With You In The Battle - Ephesians 6:10-17 Part 1

Well, when I was in college, I remember watching this documentary about Navy SEALs going to a specific school called Halo School. And if you're unfamiliar with it, it's like a top tier parachuting school. The Army Rangers go through this, something similar as well. And as the documentary started, it is nothing short of hilarious. These guys have no idea what they're doing. They go up in this plane, and they're just wearing, like, goofy outfits, and one guy jumps out, he doesn't know what to do, so he just starts, like, running in midair, right? Like, does not look like he's ever done this before. And then another guy jumps out and they don't, they've received 0 training. And so one guy just, like, opens his mouth as he's plummeting through the air, 100s of miles per hour, and, like, his cheeks are just like, right, as he's, like, plummeting through. It is hilarious to see these guys jump out of a plane knowing nothing about what they're supposed to be doing. But with every successive jump that the documentary shows them going up in the plane over and over, They learn a new skill. They learn how to roll at 100 miles or several 100 miles an hour. They learn how to increase and decrease their speed. They learn how to uh, deploy their parachute. They learn how to use different tools that are on them throughout the jump. Should they encounter something midair? And by the end of the video, I realized I was not laughing anymore. As the documentary went on, it got more and more serious because I watched them for their final jump, and they weren't in their goofy training outfits anymore. They were now in combat fatigues. They were loaded up with about £60 of gear, including weapons. And I realized why I wasn't laughing anymore. When they got on that plane, they did not look nervous. They did not look goofy. They knew exactly what they were doing. And when the signal was given, they leapt out without hesitation. And as they descended through the air, It became clear to me at the end of this documentary, why I wasn't laughing anymore, because I realized what it was that they were doing. what they had been training for. These aren't guys just taking a parachuting class for fun on the weekend. These are warriors. And they're training for mission. They're training to insert behind enemy lines. Halo, high altitude. That means they fly as high as they can so the enemy can't detect the plane as they jump out of it. H-A-L-O, low opening. So they spend a minimal amount of time with the parachute. They're deploying that at the last moment, hoping that they'll survive before they hit the ground. These are warriors. They spend a minimal amount of time in the air. And the reason they're doing this is that they can go into the midst of danger and save those who are being oppressed. And to wreak havoc on those who are doing the oppressing. And it all came to me in that moment, as I watched this, I remember thinking, That's the Christian life. Like, we don't have to be Christians for very long before we realize that the pursuit of intimacy with Jesus is done in the context of adversity. It's done in the context of challenge of suffering, of pain, that when you come to Jesus and you go, man, I want to follow him. I want to obey him. I wanna live my life for him. When you step out to do that, suddenly, it gets really difficult. And many of us know what that's like. You may think, man, I try to read my Bible, but as soon as I sit down, all manner of like competing thoughts and rival affections, come to the surface of my life, and it just distracts me from what I'm trying to do. And we go, what's going on? Why can't I do something simple? Like pray for 5 minutes. Or something simple, like just even think about God. And we find ourselves sometimes in Romans 7, just like Paul. I try to live a good life, and I find myself saying, the good that I want to do. I'm not doing that, and the bad that I want to stay away from. I keep doing that. And for some of us, we try to go about our day, but there's this constant hum. of like this low grade guilt that's in the background. And it's drowning out the truth of God, the grace of God. Things like joy and peace and love just feel so distant from us. And we just sort of live under this wet, damp blanket of guilt that's just smothering your affections for him. And some of us wake up to that every day. And then what can sometimes even make it worse is like when we hear testimonies of other people on social media, I don't know if those have come your way on your social media, we hear these amazing stories of like, oh, yeah, man, I was on drugs, I was living crazy, I was murdering people, then I gave my life to the Lord, and he got rid of all those temptations, never tempted again. And you're like, really? He just, like, got rid of those? We listen to that. I listened to that, and I was like, that was it. Like all your temptations are just like uprooted from your soul and cast out. Man, when I came to Jesus, he didn't even like mildly prune my expectation, my temptations. They're like as robust as ever. And maybe some of us came out of a rhythm in college when you just live crazy and feel guilty, but you just do it anyway. And then we'd go to some retreat or some conference and there'd be like this really winsome, engaging speaker there. And after 5 days of sleep deprivation and horrible camp food, you're like, I'm gonna do it again. I'm giving my life to Jesus. I'm never gonna sin again, and all your friends are like, I think he's telling the truth. He's really never gonna sin again, right? His heart's in the right place this time. And we can come out of that. But then next week we're like, oh, just plummeting right back into failure again. And with every sin, you go, I just failed. I'm just a failure. I'm just gonna wait until next year, until the band plays the right notes, and I'm gonna hit that high again, and the Christian life just feels like this roller coaster of highs and lows, and I'm just caught right there in the middle. It never seems to be moving forward, even though I'm going up and down. So what do we do with that? I think that's such a common rhythm. Well, this morning, Paul tells us that the Christian life isn't a roller coaster. He says it's a battlefield. And so I want to show us where we're going this morning. Where we're headed this morning is 3 points. We'll put them on the screen. The battle is real. It's spiritual. Then he's going to say that the battle is personal. And he's going to end by telling us that the battle has already been won. And so let's pray once more, let's ask the Lord to speak to us this morning through his word, and then we'll dive into it together. Let's do that. Lord, we thank you that you've gathered us here at Walden Middle School. As the church, the body of Christ, to worship you. To be reminded of the gospel, the good news, God, that even though we experience this roller coaster of highs and lows and it feels like ups and downs in life, but we're never actually moving forward. We know that you're present with us. We know that you're an empathetic high priest. You understand our struggle. You lived this life, and though you never sinned, you understand what it's like to be human. And so in our humanness, Lord, I pray that you would meet us this morning. I pray that you'd speak to us through your word in Ephesians 6, that we'd have ears to hear and hearts that are receptive, and that as we leave today later on, that we wouldn't just forget everything you've taught us, but that we would meditate on it, God. We think about it. We talk about it. We'd invite our life group into it. We live differently because of what you've done. So I pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So we've been in the book of Ephesians for about 5 months now. So if you're dropping into it, we're in the last chapter. There's a lot that's been said, there's a lot that Paul has written, and all of our talks are online, so if you're curious about any of them, you can just go to our website and find all the audio for each of those, you can find out what Paul has said, you can always read through the 1st 5 chapters of Ephesians, but you can find out what Dalton and I have said about it. But last week, Dalton took us through Ephesians 6, 5 through 9. And that was about how we work, how we lead as people and serve the Lord. And next week, Dalton's actually going to come back and he's going to preach kind of a part 2 of this same passage. So we're going to be in this passage 2 weeks in a row. He's going to walk us through each piece more specifically about the armor of God. We'll talk about a little bit about each of them this morning, but he's going to take it a little more in depth. So this morning, we're going to get just kind of the big picture of these verses. Ephesians 6, 10 through 17. Because the book of Ephesians follows this progression. You were a child of wrath, and God made you a child of God. Christ has done that. And then in Ephesians 6, Paul says, and son, child, it's time to be a soldier. It's time to buckle up. It's time to be a soldier. It's time to learn how to fight. Because one of the marks of a maturing Christian is that we fight sin. We don't make room for it. And so Paul's gonna tell us, how do we do that? How does a mature Christian fight sin? So let's look at our 1st point. The battle is real. Look at verse 10. He says, finally, okay, so we're in chapter six, that word finally, so he's got some last words to say, he's gotten to this point now, finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. That's the 1st command, in the text, be strong. And I think so many of us, when we wrestle with sin, we're like, I guess I'm tempted today, I guess I'm a failure. And we just kind of like fold like a lawn chair. We just like wilt over like a flower. Uh, and Paul saying, hey, be strong. God's not raising up an army of pushovers. He's not raising up an army of eores that just walk through this life like, oh, I guess I can just make it one day. Like, that's not the kind of kids he wants. He wants kids that are strong. And yet look at the power that he's talking about. That command be strong, is actually passive in the Greek. It means be strengthened, like allow yourself to be strengthened, put yourself in context and environments that will produce this strengthening. He's saying, I want you to be strong, but not like dialed up of your own energy, like, God, I'm gonna beat my sin today. I'm gonna do it. Finally, he's like, no, Christians ought to say, I'm going to be strong to the degree that I'm in him. Accessing his strength, his power. Because the strength that we fight is with his strength. And as I study, as I read this passage, I can't help but always think about the same illustration. I always think about Batman and Robin. How many of us grew up watching any of the Batman and Robin, like cartoon animated movies or TV shows. Yeah, a few of us, especially if you were born in the 80s or 90s or earlier. But remember Little Robin? Like, he's this orphan kid who just gets adopted by a man of unlimited resources. He's got a new dad and a new home. All of his needs are cared for in life. And then in the middle of that, he realizes, oh, yeah. And my dad's Batman. And he fights crime. And if I'm gonna be his son, I gotta get in the game, too, and I'm gonna fight crime. And if I want to be like him, I got to get in the game, because the world's a cold place, Gotham's terrible people. But who is Robin without Batman? He's like a little kid running around in his underwear. right? Like he doesn't know what he's doing, and it was so predictable as a kid. Every time I would watch the movie or watch the TV show, I remember watching Robin, like, launch out on his own. He's like, oh, I got this, Batman, you stand back and then it's like, oh, no. And, like, he would fall in, like, immediately get trampled. And it's like, okay, there it goes again. Little boy wonder, needs rescuing. He jumped in too soon without the resources of his dad. And I quickly realized that he's strong only to the degree that he's with that guy. He's only strong to the degree that he gets his training from Batman. He gets his belt from Batman. He gets a vehicle from Batman, all his power, all his strength is in proximity to Batman. So the command is to be strong. But God's not launching out us out to do something for God. And man, I hear it all the time on the seminary campus. I want to do this for God. I want to make leaders for God, lead the church for God. I want to make disciples for God. And those are all good ambitions, but the one word that's wrong in there is four. We don't do things for God. He calls us to do things with him. And as soon as we launch out to do something for God, man, you are, you've moved too fast. And see, the problem is that so many of us are letting our activity for God outpace our relationship with him. And so he says, hey, don't be strong for me. Be strong in me. Be rooted in me. You're meant to live and work out of an overflow with God, not launching out for him. And then look at verse 11 and 12. He says, put on the whole armor of God. that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we don't 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. So Paul is saying, hey, we're in a fight. Every day for the Christian life is a fight. And he's saying that it's a spiritual battle. The battle is against the schemes of the devil. And there's this whole unseen spiritual world around us that he says is very dark. And I know as soon as I say that, like, maybe not so much in this context on a Sunday morning, but if you were to share that in any other place, some people start to think, oh, here we go. Like, we just took a crazy turn in the crazy town over here. Uh, like, ooh, demons around every corner, fairy tales, like if anything goes wrong, the wood fairies did it, right? And it's like, those Christians, they just like make up things. But Tyler, haven't we evolved past this? Like, it's interesting. Some of the critics of Christianity will say, hey, Christians just blame everything on the supernatural world around us, but the reality is the Bible isn't so simplistic that it blames everything on unseen forces. When his disciples are worn out, Jesus says, hey, you need to rest a while. It's not the tired demons got to you. It's you ran out of energy. You need to take a break. James tells the church to pray over the sick. That's a spiritual thing, and then he says, and anoint them with oil. That oil is a physical healing remedy. He's saying those 2 things can actually work together. There's a spiritual component. There's a physical component. The Bible will give physical cures to some physical problems. It doesn't just blame everything on a physical problem or on demons. It doesn't blame every emotional problem on demons. I'm sad. Well, that's just the sadness demons that got to you today, right? The Bible doesn't do that. It will say encourage one another as long as it's called today. Speak the truth in love. Be gracious to one another. The Bible sometimes gives emotional remedies to emotional problems. And yet what happens, I think, a lot of times in our world today is we take every problem and we say, it's either physical or it's either emotional or it's either spiritual. It can't be a multitude. It has to be one. Either we need to deal with some emotional issue or you've got to take a pill. And we tend to make everything biological. The Bible is more robust than our modern thinking. Because it says, there are physical problems, there are emotional problems, there are spiritual ones, and most of the time they're intertwined together. They're happening at once. And some things in this world cannot be explained scientifically. Some things cannot be explained biologically. I remember looking at the photographs. of the stacks of bones. of human bones in churches after the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. where they would pile people into churches and then light them on fire. And some people look at that and they go, oh, it's because they just lacked education. They just need to be educated. But there's something really sinister about that. There's something really dark that can't be explained. There was a book I read in my early 20s called Beautiful Boy. Has anyone read this book? Beautiful Boy. They came out with a movie a while back, maybe like 10 years ago based on the book. And it's written by a dad whose son, young son got addicted to meth. And as the dad, he's trying to process it. He's trying to help his son. And he researches meth and finds out that this is a drug that is finally tuned. It's designed to increase aggression and lower compassion. And this dad, who is an atheist, came to believe in a spiritual world, not because he believed in God. But because the more he studied meth and how horribly dehumanizing it was, he wrote in his book, I don't believe in God yet, but only the devil could create a drug like this. And the more he investigated, the more he realized, there's something spiritually dark here. There's something sinister. There's something evil underneath this world and science cannot explain it. Biology cannot explain it. And the Bible tells us that there's this unseen spiritual world around us. And we can freak out about it and think that there's a demon behind every corner or we can go to the opposite extreme and say that there's no such thing as demonic forces, and both of those would be equally wrong. The battle is real. And the battle is spiritual. So let's go to our 2nd point. He says, the battle is personal. Look at look back at verses 11 and 12. Stand against the schemes of the devil. That word schemes. It means like wily. It means trickery. It means deceptive. Um, it's manipulative. It means it doesn't come straight for you. It's gonna flank you on your side. And then Paul calls him the devil. That word means the accuser. someone who stands in constant accusation against you. And then he uses this word wrestle in verse 12. You see that? He could have said, for we do not fight against flesh and blood, but he uses the word wrestle. This is the word for like close quarter combat, like locking arms, like this Greco-Roman style of wrestling. It's all up in your face. It's personal. He says, when we battle spiritually, he's talking about something that's deeply personal and deceptive. It will be right up in your face. The enemy has the playbook on your life. He knows how to get to you. And it will be deceptive, it will mess with your head. Because here's the truth. The spiritual battles that you deal with are mainly are primarily battles in the mind. The spiritual battles that we deal with are primarily battles in our minds. And the truth is that's exactly how the enemy gets you. Let me mess with your thinking to discourage you, to make you combat ineffective in the kingdom of God. I've given you gifts. I've given you a new heart, a new identity, a new purpose, but you're gonna sit on the bench. To make you settle for small dreams and simple sins. To make you forget that you've been seated with Christ in the heavenly places. That was Ephesians one. And you know what that reminds me of? The Lion King. Bad guy scar. Does he come straight for the king? For his brother? No. He goes for the king's son. How does he get to Little Simba? Let me tell you how he does it. He encourages him to go to places he was never meant to go. If you were really tough, you'd go to that place, the place of death, defy the will of your father, and go. And he keeps encouraging him. Hey, you really want to be free? You really want to be a man, you really want to be strong, you want to be like your dad, you take part in that and that. And then what happens as soon as Simba does accusation. How could you? You better run. You get better hide, you better not show your face around here anymore. You best abandon your responsibilities, your identity, your purpose because you're not worthy of them anymore. Enticement, condemnation, accusation. And scar makes Simba combat ineffective. Does he have to kill him? No. You have to make him a murderer? The worst guy in Pride Rock? No. He just has to make him deny his responsibilities as a son of the king. And can I be honest with you guys? Many Christians live here. Many of us just live in that. That's where we live. Some of you may have this lust that just has you so beat. You have so much shame over an inability to conquer it, and the accuser just whispers in your ear, you can't beat that. You never will. So be a good person. Pay your taxes. go to church, but don't get serious about the Bible or prayer or worship. Don't get serious about the church. Just like, live a good life. Pay your mortgage. Some of us have bitterness in our hearts and we just stew in it so long and so much that that bitterness has just become a comfort to us. We'd rather not get rid of it. Because we fall back on it. We love our bitterness. We go through life believing that we're just a victim of the world around us. So does the enemy have to make you a murderer? Does he have to make you just a terrible person? No, he just has to influence your thinking, and you'll sit on the sidelines for the rest of your life. He just has to keep you running around in the graveyards of success and beauty and money and power and fame and popularity, running in the tombs. Because the battle is personal. Combat ineffective for the things of God. I don't have to make you a terrible person. I just have to sit you on the bench. The battles personal. Here's our 3rd point. The battle is one. Look at verse 13. He says, therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm. So in the midst of all the voices of accusation and enticement and condemnation, Paul says it 4 times in this passage, stand, stand, stand. Because when accusation and discouragement, come your way, our default is to wilt and to fall and defold. To curl up. So he says, hey, stand up, son. Stand up, daughter. You're a child of the king. Plant your feet. Stand and resist. Resist the accusation. Resist the condemnation, resist the enticement. And notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, hey, charge, just take the hill. Go win the war. Take some ground. No, he says to stand. Stand firm. Because we don't seek to take enemy ground. We stand on ground that's already been taken. We don't fight for victory, we fight from victory, that Christ is already one at the cross. And Paul says, I want you to take up this whole armor of God. And then he starts rolling through all this armor. Dalton's gonna walk us through each piece next week, but this morning. Let's just get the basic mentality of each of these behind them. He's going to talk about a belt of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, shoes, a shield, a helmet, a sword. So what is he saying with all these? Well, he's saying the voice of God should be the closest thing to you. He says in verse 14, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth. Don't think the belt of like our modern belts, that's just kind of what we think about. Think of this as this kind of leather apron that you would wear under your armor as the closest thing to your body. And it kind of straps up around your neck and it kind of goes from neck down to shin. This leather apron, thick leather that you wore closest to your body. He's saying, I want you to get the truth of God's word closer to you than any lie. Any lie that comes your way bounces off the belt of truth. It protects you. Bind truth around you. It should be the closest thing to you because for many of us, it's the 1st thing that fails. We get some enticement, some temptation and we just abandon it. And he says, don't let the lies get past the truth. The psalmist says it this way, I love in Psalm 42 and 43, there's kind of an echo of both of these passages. Let's put Psalm 43 up on the screen. He says, the psalmist says, why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God. For I shall again praise him my salvation and my God. I love those psalms because who is he talking to? He's talking to himself. He sees the devastation of his thinking, and he begins preaching to himself. See, too often, we're just listening to our thoughts instead of talking to them. We need to take the lies that we believe, the negative things that we tend to dwell on, the destructive ways of thinking, and we need to engage those thoughts and say, no longer. No longer am I going to let the lies penetrate the truth. Instead, I'm going to take up these broken thoughts and throw them away in the presence of God's word. This has power over those things. And then verse 14, he continues. He says, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, he says, the fight with the idea that you've been made righteous because of Jesus, that was Ephesians one. Paul like, drilled that into us. So that when the accuser points out what you've done, you say yes, but look what Christ has done. Not that those things aren't true. Look what Christ has done. I remember when that landed on me. I was reading a biography of Martin Luther, and Martin Luther dealt a lot with depression. He struggled with doubt and discouragement constantly. And Luther wrote in his biography that the accuser's voice would whisper to him. Look at what you've done. Look what you did. You touched that again. You looked at that again. You did that again. And Martin Luther would just play over these thoughts, and at the end, as he started to play them over, he would say, you know what, accuser? You're right. I'm guilty of all those things. And then he would say, and you actually missed a few. And then he would start rolling through more sins. He'd start listing them off and then, and he'd say, I did all that and look at how horrible my sin is. And then he would repeat this verse, Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. for the law, the spirit of life, who lives in me, has set me free in Christ Jesus, from the law of sin and death. He combated his sin, his depression, his discouragement, with his justification in Christ. Luther fought with the righteousness that had been given to him by Jesus. Look at verse 15. He says, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. So the gospel gives us our footing, our stability, and our mission to move forward. Verse 16, he says, in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil ones. Back then, they would light the end of an arrow on fire before shooting it out at their enemy. We've probably seen this in movies before, dip it in some oil or pitch, and then light it. And the goal was, as soon as it hits, it lodges in you and it burns. It burns your insides. It lights those on fire. And for some of us, that's what sin has done to us. It has lodged in us and it has burned. And some of you might even believe right now sitting here. that you'll never be free of some particular sin in your life. But the truth is, Paul says we need to lift up a shield of faith. It means that we start believing God is bigger than my sin. It's not a shield of work harder. It's not lift up the shield of just try more. Get your calendar in order, time management, discipline. It's not the shield of get your act together. It's the shield of God can, can heal me. It's the shield of God can help me. Now, it's a help that involves fighting. It's a help that involves making some changes in your life, but it's also a help that leads to victory. And we need to ask ourselves, do I really believe that God conquered sin and Satan and death? Because if he did, then he can conquer this issue in my life. Paul continues in verse 17. He says, and take the helmet of salvation, sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. So we look to God for strength, we look to God for protection. His salvation, guards my thoughts, his spirit, through his word, cuts down the lies. Cuts those away from my life, and now some of us have wondered about all of this armor language before. Maybe you grew up going to like Sunday school or VBS and one of the top topics is like coloring in the parts of God's armor, right? And you pictured it, and maybe you dressed up, maybe your Sunday school teacher dressed up in some way. And some people have said, well, like how did Paul come up with this? And some people said, well, Paul was in prison. So he must have just like been shackled and writing this letter and he gets to the end, he's like, I don't know what else to say. And he looks at the soldier next to him, he's like, yeah, the armor of God. It's like righteousness, like a breastplate, you know? And like, that's not what he does. Isaiah 59 is what Paul has on his mind. Paul has the mind of Isaiah. Isaiah 59 describes evil and devastation and darkness ruling over the world, and Isaiah writes this. The Lord saw it. He saw the devastation. He saw the destruction, he saw the accusation, and the discouragement, and the depression, and the pain, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man. No one to combat that, no one to rise up and fight it. And he wondered that there was no one to intercede. But then his own arm. What's happening there? His own arm, probably his right arm, which in the scriptures is Christ, brought him salvation. And his righteousness upheld him. He put on, so the arm is a he. God's right arm is a he. He put on righteousness as a breastplate. And he put on a helmet of salvation. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing. And he wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. Isaiah is saying, when we were lost in our sin, God rose up. He put on his armor and he fought for us. He rescued us from the enemy who held us captive. See, this is amazing. The armor of God in Ephesians 6 isn't just the armor that God gives you. It's the armor of God. It's the spiritual armor that he wore when he fought the battles of darkness. Christ was victorious over sin, Satan, and death, and so the battle we fight has already been won. At the cross, Jesus beat down our enemy, and now we rise up as children of God, no longer children of wrath. So if we belong to Jesus, we can actually have victory over our sins. Not because we're so strong, but because he is. As children of God, we the only sins we fight are forgiven sins. You ever think about that? The only spiritual sins that you fight are forgiven sins. God has already wiped them away. So the fight that we Engage in. We stand strong in faith in Christ because the fight we're in is a fight that he's already won. So let me give you 3 questions as we wrap up our time together. Three questions to sit with this week. Where has my activity for God outpace being with him? Where has my activity for God outpaced being with him? being in him, listening to him. The Christian life is low, it's slow, and it's with God. Two, what lie or accusation do I need to start answering with God's word? Something you've let get in underneath the truth underneath the belt of truth. You've brought comfort in your life because they're something you're holding onto. What's something you need to start fighting, answering with God's truth? What sin have I believed that I'll never be free from? And do I actually believe God is stronger than that sin? Do I believe he's bigger? That doesn't mean it's gonna immediately go out of your life. But it means you can start seeking help, accountability, service, life group, spiritual disciplines, mentors, discipleship. So much that can help you. See, God made us to know him and to walk with him. But in the garden at the very beginning, the enemy came with his very 1st attack. Did God really say that? Did God really tell you that? I don't think that's what God meant when he said, whatever you said, he said? Enticement? Accusation, condemnation. And we hid. We weren't soldiers in God's army. We were captives behind enemy lines. But God sent his son behind enemy lines to rescue us, to redeem us, to adopt us. And when the devil came to Jesus in the wilderness to tempt him, to get him to fall, Jesus answered him every time with the word of God, it is written, it is written, it is written, he held truth closest to us. He fought Satan with God's word. And then on the cross, Jesus took every accusation that could ever be brought to you. And 3 days later, it says, God raised him from the dead so that all who turn away from their sin and turn towards Jesus experience forgiveness, experience life, experience. Eternal life with him. The accuser can still talk. But he has lost his power over you. So live like it. So church, Paul tells us, stand firm. Not launching out on your own, not trying to white knuckle it and do it all on your own, not away from the church, not running away, but like soldiers who step into a battle that has already been one. That we have confidence in God. We have the truth of God. We have the helmet of salvation. We have the sword of the Spirit. We lift up a shield of faith believing God is with me because we don't go into this battle alone. The one who has already won it is in it with us. So let's pray together. Lord, we thank you. that you have used this time for your glory and for our good, that you've spoken to us, from your word. You've convicted us, you've challenged us. You've encouraged us. You've called us to live like Christ lived, that we wouldn't just be complacent and take our sin flippantly, that we wouldn't just grow apathetic and go, I don't know, it's just another white lie. But that we would be broken over our sin. We would confess our sin to one another. And ultimately, we would know that the power of that sin has been broken. We still may live in the presence of it, but the power and the penalty of our sin has been wiped away. Our record has been made clean by Jesus. And Lord, I just pray that we would live in that truth each day. We need each other. We need the word. We need to pray. But we also need to let the truth of your word sink deeply into our souls that it wouldn't just be something we academically know and can answer on a sheet of paper, but it would be something that would move from our head to our hearts. We'd meditate on it. We'd reflect on it. We'd be broken over it. We'd repent because it's true, and that we would live lives seeking you. We wouldn't white knuckle it. We wouldn't try to get our act together. We'd get our faith together by trusting in you who accomplishes all things for us. And Lord, we thank you that you did at the cross. that you fought the ultimate spiritual battle on our behalf, and it broke you. It puts you in the grave. But Lord, you broke sin and you broke death. And you rose again so that all those who look upon Christ and trust in you were forgiven were sealed, were redeemed, were made new, were made whole, and were made to walk with you all the days of our lives. And we pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen.