Armor of God

Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter six, verses ten to twenty.

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

For you do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

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, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

And I shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

I'm going to move my podium over to the piece of tape that marks the center.

That's better.

Huge difference.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name's James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to see you all.

You made it through another week.

Congratulations by the grace of God.

We've got another week ahead to prepare for.

This is a great place to start in the Word, together, and singing.

Got a couple of announcements, and then I'll pray and we'll get into the text.

We've got a member meeting today, right after church.

So immediately following the service, members will just gather right in this room.

We've got some new members to bring in, which is exciting.

Uh, some news to share about the future of the church and some financial updates.

So brace yourselves.

Uh that's immediately following the service.

If you have uh kids, uh they can join some volunteers who will be uh going to the park right next door at the school during the members' meeting.

So kids will be over there wreaking havoc while we're in here uh advancing the kingdom of God.

Uh September 5th, uh, which is next Sunday, is a family service.

So there's no uh redemption kids offered on September 5th.

We'll all be in here together.

I'll be revisiting or visiting for the first time the part of Ephesians that I skipped, which was the instruction to children and uh parents, since we'll have you know children in the room.

And uh we'll have a family service.

Uh so that's a joyful time.

We're we're aiming to have a family service every month that has a fifth Sunday.

Uh September doesn't have a fifth Sunday, but August does.

We're in it right now.

And anyway, we bumped it a week to Labor Day for volunteers to have the time off and things like that.

So there you go.

If you guys want any in any more information on the date of the family service and the thinking behind it, uh you can email Zach at redemptiondenver.com.

Uh on September 12th, uh we're having at right after the service a thank you time for kids volunteers.

Volunteering in kids, it's amazing.

So many of you do it.

Uh we could always use more.

It's an insane thing to do.

Uh, and we're so thankful to you.

And so uh we're buying you donuts uh as a token of our gratitude.

It's uh a mere uh reflection of the depth of gratitude that we feel.

Uh but we but it gets us about halfway there, I think.

So you'll be able to have donuts on uh September 12th, so prepare yourselves for that.

Let's pray, and we'll get into today's text.

Holy Father, we gather humbly before you, thankful for our ability to gather together as your church.

Lord, just this morning someone shared with me friends that they have uh in the military in Afghanistan and the the difficulties that they're facing.

Lord, we remember our Christian brothers and sisters around the world and particularly there, who uh are under such threat of persecution, particularly because of their identification with you.

Lord, let us be encouraged by their witness.

Lord, we hold them before you in love.

Father, we ask that you would work in our church this morning, that you would equip us to stand, that you would make us a people who are able to stand amidst the wickedness of the world, not because of something that we find in ourselves, but because of what you have accomplished for us in Christ.

Would you put armor on us as we look at this text today?

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.

So this is the closing section of Ephesians, and Paul has moved through these minute areas of our lives and shown how the gospel applies there.

He's shown us in the letter how we relate between husbands and wives, then how we relate between parents and children, and then how we relate in our places of work and the economic spheres of our lives.

Now he zooms out from this household picture of the gospel into the cosmic reality of the war that we are in as Christians.

He lets us know that when you are a Christian every day, when you set your feet on the ground after getting out of bed, you are entering a war.

We need to have a concept of reality as war.

You might hear it said, I wouldn't risk entering a war every day.

And I I would say to you, open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.

Yeah.

Fellow nerds, I salute you.

We are in a war.

This is the picture of reality that we enter.

And if you take a second and you pause and you consider your life, I think you'll recognize this is actually a pretty simple reality to come to terms with.

One of the uh best leadership books ever written is a book by a man named Edwin Friedman, and it's called A Failure of Nerve.

Read it.

Let's read it.

And he describes the war that we're in.

Uh, and he he describes this reality of whenever you're trying to effect positive change, you meet resistance.

Now think back on your own life.

Have you ever been a part of an organization in which you've tried to foster positive change in?

What have you met?

Resistance.

Have you ever tried to change personally in your life and then tried to live out those changes amidst your own family?

Did you meet support for your changes?

No, you you likely met, or in some facet have met, resistance.

He says this in a failure of nerve.

Friedman says, eventually I came to see that this resistance, as it is usually called, is more than a reaction to novelty.

Saying it's more than just the people that you're engaging with are just like, ah, I don't like new things, so I don't like the change.

It's more than a reaction to novelty.

It is part and parcel of the systemic process of leadership.

Listen up.

Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away.

Instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the territory is a family or an organization.

Sabotage, facing sabotage, comes with the territory.

It's not to be avoided, it's not to be wished away.

It is the reality that we face.

And he's speaking in non-Christian terms of just trying to advance something positively, but he's reflecting the deeper reality that's revealed to us in Scripture, which is that sabotage is inevitable in the Christian life because we have real enemies.

We see this in Jesus' parables.

Consider the parable of the four soils.

There's the seed that's cast upon the path, and what happens to it?

Birds come and just snatch it away.

Jesus even explains this is the evil principalities that come and snatch away the potential faith of a Christian.

Or there's the seed that falls on the rocky ground and it sprouts up, but within when the sun beats down upon it, it withers away immediately.

It couldn't actually stand under the assaults that it would take.

Or there's the seed that is thrown into the briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit, and he's uh uh uh choked out, that seed is choked out by the cares of the world and by the attacks of the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places in the heavenly places.

When I see people start to make positive steps in their faith, we w in fact, when you see, this is just a pro tip from a professional Christian, which is the joke that I make about being a pastor.

That's about the reaction it typically gets.

When you see someone taking positive steps in their faith, warn them that resistance is coming.

Resistance is going to be a part of your forward movement.

So, so be take take care to arm yourself, to know the enemy that you're going to face, because this is the reality that is coming your way.

I haven't been in ministry very long, but I promise you this is true.

So Paul invites us into this war.

More than that, he just announces, you're in it.

You need to know you're in it.

And then after describing the war to us, he tells us to put on God's armor.

And then he tells us how to put on God's armor.

Okay, so the war, the armor, how to put it on.

Ephesians 6, verses 10 to 11.

Ephesians 6:10–11

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Now, that word finally there is better translated as henceforth, from now on.

How should you live now that I've shared this gospel with you, that I've entrusted you with this gospel message.

Remember earlier in the book, he said, you can know the mystery of God that I'm revealing to you just by reading.

And we've read it together.

And so we know the mystery that He's entrusted to us.

And see, so he says, All right, what happens now that you know it?

Well, henceforth, you need to live like this.

You need you're gonna need to put on God's armor.

And throughout the rest of this passage, we'll see this dynamic relationship between God's providential working in our lives and our own responsibility to engage with God's work in our lives.

It's not that we just put on armor and then show God how we have equipped ourselves.

And it neither is it that we just sit back and say, God, work on me and make me the type of person that you've called me to be.

No, we participate together in our growth.

So that when we are growing in the Lord, we are participating with God in Him bringing the growth into us.

Do you see the relationship is dynamic and we don't really have good categories for it, but we need to try and create new categories in our mind for the way Scripture reveals these truths to us, which is that when we press into God, it is actually effective, and God attends those moments to create growth within us.

So you cannot stand by passively to put on God's armor, but nor can you stand away from God to try and equip yourself.

You must be participating in the promises that God has given to you to equip you.

It is Him that brings the growth.

All our growth finds its results in Him.

Be strong in the Lord, in the strength of His might.

Put on the whole armor of God.

Do you see that dynamic relationship?

Now, what is the purpose of the armor?

It's so that we can stand against the devil's schemes.

The devil.

You know, I I I've kind of wrestled back and forth with do I need to spend time in this section trying to like make an apology for the existence of the devil?

Like a defense, not like I'm sorry the devil exists, but like like a defense of the existence of the devil.

You know, because there are likely people in the room that are like, the devil, come on.

I don't know, I'm not interested in this is getting strange and you're all as weird as I thought.

Well, I decided not to, and just to double down on the weird card.

I think that if it were even 10 years ago, it would have been appropriate to say, look, I'm I'm gonna take some time here and I'm going to show that it's reasonable to believe in the existence of a supernatural evil intelligence in the world.

But to be frank, I think that as a culture, we're more open to this concept than we than I think we ever have been in my short life.

We are surrounded by theories of sociology and civilization collapsing around us.

We do not see culture moving as a rationalistic march of scientific progress.

I think that the hope in that endeavor is gone in our culture.

And I think it served a pretty how do I say this?

There's a vacuum because that hope is gone.

And people are in turmoil.

Because we thought the world could just be understood in terms of materialist cause and effect, and that any problem would soon be met with a technological solution.

Nobody thinks that anymore.

We don't talk like that anymore.

Nor do we see people acting, the sociological movement of the world, we can't seem to interpret it in terms of a bunch of self-interested, reasonable actors.

That's not the way people are acting, right?

The economic models, based upon people being rational and self-interested, do not map onto the events of our culture.

You know what actually has more explanatory force?

There are strange personalities behind the movements of society.

Because what does society actually move like when we look at it now?

It looks like the movement of strange personalities.

So I think that at a moment like ours, the good news of the strangeness of our culture's movement is that it breaks our minds from these materialist and uh overly optimistic views of the world.

And it opens our minds to see the practicality of the biblical description of the way that the world is laid out.

When we're engaging with the world as though it's full of just technological problems that will soon be solved, it becomes a very strange place that's hard to interpret.

When we understand the world as being driven by principalities and powers, evil personalities working themselves out in the world, then you stand back and you think, you know, this actually makes sense.

This is kind of about what I'd expect.

See, when we know our enemy, we become wise to move in the world.

So that's the devil part.

Next, the schemes.

What are the schemes of the devil?

What are the schemes of Satan?

Uh this is this note may be helpful, by the way, just to kind of get our cosmology right, because we're we're bad at thinking of like characters like the devil and Jesus and how they relate.

We often think of uh Satan is like the opposite of Jesus, or Satan is the opposite of God, is the way that like you know, pop culture or something would depict Jesus and Satan.

Here's a more appropriate biblical way to think of it.

Satan is the opposite of Michael, the archangel.

Does that help?

Okay, good.

So we shouldn't think of him as the opposite of Jesus.

These are those are totally different tiers.

But there are rulers and authorities at levels of dominion in existence.

Uh and they oppose one another in the angelic realm.

Okay.

The devil's schemes, how do they work?

I heard a great analogy uh from Tim Keller in a sermon about how Satan works in our lives, what his schemes are.

Uh, and I'm going to steal this analogy, but I'm gonna put it in my own terms.

So know that I'm stealing it.

This is as close to plagiarism as you can get.

You're gonna get to bear witness to it this morning.

Not anymore, because I said it, I'm citing it.

But uh here is it in my own terms.

So Zach has a guitar, it's not here now, called a resonator.

And it's very cool, it's like custom and beautiful and amazing.

And uh when it's sitting in his office and Zach is playing on another guitar, when he hits a note that matches a note on the resonator, the resonator will start to vibrate, right?

Because the same note makes that note uh vibrate on the on the other guitar.

And so the the resonator will start to sing in his office because this note is being played elsewhere.

Your heart is a resonator, it's full of notes that are already there.

Satan plays you just by plucking the note on his own guitar that matches the note in your heart.

Yeah, that's look, Tim Keller, man, he's a Protestant Pope.

This is in your heart already, and he plays you.

Greed.

Oh man.

Look at that new you know, Defender 90 that just drove by.

That'd be like what it would be for me.

And you'd pluck.

Oh man, I wish I had something like that.

I wish I had a relationship like that.

I wish I felt fulfilled like those people.

Pluck, pluck.

He plays you.

He plays you.

He's not a creator like God.

He doesn't work at that level.

He can only work with what's already there.

And so.

He plays the fallness in your own heart.

Those are the schemes of the devil.

It's very intimate.

Paul continues, Ephesians 6 12, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Paul chooses this word for wrestle.

This word wrestle, it's not like battle.

This is not a word that translates to like a battle.

That can be distant.

You know, you can you could fire an arrow and be safely away.

This is hand-to-hand combat.

This is wrestling up close.

So there's this strange parallel that Paul gives us here because he describes this really intimate experience, this very flesh and bloody experience, and then he says it's not against flesh and blood.

And then he goes even further and he expands who we're wrestling with using words like rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

You know, these are tiers and levels, hierarchies of evil that we're surrounded by in the spiritual realm that are playing us earthly creatures.

Paul isn't saying that you don't experience evil from other people.

You certainly do.

That's not what he's saying.

Or that there are no people so closely identified with wickedness that we could not count them as enemies.

He's not saying that.

Paul is saying that when you are encountering this evil in the world, even when it is manifesting in other people's actions towards you or decisions or whatever, that they are merely participating in the evil, the cosmic evil in the heavenly places.

That we must view them primarily not as playing, but as being played by the cosmic evil in the world.

Does that make sense?

The evil that we experience in the world, we must understand, is merely participating in the higher cosmic evil, the real realm of the battle that energizes the battle.

So the world is getting played by these rulers and authorities.

We wrestle up close with those rulers and authorities in our very hearts.

So, how is it that we put on the armor of God?

Well, I'm skipping ahead.

Ephesians 6, 13.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm.

We see that same dynamic of God's working and our working.

You take up the whole armor, but it's the armor of God.

When this armor is initially laid out in Isaiah 57, it's God Himself who puts on, it's God Himself who puts on this armor.

This is God's very armor that he describes himself as putting on as he comes to save us.

That's the image that we're given in Isaiah.

But now Paul says that armor that God wore, you can put it on.

It's yours now in Christ.

Paul, when he's writing this, is under house arrest and under constant guard by a Roman soldier when he's describing the armor of God when he writes this.

Which means that it's as though Paul is sitting there looking up at the Roman soldier, being like, that's some pretty nice armor.

I know you can't see mine, and that I'm just in chains right now.

But I've got far better armor on.

That's just fun to think about.

Here's the index of the armor.

14 to 15.

Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

Belt of truth.

This is like a girdle.

It would be the center of the soldier's outfit.

And it would also have the sheath on it that the sword went into.

And it would hold together the whole rest of the outfit.

And they would also use it like when Scripture says, gird up your loins.

They would take the uh cloak that they would wear and they would wrap it into their belt.

That way they could run uh freely.

So this is this is the center of the outfit.

It's truth.

Now, why is truth the center of the outfit?

Well, consider our adversary.

The devil is the accuser, he is the father of lies, he deals in lies.

And so, what is it that combats this father of lies?

It is truth.

We must be living and walking in the truth.

And that's something that it requ that we require God to be able to uncover in ourselves.

I heard a great phrase.

They say, don't go scuba diving alone.

Don't go introspecting alone.

Don't go introspecting without God with you.

Let him be the one who searches your heart and reveals to you what is true and what isn't.

In your meditations, in when you're trying to discover what is it that my that is real in my heart and what is it that is false in my heart, you need to bring light with you into those places.

Lest you just wander around in darkness.

Trust the Lord to reveal the truth that you might walk in.

He is kind, he desires to show you the truth.

Now, in understanding the devil is the father of lies, there's this analogy is is is difficult that I want to use.

But the the best picture of the way that Satan operates, maybe not the best, but a good picture of the way Satan operates.

He's like a predatory groomer.

Have you ever been friends with a narcissist?

You know the stories of a of a of a predator who's looking to assault someone, and they they groom that person for their purposes.

That is the way Satan operates.

He teaches you lies.

He teaches you to distrust your ability to understand the truth.

He gets you to agree to things that you in your right mind never would have agreed to.

You must understand the depth of the cunning and wickedness of your enemy.

The belt of truth.

The truth sets you free from that terror of lies where you can't tell up from down.

The truth does.

Breastplate of righteousness.

This covers all your most important organs.

And it goes over your shoulders and your back and covers your chest.

It's what Maximus has the two horses on, you know?

And he uh uh this thing that covers all your most important organs is the is righteousness.

Now, righteousness is a word that we almost never use positively in our culture anymore.

So we it's just self-righteousness.

So like that person's acting pretty righteous.

Like, unless you're like Bill and Ted, then it means cool, but otherwise, we that person acting pretty righteous is just negative.

And but what we're the way that Paul uses this, we have to understand that our righteousness means we are justified before the Lord.

That when the Lord looks down on us, he sees us clothed and protected.

Our heart is guarded, not by your own righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ that is given to you.

It is the type of righteousness, notice, that you don't conjure up from the inside, but is given to you from the outside, and you put it on and you wear it as though it's your own.

That is the righteousness that we have.

Now, what type of defense does a righteousness like that make against the father of lies, against the accuser?

Well, when the accuser comes to you and says, You're a sinner not worth saving, broken beyond repair.

Your best shot at happiness is to give up the hope of changing and to settle in to accepting the wickedness that makes up your heart.

How do you defend against an accusation like that with the breastplate of righteousness?

You know what, accuser?

You're right.

I agree with you.

That is the depth of my heart.

That is the terror of my wickedness.

But this righteousness which brings me before the Lord is not my own.

I don't even need my own.

My own righteousness that I would have offered before the Lord, it was crucified with Christ.

And I've been made alive together with him because of Jesus, the Lord, who loved me and gave himself up with me.

And now I live by faith in him.

And so I proudly wear his righteousness on my chest and I walk safely.

My heart is protected, and I can move justified into the courts of the Lord.

So, do you have another accusation that you'd like to bring?

The breastplate of righteousness.

Shoes, readiness of the gospel of peace.

The devil cannot take you from the hand of your Savior, but he can halt your movement for the kingdom.

And Paul calls us to put on shoes, which are the gospel, so that we can be ready to move forward for his kingdom in the gospel of peace.

Because of the gospel, because of this understanding of what we just discussed with the breastplate of righteousness.

The righteousness that I move forward in is not my own.

I know that because of the story of the gospel, Christ died for me, I am raised, I will be raised with him.

We have this readiness to move fixed to our feet.

Because those accusations can no longer stop us.

Even your own sin can no longer stop you.

Because I worked with the missionary who used to say this all the time, and since then I've say it all the time.

If you have the story, you can't fail.

What do we move forward with?

Not a story of our own righteousness.

We move forward with the story of Christ, his glory, his victory.

It's his conquering of sin that we by faith get to participate in.

And so we're always at the ready.

Because Christ is at the ready.

Because Christ is our victor, our champion.

Like when David killed Goliath, and the rest of the Israelites who did nothing get to stand back and say, We won.

What did you do?

Nothing.

I just stand, stood back here and watched.

And they won.

We participate in Christ's victory.

We move forward with this gospel message into the world, proclaiming peace, as Paul said earlier, peace to those who are far off and peace to those who are near.

How can we proclaim that?

Because Christ acquired this peace between you and God.

And it is yours both to hold and to proclaim.

Even to the most wicked of enemies, you can say, if you come to Christ, he will in no wise cast you out.

Now we've moved kind of from the middle of the uh uh these kind of essential things moving up our core, and then now we're gonna go to our hands and our head for the next bit of armor.

In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Shield of faith.

So these put out the the shield of faith, it extinguishes the flaming darts of the evil one.

So that's another good picture.

So Satan is sending out these flaming darts at you.

I just remembered a friend who used to do a great Legolas impression, and he would always do it whenever he saw you.

But he would just constantly.

That is Satan towards you.

And we uh experience these flaming darts of the evil one.

In your very heart, this is something you experience.

So it's an it's an accusation, it's a deceitful lie, it's a promise of something that you know won't hold.

It's a layer of deceit that you allow yourself to walk in, and Satan encourages you to moralize your way through that.

These flaming darts of the evil one are constant.

So, how do we extinguish them?

It's by faith.

So, what does that mean?

We trust God.

We trust him.

This promises more life.

You won't be satisfied until you experience this.

No, the Lord calls me to find my highest satisfaction in him.

I'm going to trust him.

Now, this means you're going to need to engage with your thoughts in a couple of different ways.

Sometimes you're going to need to discover the shape in which Satan's lies come to you and map out the schemes of Satan in your life and see, you know what?

He's this particular lie that I don't understand and I'm always deceived by, it makes sense in my life because he's been telling me this lie throughout all sorts of stories.

I I never really invest in a relationship.

I heard a good one.

Uh we most of us treat relationships like an expensive restaurant, one bad experience, and we never go back again.

Now, why do we treat relationships like that?

It's because well, we've learned the way to not get hurt is to not get too close.

And so we middle our whole way there.

We want to get close to somebody, and then when we feel ourselves getting close, we know we need to retreat because we have to stay safe.

Now, what extinguis sometimes we need to understand those shapes of our thoughts in order to be able to engage with them well.

And so that requires a depth of understanding and a meditating, Lord, why is it this particular shape of this dart he keeps hitting me with?

And that type of exploration, like we said earlier, don't go scuba diving alone.

Pray with the Lord through those issues, bring wise counsel into those places, search out, understand with nuance the schemes of the devil so that you may not be deceived as they come up.

But when that process is done and you do understand it, don't act like you're still in that process when these thoughts come up.

Instead, once you've learned the shape, and Satan slings that arrow again, and he says, Look, you're unreliable again because you're always unreliable and you always will be, then you say, No.

I've had that thought before.

It's a useless thought that isn't connected to reality.

I'm done hearing it, I'm moving on.

Do you see how we need to have both tools in our arsenal?

We need to be able to do the work to understand the scheme.

But then, once we do, we need to be able to recognize this is just a flaming dart.

And so I'm going to extinguish it.

Because the good work that the Lord started in me, He will see through to completion.

So this arrow of hopelessness that I would uh that used to cause me to tumble around when I didn't understand its shape, I know its shape now.

And so now I will disbelieve this dart and I will trust the Lord.

We have we we need to have both tools.

To explore and then to know when to be done exploring, and to say, I'm done with this lie.

I trust the Lord.

I trust the Lord.

The level to which we entrust ourselves to the Lord is the level to which you can trust other people in relationships.

We don't entrust ourselves to one another.

We trust one another.

We know it's in man.

But we can every time, unashamedly, with nothing reserved, holding nothing back, entrust ourselves to Christ with absolute confidence, because He is the one in whom we find our absolute satisfaction.

And when you see that Christ is the one in whom you find your absolute satisfaction, then you become the type of person who can trust other people, even at great risk to yourself.

Why?

Because you're entrusted to Christ.

If you find in yourself an inability to move in relationships of trust, consider do you trust the Lord?

Do you trust that he could bring you through a betrayal or a letdown or a disappointment?

Helmet of salvation.

A helmet on your head is for protection, but it's also for glory and intimidation.

You know, when uh I mean, come on, it's the coolest example.

When Maximus takes, he chooses that helmet with all the spikes and stuff and that weird goatee thing, and he puts it on, it's like Is he safer?

Maybe.

Like I don't think that they didn't have like a MIPS program on those helmets.

But man, he looked glorious.

He looked scary.

You know, we shouldn't underestimate that.

When you put it on, he was equipped for battle.

He was ready to face whatever it was that was behind those gates.

I think I could quote that whole movie.

It's very formative for me.

Came out as a young man.

What is our glory that causes us to lift our heads when we step into the battle every day?

What helmet do we put on?

It's our salvation.

What does salvation mean?

It means we're the type of people that get saved.

Salvation isn't a reveling in your own glory.

When you get saved, it means you were in a position that you couldn't get yourself out of.

And then someone came and rescued you.

But what is our glory?

Our God saves us.

Which means we can constantly be getting ourselves in situations where we're in over our head.

That we can go up against wicked enemies that we would have thought would have destroyed us forever.

And we can walk in against those with a glory on our head which says, I'm gonna get bailed out.

We can loan money like an American bank.

No income.

No job.

Two percent interest.

Sorry, I happened into that joke and got distracted, but there's we I I want to regain what we had there for a second.

This glory that is on our heads is our salvation.

Paul is calling you to stand.

Christian, look look at look at the world, how you're described in the world.

You bigots, you upside-down backwards thinkers, you science deniers.

All you do is hurt people and cover up the deeds of those who really hurt.

You're against progress and the real movements of justice in the world.

You know, those are just simple little academic jabs.

Who cares?

We have brothers and sisters who are standing while they're being beheaded.

Knowing that they have a glory which can't be taken off their head.

God saves us.

You anxious hearts.

You're in over your head.

You don't know how you're gonna get out of this one.

Put on your helmet of salvation.

Those areas of your brokenness, that's precisely where you need to be saved.

Don't you see your weakness and where Christ saves you is the location of your glory?

Helmet of salvation, our God saves.

And the sword of the Spirit.

This is the Word of God.

What is our offensive weapon?

It is the Word of God.

This is the weapon that we bring with us out into the world.

What is it that takes the strings that would resonate with the lies of Satan and snaps them out of your heart?

It is the sword of the Spirit.

When your feet are paralyzed, what is it that might come rushing into your mind so that they might be unglued from the floor and you might move forward into what God is calling you to?

It is the word.

It is God saying to you, do not fear.

I'm with you.

Look, listen, Christian, God's with you.

He's not against you.

Don't fear.

I'm with you, he says.

Don't anxiously look about.

Looking for ways that this is gonna crumble and fall apart.

Well, why not anxiously look about?

Why not be on constant defense in the world?

Didn't you just describe it as we're a world surrounded by principalities and powers and like you you're using the language cosmic demons?

And you're saying, don't worry.

Why?

I'm your God.

Surely I'll help you.

Surely I'll strengthen you.

Surely I'll uphold you with my righteous hand through this.

We use the word, those promises of the word as the sword that destroys those fears.

We use the word to separate the lies from the truth in the lives of the people that we're engaging with.

We use the word to perform surgery when it needs to be delicate, to behead, when it needs to be bold.

It is the word of God that moves forward into the world.

Which is just a simple exhortation, Christian, read the Bible.

Soak in the word.

Take it seriously.

When God promises you that he's with you, look so that you can see it in the word and say, I guess I better believe him.

How do we put it on?

These are wonderful things.

How do we put this armor on?

Well, do you realize that this whole image of the armor of God that Paul is working through here, this whole thing has been an exhortation to pray?

In Ephesians 6.18, he says, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication, to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

How do we put it on?

How do we become the type of Christians who can stand as though armored with truth and righteousness, the gospel, with faith in the Word of God, in the glory of our salvation?

How do we stand as though we wear those things?

There's two ways that we change as people.

We change by prayer and we change by suffering.

And nobody prays enough.

Pray.

Pray.

That's what puts this on.

That's what puts this armor in into your heart where it becomes a part of you.

It's, you know, all these things cover our different body parts.

And it's just like Paul calls us to uh present our members, you know, the parts of us to works of righteousness, to righteousness.

How do we do that?

Well, we we present our our hand to hold on to faith and to hold on to the word, our minds to the glory of our salvation, our feet to the readiness that the gospel gives us as it severs the connection between us and our sin, the truth that holds us together, our hearts and our protection of the righteousness that Christ has given us, we put those on by prayer, by joining with the Lord and saying, equip me, change my heart, make me prepared for the war that we find ourselves in.

That way your glory might be advanced and I might participate in it.

And we put the armor on one another.

Saying, I'm feeling so ill-equipped.

Get some people around you.

Let them equip you.

Let them pray for you.

That this armor might be put on to you.

Let us, by perseverance, put this armor on one another.

I didn't intend to have so many scuba diving references, but you know when you're scuba diving, like in Colorado?

These would really play in Florida, by the way, where I'm from.

You don't put your own tank on, you'll hurt your back.

So you have a friend hold it up and then you put it on.

And then you walk around like this.

Oh wait.

Principality and power.

You need to have a community that puts the armor on you.

And then Paul knows this about himself, and so he says this, and also for me, that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly.

How would you proclaim the gospel if you had this armor on boldly?

What good news do we have?

Oh, your your God is so wicked and backward.

My God, have you not have you not heard the news?

He's no longer counting men's sins against them.

In Christ, he holds out a rescue to you, even at great cost to himself.

And if you come to him, you will in no wise be cast out.

So are we talking about the same God?

What boldness we might speak with.

Paul twice asks that he might speak this boldly.

He's sitting looking at a soldier.

Man, that guy can be bold.

He's torn constantly.

If I just renounce Jesus, I get to walk out of here.

So he sits there in that and he says, Lord, let me be bold like that soldier is, wearing the armor that you give to me.

Paul says, for which I am an ambassador in chains.

Oh, you want an image of a Christian?

We're an ambassador, right?

Because we represent a king.

And uh our king is Christ.

And so an ambassador, you would wear the glory of the place that you represent.

I once met an ambassador and visited his home.

And his he was an ambassador to Italy from the United States.

And so his home was like a little United States in Italy.

And he would invite other people from other nations and things and say, come in, I'm representing the glory of the kingdom that I represent.

We are the same.

We say, come into our church.

It's like this little slice of what the kingdom of our Lord is going to be like.

And you can participate it in, and you can begin to understand it.

And what type of glory does Paul have when he represents our king?

Chains.

Because what does our king do?

Our king laid himself down for us out of his love for us.

He was chained that we might put on his glorious armor as we participate in the advancement of his kingdom.

Pray for one another, that you might speak boldly.

I'm going to get particular because this opportunity presents itself with a clear exegesis of Scripture.

Pray for me.

Pray that I might speak boldly.

When Charles Spurgeon was asked why his ministry was so effective, he paused, probably took a cigar out of his mouth, probably lit another one and put it back in.

He said, Why is my ministry so effective?

It's because my people pray for me.

So it's in the text.

I'm gonna seize this moment.

Pray that I might speak boldly.

Are there any questions today?

Great.

Let's pray Well, first let's take communion.

Sorry, I've got to pull up the text.

I missed it.

First Corinthians eleven twenty-three.

We feast and we fight.

What a world.

We feast because the Lord prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies.

Because while the cosmic powers fight against his church, the Lord sees to it that his church moves forward.

So let's feast this morning.

Remembering that this bread is his broken body poured out for us.

The blood is spilled on our behalf, that we might be justified, that this feast might be a way of putting on this armor that the Lord gives to us.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Holy Father, we praise you for the sacrifice that you made on our behalf, for the victory that you acquired, so that we might stand back and in praise and honor of you alone, and in utter humility of our position, we might participate in your glory, which you freely give to us.

Lord, let us wear the armor, the armor of God.

What an amazing thing to be able, what a cabinet to be open to us that we might take out the armor of God and put it on.

Lord, make us a people who praise, to equip one another.

That way we might see the advancement of your gospel by the movement of a people who are equipped in your armor of truth and righteousness and the gospel and faith and the word and our salvation.

Lord, let us be characterized by those things.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.