The Invisible War- Sword of the Spirit - Ephesians: Born for War

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Rudd Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

So turning your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6, we're coming to the last two messages on Born for War or the Invisible War.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

It's kind of a there's a series within the overarching book.

So we've been in the book of Ephesians now, and the last five messages or so has been with the invisible war.

Some of you have asked me about the Great Reset and the message I gave like four weeks ago.

So you can find that online.

That's under the rubric of the invisible war.

The Great Reset related to Klaus Schwab, Anthony Fauci, and the World Health Organization.

So I'm not World Health, I mean the World Economic Forum, WF.

So look at Ephesians.

And I want to I want to kind of take us back a little bit because I've been gone for uh I've been here, but I mean we've had different speakers for the last two weeks.

Look at verse 10.

Let's pick it up at verse 10.

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of his might, put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and against powers and against rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly place.

So here's Paul, who talking about persecution, he's constantly under persecution.

Everywhere he goes, he's getting persecuted by the Jews and the Romans.

So, I mean, he's getting hammered, and yet he realized that even in the midst of that, I'm not opposed primarily by the Jewish rulers or by the Roman emperor.

I'm being opposed by principalities and powers.

And that's why we pray.

That's why we come to a Tuesday morning prayer or a Thursday night prayer, is because our problem is not with a particular political party primarily, there's actually demonic powers behind some of this stuff.

And that's what we pray against.

Verse 13.

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.

Go, guys, we are in the evil day.

I mean, wake up and smell the coffee.

You know, when I wake up in the morning and I churn our coffee and I put it in there, and you can smell the coffee.

Well, smell the coffee.

You are in the evil day.

Let's all say, I'm in the evil day.

I'm in the evil day.

That's what we're in.

This is not business as usual.

Don't treat it as business as usual, and don't act like that everything's just gonna go back to normal.

It ain't, to use a southern term.

It ain't gonna happen.

We're not going back.

This is the new normal.

And if you haven't figured that out, keep coming because we're gonna equip you and empower you for the new normal.

If we don't put on the armor, if we don't make prayer a priority, you're dead spiritually.

Because so much is happening, it's happening so fast, it's gonna affect your health care, it's gonna affect you politically.

Do you realize that everything in life is political?

I mean, laws determine where you go and what side of the street you drive on and whether you stop or yield.

I mean, it's all political.

And you put bozos in office, you get bozo laws.

You put smart, intelligent, good, godly people in office, then that's what flows out of it.

So this all this matters.

That's why we're doing hold the line.

Man, I'm busy.

I'd like to take a break.

I really would.

I'm exhausted some days.

But we've got to equip the saints because this is the evil day, and you don't sleep on evil days.

Folks, don't be asleep at the wheel, you have a wreck.

Verse 14.

So therefore, stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth.

Truth matters.

I've already taught about that, the importance of truth.

Having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

The righteousness of our motives really matters.

And having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

So I went into the D49 school board meeting this week.

Because the president, John Graham, asked me to speak.

So I did.

I came wearing shoes of peace.

I came as a peacemaker.

Holy Toledo.

There was anything but peace there.

And having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one.

So even above all of that, it has to be matched with faith.

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Now that's what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about the sword of the Spirit.

Because the sword of the Spirit is the offensive weapon of a soldier of Christ.

So can you imagine a medieval knight going into battle without the sword?

You could have everything else, but he has no sword.

Doesn't stand a chance.

You take a special ops guy going in guerrilla warfare, ranger or whatever, going in without his rifle, without his pistol, without his knife, dead in the water.

And yet we spend more time in America talking about the malnourished of the third world and hunger in the third world, which we should be involved in that, but we forget that there's malnourishment and there's hunger in the first world, and it's called a hunger for truth and a lack of nourishment from God's Word.

More Christians that I know of, not so much from the road, but some from the road, are so uneducated and so unaware and so unempowered by the word of God, I don't know how they stand.

I don't even want to know why they go to church.

I don't know why they go to a service, and that's the only time they're in God's Word.

Because can you imagine seven days a week and the only time you eat is on Sunday.

And the whole rest of the week you don't eat.

You don't ever eat.

I mean, you just, I mean, that's what so many Christians are.

They're just, they look, they're they're really like holocaust.

I mean, they're like, they're like they're coming out of a concentration camp, man, spiritually.

And they say some of the dumbest things to me.

I mean, I seriously, I go, holy Toledo.

I wouldn't have said that one month after I got saved.

And they've been, they call themselves Christians for 30 years.

It's because they don't know God's word.

They're not fighting with the sword of the Spirit.

They're fighting in the flesh.

They're fighting their own way.

That's the reason we got so many conservatives shooting each other in this county, is because they they've made, they don't care about the means of getting their opinion across.

They just want to get their opinion across.

And I'm telling you, that's a recipe for failure.

Because, because men, we don't lose our Christianity in order to speak truth.

We live our faith.

That's more important than anything we say.

It's living it, it's coming with kindness and love and forgiveness and care for others.

We don't slam each other over stuff because it's not a battle of flesh and blood anyway.

But we get involved.

And so I want to challenge you that you've got the sword of the Spirit.

And that sword of the Spirit can change your life, it can fire you up.

So now, turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 4.

Now, it's because of Hebrews 4, just turn to the right.

If you get to Revelation, you went too far, and then turn left.

But this is what's important, guys.

Every socialist government, every fascist government, every communist government in the history of the world, one of the first things they do is they outlaw the Bible.

Because they know that if you get a people that are living by this book, it's going to challenge their worldview on every front.

Because what any government, any king, any president or CEO wants is complete sovereign control over the people.

And when you get a group of people that reads God's word, loves God's word, believes God's word, what happens is a new freedom that comes within them, a new boldness and a new courage.

That's what the Romans were afraid of, and that's what the Jewish, uh the Jewish rulers were afraid of with Christianity, was because these people aren't bowing down to the chief priest and to Caesar anymore.

They've got a new Caesar and his name is Jesus.

And it was coming from the Word of God.

So look what it says about the nature of the Word of God.

And if you were gonna give it kind of a title over this, I would say it's the dangerous, the dangerous word of God.

It's dangerous to your religious life.

If you want to stay religious, don't read God's word.

If you want to be a religious zealot, don't read God's word.

Because when you read God's word, it makes your relationship with God the priority, and you become, you start to have a personal intimacy with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and religion gets dropped off, and we start having a relationship with God.

So this relationship with God becomes dangerous through the word of God because this is the nature of the dangerous book that you've got in your hand right now.

Verse 12.

For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Now look at verse 13.

This is what every government in the nations is afraid of.

And there is no creature hidden from its sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

So what the Word of God does is it creates fear of God in believers, and it puts a fear of men in unbelievers.

Because what happens is they don't have a fear of God, but they see, wow, these people have a fear of God.

There's something about them that's uniquely different.

They're kingdom of God people, they don't know those terms, but they're thinking, they're thinking, and now they don't fear me.

Because they're bold, they're assertive, and holy, Toledo, they're loving.

What do you do with that?

Well, you burn them at the stake, you throw them to lion, the lion's den.

Whatever you can to stop them, because this book is alive.

That's my first point.

First point is the word of God, the sword of the spirit, is alive.

It is living.

That's what our passage says.

It is alive, and what happens when you start reading God's word is something comes alive in your spirit.

Because your spirit is dead until you're born again.

But when your spirit comes alive, it has to be nourished by the life of the word of God.

The word of God is not pasteurized.

All right?

So when they take cow's milk and they pasteurize it, they do it to kill some of the bacteria and stuff, but they also kill good bacteria.

So it's pasteurized.

Well, you get a living culture from the word of God, it's not pasteurized.

You start eating and drinking from God's word, and it's life to your bones, and it's life to your heart, and it's life to your brain, and it's life to even you physically, it affects you, it impacts you.

Your spirit gets nourished with the vitamins of the Spirit of God.

And you become, you become fat in God's word.

You become strengthened by God's word.

And when that happens in you, you can have a group.

We can have a group right here.

We have five people.

We took Hebrews 4:12, put the Bible right in the middle, everybody reads it.

Hebrews 4:12

And what is God saying to you?

And what's God saying to you?

And it'll be different for every one of us.

Because it's alive.

This is not a dead book, this is a live book.

And it's and it's so alive that every time you read it, you get something different.

Even when you've read it again and again and again.

It's alive.

That's the dangerous nature of God's word, is that it's alive.

Number two, it says here that it's powerful.

In the New King James Version that I study from, it's powerful.

Some of you are, I think New American Standards says it's active.

Both are good, but here's the word it comes from in the Greek.

Write this down.

E-N E-R-G-E-S.

That's the Greek word.

Energis.

Guess where we get the English word energy.

It comes from this word.

It's energy, it's energetic.

It comes into our bodies, it comes into our minds, it comes into our spirit, and it gives you spiritual energy.

Isn't that cool?

So when you read God's word and you start studying God's word, you start memorizing God's word, even just reading it, there's energy in that.

It's the nature of this dangerous book that it gives you energy, and thus that's the reason it always gets outlawed.

That's what they want to do.

That's what Polis and others want to do.

And they said, You can't, you can't meet.

You can't have services.

And you guys know we we drank the Kool-Aid for one month.

And then we said, That dog doesn't hunt.

Because we need energy from each other and from God's word, because we're commanded in Scripture to meet together.

And so we studied the research, we did the research, we did the work on it, and we realized what we realized about the you know, about COVID, and we felt pretty good.

And we could we could do this thing.

And we did.

And it was successful because it was the energy of God's word.

There should be energy.

That's why it's so sad when you hear of pastors that have boring sermons.

A boring sermon from God's word should be an oxymoron.

Okay.

Now, you can have a boring sermon if it's not from God's word, and most sermons are not.

Most sermons are topical based on the choice and the opinion of the pastor who's giving them.

So sometimes they actually take a passage from Scripture, and it's called teaching from the Bible.

And up until 2002, that's what I did.

And then I realized I think maybe I could disciple people better if I didn't teach from the Bible.

I taught the Bible.

And so we started going book by book and chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

And that's what you're hungry for.

That's what your spirit needs.

Your spirit doesn't need another guy up front on a stage giving you his opinion on everything.

You need a guy up there that gets his opinions from God.

I mean, there's always, it's never perfect, but it's from God's word.

And so he's given us 66 topics.

Starting in Genesis and ending in Revelation, he writes this sermon.

It's his words.

It's living, it's energetic.

You're feeling tired?

Feeling worn out?

Feeling depressed, despairing, bummed out, discouraged.

Bad day.

Bad life.

Need some energy.

Don't go to the gym first.

Go to the word first.

Let him give you energy.

Let him give you energetic people in their spirit become energetic people at work.

Energetic in their spirit become energetic in their marriage.

Energetic in their spirit, they become energetic relationally.

People who are energetic in their spirit are unstoppable.

Nourish yourself with God's word.

Don't let anything get in the way from time in the word every day.

All right?

Living.

Two, powerful.

Three, sharper than any two-edged sword.

What does he mean?

Piercing.

Even the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, is discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

So the word of God is like a two-edged sword that cut between soul and spirit.

Here's what's cool about this sword.

Look at that, it's got worshiper warrior on it.

Yeah.

All right.

So when we're jousting with the enemy, and when God is jousting with us because he's got something to say to us, he cuts into that division of soul, which you're born with.

You're born with a soul.

But when you get born again, your second birth in Christ, you get his spirit.

And when that spirit comes in, it's good news and it's bad news, right?

I was a happy pagan.

I liked parting.

I liked running around.

I liked being the life of the party and all the things that were true of me.

Then I got saved.

And I got, it was kind of a bummer because then I realized I'm not as happy anymore.

Because as I began to read God's word, he began to cut between soul and spirit.

And I thought, man, I gotta change that.

I gotta quit lying so much.

I gotta quit fabricating the truth so much.

I've got to quit being such a being a person who's not what he should be.

Because the word of God does that.

It's supposed to do that.

That's the nature of the dangerous word of God, is that it comes in and you begin to realize that he doesn't want to work with my pride, he wants to work with my humility.

He doesn't want to work with me being a big braggart.

He wants me to learn how to keep my mouth shut and and learn to be surrendered to him.

So that's the nature of the word, you guys.

And so you know, it was it was Spurgeon, the great preacher in the 1800s in London, had the largest church in the world.

And he was amazing.

And he said, You show me a man or a woman who's got a torn-up Bible, and I'll show you a man or a woman who doesn't have a torn-up life.

I'd say vice versa.

You show me a man with a Bible that's never been opened, never been used, looks brand new, and I'll show you a torn-up life.

So some of the things that have to happen in our lives is we get torn up a little bit and we realize, you know, if I keep running my life, I'm up to no good, and I'm just going to continue to get hammered by the enemy.

Or maybe I should stop, reevaluate life, start digging into God's Word with the power of his Spirit, enabling us to read God's word and begin to see his action, his energy, his life, and his power flowing through my life, and he might actually start healing my torn-up life.

That's the nature of the word of God.

Now, there's two words used for the word of God in Scripture.

One is Rhema, and the other one is logos.

And this Rhema Logos combination is really, really important in our lives.

So Logos is the word used here in Hebrews 4.12, the logos.

It's also the same word used by John in John 1.1, probably one of the most famous verses in the Bible.

In the beginning was the word, logos.

And the word logos was with God, and the word logos was God.

Now the logos is the written word of God.

This is the logos of the word of God.

It is written and it has everything that we need here, but then what God does as we read the logos, he gives us rhema.

He gives us revelation for personally our lives.

In other words, when we read that the word of God is the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6, that's the word Rhema, not Logos.

So you'll note on this chart the difference.

The Logos is the general.

Word of God, Rhema is the specific word of God for you.

Logos is the written word, Rhema is the writing word.

It's current for your life.

Logos is the spoken word.

Rhema is the speaking word for you.

Logos is the promises of God in general.

Rhema is a promise that God gives you.

Logos is the knowledge about something, but Rhema is the revelation for you about something.

Does that make sense?

So as you're in the Logos, you get your Rhema.

You don't get Rhema by not being in Logos.

You got to be in Logos to get Rhema.

And you spend time in Logos, you'll get a Rhema.

So you're just reading along, and right now something's happening in some of you.

Right now, how many of you would say, right now, if we've looked at Ephesians 6, we've been in Hebrews 4, I've alluded to other passages, God is speaking to you a Rhema word for your life.

Just slip up your hand.

See, that's Rhema.

But if you weren't here, you wouldn't get it.

And same thing when your time with the Lord.

When you spend time with the Lord and you go into your study or you go into your closet or in your living room where you start to open God's word, the more time you spend over logos is the more opportunity for the Spirit to give you Rhema.

So here's what's sad.

What's sad is how many people go out and do dumb things.

I mean, they just do dumb things.

You listen to me and go, that's really dumb.

I can't believe you did that.

You know?

And then you, and then they do another dumb thing, and then they have a whole bunch of dumb things that they've done.

They'd never open God's word.

Maybe they come to church, that's great.

They come and they hear me give the word or whatever, but they're not regularly in God's word, and they go from dumb to dumber.

When, if they would just start opening God's word, you don't need a big anointed speaker.

You just need the anointed speaker, which is the Holy Spirit speaking through his word.

And so you just start, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna start in the Gospel of John.

So they start reading the Gospel of John, bam! They go, wow, that's God's opinion on that?

Man, that was a dumb decision that I made.

And then they decide to change, they repent.

You see how it works?

And you start doing that, what you start doing is you start building up a history of victories with God.

You start making smart decisions with your money, you start making smart decisions about the people you hang out with, you start making decisions about where you go and what you do at night, stuff like that.

You start becoming you become smart.

Psalm 119 says you become smarter than your teachers.

I remember one of our kids one time came home, was at this at this community college, and and said, They, hey dad, you know, I just want you to know, man, everything you taught about the Puritans isn't right.

And suddenly I'm being compared, you know, to Dr.

So-and-so or whatever.

And I said, Well, what'd they say?

So he told me what they said.

And I said, That's a lie.

He said, What?

Yeah, you just heard a lie.

That's fabrication, man.

That's revisionist history.

Let's go back and look it up.

So we went back, we looked it up, showed him some of the original documents.

I said, Guess what, son?

You just became smarter than your teacher.

And then he, being the kind of guy he was, he had to tell her when he got there.

So, anyway, not everybody likes me in this county, I can tell you that.

Um, but it makes you smart.

You start going from smart to smarter instead of dumb to dumber.

And anybody tired of being dumb?

I mean, if you're tired of being dumb, you ought to get in God's word.

You don't need a seminary education, you need a seminary degree from the seminary of the burning bush.

That's what you need.

So Moses never went to seminary, but he saw a burning bush and God spoke to him, and that's what every time God speaks to you, it's a burning bush.

God will give you a burning bush on a regular basis if you'll be on the mountain of the Lord.

He will.

He loves you, he cares about you.

But nobody's gonna open the word for you.

Nobody's gonna open the word for you.

You have to open the word.

So you got you got the Holy Spirit right at your doorstep, knocking on the door, ready to speak.

But if you don't open the word, he's not gonna force his way in.

And so it's living and energetic and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it's convicting and it's comforting, it's powerful, and it's beautiful, and it's and it's awesome.

But you gotta be in it.

Alright.

So write this down.

This is just a good sentence I wrote.

Okay?

No, it is, it's good, okay?

All right.

You need a spiritually high calorie, energizing, and nourishing diet of God's word if you are to be a healthy, vibrant Jesus disciple.

Let me say that again.

I'm taking notes on myself.

You need, it's from I think it's from God, but anyway, it's my wording.

Okay.

You need a spiritually high calorie, energizing and nourishing diet of God's word if you're to be a healthy, vibrant Jesus disciple.

So that means you gotta eat God's word.

You gotta eat his word.

And that's actually a phrase that's in Scripture: eating God's word.

Write down Revelation 10.

Revelation 10, 8 through 11.

Revelation 10, 8 through 11.

So I went to the angel and said to him, Give me the little book.

And he said to me, Take and eat it.

And it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.

Now you say, What is that about?

What does it mean?

It comes in and it's sweet, goes down and it's bitter.

Well, look at the next verse, verse 10.

Then I took the little book out of the angel's hand and I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter because of the next verse.

And he said to me, You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.

So, what's happening in Revelation 10 is that John eats the word, and it's actually the prophecy to the nations of the last days.

So, what happens sometimes in our lives, church, is that you eat God's word and it's sweet to you.

You're reading it and you go, oh man, that's awesome, and you can't wait to tell people about it.

And you're excited because you're loving God's word.

He's spoken a beautiful word to you, and it's sweet in your mouth.

But then you go to work, or you're with your kids, or you're at this or that, or that or this, and you see something happening, and you know the Spirit of God's telling you to speak into that situation, and you know it's not going to be received.

So then it becomes like bitter.

It's kind of like it's bitter because you gotta say it.

Now, a lot of stuff that gets said does not need to be said, just so you know.

So I'm talking about the timing of the Lord, where you know that you you're supposed to say something, and you can say it kindly and gently, but then it's like bitterness in your soul because you have to say it.

And so someone comes to me and they're talking about this and that, and I get this word of knowledge or something, and I say, Are you involved in porn?

Now we were having a very pleasant conversation until I said that.

I mean, we were doing just fine.

And it's like, I did not have to say that.

That was like, I'm thinking of myself, and you and I, and I it I it's kind of like the mental gymnastics of it all.

You're going, if I say this, then he's gonna say that, and then she's gonna be ticked off at him, and man, it's gonna be a brew ha, you know?

And so you just don't know, right?

But this is like the timing of the Lord.

This is when you're supposed to say it.

Not always supposed to say everything that you think, but say, how are we doing with porn?

Oh, suddenly it's bitter, man.

It's like a bit because you had to prophesy it, you had to say it.

But that's the beginning of healing.

Because if you don't acknowledge something and get it out in the light, it's gonna sit there and it's going to become a growing problem that eventually, instead of just cutting off a finger, you're gonna need to cut off a whole arm because it's just taking over the whole body.

So sometimes you need to catch it early.

So that's what he means by that.

So it's it's he's eating it, and not everything he's eating is going to turn out so well when he begins to prophesy.

In Jeremiah 15, 16, your words were found, and I ate them, and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.

For I am called by your name, O Lord God of us.

Now I think most of the time that's the word.

I think God doesn't give you words to go out and just preach to everybody.

Most of the time, the word is for you.

It's God speaking to you.

And he's saying it's joy and rejoicing in his heart.

Ezekiel 3.

He said to me, Son of man, eat what you find.

Eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel.

So I opened my mouth and he caused me to eat the scroll.

And he said to me, Son of man, feed your belly and fill your stomach with the scroll that I give you.

So I ate, and it was in my mouth like honey and sweetness.

I think that's most of the time the purpose of the word.

The purpose of the word is through Rhema to be sweetness and honey to your soul and to your spirit, to build you up, to strengthen you, to empower you.

And so, do you have time?

Have you made time in your schedule, morning or evening or both, to spend in God's word?

It's the only way to grow.

You know, we we have no trouble understanding the fact that going to the gym and working out physically is important.

But we forget that there's a gymnasium that God has in his word, that when we go to that, he builds us up with energy spiritually.

And you show me a man or woman that's spiritually nourished, full of the vitamins of God.

I'll show you a man or woman that's unstoppable in their Christian life.

They are bringing impact wherever they go.

So you say, Well, why don't I have more impact?

Why am I struggling with depression and despair in my life?

It's because you're not you're not strengthening yourself on a regular basis by eating a healthy diet, a calorie-filled diet of the Word of God.

It's the sword of the Spirit.

Now, I want you to look at Psalm 119.

Don't need to turn there, it's gonna come up on the screen, but Psalm 119 is the best chapter in all of the Bible on the benefits of the Word of God.

So I'm just gonna read these through.

If you want to take a picture of it, you can.

25 most powerful benefits of God's Word from Psalm 119.

It gives you a blessed life, verse 1.

It produces purity, verse 9.

It builds wholehearted living, verse 10.

It produces joy, verse 14.

It gives delightful counsel, verse 24.

It brings revival, verse 25.

It melts away heaviness, verse 28.

It enlarges our heart, verse 32.

We can walk in liberty, verse 45.

It's comfort in affliction, verse 50.

It produces fear of God, verse 63.

We experience merciful kindness, verse 76.

Experience God's firm faithfulness, verses 89 and 90.

You become wiser than your enemies, verses 97 to 99.

It gives you understanding, verses 103 and 104.

It brings guidance, verse 105.

It's a hiding place, verse 114.

It produces hope, verse 116.

Develops justice and righteousness, verse 121.

Learn God's statutes, verse 124, brings light, verse 130.

Understanding to the simple, verse 130.

You learn truth, verse 142.

Produces peace, verse 165, and produces praise, verse 171.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.