How Does This Armour Fit?

Everyone say discernment.

That's what we're in.

I just wanna start by, We're gonna do communion at the end, by the way.

So if you're a parent, you got your kids in, it's gonna be a great

little moment after the service, at the end of the service just to, to

share communion together as a family.

last week Dale, presented Dallas Willard's definition of discernment

and I just thought it was so helpful.

so.

Discernment is the cultivated ability to perceive and respond to God's guidance

as a natural expression of life.

Rooted in loving, a loving attention to God.

It's shaped by scripture, community obedience, and the

transforming work of the spirit.

That's really helpful Definition.

The other thing we kind of touched on last couple of weeks in my way of describing

it is firstly, we kind of discern our identity in Jesus, and then we discern

the direction that he's got for us.

I've been thinking about John 10, talks about the shepherd.

Jesus is the good shepherd and we are his sheep.

The, the, the picture of that dynamic with the sheep and the shepherd,

Jesus says, I'm the good shepherd.

And I, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

And then in verse 26, he says.

You do not believe because you are not my sheep.

There's this kind of delineation between, you'll know you're a sheep because

you believe in the Good Shepherd.

And the good shepherd is the one who is speaking.

And the sheep listen to his voice.

They know his voice.

They follow his voice, they discern his voice, and I give them eternal

life that, and they shall never perish.

No one shall snatch them from.

My hand.

So this idea of discerning who we are in Jesus is kind of, when we

think about sheep and shepherd, it's all predicated on the fact that you

are his sheep, you are his sheep.

It firstly starts with being a sheep, right?

Because the.

There's no sort of reality of the good Shepherd unless you

acknowledge that you're a sheep.

There's no reality of discerning the direction that God has for your life

if you first don't discern who you are.

You're a child of God.

He loves you.

He cares for you.

And so this whole image of sheep and shepherd this following, it's, it's,

it's, it's founded on the fact that.

Firstly, we must discern who we are.

We must discern not just in the mind cognitively, we must discern in the

heart, in the core of our beings.

In this series of discernment, we've been sort of cross-referencing,

the book of Colossians, and so.

We're gonna do that, but I'm gonna add another cross reference this

morning to help us think about the application of discernment.

And I'm gonna use the armor of God in Ephesians six.

So I'm gonna use discernment.

Colossians.

Ephesians six.

Are you catching that?

All and half an hour, 27 minutes.

If you're a child and you want to follow along in your packs, your coloring packs,

there's an Armor of God page somewhere in your pack, so you gotta go find that.

Now, when you think about the armor of God, I want you to just

potentially contextualize it like this, that each piece of armor

answers a particular vulnerability.

In the fragile human experience, and that vulnerability corresponds

to a area of discernment that we all need to be aware of.

So we're just gonna read, Ephesians six, 10 to 18 very quickly says this.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and his mighty power.

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand

against the devil's schemes.

For a struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against

the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against spiritual

forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you

may be able to stand your ground and after you've done everything to stand.

Stand firm then with the bout of truth buckled around your waist with the breast

breastplate of righteousness in place with your feet fitted with the readiness

that comes from the gospel of peace.

And in addition to this, take up the shield of faith, which you can extinguish

all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take up this helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit,

which is the word of God.

Armor number seven and pray in the spirit on all occasions with

all kinds of prayers and requests.

Would this in mind?

Be alert and always keep praying for all the Lord's people.

I just want to give you a quick dot point summary of what we've just read.

So firstly, Paul insists that this struggle is not against flesh and

blood, and so often we think in this physical experience that we all live in,

that this is primarily just a physical experience, but Paul is insisting.

There's more going on.

It's not just a physical reality that we're playing in.

We're playing in a spiritual reality.

So discernment is needed to firstly recognize that fact.

Number two, the opening command reiterates with what I just said.

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Stressing that before we can discern the spiritual, we need to know who we are.

We are in the Lord.

We are not in our own self-improvement.

Do better program.

We are in the Lord.

We're in his accomplishments.

So discernment here means refusing both passivity and self-reliance,

choosing a posture of dependence.

In participating with God, what God has already supplied us, he's

already given us identity in Christ.

Number three, the key understanding here stems from the idea that the reason God

would give your armor is to protect you.

You need protection.

I need protection.

We need protection because you, me, us, we are vulnerable.

Everyone say vulnerable.

We don't like to swallow that pill because it suggests that I'm lacking in something.

yes.

Welcome to following Jesus.

We all need him.

We all have vulnerabilities.

We are vulnerable.

Why are we vulnerable?

Because we are in a battle.

There will be resistance to our following Jesus.

And you can't stand without God's help.

We need his help.

Number four is that repeated verb stand.

Stand against stand firm, and it frames our spiritual warfare more as holding

ground in Christ's victory rather than chasing spectacular battles.

Like this is something that we are waging war.

No, the war's already been won.

We're just standing in the victory of what Jesus has accomplished.

Amen.

Amen.

Good 1 0 1 stuff right now.

So as we go through Ephesians here.

There's seven armors, armors, armors, seven items that are armor listed

and we need to discern what armor is needed when, lemme say that again.

We need to discern what armor is needed when discernment is needed as we stand

so that armor operates a certain way.

The armor operates in the way it's been designed.

It's really important to understand what's been designed so we don't end

up using the armor the wrong way.

That's not much help.

Would you agree?

Can't put a, a helmet on your kneecap.

It's not gonna work all that well.

It's not designed voice well.

Interesting enough, kind of if you're trying to do a job, you

need to use the tool the right way.

For instance, if there's something up high, you don't use the ladder

to try and hit the rag off the pole.

The things in your hand.

Now, you might say, well, that's just a bit of application of knowledge.

Surely you just know that the ladder is something you put out in your climate.

Now kind of knowledge works in the physical.

You didn't get it by the way.

But discernment is recognizing this is personal to me.

There's something personal that I need to apply the armor the right way.

I think about that picture and the word ineffective and

unproductive comes to mind.

Wasting time.

Man, do we don't wanna waste time mm-hmm.

In the knowledge of Jesus in following him just to on that point, the

enemy can't steal your salvation, but what he can do is he can make

you unproductive and ineffective in outworking that and following him.

Does that make sense?

Number one, belt of truth.

So we're gonna whip through these seven.

So the belt of truth, I want you to frame it in that statement, discern

truth from lies, truth from lies.

Colossians chapter two verses four and eight says, I tell you this so

that no one may deceive you by sound.

F fine sounding arguments.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow deceptive philosophy,

which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces

of the world rather than Christ.

So we think about the bout of truth.

It's actually protecting fragile humans from being taken captive by

false teaching human traditions, spiritualities that kinda look profound,

but they pull attention away from you.

In recognizing the sufficiency of Jesus, the sufficiency of him.

Discernment here means testing every claim of wisdom against the

work of Jesus, known as the gospel.

Testing it, refusing any gospel that kind of adds to the gospel.

well, yeah, you need to say yes to Jesus, but you need to

go to this particular church.

Do you see what's happening there?

We are adding to the work of Jesus.

The work of Jesus is sufficient in everything.

So just quickly, I'm gonna ask this question for each.

Armor type is how do you discern lies from truth?

How do you discern lies from truth?

Allow your feelings to direct your discernment about why are you feeling

a particular way so you can be in a moment and you feel a little bit

disturbed on the interior of your soul.

The question you should be asking is, why do I feel like this?

Why do I feel so disturbed?

It could be pointing to the fact that there's a lie that you are believing as.

Truth.

I've always found this little picture very helpful.

There's truths that we believe and those truths that we believe

affect our feelings, and then our feelings affect our decisions.

Then our decisions affect our habits, and our habits affect our life direction.

This is not something that.

Based on just a knowledge of something you can see it's discerned

on the interior of your soul.

It requires discernment to discern lies from truth Number two,

breastplate of righteousness, discerning acceptance from accusation.

Colossians chapter two, verses 13 to 15, when you were dead in your

sins and under the, and in the uncircumcision of the flesh of your

flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

He forgave all your sins, having canceled the charge of our legal

indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us, he's taken it away.

Woo, come on.

Nailing it to the cross.

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle

of them triumphing over them by the cross.

Jesus has made you and I righteous, not because of our actions, but because

of his on the cross, his resurrection.

Jesus is completely righteous and he's given his righteousness to you and I.

We are righteous.

The breast blessed breastplate of righteousness makes us righteous.

We are righteous because of Jesus.

The question here is how do you discern acceptance from accusation?

Here's some thoughts.

The thing that you are going through, the situation at hand, does it

point to Christ's sufficiency or does it demand performance of you?

Acceptance builds.

The interior of the soul accusation crushes in, crushes it in condemnation.

Grace convicts towards repentance, and then it releases actually, it's

like, oh, conviction of the spirit, the grace of God showing you something.

You're discerning something, but when you see it, there's peace.

Ah, accusation badges.

You endlessly badged endlessly.

That's Convi, that's condemnation.

It's, it's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about acceptance versus accusation.

Lastly, acceptance fuels prayer and unity.

Accusation isolates you in despair.

I'm giving you some thoughts just around how do you discern.

Am I being accused of something here or am I being accepted?

The heart's gotta discern that.

Number three, shoes of the gospel of peace.

Discerning unity from uniformity.

That's interesting.

I'll let you ponder.

Colossians chapter three, verses 13 says, bear with one another.

And forgive one another.

If any of you have grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you.

And over these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity.

Full stop.

Next sentence.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Since as members of one body, you were called to what?

Peace and be thankful.

When we stand in Christ, we stand in peace.

In the shoes of peace.

Now what I'm thinking about it is the reason why I have shoes of peace is I

can stand here is 'cause I recognize there's an army of heaven behind me.

I can't really see them 'cause I'm looking in this direction, but I have

peace because I understand who's with me.

That's generally sort of seen as a typical way of understanding these

shoes of peace, especially when you're advancing, when you're going

after God's kingdom, when you're following him, there's a peace there.

But I wanna say to you, in addition to that, this peace that you

experience should lead you not to divisiveness in relationships, but to

harmony and unity in relationships.

It's a posture that ripples and affects our relationships.

And so how do you discern unity from uniformity to discern unity

from uniformity and practice?

The key question is whether the peace of Christ is ruling your

decisions and relationships, or whether comfort and control are ruling

where Christ's peace and agape love governed, how differences are handled.

So we're all different in various ways, right?

There is biblical unity where people are quiet, are quietly

pressured to fit a mold.

That's when it's just mere uniformity.

So these are ways to just discern, is peace leading the charge here?

Is peace guiding my heart, right?

Or.

Is uniformity this pressure to mold be molded into sameness.

That's not a marker of Christ in his kingdom.

Next one.

Number four, shield of faith.

Discerning faith from fear.

How we going?

Okay, we're just trucking through this warp speed a bit.

That's why I've done 600 slides for you to take pictures and we'll put them

all the slides on the podcast as well.

If you wanna review this later.

Colossians one, three to six.

Oh, this is so good.

We always thank God the father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus

and the love you have for all of God's people, the faith and love that

springs from the hope stored up for you in heaven, and about which you

have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.

So the shield of faith, it protects.

Fragile humans.

Remember, vulnerable humans, you and I, faith protects us from despair,

intimidation by hostile powers that the fear, the fear is this.

The fear is that Jesus's work on the cross isn't enough.

That's the fear.

But no discernment about learning to recognize that fear.

Learning to recognize when I'm stepping into like a performance

based confidence where I'm doing well, therefore I'm confident and

actually discerning where I'm like, okay, now I've actually gotta stand

in the, in the finished work of Jesus.

And that requires faith.

So how do you discern fear from faith or faith from fear?

Faith is an active trust in the work and the person of Jesus.

When we fear, trust has drifted away from Jesus, away from God

and has landed on self, and when that happens, it breeds anxiety.

Division.

Faith seeks God's wisdom, humbly fear relies on human reasoning or past wounds.

Faith prays persistently fear withdraws or demands certainty in life.

And that certainty is like all if you, if you're certain I'll have peace.

That's so fear demands, but faith prays persistently.

That's really good, Adam.

Thanks.

Thanks Adam.

number five, helmet of salvation.

Discern above from below.

Where do we get that from?

Colossians chapter three verses one to four.

Do you see what I'm doing here?

I'm super imposing Armor of God.

Colossians.

You with me?

You're picking that up Good.

Colossians, chapter three verses one to four.

Since then, you have been raised with Christ, sets your heart on things.

Above where Christ is, seat at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ who is your life appears and you will also appear with him in glory.

Come on.

That's exciting.

The helmet of Salvation Guards, the head guards the mind.

It points the mind to be anchored in the saving work and the future

hope that we have in Jesus.

It protects fragile humans from confusion, from hopelessness, from

identity fracture where, where under understanding is shaped.

Where I suppose where I'm thinking here is we can be shaped more by the culture

around us that tells us who we are.

Or we can be shaped by what, who Jesus says we are.

Right?

So this is this helmet of salvation being.

Setting my minds on things above, not things Below things below

is what culture says about me.

Things above is what Jesus says about me.

Does that make sense?

And that is something that's discerned through the power of the spirit.

The spirit is helping us to discern that.

So how do you discern?

above or below real easy?

There's a heavenly focus when you're looking above that yields

hope, gratitude, and resilience.

Viewing trials through Christ's ultimate victory above foster's peace and unity

below fuels, division and despair.

Ah, I think that's really helpful.

Number six, sort of the spirit discern spirit from letter slash flesh.

You might be thinking, what does that mean?

Letter slash flesh.

Let's explore.

Colossians chapter one, verses nine to 10 says this.

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we've

not stopped praying for you.

We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will.

Through all the wisdom and understanding that the spirit gives, so that

you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.

Bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God,

the sort of the Spirit, the word of God is the one explicitly offensive

piece of armory that we have.

Cutting through deception, resisting temptation, and Colossians urges us to

let the word of Christ dwell in us richly teaching admonishing with one another

with wisdom, but it's not just primarily getting the word of God in your head.

That's why it says discern spirit from letter or flesh, because the

reality is so to the next lie, which essentially, so how do you

discern spirit from letter or flesh?

The word of God must be illuminated by the spirit of God.

It's the spirit of God that takes the word of God and makes it living and active.

The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

That's in two Corinthians three six.

The letter or the flesh that we're referring to here is an old covenant

old law expression moment, which kind of the old the law exposed sin,

but it did not empower obedience and it leads to condemnation.

The spirit in a new covenant mindset.

Understanding brings regeneration and enables believers to fulfill God's will.

Inwardly and enjoy freedom through outward obedience.

So without the spirit of God, we can understand it all here, but

it doesn't bring life, and that is something that's discerned.

So if you know your Bible back to front, you know every doctrine, but

there's no inward empowerment of the spirit causing you to be like,

I can't wait to obey the Lord.

Lemme reframe it for you real quick.

Sometimes we can refer that inner witness when the word of God

is illuminated by the spirit.

Some people might say, whoa, they're on fire for the Lord right now.

Do you ever heard that phrasing on fire?

There's nothing burning on the inside of their of their spirits.

There's just such a conviction about they step into the room and

the room just lit up because Jesus is living in the interior of their

souls and it just lights up the room.

Oh man, along for that taste, tasted it.

But that experience, that fire, that light is only an empowerment of the

spirit on the interior of your soul.

Some of you have tasted this, this fire right now, the spirit

of God wants to just help you discern that that fire has dimmed.

It's going a little bit cold.

It's not firing at all cylinders like it used to.

Now as I'm saying this, you might be going, oh, is that me?

I don't know.

I said, Lord, show me.

Help me to discern whether this is true in my life.

Help and show me.

Help me to discern.

How do I get back into that pocket of grace that I'm just illuminated?

I'm on fire for you.

Does that make sense?

You gotta remember, this is not trying to get God to love you anymore.

This is so, our experience of following Jesus is full of light

and life and peace and joy and all the things that he's got for us.

I'm, I'm distracted.

sword versus spirit.

Oh, no, it's good.

Oh, not bad.

Not bad.

Okay.

I said that already.

number seven, pray, discern dependence from self sufficiency.

just quickly, Colossians four, uh two says, devote yourselves to prayer, being

watchful and thankful, and pray for us too, that God may open a door to our

message so that we proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains,

fragile humans, we tend to default to independent living and striving.

But persistent prayer aligns strength with God's power.

It aligns us with God's strength and God's power.

It's countering it's prideful, exhaustion and saying, Lord, I recognize that I've

come to the end of my rope, my end of my capacity, the end of my self-sufficiency,

and says, Lord, I need you.

If you, the, the exposing question is this, you know, how do you

discern if prayers in my world?

When was the last time you prayed?

Now, I say that lightly because this is not a place of condemnation today.

This is a place of saying, I

recognize I'm not praying, I don't have a prayer problem.

I've got a pride problem.

And so I humbly just lay that down today and say, Lord, come.

Calm and, and help me to discern the mind of Christ, the will of Jesus in

this present moment here and now show me.

Open my eyes so I could discern your perfect will.

That is a work of the spirit wanting us and gracing us to pray.

A lot of the time we think about prayer, we're thinking, oh, it's

gotta do better, try harder.

Have you ever tried just praying, God grace me to pray?

Help me to pray.

It's like a radical thought, isn't it?

If you have, that's a radical thought for you.

It's potentially in your mind that your thinking performance

is your means to acceptance.

Do you, do you catch that?

So, so if you, if you're praying, Lord, help me to pray, help me to burn with

fire, help me to hunger for that closeness with the Father through intimacy.

Just being close with him not bringing my list.

Just being close.

God, can you grace me for that?

That's a good prayer.

And if you're praying that way today, I wanna let you know

you are discerning the will of God right there.

You're discerning it.

I'm gonna share communion just a minute, and so I wanna just sort of.

Do my very best to link the armor of God into the communion because

communion is a powerful statement both to the interior of our souls and to

the exterior of the world around us.

We are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes.

When we take communion, we're proclaiming that both on the interior of our lives and

we're proclaiming that to the world around us in the spiritual heavenly realms.

We're actually proclaiming it.

It's, it's, it's almost in many ways a warfare act, which is why I wanna link it

to the, armor of God, because it's one of our, it's not listed here as an armor,

'cause it's quite a offensive position where we're saying, no, I'm gonna declare.

That Jesus is king and Lord and savior of all by the taking of communion.

And I'm not just declaring that to something external.

I'm declaring that to my own soul.

'cause we all need that.

So the reason why we take communion, I want you to know as we take communion,

imagine that belt, the belt of truth.

The truth is it's Jesus' work on the cross, not yours.

That's the truth.

The shield of faith.

That his death is the death that I deserve to pay.

But he took it and my, and I, I have faith to believe that

his death is sufficient for me.

The breastplate of righteous as you take communion, Jesus, you are my righteousness

and you've given me this wonderful gift that I'm in right standing with God.

The shoes fitted with the readiness of peace, the gospel of peace.

Peace comes through his presence.

In the Old Testament, the bread was called the bread of presence.

In the New Testament, Jesus says, takes the bread of present.

He says, this is my body.

When we take the bread together, we are literally saying is presence

is right here, right now for me.

I need your presence.

I need your peace.

The helmet of salvation.

As I take the elements today, may our minds be renewed,

that our salvation is secure.

Nothing can separate it.

The sword of the spirit as we take the elements.

We proclaim the Lord's death in an active offensive demonstration today.

Today.

So what we're gonna do, we've got four stations, two at

the front, two at the back.

If you've not done communion here before, there's a few different ways.

love you to get, if you're here with your children and you're here as a parent, I'd

love you to come to one of the stations, tear off some bread, fill up a little cup.

there's also the little.

fellowship cups if you don't want to do the sharing thing and

the gluten-free option as well.

And as you do that, go back, you see, maybe it's just one

person you're gonna share with.

I want you to think about those aspects of the armor of God.

And if you need to pray, God grace me, that I would be able

to discern truth from lies.

Those that screen where it's got all the seven listed there.

Sharon, can you please pop that up for me?

Thank you.

and through that we're going to allow you, maybe there's one specific prayer.

Grace me to discern acceptance from accusation.

Grace me to discern unity from uniformity.

This may be a prayer space that you can access today as we share communion.

Does that make sense to everyone?

Okay.

So I'm gonna pray and then I'm gonna release you to come and get the

elements and then go back and take that.

And that's how we're gonna end today, our service together.

Very good.

Father, thank you for your presence amongst us.

We are we.

Thank you, holy Spirit, that you're here to help us to discern.

Help us to discern what's really going on in the interior of our beings, that where

Christ is not on the throne right now.

We say, Lord, forgive us and may you be reestablished on the throne

of our hearts this day, this day.

Where I've drifted away from that reality, God help me to come back.

Help me to come back today.

Grace me to return.

Grace me to discern

Holy Spirit.

Manifest your presence amongst us as we share the body, as we share the as

broken body, the shared blood of Jesus,

that we would have the mind of Christ in all things.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.