Heavenly Father, we pray that you would bless us this morning, that you would strengthen us to comprehend the things that lie before us, that you would help us to see your word clearly, that you would break open our stopped ears, that you would soften our hearts that may be hardened with the trials of this week, that you would warm our hearts from the cold that may have afflicted us. and that you would cause us to come eagerly to hear what you would say to your people this morning with an eager expectation that you have wonderful things to say to your people and even difficult things to say to your people, but all good, all for our good and for your glory. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name, amen. If you take your insert on it, you will find the truth taught And the truth taught for this morning is that all of life is spiritual warfare, and thus we need spiritual strength for all of life. And Lord willing, we'll come to a greater understanding of these things, a greater accepting of these things this morning. As we consider our text, we have finished a section we've been in for several weeks that pertains to walking in wisdom. Remember this section we could say begins in Ephesians 5, starting in verse 15, where Paul says, look carefully as you are to walk, not as unwise, but as wise. He ends that paragraph on wisdom by talking about how we are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And then he itemizes what this means in regards to the marriage relationship, in regards to the parent-child relationship, in regard to the slave-master relationship. And then immediately upon concluding this section, we come to a different verb, Throughout chapters four through five, you've had this verb repeated, walk, walk, walk, walk this way. Now you come to this section, we have a different verb. Now we're to stand. And so hopefully we'll come to see these things as we consider them. But even here, we're only going to cover verse 10 this morning. because this is more to give us a reminder of where we've been, summary of where we've been and how that applies to what's to follow. And your outline that we have here is we're thinking about these things in summary. First, we're gonna consider the battlefield of spiritual warfare, which you can guess from the truth taught is all of life. Then we are to consider the combatants in spiritual warfare, And then finally, the power of spiritual warfare. Where do we find the power to wage this war? So, Ephesians 6, verse 10, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Now, finally is a word that transitions us from where we've been to where we are going, where we've been to where we are now. And just to go into a bit more detail of what I just was talking about, we've been exhorted from chapter four on to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called. And so we could say chapter four, verses one through six, we're encouraged to walk in unity with one another. This is where we get that sevenfold unity that we talked about. There's one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, father of all. who is over all and through all and in all. We are to walk in unity, eager to protect that unity, zealous to protect that unity, to walk with humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love. In verses seven through 16, the verb walk is not necessarily used, but if we stick with the theme, we can talk about walking in maturity. And this maturity comes when we make good use of the gifts that Christ won for us. Remember, Christ subdued our enemies. He ascended on high and led a host of captives. He gave gifts to men. And those gifts, we argued, are offices that God used for the maturing of his church. The apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. that are given, that we might be equipped to do the work of ministry for attaining to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God for a mature manhood, and that we might not be tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine. We are to walk availing ourselves of these things. In 17 through 24, we are to walk in the new man and not in the old man. We're not to walk as if we are still in Adam, but we are to walk as if we are in Christ, because we are. In verses 25 through 52, we are to walk in love. And this is where we begin to see Paul really deal with an exposition of the second table of the Ten Commandments. Love is defined by Christ's law. We are told to put off lying, we're told to put off wrath and vengeance, we're told to put off stealing, we're told to put off corrupting language, and we're told to imitate God by walking in love at the beginning of chapter five. From there, in verses three through 14, we're told to walk as children of light, which essentially boils down to not to participate in evil, but to expose it as a light that shines in the darkness. Verses 15. through chapter six, verse nine, we just talked about is walking in wisdom. And this wisdom involves many things we've talked about very much over the last several weeks. We make the best use of the time because the days are evil. We want to understand what the will of the Lord is. We want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We address one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and we give thanks always while submitting to one another, which is detailed in the following passages. Finally, in chapter six, verse 10, after all that, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. And what follows immediately is an exhortation to be aware of the spiritual battle that wages all around us, which I believe puts all of this in a connotation of spiritual warfare. And think about this, like we just read in chapter two, when we did our confession of sin and assurance of pardon, we were enslaved to the prince of the power of the air. Paul's not shrunk back from talking about these things to this point. And in Ephesians four, he led a host of captives and gave gifts to men, which I think is also in the same context, that we had spiritual enemies, And those enemies were captive, taken captive. And because of that, gifts were given to men that involved the authority given in the church. So if we're to run with this idea, then the spiritual warfare is in the context of what we might call normal life. Because everything that's led through chapters four through six at this point, this is all normal life kind of stuff. Don't participate in works of darkness, but expose them. Walk in love, put off lying, stealing, all of this. This is normal life kind of stuff. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is not things like that silly movie, Constantine, where, you know, we're gonna get bullets made of a certain metal to fight demons. Like, this is not what spiritual warfare is. Spiritual warfare is the struggle we all face as Christians to live faithfully, to live faithfully in a world that's still tainted with sin, with our flesh that's still tainted with sin, and with a devil who prowls like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. This is the context of our spiritual warfare. With this in mind, spiritual warfare is in the home when the child utterly refuses to obey the parents. This is a theater of spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is when the husband and wife are in conflict and are struggling to reconcile. Spiritual warfare is when you are looking for something to listen to, to help you understand the word of God and a false teacher is coming on your podcast feed. This is a battleground of spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is in the church when there is conflict between church members. And the devil is prowling like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Spiritual warfare is in play in any conflict that might threaten the unity that we have and the unity that we pursue. Spiritual warfare, we often have an idea it's more dramatic than this, but this challenges the way we think. One way this challenges the way we think is that normal life is more dramatic and more important than we may think. Your conflicts in your family have very large spiritual significance. Your conflicts in the local church have big spiritual significance. And we're tempted in the moment to think this is just a spat. And hopefully it is just a little spat that we can move on from. but these things have spiritual consequences. And we have an enemy that's always ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness. As we've shared before, if the devil is likened to a lion seeking whom he may devour, lions do not seek the strongest among their prey. They seek the prey that are separated. They seek the prey that are weak because they want a successful kill. They don't necessarily want the biggest kill. and it may be an apt metaphor for us, be careful in our normal life. Are we pressing into the body? Are we availing ourselves to the ordinary means of grace? Or are we separating ourselves and making ourselves a more enticing target? If these things are true, there are necessary implications that we have to reckon with. And the commentators I've read really wanted to stress this point. If spiritual warfare is normal life, I don't think you need to have any experience in war to understand war is not comfortable. War is painful. War is hard. War is difficult in the extreme. And if we take this view, then we're to understand normal life is not something we're to expect to be comfortable all the time. Normal life is difficult. Normal life is filled with trials. And we tend to think that it's strange when conflict and trials come. But we are warned about this in 1 Peter 4, verses 12 through 13. He says, Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. It is not strange when the trials come. And if we think of it in the context we're talking about this morning, it's not strange because you're in a battle. When explosions are going off around you, it's not strange if you're in a battle. If you're not in a battle, then yeah, explosions going off around you is strange. But if you are in a battle, it's to be expected. And if all of life is a battle, if all of life is spiritual warfare, we ought not to be surprised when trials come. And we're only surprised when we think we're not in a battle now, and I expect to have my comfort now. I expect to have my best life now. These are lies. Our best life is not now. Our best life is to come. He says, but rejoice in so far as you share in Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. Soldiers glory in the courage of other soldiers and celebrate the bravery of those that lead them. We are to do the same and celebrate in the glory of our Savior, the courage of our Savior, and we're to celebrate that we're counted worthy of being in the same theater as him. That we get to suffer with him because the encouragement is if we suffer with him, we will also be glorified with him. If we share in his trials, we will share in his victory. And we know we share in his trials now because this life is hard and we are all facing trials that vex us. And so true is the inverse, that we will share in the glory that our Christ is one. This means that in this sin-cursed world, everything around us tends towards sin and decay. We need the power of God for anything good to occur in us and among us. We are commanded to walk in unity, maturity, the new man, love as children of life, and in wisdom. But we understand that these things don't happen by default. We are, for our part, to labor and strive to walk in these things. And the world, the flesh, and the devil militate to drag us down and to keep us from walking in these things. And so, yes, one implication is that this life is not meant to be comfortable. There is a cross before the crown. It was true of our Savior. It is true of us. Additionally, our struggles and trials in normal life may be less normal than meets the eye. What I mean by that is that there are spiritual realities at play in even the most mundane things in this life. And so again, when there is conflict in the home, we are to pray. for resolution to that conflict. Why? Because there is more going on than meets the eye. There are spiritual realities at play, and I am unable in and of myself to do anything good. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. And I ought not to presume that I have the strength in and of myself to walk in all these ways that I've been commanded to walk. So in a spat between spouses, It's an opportunity to pray, call for power from the Holy Spirit, to work resolution and wholeness in the home. When the child utterly rebels and refuses to listen to any correction, it is an opportunity to pray because there's more going on than what our fleshly eyes see. And we need greater strength than what we have to deal with the conflict When a false teacher speaks in your hearing, this is more than an issue of information. This is a spiritual war. And we ought not to be so arrogant as to presume that I can listen to as much false teaching as I may desire to without any prayer. Because the devil is clever. And though He cannot rob us of our election and our justification, He can rob us of our assurance and our sense of hope and make us less effective than we might otherwise be. And so again, implications that the battlefield of spiritual warfare is normal life. One, normal life is not promised to be comfortable. In fact, it's promised to be uncomfortable. And two, Normal life is not so normal. And we need spiritual strength to do really anything and everything, to do it faithfully and for the glory of God. It is essential that we understand these things because our enemies are terrible. They are immeasurably stronger than we are. If we do not understand these things, we will place ourselves in terrible danger. And so from this, we go to the combatants in spiritual warfare. We have an enemy, and that enemy is described in Matthew 25, when we are told that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. So we have an enemy, the devil and his angels. consider the martial, the military language that comes right on the heels of all this talk about submission. We've got a picture of a soldier, and if you've been in any Sunday school classroom that has pictures on the walls, you've probably seen one of a Roman soldier or of a medieval knight, and it's got them labeled with all the parts of the armor of God. Like it's obvious military language. but it's coming right on the heels of this talk about submission. One thing to consider here, when we consider our enemy and who they consider to be the combatants in spiritual warfare, they consider anybody and everybody as a target. You might be familiar with in church history, there's a concept called just war theory. where in the Middle Ages, there was an attempt to delineate what a just war was and what an unjust war was. And one of the principles of a just war is that you make a differentiation between military targets and civilian targets. The devil doesn't do this. The devil doesn't recognize targets as off limits. If you consider in this last section, who was commanded to submit right into this passage that's coming into the war that we're engaged in, husbands, wives, children, parents, slaves and masters. I think one implication of this is that all in the devil's mind are valid targets. He's not concerned to get only trained military men, but he's happy to take children. He's happy to take the wives. He's happy to take whatever he can take. Implication of this is that we might think that spiritual warfare is something that only officers of the church deal with, because little old me is not worth the devil's time. Now, the devil is finite. He is not omniscient, he's not omnipresent. But he does have a host of demons that work for him. And every Christian is a target. And so we ought not to rest easy as if I'm not a big enough target in and of myself. All of us ought to cry out to God for grace and for help. All who belong to Christ, male and female, Jew or Greek, slave or free, elderly or very young, all are targets of the prowling devil seeking one to devour. So, That is our enemy's target, everybody. Everybody that names the name of Christ. We are also combatants in this war. And this text has something interesting to say about how we think about our targets. Because this text does delineate there. We have a focus of some who are not our target. Now we're skipping ahead a little bit out of verse 10. But in verse 12, We read, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Basically four descriptors of spiritual entities. In other words, these are the ones we actually do wage war with. Flesh and blood, we don't wage war. on the same way, on the same level. Another way to think about this, in my normal life, which is a battlefield full of trials, when I am in a fight with my spouse, I have to resist every urge to make her my enemy, because she is not. When your child utterly rebels and refuses to obey, refuses to listen to reason, We have to resist the temptation to think of the child as the enemy. And those temptations come quickly. When I'm in a conflict at work and I think, man, my boss is just such a fool. Why can't he see what is so obvious in front of him? We're tempted to think he's the enemy. And this text encourages us to not think this way. but rather to pray. We ought to be praying for the salvation of all that we're either in conflict with or not in conflict with. We're to hope that Christ redeems all that we know. But we know that on the deepest level, our enemies are these spiritual powers at play that hate God and his people and will do anything they can to afflict them. This changes my perspective regarding conflicts. You might've heard in apologetic training, win the man, not the argument. And I think this has application here. I saw a video this week where the guy, he was having an apologetic conversation with someone and they were talking about whether God exists or not. And then the person brought up, well, if someone commits suicide, are they going to hell? And the guy said, that has nothing to do with the main point. What on earth? This is totally irrelevant to the main issue as to whether God exists or not. And he was right. But the issue was that he missed, there's a reason why the person asked that question. And the reason was that the person had personal experience with someone that committed suicide and was struggling with Christianity in general if they thought that the Bible taught that automatically the one who commits suicide is going to hell. That's an example of what it might look like to pursue winning the argument as opposed to winning the person. Where it would have been better to say, that's an interesting question, why do you ask that? And maybe we could consider what the hangup is behind that question. In other words, I'm not looking just to dominate those I'm in a conversation with. I'm looking to win them, win them for Christ. I'm not merely trying to get my way in conflicts. If I'm in a conflict with someone in my family or someone at work, Success is not qualified by, I get my way. And they cry uncle and they say, how foolish was I? All hail your superior intellect. I don't know how I could have possibly thought any differently. No. We want to win the people, which sometimes means we sacrifice some of what we're looking for in the conflict. If all of life is a theater of spiritual warfare, then all of these conflicts have spiritual applications and implications. So, how are we to go about doing this? Well, practically speaking, Paul's been encouraging us to think along these lines through everything he's talked about in chapters four through this passage. As we think about this, all the teaching about walking in unity, walking in maturity, walking in the new man, walking in love, walking as children of light, walking in wisdom. And if I pursue this, then I'm walking faithfully and hopefully being a benefit to those around me and to myself in the theater of spiritual warfare. But you might understand quickly That's a lot of language about what I am to do, and I'm not capable of doing that in my flesh, which is why I think it's helpful in Ephesians 6.10. Finally, the encouragement after all of these instructions, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. So as we come to the power of spiritual warfare, power is not in me. to discipline myself, to grit my teeth. It's not in me to take these pieces of armor and take these weapons that are described in this passage and strap them on and make myself, you know, somebody that can hold their own in the field of battle. Because if you think of like a regular battlefield, that's most of what's going on in training. You're a soldier. And if you're terrible, you're going to endanger the lives of those around you. So it's up to you with the team. to be somebody that can hold their own and not be a detriment to the whole squad. We don't think that way in regards to spiritual warfare. I cry out to God that he might preserve me, that he might give me strength, that he might persevere me through the trials and temptations of this life. The strength for the battle is the Lord's and not our own. And there's even more going on with this phrase than what might first appear because the strength of his might, Paul has used this phrase before in this letter. And he used it in Ephesians chapter one when he prays for the Ephesians. Starting in verse 16, Paul says, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance and the saints, what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, and here, according to the working of his great might, same phrase we have in Ephesians 6.10, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. In other words, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might has specific application to the power displayed in the resurrection of our Lord. We're to be strong in the Lord that has the power to defeat death. And defeated death in Christ, and will defeat it ultimately when He raises us. In other words, to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might is to believe the gospel. To believe the gospel. To believe in the God who is able to save us from death. And in strength of His great might, to raise our Lord from the death and to raise Him to the right hand of the Father. So as we think about all that we've considered over the last several months in Ephesians, you have been called to do great things, and you've been called to do greater things than you can do. You've been called to withstand, in this passage, the assault of great enemies, and to withstand greater enemies than you are in your flesh. The good news is that greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. So by the power of his great might, God will accomplish great things in you and through you. God will persevere you against the terrible strength of terrible enemies in and through you. By the strength of his power, by the power of his spirit. This sets us up right away to think very differently about this whole passage than is popularly taught. And there's even some good guys from our perspective, theological perspective, that will go through this passage in the armor of God and talk about you. As if the breastplate of righteousness is your righteousness. To equip yourself in your righteousness. And I'm gonna say, may it never be. We equip ourselves with Christ. we equip ourselves with the Holy Spirit. It's about who he is and what he's done. And so while this spiritual battle takes place in everything we do, everything that happens around us, and it is overwhelming to us all too often, we all too often succumb to the world, the flesh, and the devil, we will lose many individual battles in this life, but the victory is won, irrevocably, completely, And we're encouraged to remember that, remember the gospel, remember the victory won, to cling to it in hope, to cling to Christ in hope. It's one of the reasons I love the song of Moses in Exodus 15. After the Israelites had been rescued from Pharaoh and his armies, which were greater than they could resist. And when we consider the might of our God, it says in Exodus 15, 3, the Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. This is the celebration song of the Hebrews after they're saved from Pharaoh. Our God is mighty. And in him, there is none who can defeat his people, who can defeat him. And so in the arms of our God, who is a man of war, we are safe and secure from that which would ultimately undo us. And like we've seen in the book of Job, what might afflict us ultimately works for our good. And the devil who so hates God and his people, and seeks our utter destruction and humiliation in every act that he commits against God and his people only contributes to the final glory that Christ will reveal. So one thing to consider this morning before we close, we want to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might by believing the gospel But I would take this as another opportunity to encourage you to think about the ordinary means of grace by which we are strengthened to wage the good warfare and to remind you of what these ordinary means of grace are, which is interesting. They are ordinary means of grace to help us in normal life, which is not so normal. And the ordinary means of grace, in a sense, are not so ordinary. But we have the preached word. where God speaks to his people from the word, speaks to you to strengthen you, to bless you with grace for all that struggles against you, that wages warfare against you, that you are not only informed mentally with new information, but by the spirit of God, you are also convicted, inspired, and given hope. We also believe that the sacraments are an ordinary means of grace. And both of the word and the sacraments were referenced in Ephesians 5, when Christ says, husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. These are acts of Christ in the church to strengthen his bride, to strengthen his people. The third ordinary means of grace is prayer, but especially corporate prayer. Especially corporate prayer when God's people gather to cry out to the Lord together. And we see Paul ends this passage with an exhortation to pray. After all this talk about the spiritual armaments, he says, pray. Pray for all the saints, pray for me. So, Lord willing, next week we will learn more about the nature of our enemies in the spiritual warfare. Then in the following weeks, we'll learn more about the nature of what Christ gives us to preserve us in this conflict. But to remind you again of what I trust you already know, Our enemies, though they are terrible, though they are greater than we are in our flesh, they are defeated. They are temporary. Our victory is won. Our victory is assured. And so though we have great trials in this life, the exhortation is not to despair in those trials, but to cling to the promises of the gospel, cling to the hope that is offered in the gospel. because those are promises that are true, regardless of what we may think in our darkest moments. And in our darkest moments, we tell ourselves many lies. The devil tells us many lies. We cry out for God's grace to reject those lies and to believe what he has said. So we read, we conclude with the reading of the truth taught. All of life is spiritual warfare, and thus we need spiritual strength for all of life. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would help us to embrace these things for our good and your glory. We pray that you would help us to remember that there is more going on around us than meets the eye, and that it is not strange when trials and tribulations afflict us, but it is something that, as much as it may confound our fleshly thinking we can even glory in. But Lord, this is more than we can do in and of ourselves. We need you if we are to have any hope of glorying and suffering with Christ and his sufferings. We pray that through it all, we might eagerly look forward to the hope that is promised. That though we suffer with him now, we will also reign with him when the time is fulfilled. Lord, we love you. We praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.