Ephesians Week 11

Welcome to the North Iron Church Podcast.

Our mission is to take the gospel from the Upper Peninsula to the ends of the earth.

We pray this message will inspire and encourage you in your faith journey.

Enjoy our Ephesians series where we break down Paul's letter to Ephesus.

Good morning, North Iron Church family.

My name is Erin Windholm.

I'm the campus pastor at Lawrence Campus.

If we haven't had an opportunity to meet, uh like to say I'm excited to be with you this morning.

Very special welcome to our Lawrence and Antonagon and online campuses joining us streaming.

Also to everyone here in the room and Ishbring and Marquette campuses.

What an exciting time as a church family to be together.

We're continuing our sermon series in the book of Ephesians.

Today we will be looking at chapter 6, verses 10 through 17.

And if you'd like a physical Bible to be able to follow along, we have Bibles at all of our campuses.

Just stick your hand up in the air and someone will hand you a Bible.

The book of Ephesians is towards the end of the New Testament.

You can find it there.

Or if you'd like, you can also follow along on the Church Center app under the notes tab.

You'll find today's sermon notes there.

A great way to great way to get the scriptures that we're going to be covering today.

And we are going to look at a lot of scripture today.

I promise you that.

Maybe you've heard this term before.

Ignorance is bliss.

Okay?

I know it's not good for me to eat this whole box of donuts, but I'm going to pretend to be ignorant to that fact because I'm very, very happy, right?

Or, you know, I've seen a meme of this where there's like a bird just blissfully sitting on the windowsill sill, uh singing away, and there's a cat coming down behind.

You know, like we all have kind of a different version of what this statement means, but I actually think this is probably more accurate.

And we probably all realize that ignorance may be bliss or blissful, or we may be blissfully ignorant, but oftentimes that ignorance can hurt us, even kill us.

We're going to try to become less ignorant today about some things in God's word, specifically things that Paul talks about, about the spiritual realm, about demonic forces, and in the good news about how to engage and win against those forces.

But if you're like me, and I believe that you are, you may have done some things in ignorance in the past that have hurt you.

I don't believe any of you have died yet because you're here, you're watching, right?

But we we could fill up uh a whole day of sermons, maybe even days of sermons talking about the ignorant things Pastor Aaron has done, that my friends and I have done, that my family has done.

And I'm guessing you're right there with me, right?

You're like, yeah, yeah, I get it.

I'll tell you one one quick one, okay?

Just to just to whet your appetite a little bit uh uh this morning, uh we'll just dive into God's word after that.

But my oldest son, his name is Tyler, one day he decided that he and about six or eight, I'm not kidding, friends, all teenagers, would ride down a very steep, steep hill in a red rider wagon.

I don't I don't know how eight of anybody, you know, eight toddlers could get in this wagon, but you can you can imagine, right?

Steep hill, not uh a device you should be riding in.

But you know, they crashed at the bottom of the hill and he came limping back up to the party that we were at, kind of holding his holding his arm like this.

Oh dad, I really hurt my arm.

I'm trying not to laugh because I'm like, you're ignorant, you're stupid.

Um but but but I said, Don't worry, son, I'll fix it for you.

I've seen this on TV, right?

So I grabbed his wrist, and and you can decide and let me know later who is more ignorant, him in the wagon or his dad.

And I grabbed his wrist and I put my my leg up against his waist like this, and I'm like, I'll pop this baby back in, right?

And he's like, oh well, his collarbone was broken, not his shoulder.

And I don't know if it was broken before or after, but a lot of ignorance, a lot of hurt.

We're gonna we're gonna try to reduce our ignorance today so we don't get hurt.

And Paul gives us some great instructions.

We'll we'll begin in verses 11 and 12 of Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Let's look at it together.

The apostle Paul says, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

We're gonna talk a lot about the schemes of the devil today.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the, again, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

And I just want to say this kind of right from the beginning.

We don't preach a lot about the devil or demons or the demonic at North Iron Church, because quite honestly, we don't believe he deserves that much airtime.

We preach about Jesus, we preach the gospel, we believe that putting Jesus in the gospel center is what brings people into the kingdom, keeps people into the kingdom.

But but Paul specifically talks about our enemy in this passage, and and we would be remiss not to cover this.

But I just want to say that, you know, we're not kind of like focusing on the devil a lot.

He doesn't deserve it, quite honestly.

And and it wouldn't be a good North Iron sermon without a C.

S.

Lewis quote, right?

So I've got one for you this morning.

Uh C.

S.

Lewis says this about the devils, and we can kind of combine the devil and demons into this the devil's thing.

He says there are two equal and opposite errors, two problems, C.

S.

Lewis says, which our race can fall into about the devils.

One is to disbelieve their existence, the other is to believe and to feel an excessive, unhealthy interest in them.

We don't want to be ignorant.

Either way, you know, C.

S.

Lewis says the first problem is some people don't actually believe the devils, and I'm gonna say that, you know, in terms of talking about Satan, our adversary, the devil, and all the demonic hosts.

Some people don't believe the devil exists, uh, believe it or not.

You know, maybe, maybe you're here today and and and you've grown up in church, you've got some church background, and you're like, oh, of course, of course I've I believe.

But not everybody does.

And we're gonna we're gonna combat that today and try to reduce that, what I would say, that ignorant position, that there are no devils, that there isn't a devil.

And the second problem is that that some people, or maybe even many people, don't engage the spiritual realm properly.

And and again, today through Paul's teaching, through our sermon series of Ephesians, through this passage, we're going to not only prove the the existence of the demonic realm, but we're gonna we're gonna dig into how to engage properly.

And I want to start that conversation by talking a little bit about Louis or Louis Pasteur.

Um, I don't know if it's Louis or Louis.

I guess it's tomato tomato.

But Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and pharmacist in the middle 1800s.

He was born in 1822, died in 1895.

Probably the majority of his work that he did was just about exactly 200 years ago or so.

And you know Louis because of pasteurization, right?

Your milk in your fridge, unless you're a homesteader, is pasteurized.

Uh it's it's slightly heated, slightly boiled to kill some germs, but not all the germs.

And Pasteur is responsible for our understanding today about germ theory.

He did scientific experiments and combated the ignorance of his age that people didn't actually under, not only didn't they not understand what germs were, not only did they not believe in germs, they believed wacky things like you got sick from bad air.

You know, sewage smells bad because put yourself 200 years ago, because there's disease in the smell.

Corpses smell, you know, people knew that if you if you ate sewer, sewage, if you ate the sewer, if you lived in the sewer, if you messed around with dead bodies, if you played with yucky stuff that smelled bad, you would get sick.

So it must be in the smell.

They called it bad air.

Secondly, you know, some people believed in something called spontaneous generation, where like if you threw a pile of rags in this in the barn, eventually mice would just spontaneously generate there.

And they carry disease and they make people sick or sick, or flies would just spontaneously generate on top of bad meat.

And if you ate it when the flies came, you know, Pasteur was like, no, there's invisible microorganisms in those things that make you sick.

And people said, You're crazy, Lou, you're nuts.

But eventually, through his experiments, he proved that that was actually true.

And and you and I see the world that way.

We we know there's germs in those things, right?

Uh I looked it up on the internet, I don't I didn't actually know this before, and this will gross you out, I promise.

But there are hundreds of billions, B Ilions of microorganism organisms on your skin and my skin at any given time, sometimes upwards of a trillion microbes and microorganisms.

Those of us who sauna regularly, we have less microorganisms, right?

So get get in the sauna.

They're everywhere.

We get that.

We we subscribe to the idea of of germ theory.

And I I thought maybe I could illustrate this another way.

There is a turkey sandwich here that I made.

This is hilltop rye bread.

Hilltop, right?

Miracle Whip.

Love that tangy zip.

Don't come at me with no mayo.

You know, that's get that junk out of here.

And and good turkey.

Not not Carl, but not the square turkey, the slimy turkey.

This is this is good turkey, you know.

Spent a lot of money on on this.

And if if this were sitting in the back stage and one of my fellow campus pastors or counterparts walked by and it didn't have my name on it, you know, it's it's not labeled.

Fair game, right?

You know, they might eat this thing.

You actually, it's it's getting on lunchtime somewhere, somewhere where somebody's watching this.

This probably looks decent to eat, right?

What if I told you that I made that sandwich four days ago?

This this sandwich has been sitting on top of my microwave for four days.

It's it's not opened.

It's probably good, right?

There's probably a couple of us here that are ignorant enough to give it a try, okay?

The majority of us believe in this idea of germ theory enough to know that there is something invisible and dangerous growing and living inside of this sandwich that could potentially hurt us.

And the demonic realm, I want to argue, is kind of similar to that.

Maybe it's not a perfect analogy, but but the demonic realm is also like the germs of Louis Pasteur, and the germs in this sandwich, it's invisible, we can't see it with our naked eye, but it's dangerous to us.

And Pasture's scientific experiments proved the existence of germs, and one day maybe science will prove the existence of demons.

In the meantime, we are going to prove their existence the way that we know how, through scripture.

We're gonna look at a lot of scriptures today that that prove the existence all through the Old Testament to the New Testament to today, just like Paul said, that we struggle against some very invisible yet dangerous demonic things.

He's writing the letter to the Ephesian church, the church in Ephesus, as he's as he's writing it to us 2,000 years later, um, how to be how to be aware of that, how to be careful about these dangerous and invisible things.

So we'll just kind of march through it pretty quick.

We won't spend a lot of time on any one of these areas, but we see demons first reference in the Old Testament.

If you're wondering if this is just a New Testament idea of crazy Apostle Paul, he was kind of way out there.

No, this is all through the Old Testament, too.

And often in the Old Testament, demons were referred to as false gods.

Notice that it's a little g God.

There is no other God but the one true God, Jehovah, big G God.

And and both the pagan Canaanites, sometimes even the the Hebrew Israelites themselves, sometimes would get caught up in demon worship.

They thought they were appeasing uh a false god by sacrificing their children.

There is a false god Molech where where mothers and fathers would would throw their children into the fire to appease this false demonic God, who's nothing more than a principality and a ruler and a demon.

And sometimes I wonder if he's still around today and people are still sacrificing their children for this.

That's a whole nother sermon, a whole nother rabbit trail we could go down.

Don't, don't, don't subscribe to that.

In the book of Daniel, chapter 10, Daniel is praying.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

He's not going out to go on a demon hunt.

He's not going to war against the demonic.

He's just praying, he's just fasting, he's just spending time with the Lord, and an archangel shows up, likely Gabriel, and he says to him, Say, sorry, dude, I would have gotten here sooner, but I've been fighting some demonic princes, the prince and the principality over Persia and over Greece.

And my buddy Michael, the other archangel, had to come and help me so I could get here and deliver a message from God to you.

So the point being, we see demonic influence and demonic references in the Old Testament.

We also see a lot of demonic references to the devils and even Satan himself in the New Testament.

In three of the four Gospels, Jesus has it out, has a battle, so to speak.

It's not much of a battle because Jesus kicks Satan's butt each each time the same way, but he has it out with Satan.

Satan tempts Jesus at the onset of his ministry three different times.

He says, if you bow down to me, uh, you know, I'll give you everything.

If you turn this stone into bread, if you if you throw yourself off this cliff, uh nothing's gonna, you know, he like he comes and he tempts him, and each time Jesus says, uh, according to God's word, that's not what's gonna happen.

This is how it's gonna happen.

And every time Jesus resists the devil's temptation and and wins, he properly engages the demonic.

I guess, just to make sure everybody's on the on the same page, it would probably be good to give a little brief history of Lucifer.

We we we call him in English Satan.

Satan means adversary.

He is our enemy, he is the king, chief leader of the demonic host that Paul is referring to in Ephesians 6.

He once was Lucifer.

He once was an archangel in heaven.

We we we know this primarily through Revelation chapter 12.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

We'll just unpack that very, very, very briefly.

Believe that that Lucifer was a high-ranking angel, maybe one of the three archangels, possibly, a little bit of speculation here.

But for whatever reason, his pride, his stupidity, his ignorance, maybe, he decided to make an attempt at the throne, to supplant God, to to take the place of God, even as crazy as that sounds.

And and scripture tells us that the rest of heaven went to war against Lucifer and he lost.

This this name in Hebrew actually means shining one.

He was probably actually high ranking in charge, maybe even of worship.

Some translations of scripture uh translate this as the morning star.

He was beautiful and he was likely prideful, and that got him kicked out, and he lost that war and took, scripture says, a third of what was the angelic host, the heavenly host, with him to earth.

We believe that when we're talking about demons and the demonic realm and the chief demon, Lucifer, the devil, Satan, that those those fallen angels are actually demons.

And verse 17 really, really, really gives us a clear picture of what Satan, Lucifer, is now doing on the earth.

What he was doing 2,000 years ago in Rome and in Ephesus, and what he's doing today in Marquette and Ishmaeling and Lawrence and Antonagon and wherever else you're watching from this morning, he is making war on those who keep the commandments, kingdom people of God, and those who hold to the testimony of Jesus.

So if you are a Jesus follower, your real and true enemy is Satan.

It's not your neighbor, it's not your boss, it's not your spouse, no matter what they said on the way to church today.

Am I you feeling me?

It's Satan.

He's out to get us, he hates us, he's making war against us, and we would be ignorant and foolish if we didn't make an effort to engage him properly in God's power.

We'll talk more about that in a minute.

But we see this not only in the Old Testament, not only in the Gospels when Jesus confronted Satan, we see Jesus also deal with demons all throughout the New Testament.

I'll give you just a few references real quick.

Again, I said I'm gonna throw a lot of scripture at you in your branches groups this week, in the notes.

I'd encourage you to review and go back over all these things.

But again, in three of the four gospels, we read about the Gatherene demoniac.

This this man had a legion of demons inside of him.

A Roman legion was about six thousand.

That's a lot, that's a lot of demons, right?

Oh, by the way, we don't know how many demons there are.

A third of the heavenly host, that could be millions, that could be billions.

We we don't know.

You know, that's there's a lot, needless to say, because this one guy had six thousand in him.

Jesus ministers to that man, he casts those demons out, they go into the pigs and they they go down over the hill.

If you love pigs, I'm sorry, that's a sad story.

If you if you hate pigs, you're you're happy about that story.

I don't know.

Either way, this guy gets set free from a legion of demons in in all of the gospels besides John.

The Capernaum synagogue demoniac.

Jesus first shows up in Capernaum.

He comes back off of his battle.

I hate to call it a battle.

It wasn't much of a battle.

Uh Jesus obviously won, no problem.

He comes back off that, begins his ministry.

Capernaum is one of the first towns he goes into, and this demon manifests through a person and says, I know you, holy one of God.

What are you doing here?

Did you come here early to torment us before the appointed time?

Jesus says, Shut up, come out of him.

You know, in all these accounts.

You know, that's another kind of famous account.

And and many, many, many times, too many to list, uh, when we're reading about Jesus' ministry, cast out many demons, cast out multiple demons, cast out many demons.

So you're beginning to see the theme here that that the idea of a demonic host being led by the chief of demons, Lucifer, is not foreign to scripture.

It's it's where we get this doctrine, where we get the theology that Paul is referencing.

Um one more story, Acts chapter 19 is important.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

The seven sons of Skeva, we've talked about this recently, um, but this is interesting because this happened when Paul was in Ephesus, when he writes the letter of Ephesians, it's about five or six, seven years later, while he's in prison in Rome.

But but if you're if you're thinking, well, Paul's just overly demonically oriented, this is actually Dr.

Luke writing the book of Acts, and he's telling the story about what happened when Paul was in Ephesus.

Paul is going around ministering in extraordinary ways.

Scripture says people are getting healed, and he's casting out demons, and amazing things are happening through the power of God.

And these seven sons of a Jewish priest named Skeva, that's where this where this comes from, decide they're gonna go and do the same thing because that looks really cool.

We we want to be demon hunters, they they say.

Uh let's give it a try.

And they try to use Jesus' authority without having Jesus' authority.

They try to go out and engage the demonic without standing in the authority that will protect them.

And they say, in the name of Jesus, who Paul talks about, get out of here, this guy who's demon-possessed.

Go, go away, please.

Never do that when you're in a fight, no matter what it is, demons or not.

The demon fires right back.

Jesus, I know.

Paul, I recognize he's going around winning some amazing battles in the power of the Lord.

Lord, but who are you?

And that demon proceeds to kick all seven of those boys' hind ends.

And it's just an interesting story, another proof in scripture of the demonic realm.

And I think it's interesting textual criticism that it's not actually Paul writing about it, even though he's referenced there.

But there is plenty of scripture.

If that's not enough, there is more.

And we can choose to be ignorant of the demonic realm.

We can choose to pretend to blissfully deny that they're real.

But that would be like denying the germs in this sandwich.

They're not only real, they're dangerous.

And I think Paul's instructions to us in Ephesians 6 give us a really good, practical, and pragmatic way to engage the spiritual realm, to engage the demonic.

And I believe there's three things that we see in this short passage in verses 10 through 17 that will cover these three ideas.

That engaging properly means that we are strong in the Lord.

And I'll argue this morning that that's our responsibility, that's our part, and that being strong in the Lord actually looks like a bunch of common sense things that we can do in our strength, that we are strong in the Lord, in our abilities.

Secondly, it means being clothed in His power, in His armor, not our own.

And thirdly, I believe it means living what I'm going to call this morning a normal, normal kingdom life.

That it is normal to be balanced between the natural and the supernatural.

I'll unpack that a little bit more.

No demon hunters need subscribe.

If you came this morning with your black fatigues and your holy water in one uh pouch and your cross in the other, and you're ready, I hope to dissuade you from that and I hope to encourage you to just live a normal Christian life.

Here's how Paul says it in verses 10 and 11.

Finally be strong in the Lord.

This is this is part one that we're gonna talk about.

And I think, man, I wish the period, I wish the punctuation was in a different place in this passage.

I wish it read like this: finally be strong in the Lord, period, and in his mighty power put on the armor of God, because it is his armor, and it is his power.

We're gonna unpack that really, really deeply.

It has his armor has nothing to do with my ability, my might, my wisdom, my my suave plan.

It's it's in his mighty power that I put on the armor of God, and then I take my stand against the devil's schemes.

That's just taking taking our stand, I honestly believe is just what we're all called to.

Not just pastors, not just preachers, not weirdo demon hunters.

We are all called to just take our stand, Paul says, against the devil's schemes and be balanced in these things.

So we'll unpack those three things a little bit further.

First of all, being strong in the Lord, doing the common sense stuff within our natural abilities.

And we all arrive in God's kingdom at different times, in different seasons, in different places.

And I believe in an audience the size that we have, everyone has different abilities.

I would argue some of these abilities we we are all capable of, some are further in the journey, some have have more spiritual maturity, more, been around the block a few more times, been in branches, groups for years, where wherever it is, there are things that we are all capable of with our human intellect, our our human wills, the things that God has blessed us with, the way that He has made us.

And I'm just calling this common sense stuff like read your Bible.

Okay, maybe you're brand new to church, God, and the Jesus thing, and and the Bible you got this morning, it's the first one you ever have.

Awesome, welcome.

Read it, okay?

Take, don't, don't, don't use it to hit flies, don't put it on the shelf.

Read it.

For those of us who've been walking with the Lord for years and years, read it, okay?

Same, same instruction.

Read your Bible, spend some time each and every day, quiet time with the Lord.

I don't care if it's the morning, I don't care if it's the evening, I don't care if it's on your lunch break.

Spend some time relationally with the King of the universe.

That is something that's within your power.

And I would argue it's even something that the Lord expects of us.

Jesus can't read my Bible for me.

Jesus can't make me pray in the morning.

He never has even tried.

It's amazing, right?

Love the things God loves, hate the things God hates.

Do the things God wants you to do.

Scripture encourages you to do in your strength.

I think sometimes we we approach Christian life like if I just hang around, some moment the Holy Spirit is going to move me.

Old school Pentecostals are gonna say, amen, brother.

My experience, and I don't claim to be the authority on all things Christian life, but my experience has been that it is my responsibility to move Aaron Lindholm.

It is God's responsibility to do the God stuff.

We'll talk about that in in just a second.

But if you're sitting around waiting for someone else to make you strong in the Lord, waiting for someone else to do the things that you're responsible for and I'm responsible for, you're gonna sit around waiting.

Boy, we could make some merch and some hats, right?

No excuses, dirty hands, whatever.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't I don't want to belabor this point.

But there is one other thing I want to say with regard to common sense and being strong in the Lord as it pertains to the demonic and the occult.

Once I know that this sandwich is germy and bad and rotten, probab most likely, I'm not lying, I made this four days ago.

Debbie said, just make it fresh and just tell them you made it four days ago, because that's gross.

You know, well, I want it to be gross, okay?

But if now that you know that, and now that I know that I willingly eat this, I am inviting disease.

If you are willingly, knowingly consuming occult material.

If you have a Ouija board at home, go home and throw it away.

Destroy it.

If you have satanic music, movies, whatever, t-shirts, get rid of them.

Stop eating things that are invisible and dangerous.

That's just common sense, that's just being strong in the Lord.

I I would encourage you to do everything you know to do to stand, because that's what Paul tells us to do.

He doesn't ask us to do anything we don't know how to do, he doesn't ask us to do anything that's beyond our ability.

He only says, do everything you know to do.

Let's look at verses 13 and 14.

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, after Aaron has done everything that we know to do, stand.

We're gonna talk about the armor part, the God part here in just a second, but I think this is this is passed over too frequently.

We ignore this too often, that we have a role to play in engaging the demonic properly, and our role is everything we know to do.

Sometimes I think in kingdom life, we expect God to do it all.

We expect that we don't even have to show up, we expect that.

Well, I went to church on Sunday, God do the rest.

If that's all you know to do and this is your first day, welcome.

You've done everything you know to do.

If you know that you should be doing more, and the Holy Spirit is convicting you of that and ministering that to your heart right now, go do that tomorrow.

Go do that next week.

You don't need me to tell you what that is.

You know God's word, you've been around the block enough.

Do everything you know to do, and then when you've done all that, in his mighty power, put on the full armor of God.

That's the second step in engaging the spiritual realm.

The armor, I want to I want to do my best to not not miss this.

So I'll I'll talk about it early and maybe come even come back to it.

I think sometimes we view the armor as something that we put on so that we can then go fight well in our power.

That's probably not exactly I I think a better a better picture is that we put this armor on so that we're clothed in God's power, so God can do the heavy lifting, God can do the supernatural stuff.

And uh I guess I'm gonna prove that to you as we walk through the armor, but if you have a picture, as I've had a picture of myself in the past, this trust me, of going out and doing amazing things for God, of kicking down, kicking the devil's behind for Jesus in, you know, because I'm wearing this cool, cool stuff and and really giving it to the devil, it's probably arrogance and it's probably pride.

I can only do my stuff, God does the rest.

John 15, Jesus says, Remain in me, and you will do many things.

You'll you'll bear much fruit.

Apart from me, apart from my armor, you can't accomplish anything.

Paul lays it out right here: stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, in which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, take the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, Ephesians chapter 6, verses 14 through 17.

Ephesians 6:14–17

Highlight it, underline it.

I don't know why Paul puts his armor on this way.

It doesn't make sense to me, okay?

I put my stuff on from top down, that's how I want to go through it.

Maybe you get dressed from the bottom up.

I don't care.

You know, if you want to get dressed like Paul, get dressed like Paul.

If you want to get dressed like you're, I don't care.

But let's go through it, okay?

I'm gonna go top down because that's just how I remember it.

Uh you can make fun of me later.

Whatever, I don't care.

The helmet of salvation.

I'm going to argue today, because all of these things are I'm putting on in his mighty power, that every single piece of the armor is Jesus-centered.

Every piece of the armor is gospel-centric and they all revolve around Jesus' power, not my own.

And if I'm putting them on thinking that I'm gonna do something great for Jesus, I'm missing the point.

I'm putting these things on because I need to be clothed in the mighty power of Jesus.

I put on the helmet of salvation first.

It protects my mind against the attack of my enemy that would argue that I'm not saved.

When you confess your sins to Jesus, when you believe in your heart that he is your Savior, you are saved.

Acts 4, 12 says, salvation is found in no one else.

There is no other name besides the name of Jesus by which men are saved.

You're saved because of your faith, your belief, your confession in Jesus, but it is Jesus who does the saving.

It is not me, and I put on that helmet, remembering that he alone is who saved me.

And secondly, connected to this, I put on the breastplate of righteousness because I know I stand right with the Lord because of Jesus.

This verse says that God made him, Jesus, who knew no sin to become sin for me, so that I might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

I am in right standing because of Jesus and Jesus alone, and I put that on as a breastplate, and I stick my chest out with pride, not because of anything I've done, boy, I'm ignorant, remember?

I stick my chest out in pride because the God of the universe loved me so much that he allowed his perfect son to become sin for me, so that I could be made right.

And boy, does that make me proud.

I wear it like a breastplate.

I put on the belt of truth around the core of who I am.

I love this idea that the belt centers me, that I'm centered in truth.

It's the center of the important part of my core and the center of who I am.

And Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

I am truth.

My words are truth, my ways are truth, the things I did to show you the way are truth, and I want to be centered in the truth of Jesus, not the truth of culture, not the truth of Hollywood, not the truth of Netflix.

I want to be centered in the truth of Jesus' words and Jesus' ways alone.

I want it to be the center of who I am.

After that, I put on the footwear of peace.

Depending on where you live, this might be flip-flops, this might be sandals.

I saw a brother today in Crocs.

I'm like, bro, it's like end of September, man.

Like, it's time to maybe those are your winter crocs.

I don't know.

Love you, man.

Maybe you wear boots.

You know, I want to make fun of you if you're wearing, but hey, I don't care.

Scripture says shoes, scripture says sandals, you know, Paul probably was referring to sandals.

It's it's fine, okay?

It's the footwear.

That's the politically correct way.

It's the footwear of peace.

And Isaiah prophesies hundreds of years before Jesus that he would be peace, that he is peace.

He will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.

Jesus is my peace.

There is no peace apart from him.

And when I put on my boots of peace, I stand in the midst of chaos and the midst of strife and the midst of trial and war and whatever's going on in your life and whatever's going on in my life, I can stand on and in peace because Jesus' peace, He allows me to stand on His great shoulders.

He allows me to stand in what He's already done and what He will do in the future.

And I know it's true because I put on truth and salvation and righteousness, and then I just stand in that peace.

And then when I've when I've soaked it up, I start to walk in it.

And I be, I bring it everywhere that I go.

I am a peace bringer.

I am a peace deliverer, not because of my wisdom or my goodness, not because of anything that I have to offer, but because I bring Jesus everywhere that I go.

I walk in Jesus and I bring his peace to my workplace, to my school, to my neighbors, to the world.

I believe that was that was what Paul's intention was with the footwear of peace.

And finally, quickly, shield of faith, sword of the spirit.

John chapter 11, verse 25.

John 11:25

Jesus has arrived at Martha and Mary's house to raise their brother Lazarus from the dead.

He's passed on and they're brokenhearted, and Jesus is brokenhearted, understandably so.

And Jesus says, I'm the resurrection and the life.

And whoever believes in me, whoever has faith in me, will also live and never die.

The shield of faith brings the life-giving resurrection power of Jesus everywhere in my life.

I think sometimes we think of the shield like a Roman shield where I have to aim it where the darts are coming, like I have to be aware of where the enemy is attacking me.

And you know, scripture says it's the shield that puts out the fiery darts.

That's true.

But in Jesus' resurrection life, he says, I have come to give you life and give you more abundant life, full life, perfect life, great kingdom life, where I don't have to be worried where the attacks are coming from.

Jesus' resurrection life just covers me.

It's probably less like a Roman shield and probably more like a forgive me, I'm going a little sci-fi here.

Probably like a pulse shield, okay?

Probably like deflector shields up.

You know, my faith is up, it covers me 360 on all sides.

It's because of Jesus, not because of me.

Finally, the sword of the spirit.

You'll notice if you are acutely following in your notes and looking at the screen that there is a small S right here.

This is not a sword that I swing around.

This is the Word.

This is Paul even says the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, John 1 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus is the Word.

Jesus words are the Word.

And if you only know one of them, great.

If you you probably got like a like a pocket knife, right?

You know, like if you know a few, you probably got like a EDC, everyday carrier.

Maybe if you know a dozen of his words, maybe you're carrying a machete.

If you know a couple dozen, maybe you got a lightsaber.

You know, we're going sci-fi today, okay?

The more of Jesus' words I have hidden in my heart, David says, the more effective I can be in his kingdom.

Not because it's my responsibility to go out fighting and slaying and hunting demons, but because when kingdom life happens all around me, in my family, in my home, in my individual, I need God's word to combat whatever is happening.

And when I speak his word, his word and my spoken word become that double-edged sword.

That's powerful and effective.

I could go on and on and on about this, but I but I have to move on.

And we read these things, and maybe if you've heard this kind of a message before or you've read this passage before, you you might be thinking like Paul was undoubtedly thinking, Paul was writing this letter from a Roman prison.

He was surrounded by Roman soldiers, he had a Roman Empire mindset because that's when he lived.

That's that's not inappropriate, that's understandable, but I wonder to myself, had Paul written, had Paul lived post 1895, Lewis Pasture Germ theory life, like like we do, would he have written about the armor, would he have talked about the armor, and would we think about the armor a different way?

And so I just want to I just want to postulate for you, propose something for you of what actually, instead of being Roman armor, like I think sometimes when you guys read Ephesians 6, if if you're like me in the past, you think of like Joey Tribiani at Caesar's Palace.

He has friends anyway.

He's got the Roman thing with the puffy and the shiny.

I want to I want to give you an alternative picture, okay, of what the armor might rather look like post-Louis Pasteur.

Let's look at this picture together.

Brothers and sisters, hear the word.

The message is clear.

Let it protect you.

Helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, a belt of truth.

You know, he's wearing the boots of righteousness, a piece there, you know what I mean, holding the word.

If if demons are like invisible, dangerous germs, boy, uh a Roman, a Roman kit's not gonna do much.

I actually think that the armor in God's power is more like this.

And I don't mean to pick on any any past sermons about the armor of God, but I want us to think about in his mighty power putting on the full armor of God and it looking like this.

And now maybe maybe you're saying to yourself, uh, Pastor Aaron, if I wore that to work, I wouldn't be able to get anything done.

If I, you know, like try to vacuum in that, Pastor Aaron, you know, try to raise kids in that.

And I and I get that, because our minds think it's our job to wear the armor and go out and do things.

I I think the armor is light, invisible, supernatural, powerful, and I get to go out and do the common sense things on my own, wearing a supernatural kit that surrounds me from all kinds of the demonic influence and demonic realm.

That I don't even have to worry about it.

It's kind of like just having a healthy immune system.

I don't really have to worry that much about germs.

I don't I don't go around wearing a mask.

I don't go around wearing a bubble, wearing a helmet with regard to physical germs.

I don't go around watching out for bad sandwiches.

I just I just live my normal life.

And that's what I think the third way of engaging.

Taking our stand against the devil's schemes, just being a normal person who's doing everything they know to stand for Jesus, everything they know to follow Jesus, loving the things God loves, hating the things God hates, and also perfectly, supernaturally equipped in invisible armor that protects from head to toe, all 360 degrees around.

This is not properly engaging the demonic, going to look for them, going to pick fights with them.

We don't see that in scripture.

We don't see we see Jesus engage the demonic a lot.

We talked about that because they manifest to oppose the work of the kingdom.

When you go out to do the work of the kingdom in your home, school, workplace, neighborhood, you you will encounter spiritual resistance.

You don't have to go looking for them.

You don't have to go picking fights.

I would encourage you not to go pick fights with the demonic.

I would encourage you rather to just take a stand, doing the common sense things, equipped in Jesus' supernatural power.

A quick, very, very brief side note.

Jesus himself talks about binding and loosing, and sometimes when we talk about spiritual forces, you know, we we may get out of balance with this, I think, when Jesus is accused of doing his miracles in the power of the devil.

He says, That's stupid.

No, no, no, no kingdom divided against itself can stand.

Someone has to go in and bind the enemy, bind the strong man.

Talks about that in in many of the gospels.

In Matthew 16 and 18, Jesus Himself actually says, you know, whatever you bind in in heaven is bound on earth, whatever you loose in heaven, and so I think sometimes people have this idea that it to engage the demonic, I have to go around binding and loosing.

I bind you germs from making me sick.

I bind you, kids, from making a mess.

You know, like I'm being silly, but I really don't believe that's the appropriate way to engage the demonic.

I I actually think when a demon manifests, it's time to bind them.

We have a plan for that at North Iron.

If a demon pops up at any one of our campuses, we're gonna take that person out quietly and we're gonna keep preaching the gospel, do an altar call, and when service is over, we're gonna go deal with that thing.

We're gonna bind it, we're gonna cast it out.

No big deal.

Okay?

But I think the more appropriate way to live a normal Christian life is just in that common sense, what we can do, supernatural, what God only can do, and then standing, walking in the fullness of everything he asks us to do.

I want to finish this way, this morning.

I'm out of time.

I want to finish with a wrestling analogy.

My dad was a wrestling coach, my brother and I did junior wrestling, my kids did junior wrestling, wrestled a couple years of high school, and one of my sons did as well.

So I've kind of been around the wrestling community.

I'm not talking about WWF, WWE.

That is not wrestling.

Talking about high school, collegiate, folk style wrestling, okay?

For those of you who are unfamiliar, for those of you who have wrestled, you you you get this, but a wrestling match begins with the referee saying, Ready, wrestle.

Okay?

Boom, it's go time.

It's it's one man or one woman trying to impose their will on the other.

And I think sometimes we think about engaging the demonic like the wrestling match is about to begin.

I better get ready.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Apostle Paul said, it's on, it's happening.

He said, ready wrestle 2,000 years ago when he wrote this letter.

And I'm saying as a continuation of that message, you're on the mat.

And if you feel like you've been beaten up and you've been thrown down and you've been slammed on your head and your body's all dislocated because of the demonic, maybe it's because you haven't been wrestling back appropriately.

Some translations of this passage say, we don't struggle, we we don't we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

We wrestle against the demonic.

The match is happening.

And I believe in this place today, wherever you're watching, wherever you're listening from, that there is supernatural help.

If you need help this morning to stand and do the common sense things that you know that you've been supposed to have been doing, or that you've learned about that you're supposed to be doing today and you haven't, come down to the altar this morning and get some supernatural help.

If you want to come down and just get re-equipped and re-annointed and recovered and re-clothed in the supernatural, mighty power of God, come down to the altar, spend some time in his presence and in worship, and let the supernatural clothe you so you can stand and remain in the power of Jesus, and so you can walk out of this place today as in what I would call a normal kingdom person getting ready to advance the kingdom of God in your everyday life in a balanced way as we should.

Would you stand this morning wherever you are?

Let's pray together.

The wrestling match is on in all of our campuses.

There will be people who will pray with you if you come down to the front.

There will be people who lay hands on you for what you have need of.

It is in your power to walk forward into the presence of God and get some supernatural help for what you need this morning.

And I would invite that of you.

Heavenly Father, thank you for instruction that helps reduce or even eliminate our ignorance from your word, Jesus.

Thank you for the words of the Apostle Paul that remind us that we're in a wrestling match, not against the natural, but against the supernatural.

And that we have a job to do, and you have a job to do, and you're amazing and perfect at your job.

Called us, I pray, in your power, in your armor, in supernatural might, and help us in the name of Jesus to do our part with the common sense things so that we can not only stand against the devils, and we can move your kingdom forward, we pray, in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen.