servant and bless these, your people. Give us ears to hear. We pray, Father, that the seed of the gospel would not be stolen away. We pray that we would not have our ears shut to what your word says, but pray your blessing on it. For the glory of Christ and for the goodness of his kingdom, we ask all of this now in Jesus' name. Amen. My friends, what are we talking about here, and what is at stake? We are talking about the church, we are talking about her work, her witness, we are talking about you, we are talking about me, we are talking about our souls, and we are talking about where our souls, the souls of our children, will spend eternity. Wyoming has some wonderful illustrations to offer us, and I've often thought this, working, doing, helping with ranching. There's so many valuable lessons to be learned. Our brothers who are ranchers have as their job the care, the nurture, and protection of their livestock. When they move their livestock from one field or one pasture to another pasture, the goal is to get them all from the one pasture and deliver them safely to the next pasture. This is the job of pastors and elders to care for the flock of God. It is to bring this flock from one pasture and deliver the flock to the next pasture. Obviously, they are under shepherds. We can't control hearts, but we do care for the flock nonetheless to feed, protect, to gather, to lead, to bind up, and even admonish. And you can pray for me in this. The goal is to safely see you all standing before the Lord without fear without fear of condemnation or judgment, and to have you peacefully standing there embracing the Lord Jesus. The Apostle Paul said to the believers in Thessalonica, and First Thessalonians 2, but we, brethren, having been taken away from you for a short while in person, not in spirit, we're all the more eager with great desire to see your face. For we wanted to come to you, I, Paul, more than once, and yet Satan hindered us. For who is our hope or joy or crown of exaltation? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming? For you are our glory and joy. Again, friends, it is the ultimate goal of the pastor and elders to see the Lord's people cared for and standing in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming. However, the reality is it's not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, we'll enter the kingdom of heaven. because many fall away from the Lord, demonstrating that they were never truly the Lord's to begin with. John would write in 1 John 2, they went out from us, but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. This is why the writers of scripture exhort the people of God to give great care to their souls, saying things like 1 Corinthians 15, 1 and 2. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Or Paul in 2 Corinthians says this. Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves, or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test? Or again, John would say, as for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. The reality is, is that some will start the race but will not finish. The gospel seed will fall upon rocky soil. He receives the word with joy and immediately, or immediately he receives it with joy, but yet he has no firm root, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, he drops out quickly, as quickly as he has signed up. The gospel will fall upon thorny soil, and this man hears the word, but the worries of this world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. Beloved, I want to see each of you standing on that day of the Lord's return, not ashamed, but faces beaming at the realization of hope that we have in Jesus Christ. That's the goal. But Satan is cruel. Satan is cruel, and he is crafty, doing all that he is permitted to do to set you back, to set the church back, to waylay us, to subordinate us, keep people in the darkness from the Lord and to keep you and me from being effective witnesses or even to destroy the word within us. It is a battle. We are engaged in a giant spiritual battle. We have been from the very beginning. And I'm not speaking, friends, about whether or not the Lord is able to save you or whether he is faithful. But I am speaking about you and assurance and perseverance. Many so-called Christians no longer fellowship with the church, nor walk in obedience, nor serve the Lord Jesus. I read a statistic in our membership class this morning that I was made aware of this past week, that in the Protestant church, the evangelical church, 63% of those who attend church believe that there is an absolute God. only 63% of those in Protestant churches actually believe in a God who is absolutely there. That means that there's 31% who don't believe in an absolute God. Did I get that right? No? What did I say? 63? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought 69. You get my point, right? I'm not paid for my math, obviously. There's a large number of people in the Protestant church who don't even believe absolutely that there is a God. Satan's at work, and the numbers are getting worse as the years tick by. Are these people even Christians? Not as far as the Bible teaches. Christians hold fast because God holds fast to them. Christians hold on because the Lord holds on to them. When we had interaction with a Marine chaplain some years ago, it was one chaplain for nearly 1,000 Marines, and he told me some of the dangers his troops would face. He said lethargy and complacency. He said, they let their guard down, and that is when they are injured or killed. And so it is with the Christian whose guard is dropped. He says to himself, I'm eternally secure, you see, so nothing's going to happen to me. I don't need to be concerned about my soul. Or you talk to him, and he says, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. You don't need to be concerned about me. This is his attitude. And Satan blindsides him, or blindsides her, and they're taken out. Satan is behind these attacks on truth and morality. Again, Paul would say, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Here the Apostle Paul is writing again to exhort us so that we stand firm. You really do have an enemy and you really need to take to heart the things that the Lord has revealed to us in his word so that we may advance the cause of Christ, so that we may stand firm in the face of hardship. And we do so, friends, by putting on the full armor of God. We now come to the fourth piece of the armor of God's armor, the fourth piece of this armor, the shield of faith. And again, he says, verse 16, in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. The shield of faith is a part of the whole armor. Notice it is not above all else, but in addition to all else. So as we've been saying, the full armor of God is the armor which God provides. It is a spiritual armor to deal with a spiritual enemy. No flesh can contest with the devil and his demons. It doesn't matter how many self-help books you read, how much positive thinking you do, or self-discipline or self-scourgings you apply to yourself. These things are not the things that will enable you to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. There's all sorts of things that we will say, I will pick myself up by the bootstraps. I remember as a child thinking this way. And boy, was I wrong. And I'm glad I learned it on a small scale. I'll move to the new school and I'll start fresh. And I just won't make the same mistakes I made at the last school. Self-discipline. And I get to the new school and it's not long before I'm doing the same things I did at the old school. Demonstrating that the human flesh, the human heart, is deceptive, it's wicked, and it leans on its own understanding far too often. Do not trust in your hearts, my friends. Do not trust in your abilities. These things cannot contend with the devil and his demons. John Stott, we've read this before, he writes, in the Old Testament, it is God himself, the Lord of hosts, who is depicted as a warrior fighting to vindicate his people. Still today, the armor and weapons are his, but now he shares them with us. So far as we've seen, and I will not elaborate much, but what we've seen so far is that we are told to put on truth like a belt. Again, the belt provides confidence, it provides freedom, we know what truth is and we stand confidently upon it. We don't interpret the world through the grid of our imaginations, we interpret the world through the grid of scripture. Secondly, he tells us to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Again, this covers the vital organs of the man and is clothed in righteousness of Christ. Who can now bring a charge against me? This is what the scriptures state. It's the righteousness of Christ that changes me so that my life and attitudes change. I have the imputed righteousness of Christ credited to me. I am declared righteous and by the indwelling of the spirit and by the power of God's word, the spirit using the word, he brings about a holiness, a righteousness of life so that I can no longer, I will not be assailed by the evil one. I hate sin more and I love the law of God more and more and I want to obey it more. That's the Christian. He loves the things of the Lord. He wants to do what's pleasing to his Lord. Even though he falls short, he says, thank you, Jesus, for your forgiveness. Help me in my struggle against sin. It's what we do every Sunday morning when we sit in here and we have our silent confession of sin. I tell you, I don't expect you to come into the church. You're a sinner. I know you are. You're fighting in the car on the way to church because he wanted meatloaf and you made macaroni with beanies, weenie beanies, beanie weenies. You put it in there and you're saying, what are we doing fighting about this? And you come into church and you realize what a mess you still are and what a gracious and wonderful savior you have. And you confess those sins. Third, he says your feet or to be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. The gospel of peace gives me protection and stability. If God is for me, who can be against me? We will not be harmed. No one friend can separate you from God. And so we stop worrying and we start fighting. We march, we run to the battle. So it is along with these that the Apostle now says, take up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take up the shield of faith. We're given this wonderful picture here. A shield to which the Apostle is referring was a great big oblong shield. Charles Hodge said it was four feet long by two and a half feet wide. It would just about completely cover the body. The shield was made of two layers of wood glued together and covered first with linen and then with an animal hide. It was bound with iron above and below. And before a battle, the shield would be soaked with water so as to extinguish the flaming arrows. Arrows dipped in pitch, lit on fire, and then they were shot. These would be the enemy's arrows. The biblical reality is that faith serves as a shield to the child of God. Faith serves as a shield to the child of God. How? Consider what faith is. Paul, the writer of Hebrews, says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The world views faith as an object. In other words, when we're in a desperate way, we say, we just have to have faith. And it stops there. We need to have faith in faith. Because if we wish it hard enough, it'll come true, kind of like a Disney princess. Just wish it into existence. It's not what the scriptures state. This is not the way the scriptures speak of it. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. So in Hebrews 11, we are given many examples of men and women who lived by faith. Again, God promised Abraham both descendants and a land. He believed God's promise. That is faith. He had an assurance that what God said was true, a conviction that these things were so. How do we know he really believed the things? James would talk about it. The writer of Hebrews speaks about it. It says, he went out not knowing where he was going. Who in their right mind goes where they don't know where they're going? What would possess Abraham to do this is because God called him. God said, Abraham, I want you to leave this place. And Abraham says, all right, I'm going. Abraham believes the Lord. Abraham offered up his son Isaac as a sacrifice because he was firmly convinced that God, who promised his child, was able to resurrect him from the dead. Friends, that is faith. His faith was not in faithiness. His faith was in God, who made the promise. Noah, being warned by God about the things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household. You see, Noah believed God's word. And how do we know he believed God's word? He built an ark. He built an ark. A big ark, nonetheless. He did all of this because he feared the Lord, in reverence for the Lord. He had an assurance, conviction that what God said, God was going to do. Faith is not an object. We are never told to have faith in faith. We are told to have faith in God, faith in his word. It is a conviction and assurance that God exists and he rewards those who seek him and he will judge those who don't. Let me state that again. Faith is a conviction and assurance that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him and will judge those who don't. Therefore, the shield of faith, then, is that protection that comes to the Christian as a result of believing in God and the word that he has spoken. That's the shield of faith. The Christian, then, is protected against Satan's assaults when he believes or takes up that God is and that he rewards those who seek him. That God is God. There is no other. He has given his son, Jesus Christ, to buy us back from the dead. and that he means for us an abundant life. And by abundant life, I don't mean a life full of riches or gratifications of our lust. That's not the abundant life, friends. The abundant life is a life that knows the Lord and walks with the Lord now and will be with the Lord forever. The Lord himself is our great treasure, hear me. He never promised us money or houses. He never promised us those things, but he did promise us that he would never leave us or forsake us and that he is the great treasure and he was the one who will bring us safely home. Christ himself is the great treasure. It is Christ that is promised to us. It is life with him eternally that is promised to us. In this life, we are promised that he would never forsake us. In this life, we are promised that we will have hardships and tribulations and persecutions and sufferings and all of those sorts of things. But take heart, he's with us to the very end. That's what he's promised us. The conviction and assurance that is so is a shield. It's a protection against what Satan will fire at us. And as we said, He will fire at us all sorts of things to discourage, injure, or take you out. That's what Satan does. He will fire at us all sorts of his flaming arrows to discourage us, to injure us, or to take us out of the race altogether. And remember we said, what's the beginning? What's the goal of the church? According to our standards, it is to gather in, and to perfect the saints. We're reaching the lost and we're making disciples of the Lord Jesus. And our goal is to see you all safely delivered to the next pasture, to be in front of the Lord Jesus and to be safe in his arms. In the meanwhile, there's all sorts of crazy attacks and crazy things going on in your lives. My friends, the shield of faith is able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. As was pointed out, in the warfare of the day, the enemy would dip the tip of his arrow in pitch. He would light it on fire and shoot it at his enemy. Again, imagine it's a big shield, four feet tall, two and a half feet wide, and the Roman soldier is holding that. This thing must have weighed about as much as a small car. dipped in water, it's holding it, it's got layers of skin and everything on it. The shield was strong, it's big, it's a difficult defense to get by. One commentator had this to say, that these arrows were designed to cause personal or material damage. Even when such a missile was caught by the shield and did not penetrate to the body, it caused panic. Just to give you an idea, I remember as a kid sitting by a campfire. I was with the boys' brigade. It was like a Christian Boy Scout thing. And I'd never roasted marshmallows before. You know, seven children with skewers and marshmallows and fire is a bad idea. But here we are camping, and I've got my first marshmallow in the fire. I'm just delighted. Mine catches fire. And I immediately go, whoa, whoa! And I stuck it in the dirt. And they said, Phil, just blow it out. Oh, okay. You know, but it's a panic. It's the idea of something is, I'm holding something that's on fire, and this is crazy. Listen, it's not different than these soldiers. Because it was shot, went on fire, and because it passed through the air, it made the arrow burn more fiercely so that the soldier was tempted to get rid of his burning shield and expose himself to the enemy's spear thrusts. It's on fire! And now he's open. He's open to get hit. The shield not only caught the arrow, and if it clung to it, it would also extinguish the arrow. Just relax. Breathe. Hold on to it. It's going to put the flaming arrows out. You don't have to panic. Don't panic. It's a shield of faith. Who's God? But it's on fire. Who's God? He's the Almighty. What has he done? He means good for me. He's not going to abandon me. You're going to be OK. Trust the Lord. Trust the Lord and obey the Lord. It seems to us that the very thing that is under attack would be good to get rid of. but it's actually quite the opposite. The shield of faith preserves our lives and quiets us and it extinguishes the assaults. So I want you to think of things like this. Hardships, disease, personal loss, death, unanswered prayers. You're tried and you want to quit. You want to walk away. You want to walk away from the church. You want to walk away from the faith. I can't do this, Lord. I can't do this. Hold that shield of faith. Hold fast. Don't let it scare you. The attacks, they're real, but they're not going to get you. You see that? Satan's arrows are flaming and they are aimed at you and me and all who tremble at the Lord's word. Generally, he will get us to question the Lord, his being, his goodness towards you. He will get the sinner to question Christ. both in this life, all that we need, what is good for you, and in the life to come, Satan will work to divide us, to import bad doctrine and morals, and to separate us from the Lord. As I was thinking about these arrows, and I'd like to know what I'm dealing with, and I thought of Job. What were the things, what were the areas that God permitted Satan to attack Job in? His children? his business, his livestock, his buildings, his body, his health. How many of you are dealing with things? And even his faith was tried, which we mentioned in class this morning, Job would have been a whole lot shorter had Job just said, I'm good. Lord, you can do what you want. 42 chapters. And Job says, I'm going to shut my mouth now because God says, I don't answer to you. I do what I want. And he's good, and he's just, and he's kind. Satan attacks your life, your well-being. He attacks those around you, and he attacks your faith, all in order to destroy you. We could spend a long time looking at his strategies. I want to just name a few. He attacks us in regard to who God is. Remember Israel crying out to Moses saying, You've just brought us out here to kill us. What? You've just seen the plagues. You've just seen this tremendous deliverance. And now you're saying God has brought you out here to kill you because you've been three days without water. I admit, God makes us sweat. He takes us into some tough areas, but that's where he's testing you. He's not going to abandon you, but Satan attacks us in regard to who God is. You may think that God does not even know you exist. And so why do I bother? Or you may think that God hates you. Look at your upbringing. Look at your life. Look at the tragedies you've endured. And you don't want anything to do with them, says Satan. Or that God doesn't exist, but you do. And so you're number one. Satan's arrows, pfft, pfft, pfft, hitting you, causing you to question all these things. Remember how he tempted Adam and Eve? Has God really said? or how he tempted the son of God. He tempts us in the idea of him not providing for us. Thinking of David and Bathsheba. What was he doing strolling around on the rooftop when he should have been out in battle? The Lord said to him, if you had needed another wife, I would have given you another wife. So often out of the blue, Satan attacks us in this way. Charles Hodge said this, I really like this quote. He says, it is a common experience of the people of God that at times horrible thoughts, unholy, blasphemous, skeptical, malignant thoughts crowd upon the mind which cannot be accounted for on any ordinary law of mental action and which cannot be dislodged. They stick like burning arrows and fill the soul with agony. I'm so angry with you, Lord, for doing what you're doing. You know, one of my favorite movies is the movie Signs, where I think he's an Episcopalian priest, Mel Gibson's character, and he sees his little boy. He's just lost his wife six months earlier to a terrible car wreck, and now he's about to lose his little boy who's been sprayed. It's a movie, By Poison from Aliens. He's wrestling through the movie with the idea of faith. And is there purpose? Is there design behind all of these tragedies that are occurring? And he says at one point in the movie, he says, I hate you. He says this because he thinks God is going to steal his little boy away. At the end of the movie, he understands that God had a reason for closing his little boy's lungs with asthma. And it kept the poison from going in. He sees the hand of God, which delivered hardship, was also the hand of God that brought life. And his faith is restored, and the movie ends beautifully. Satan works on us like this. He does. He attacks us. I need this, Lord, but you're not giving it to me. I hate you. Why are you taking this away from me? Somehow God doesn't see what you need, and he's holding back, and you need this thing or you need that thing. They will be those things which pierce your soul and cause agony and sorrow and bring shame to Christ in his glory. The worry and deceitfulness of riches, immorality, lustful pursuits undermine railroad, the faith. He attacks us with afflictions and persecutions. He attacks upon us, attacks us, our comforts. Satan works to discourage us. He attacks our families and so many other things. Friends, these attacks, again, he attacks us personally. He attacks those around us. He attacks our faith in so many different ways. And you feel like on any given day, I might just not make it, Lord. I don't know if I can stand this anymore. And then he calls us back to faith. What have I told you? What do you believe? This is the reality of what I said. You know, if you look at the saints in Hebrews 11, the Lord makes these wonderful promises. It's the thing I love about Hebrews 11 is that we have all these these exhortations, these examples of men and women who walked in obedience. And yet, if you were to take what says about Abraham, maybe in seven verses, we have how many chapters in the Old Testament? And so the man we read about in Hebrews 11, we look at this hero of the faith. You go back to the Old Testament, and you say, this is the hero of the faith? This guy who handed his wife over to some other fella, this is a hero? This is a man to be emulated. Mm-hmm. Because what we see in the Old Testament, which is assumed in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, we see men and women who are living out their faith, and they're imperfect people who are being attacked by the devil. They're being attacked by flaming arrows who have their moments of doubt. Abraham, maybe you should take my handmaiden. OK. What is he thinking? The Lord has said, I'm going to do this, and I'm not going to use some other woman. Sarah's going to be the mother of this great nation, of this great people. You find them struggling with their faith. They're attacked on every level. Moses was attacked. He was angry. He struck the rock rather than speaking to the rock. He failed, and yet he's remembered as a man of great faith because ultimately his hope and his confidence was in the Lord and not in the circumstances. Friends, don't be unduly hard on yourself. On the one hand, be hard on yourself. Push yourself, repent, turn away from sin. But on the other hand, when you fail, flee to Christ and hold to him. He is enough for us. All of these things are used to cause us to panic, to abandon the faith, and to quit, to run away. And friends, the shield of faith, if clung to and used, will protect you from the evil one and will help you through the trials that you face. It will silence those thoughts that God somehow doesn't care or that he doesn't see or hear your cries. or there is something better, or somehow that he will not provide for you all that you need, or that he will somehow abandon you to the lions. That's the shield of faith that protects us from all of those lies and those doubts and those fears. It reminds us daily, moment by moment, and if you will take it up, that he is our God, and that he rewards those that seek him, you will not fail in the battle that's ensuing. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, again for your kindness to us, and we thank you for your word and pray that you would make it a blessing for your people, that those who are struggling will stop struggling in their flesh, and that they would fall back upon what you have done for us in Jesus Christ, that the trials that you bring to us that come through your loving hands are trials designed to strengthen faith and to provide or make in us proven character. We ask Lord that we would not be shaken, that we would not be moved away, but like a shield that the faith in Christ, the faith we have in you and your word and your promise would be those things that would cause the flaming arrows, the doubts and the temptations to be extinguished so that we persevere. We pray, oh Lord, that you would preserve our souls, that you would hold fast to us, and that we would someday soon stand before you without shame and gladness, knowing the realization of the hope we have in Jesus Christ. Thank you again, and I pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.