Armor of God (Part 1) - Ephesians 6:10-20 - Pastor Greg Addison - June 2, 2024

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

It is a joy to hear you all sing.

It's just great to hear your voices calling out to the Lord.

What we're going to start today is a sermon series that we'll go through this summer because we really want to take some time to marinade in the truth of this passage of Scripture.

So I want you to turn with me in Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

The armor of God is something that people love.

It's interesting.

But really, what it is, it is the truth of what we've just been seeing applied to our lives.

It is the goodness of God and his mercy and his grace and all that he has done for us, all that he does in us through salvation and our relationship with him.

And it really is all of that applied.

And so it's an incredible, rich passage of Scripture.

And it's one of those, sometimes we just kind of run through it, and you can, because in some ways it's very simple.

In other ways, it is incredibly rich.

And it is one of those things that you can soak in.

And so we're going to spend some time doing that this summer.

So I want you to read with me in Ephesians chapter 6, beginning in verse 10.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.

Boy, that's incredible.

When we think about the goodness of God, all that he does.

We think about the name of Jesus we sang about that breaks every chain, breaks every chain, the power of who Jesus is.

And what he says is, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.

So it is literally all of that goodness and strength and power and blessing of God projected and applied into our lives.

That's what we're going to be looking at in this study.

Then he says, put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the devil.

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.

This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand.

And now he unpacks for us what that full armor of God means and what that picture is.

Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist.

And he takes this picture of a Roman centurion, a Roman soldier, and he unpacks the purposes and the impact of each one of those pieces of armor, and he relates it to a spiritual truth that is sort of covered or defined in our identity and who we are in Christ.

So he says, stand therefore with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest, your feet sandal with readiness for the gospel of peace.

In every situation, take the shield of faith, and with it you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is God's word.

Pray at all times in the Spirit, with every prayer and request, and stay alert in this, with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.

Pray also for me that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make with boldness, make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.

And so here he gives us this picture being strong in the Lord, and God, through the relationship with Jesus Christ, brings his strength, his grace, his power, his mercy, his love.

He brings all of that into our lives when we receive it that way.

And then he unpacks for us in this incredible picture of this Roman soldier what all this means and how it works in our lives.

One of the things I love about God's Word is He doesn't just tell us something, go do this or go do this, but He unpacks it and explains it for us so we can understand the why and the how and the incredible impact of what it means in our lives.

And so I think this summer is hopefully will be a blessing for you.

We've been praying about this for a while, and as we really begin to unpack that.

But here's the first thing that I want you to see.

He gives you this picture of the armor from verses 14 through 17, and he just gives you a phrase on each one of these pieces of armor, but he takes an entire chunk right here, verses 10 through 13, just to give us this truth.

We are to spiritually prepare ourselves.

He tells us that life is a spiritual exercise, not just a human or tangible one.

And because of that, we have to have a singular focus on preparing ourselves.

Look at what he says again here in verse 10.

Be strengthened by the Lord.

Verse 11, put on the full armor of God.

He says in verse 13, this is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything to take your stand.

And so here, this whole section of this, in looking at that armor, the biggest part of this he wants us to understand is life is spiritual, and you have to prepare yourself spiritually for spiritual victory in life.

And so today we're going to talk about the preparation, just the need to prepare and the importance of preparation.

Now, there's one verse that kind of encapsulates this whole thing.

In fact, it's repeated a couple of times.

Verse 11, put on the full armor of God.

Verse 13, this is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist an evil day, and having prepared everything to take your stand.

So I'm going to do is take that verse right there, put on the whole armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the devil.

That right there grabs this whole picture of preparation.

In fact, I'm going to encourage you this week to do something that I've shared a number of times, and kind of it's a great way for us to meditate on a passage of scripture and unpack and own the truths on it.

We usually call it, I'll refer to it as brew, and y'all have heard me talk about brewing a scripture verse.

Want to remind you what that is.

This is just an easy way, a simple tool for you to meditate on scripture.

Helps you focus on scripture, on how you take a Bible verse, not just memorize it, but how you really unlock the truths in that and listen to God teach you through that.

The first thing is believe that Jesus has a message for you in that verse.

Second is read and repeat the verse over and over and over and over and over.

Because the more you get familiar with it, the more God unlocks it for us.

Scripture was made to soak in, not speed through like a novel.

Each word is truth.

That's the E.

Each word has truth.

And so it's important to slow down and look at each word and grab that real sense of truth and the application and all of that in it.

And then write down what Jesus teaches you.

If you're going to meditate on a passage of Scripture, if you're going to spend that time with the Lord, and He's going to speak to you and teach you through that, it's important enough for us to write it down.

We need to write it down.

Pastor where I grew up used to tell us all the time, the weakest ink is a greater memory than the strongest mind.

And so when you write it down, you own it.

The other thing that happens is when you write it down, there's a thing that occurs in your brain where you're training yourself and you have a greater recall of when you write something down.

And so if this instruction for us in these verses is to prepare ourselves spiritually, prepare ourselves for life, prepare ourselves for victory, prepare ourselves for when we're attacked by spiritual forces and the enemy and all of that, then it's something that we should grab a hold of and own.

I believe that's also why the Holy Spirit instructed Paul, use this illustration of the armor because it just lodges and sticks.

That's cool to see kind of how God does all this.

And we know that God is the author of Scripture.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

But when you think about what Paul is doing in this moment, Paul is in prison when he writes this letter, and he's probably chained to, or certainly is next to, a Roman guard.

And so it's one of those things that's right there, accessible to him.

Everyone knows this picture of a Roman soldier.

Even today, it's a universal image of a Roman soldier.

And so he grabs this picture of the armor to describe for us what it is we're looking at, and so it will register and it will help us understand and keep in the forefront of our minds this preparation process.

Right?

And so here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna brew this process on how we prepare.

And it's going to give us this sort of big idea and three principles that we need to grab onto.

So here's what you're gonna look at as you're brewing through this.

Always remember the word preparation.

What we're doing is preparing ourselves, and we're gonna prepare ourselves with these principles we're gonna see in this verse, our purpose, our problem, and our power.

So again, the scripture is put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the tactics of the devil.

So let's look first and see what our purpose is.

We are preparing ourselves spiritually for a purpose that God has given us in life.

And that purpose is to stand.

Now look how often he says.

Verse 10 is be strengthened by the Lord.

But in verse 11, put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand.

You can stand.

Look what he says again in verse 13.

This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day.

And having prepared everything, to take your stand.

Verse 14, stand therefore.

And then he puts on the armor and helps us understand in a practical way what our identity in Christ means for us.

And so here's what he's telling us that we are to stand faithfully as a testimony of Jesus.

When he saved us, he saved us to be an example of Jesus to the people around us.

He saved us to be that picture of what God does when he saves a life and he redeems it.

You see that message all throughout the book of Ephesians.

I would encourage you this week, if you have some time, to go back and read through the book of Ephesians.

It's an incredible book, and it's one of my favorite books.

It is rich with truth and application of that truth in our lives.

In the first couple of chapters, what you get is this picture of who we are in Christ, what he did when he saved us.

It says in chapter 1, verse 3, that he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.

When you gave your life to Jesus, everything that God could bless you with, he blessed you with that when you gave your life to Christ.

It's incredible to think about who we are in Christ.

And as you continue to read, he starts to unpack some of that and he starts to explain what some of that means.

And he says in there twice in chapter one that our lives as they are transformed are evidence of the glory of Jesus.

And they are evidence of the work of God in our lives.

And you see that all throughout those first couple of chapters.

And then he tells us in chapter four, because of the truth of what all that means, chapter four of Ephesians, verse 1, just flip back a page or so and look at it.

He says in verse 4, Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received.

So he says in this book, as he goes through the preparation and the understanding of what happened to us when we were saved and all of that, therefore, we are to work worthy of the calling of Jesus Christ.

We are to live a life that is a model of Jesus, that is an example of who he is and what happens.

As you continue to read in chapter 4, he says here in verse 12 that he has put in the body people to teach and lead and grow, verse 12, for the training of the saints and the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, until we've all grown into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.

We are to live for Jesus.

We are to be an example of what it means when Jesus comes into a life and saves us.

And so we prepare ourselves spiritually because we have a spiritual purpose in our lives and who we're called to be.

As you read in chapter 5, just look at a couple of these scriptures.

Chapter 5, verse 1, be imitators of God as dearly loved children.

We are to imitate the person and the character of God.

Now we can't do that in our own strength.

We'll see that in our power in a moment.

But we are to be obedient to the work that God is doing in us as he transforms us to be like that and walk in love as the Messiah also loved us and gave himself for us a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

How we love the people around us.

We are to be an example of Jesus who loved us so much that he stepped out of heaven, he went to the cross, there he died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, to take the spiritual burden of redemption, and then rose again, conquering death and sin to offer us salvation.

And that salvation in us is to make us this example of Christ.

Then as you read through chapter 5 and some of these famous passages of Scripture, he basically goes through every part of life and he tells us how to do what we're instructed to do in verse 1 of chapter 4 and verse 1 of chapter 5.

He, for example, he says, in the body of Christ, after we've submitted ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit in verse 18, verse 19, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music from your heart to the Lord, and submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.

So he talks about the body of Christ, how we're supposed to love each other with the love of Jesus.

We're supposed to care for each other, bear each other's burdens.

We're supposed to look into each other's lives and our desire to be for the other one to grow closer to Christ and to serve and to love.

Then he goes into the home, verse 22, wives, submit your husbands as the as to the Lord.

And then he says in verse 28, in the same way husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies, we're supposed to love Christ, love our wives by dying on the cross for them the way Jesus died for us.

Then he says in chapter 6, verse 1, children obey your parents.

Children obey your parents.

As we're raising our kids, we're to teach them to obey their parents, and we're supposed to teach children that you obey your parents.

And what happens is that's how we learn to obey the Lord, as we learn to understand authority and all that.

And then he goes into human life.

Well, first he talks to parents.

Fathers, don't stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

We're not supposed to make our kids mad and be ugly and we're not supposed to judge them.

We're not supposed to frustrate them by not teaching them how life works and all of that.

We're supposed to train them up, and in that training, we show them the joy of life and the salvation that comes from Jesus, and we teach them that.

Then he moves from family to other forms of human relationships.

In that day, they estimate that as much as 50% of the Roman Empire was a slave.

They did not control the ownership of their lives.

Sometimes it was criminal deals, sometimes it was indentured deals, sometimes it was slavery, like we would know that modern term.

Sometimes it was conquered peoples, and they put them in slavery.

But here's what he says slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ.

Don't work only while being watched in order to please men, but as slaves of Christ, do God's will from your heart.

Serve with a good attitude as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good each one does, slavery free, he will receive this back from the Lord.

There is a practical application of this into employee life today, right?

So that was a large category of people in that slavery deal, and including indentured servants and all kinds of stuff.

So it is an application for us as employees.

We're to serve Jesus and we're to serve with a heart that models Christ to the people around us.

We're to be an example in the place where he put us to serve and to do that.

And it's hard on normal days.

Sometimes every workplace has stress and all that kind of stuff, and you're pressed on and things don't go well and all of that.

And he says, in that spot, we are to be an example of Jesus and serve as if we are serving him.

And then he talks to masters.

Treat your slaves the same way without threatening them because you know that both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

In other words, when God looks down, he doesn't care what your positions are.

In that culture, he didn't care if you owned slaves and you were in charge and you thought you were something because you had all he doesn't care.

And today, if you're the president of the company or you're a vice president or you're a supervisor or you're whatever, and you got all these people that work under you, listen, when God comes, sees out of heaven, what does he see?

He says children and people that Jesus died for so that they could be children.

That's what he sees.

He sees people that he knows have already accepted him and have been adopted into his family, and then he sees people that Jesus died for so they could be saved.

And how we function in those roles, we're supposed to be an example of Jesus.

And so then look what he says in verse 10.

Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength, put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the devil.

Our purpose is to stand in the person of Jesus and allow him to work in our lives so that we are an example of him.

Listen, we have so much more in life than just a set of truths that we believe in.

We do have those.

But what good do they do if they do not transform our lives into the model of Christ that he's called us to be.

And so as we live out this life, we are to live it out pursuing being like Jesus.

Now it's interesting.

In this church in Ephesus, it's a fascinating church when you begin to unpack things in Scripture about this church.

Here's the first thing you understand.

In the book of Acts, and then he references this church in 2 Corinthians.

If you put that together, what you find out is that Paul loved being here in this place because there was great opportunity and there was great evangelism, and there were lots of people who were saved.

But he also warned this church they have huge enemies and obstacles within the church and without the church.

And so when he is talking to them in this letter and telling them to be strong in the Lord and stand for Jesus, he is doing it in the context that he says, Look, you are a lighthouse in Ephesus.

And it is awesome what God is doing, and there are a lot.

Lots of people to be saved, but there are also barriers and there are enemies.

And to be this example of Jesus and to live out being an imitator of God, to live out loving with the love of Jesus, to live out this truth of being strong and doing the work in the church so that everyone becomes the full measure of the stature of Christ in order to model all these things.

You're going to have to be strong to accomplish this in your relationship with Jesus.

And then when you get into the book of Revelation, and Jesus shows up and he speaks to John and he begins to talk about those seven churches, and when he goes back and pulls each of those churches as examples to us in the church age today, he refers to the church at Ephesus.

He says, speak to the church at Ephesus.

And here I think it's awesome, he says in his letter, that you have been pure, that your doctrine is good, and that you're obedient to the word.

But I have a serious matter against you, Ephesus.

You have left your first love.

You see, he tells the church, and by extension, he tells churches like ours and all the churches around in the river valley, that it's not enough to have good doctrine, and it's not enough to have a belief system, and it's not enough to go, well, we don't do this, and we don't do this, and we don't do this.

It's not enough.

To stand in our purpose, we have to be in love with Jesus.

We have to be walking with Jesus relationally.

We have to be standing in the person of Jesus and standing so his transformation works in our lives and so that we are a model and example of Jesus.

Our purpose is to be so much more than good or whatever.

We have so much more in the Christian life than just simply a belief system or a philosophical structure in Scripture.

We have so much more than just truth.

Now we have truth, and we'll talk about that next week and how vital that is.

So don't misunderstand me.

Understand what we're saying.

The truth of scripture teaches us more than right and wrong.

It teaches us for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

And it teaches us that our lives are to be a love response to him.

In fact, Jesus says in the book of John, He it is who loves me, who keeps my commandments.

And so our lives are to be filled with love, filled with the love of Jesus, and the love of Jesus comes in our lives and pours out of our lives.

And when we are standing strong, and we are standing against Satan, and we're standing against spiritual warfare, and we're standing against all those things, we are standing to be a model of the love of Jesus and his grace.

And that he died for people to save them.

And we are to be so much more.

And so it's always good for us to remember what our purpose is and what our stand is.

When Jesus repeatedly says here to stand, we are to stand in the love of Jesus.

We are to stand primarily focused on our love of Jesus and responding to him.

And we are supposed to be a model of the love of Jesus and who he is to the world around us.

And that is when he is free to use us to impact the world around us.

You see, our purpose is to stand faithfully as a testimony of Jesus.

But there's a problem, there's a struggle here.

Put on the whole armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the devil.

And there are two issues that I think are highlighted in this passage of Scripture that are important for us to see as problems.

We're not going to unpack all of those today.

We're going to do that as we go through, as you see each piece of armor work against that.

But here are two things that we have to learn.

First of all, a spiritual understanding instead of a human, flesh, earthly life.

We live a tangible life.

We're hungry.

I can see it on your faces.

You're already hungry.

Hurry up, Pastor.

We want to beat everybody else to lunch.

My wife told me this morning, she said, Listen, sweetheart, if you can't make the sermon good, make it short.

We're hungry.

We want to go.

We're tired.

It's hot in here.

It's cold in here.

We got all that kind of stuff.

I got to pay the bills.

I got to go to work.

I got this schedule.

My car broke down.

My kids are doing this.

My grandkids are whatever.

And we got all this life and all of the tyranny of the urgent and the things in front of us pull us.

But the Bible says we do not walk by flesh, but we walk by faith.

We do not walk by sight, but we walk by faith.

That what is going on around us that is most important is the spiritual reality of our lives and the lives of the people around us.

And what he's grabbing a hold of here is he's trying to tell us, look, in verse 12, our battle is not against flesh and blood.

When they were facing persecution from outside the church in Ephesus, it wasn't that person or who was being mean to them or Rome or the governors or whatever.

It's not just that.

We focus on this tangible enemy because that's what's in front of us, but he's saying, listen, Satan and all of this is working.

This is all about the flow of the gospel.

And when you guys step out and stand for Jesus and you stand strong as that testimony, the enemy is going to oppose that.

And you need to understand this is so much more than what you think is your enemy.

It is a spiritual battle that is attacking the advance of the gospel.

And the first thing he calls out is listen, you just got to understand and start to pay attention more to the spiritual reality of life.

That person's mad at you.

What's going on spiritually in their lives that we can help?

Heading into election year and all of that, listen, we need to be called to prayer more than we need to be called arguing on social media or whatever.

We have to grasp in our minds that this is a spiritual life and it is a spiritual reality.

Now, yeah, it is tangible, and yes, I'm going to go have lunch as soon as this is over.

But it's so much more than just the tangible.

And we are always being pulled back to what we see and feel and have to do around us.

And we are always being called back to remind ourselves we walk by faith and not by sight.

There is a spiritual reality that goes around us that we have got to attune to.

And as human, fleshly, earthly, physical, tangible, we always have to remind ourselves of that truth.

And then the second thing is, once you become aware of that and you start to pay attention to that, we realize that there are spiritual enemy and warfare.

There is spiritual enemy and warfare.

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.

Look back over to Ephesians 4, and you saw that, what we were looking at.

We talked about how we're to build up the body of Christ till everyone's the full measure of Christ.

Look at what he says in verse 14.

Then we will no longer be little children tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness and the techniques of deceit.

And so all those lies and all those things that you see, all of that has behind it a spiritual force of the enemy who is trying to stop the advance of the gospel and the work of Jesus.

That's why we don't just come here and do this.

This is soaked in prayer.

We are deeply in prayer as we're preparing for church.

We are praying as we're in church.

We are praying after church.

We are praying over the decisions that need to be made.

And as folks make those decisions, we are praying over those decisions.

That's why we've started our prayer force, and we're, and they are very active, and all those things are happening.

We are praying all over all those things because this is a spiritual battle.

People are not going to get saved here just because we have church.

People are not going to, there's not going to be revival in the River Valley just because we have a new sign outside and it says First Baptist Church, and everybody ought to know First Baptist Church is special.

Now, our church is special.

We have an incredible heritage and all of that.

But it's because every generation of our church has understood that this is a spiritual battle, and they have been prayer warriors and they've soaked it in prayer.

And men of God who've preached in this pulpit, they've preached the word of God as empowered by prayer from the church in their own lives as they preached.

And so, as we do this ministry, we have desperately got to understand it's got to be soaked in prayer.

Everything we do has got to be in prayer.

And so here's the deal: He talks about in the church the importance of the love of the body and all the things connecting with the body and all of that.

He also talks about individual lives and relationships.

And so you face spiritual warfare in your life as an individual just like we do as a church.

Satan doesn't like it.

We've been baptizing folks, we're pushing into missions and all that, and he doesn't like it, and he's going to try to mess up whatever he can mess up.

He's going to try to attack and pressure and all of that.

But in your spiritual life, if you are growing in the Lord, Satan's going to attack you as an individual.

He's going to tempt you in your life.

Listen, when we talk about, when scripture uses the illustration of a lion and it says that Satan is like a roaring lion walking around seeking whom he can devour.

He wants to devour churches like ours that are doing ministry.

But he's just as happy as if he can devour a family.

If he can devour a dad or a mom.

If he can take a young adult that's trying to grow in the Lord and trying to get anchored, and he can pull them out and step on them in that point and destroy that faith while it is fledgling.

Last week I it was great to be able to go back and do a retreat for our single adults and young adults at Bellevue when I, that was one of my first positions in ministry, and it was where I learned more than anything else.

And I talked to them a little bit about it last week.

It's incredible you see young adults and you see students in ministry and college students and all of that.

They're trying to make these decisions, they're trying to work through these things.

They don't have the root system of someone who's walked with the Lord for 40 years yet or 50 years or whatever.

And they're making these decisions and they're working in the culture and they are living a physical life and they've not yet been fully attuned enough to spiritual warfare.

And I can't tell you how many times, over and over and over again, we have seen someone get saved, or we've seen a prodigal come home to the Lord, and they're trying to grow and they're trying to work.

And someone who is in the church who is carnal and not seeing spiritual things and not walking with Jesus, they take them out drinking, or they take them out somewhere, or they're dating or whatever, and they fall into temptation, and this carnal Christian becomes a part of the destruction of the spiritual life of this person.

It's a tragedy to see.

We already know that the world is out there trying to crush people, and we know that Satan is out there trying to keep people from Jesus, and he's creating all kinds of mess out there.

But what God is telling us here as believers, listen, it is our job to be armored up and to be aware of the spiritual warfare and to be fighting against that and not being duped into something where we are allowing or fostering or inadvertently creating an environment where people get hurt.

And so it's important to understand that we all struggle with these things.

Now, let me just talk a minute for folks, if you don't know Jesus, if you're searching, if you're wondering why should I be a Christian and all that?

Listen, this applies to you.

The world that we live in, the systems of all that, listen to what he says.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.

What does all that mean?

Is that some weird right-wing nut job, Christian nationalist conspiracy or whatever kind of nonsense you hear on television?

No, it is the reality of life.

Why do we live in a world where drug addiction is out of control?

Why do we live in a world where our government wants to foster more drug addiction through marijuana and all of that or not stopping fentanyl or whatever it is?

Why do we live in a world where people are trying to tell boys that they're girls and girls that they're boys and all of that kind of stuff?

Why do we live in a world where abortion is real?

Why do we fight those things?

Because Satan is trying to move our culture so that it pushes people away from Jesus.

There is no answer.

There is no hope.

There is no forgiveness.

There is no healing from struggles that may have happened in life when you are running down those roads and there is no answer anywhere in any of that for grace or healing or truth or hope or anything else.

And our entire culture is telling people do this and you're okay, do that and you're okay.

And it's not.

We live in a culture today where we have epic, epic, epidemic.

Um I can't even get the right word out.

I'm trying not to get all it it is it is a massive flow in our culture.

There is so much anxiety and fear that is an epidemic, there it is, of prescription antidepressant drugs.

If you're an HR or something in your company, you understand this.

You can't even get insurance, or it's hard to get insurance for certain kind of drugs because there is so much of that going on, and there is so much prescription of that that they're pushing back and they're saying that's addictive and there are problems.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't take care of your mental health, you should.

But understand, if you are wondering why I should be saved, you look around you and you realize there are no answers in the culture.

There's none.

There's no hope, there's no grace, there's no forgiveness.

Man, if I've struggled and messed this up in life, the world's just gonna cancel you, they're gonna crush you, they're gonna whatever, or they're gonna try to validate it and drag you into more of what's already hurting you.

When you come to Jesus, he forgives.

He heals.

He brings grace and forgiveness.

How do you know that, Pastor?

Well, because in this very letter to this church in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 and 9, it says, For by grace are you saved through faith.

Ephesians 2:8

And it is God's grace that saves us.

And then how do I know that there's strength in that?

Look at what he says for the Christian: be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.

That is what is available in Jesus.

And if you want to know if there's hope in Jesus, Scripture tells us that there is grace and hope and strength and truth and wisdom and relationship with Jesus that makes us strong.

But we have got to acknowledge that those things are problems that we fight through, and that's why we must prepare ourselves.

What does he say?

Put on the whole armor of God, verse 11, so that.

Verse 13, this is why you must take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist and having prepared everything to take your stand.

We need the truth and the power of Jesus and who he is in our lives in order to bring that hope and fulfill our purpose.

And we see our purpose, we see our problem, but I want you to see our power.

Here's the great thing about being a Christian: you do not have to do this on your own.

In fact, you cannot do this on your own.

The Christian life is not a grit your teeth and try to behave better.

It's not the deal where you go, I'm gonna fix this so God will approve of me.

That's not what happens.

Look at what he says, verse 10, be strengthened.

That means that happens to us.

It's not something that we do.

Now, listen, my dad was tough, man.

He was from South Mississippi.

I got all that suck it up and be a man.

And, you know, I remember the first time I was 16, I had a job doing hamburgers and I have allergies and I get sinus infections, and I got my first sinus infection, and I go see my dad, I said, Dad, I'm sick.

I can't go to work.

And he said, That's not a good answer, son.

Suck it up.

They're counting on you today.

They made a schedule.

And somebody's got to make hamburgers and clean the dishes, so get with it.

I remember I got to college and I was a work study guy, part of my scholarship, and I had allergies and I was struggling with that, and I worked in a shop, which, if you got allergies and you already got a science infection, and you're working in the shop and there's wood and all that kind of stuff, like it's awful.

And I'd work a little bit and I'd go over to the chair, and y'all forgive me, I'd hawk it up and spit in a garbage can and do whatever.

And I'd look at this professor like, really?

Send me home.

And he'd look at me and go, it's all organic.

Don't worry about it.

Suck it up.

Listen, the Christian life is not a suck it up and get tougher.

Christian life is a life of obedience and surrender to the Lord.

And so when you try to do it on your own strength, you are literally stiff arming the Lord.

But here's what he says: be strengthened by the Lord and his vast strength.

There are multiple times in the book of Ephesians where he talks about the vast strength of God.

And so what happens in our lives is we have to understand that God is our power.

He is our refuge.

He is our power.

He is all of those things.

He is there for us.

And because of our problems that we don't understand life is spiritual, and we try to live it out in a physical way, we try to live out the Christian life in our own wisdom, our own thought, our own strength, and it doesn't work.

We're not fulfilling the purpose of Jesus.

Remember, in this church, Ephesus, he wrote to them in Revelation and he said, Listen, you're doing the right things, but you have lost your first love.

And you are not modeling and exampling the person of Jesus because the relationship is not there, because you've not surrendered to him.

And so here's the picture: it is his strength that he does to us.

Be strengthened by him.

Take on the full armor of God.

It is his armor.

He has made it.

We are just being obedient and surrendering to it.

And so our preparation is acknowledging the power of who God is in our lives.

In fact, Paul tries to drive that home all throughout this book.

Let me just remind you of an incredible, an incredible scripture here in chapter 3.

Look with me in chapter 3, verse 14.

He says, For this reason, I kneel before the Father, Paul, praying for the church, for whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, again, vast power, vast strength, limitless mercy, to be strengthened with power in your inner man through his spirit.

And that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith.

It is his work in us, it is our identity in Christ.

It is when we understand who Jesus is and what he's doing in our lives that we fulfill that purpose and we become like Jesus.

Look what he says in verse 20.

Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us.

It is God's power at work, not ours.

It's not our strength.

And part of our problem is we are living a physical, earthly human life in physical, earthly, human strength, and we are not putting on our identity in Christ as armor that makes us strong to Stand in our purpose.

Here's the picture that I'll close with as we set up for next week.

The way this command is structured in chapter 6, in the Greek, with the verbs and all of that, it is a command that we have to obey.

It is structured as look, God is who God is.

It's your choice whether you put the armor on or not.

It's the picture of a soldier, and right here in his tent or home or wherever he lives is his armor on its stand.

The helmet is effective as a defensive weapon.

But it does not protect his head if he doesn't put it on.

The breastplate is effective.

The shield is an incredibly powerful tool.

The sword that they used and how they were trained to fight, they were incredibly powerful.

But if they sat on the rack unused, it is the soldier that suffered and failed.

And so the call for us is to prepare.

Prepare.

If you are, His vast strength strengthens you.

If not, we want to encourage you in how to do that.

I want you to bow your heads as we close.

In a moment, we're just gonna, I'm gonna pray, and then God's people are gonna sing an invitation hymn.

It's a testimony of salvation in Jesus.

And if you've never trusted Christ, this armor is available to you, but you have to give your life to Christ.

If the power is Jesus working in us, as Paul said, and through us, then you, your first step of putting on armor, your first step of obedience, your first step of stepping into this truth is to come to Jesus and acknowledge that he died for you.

That he took God's full wrath and punishment for sin, and that he rose again to offer you this forgiveness, this life, this mercy, this grace.

Listen, Jesus paid it all.

You do not have to clean yourself up to come to Jesus.

You just come to Jesus as you are.

He's the one that does all the work.

Jesus paid it all, and all to him I owe.

Sin had left a crimson stain, but Jesus is the one who washes it white as snow.

If you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, watching online or here, as we sing, come.

There'll be pastors at the head of the aisles, you come and give your life to Christ.

If you're already a brother and sister in Christ, I want to encourage you.

You already know a lot of what we'll unpack in this deal.

My question for you is, are you armored?

Do you get up in the morning and put your armor on?

Are you resting in who you are?

Are you paying attention to the spiritual things in lives?

I want to just encourage you this morning in the invitation.

This time is for you, as a brother and sister in Christ, to make the commitment to armor yourself.

Stand in the strength of Jesus.

Lord, we thank you for this incredible picture that you wrote through Paul to us and how it applies in our lives so clearly.

And I pray, Father, that today you'll unpack these things and work these into the lives of your people because we know it's you who's working.

This is a spiritual decision and time, and so we are dependent on you to work, and I pray you will work.

If there's someone who needs to be saved, they'll give their lives to you.

And my brothers and sisters in Christ, you'll strengthen us and encourage us and remind us to armor up and stand in your strength.

Lord, help each person make the decision they need to make today.

It is in Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people said.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.