Good morning!
If you would turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 6.
As Ray said, we're going to be considering the the armor of God this morning.
I'd like to just read the section.
That we're going to be focusing on.
To start, and and then we'll get into it.
So we're gonna be in Ephesians 6.
And starting in verse 10.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord.
And then the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God.
That you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities.
Against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age.
Against spiritual hosts of wickedness 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.
Stand. Therefore, having girded your waist with truth.
Having put on the breastplate of righteousness.
And having shad your feet with the preparation of the gospel of.
Above all, taking the shield of faith.
With which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
And take the helmet of salvation.
And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit.
Being watchful to this end.
With all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.
And for me, that utterance may be given to me.
That I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains.
That in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Good, just.
Opening a word of prayer, and then we'll get into it.
Our our Heavenly Father. We thank you for your word. We thank you.
That in it you have.
Reveals yourself to us. You have revealed the Lord Jesus Christ, us.
And
Great victory that he has.
Accomplished by dying on the cross, by being raised back to life.
Over sin and over death, and over the enemy.
And we just are thankful for your word. Help us to understand.
As we're studying it this morning.
What it is that you'd have us to learn.
And we pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
So I'd like to.
Consider the armor of God.
But.
But before I do that.
I want to take a look at.
A very familiar passage in the Old Testament, and 1st Samuel.
The story of David and Goliath. Actually. So it's going to be first.st Samuel.
In Chapter 17. We're not gonna spend a lot of time here, but I just want to.
Point out a couple things that I was thinking about. As I was preparing.
To think about the armor of God, and and what it all means. So.
I'm sure everybody knows the story.
Well enough to.
Recite it without.
Us having to spend a whole lot of time here. So I just want to point out a few things.
The armies of Israel and the armies of the Philistines had gathered to fight, and Goliath is coming out and defying the armies of Israel.
I always think about Micah. Give me a man. Give me a man Goliath is. He's.
He's challenging them to send somebody out to him and.
The armies of Israel are afraid.
And so David, the shepherd boy, comes.
And
He is indignant.
There's nobody who's challenging this person, because.
In his estimation. They are God's people, and.
Why would they be afraid of an uncircumcised Philistine, as he puts it.
And so.
Chapter, 17.
Verse 30.
31. Now, when the words which David spoke were heard, they reported them to Saul, and he sent for him. Saul sent for David. Then David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.
And Saul said to David, You are not able to go against the Philistine to fight with him for you or a youth, and he's a man of war from his youth.
So there is an element of truth to what Saul is saying to David. You're not able to do this thing.
You're a puny little shepherd boy, and this is a.
This is a man who knows how to kill people, and he's been doing it for a long time, and he's way bigger than you.
In essence a true statement.
David could not do it.
But David wasn't relying on David.
To do it. If that makes sense.
He wasn't looking to himself to be able to defeat Goliath.
His perspective was somewhere else. And so David responds, and I want to look down in verse 37. Moreover, David, said the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the line and from the paw of the bear.
He will deliver me from the hands of this Philistine.
So David isn't looking to himself to do this. David is looking to the Lord, saying.
The Lord is going to do this great thing. It's not going to be me.
And Saul said to David, Go, and the Lord be with you. So Saul clothed David with.
His armor.
And he puts on his helmet, and he puts on his sword, and he puts on his mail, and David tries to walk around in him, and he says I can't wear these things.
So David took them off, but I thought it was interesting that.
Was there, and Saul had his own armor.
But Saul didn't go out and fight him.
Right, so.
Gave David his armor for this fight.
And David realized, I can't use this stuff.
Because again, that's not where my strength is. My strength is coming from the Lord. It's not coming from this really nice shiny helmet, this really nice sharp sword, this mail, or whatever.
The victory is going to be given to me by God.
So David took off these outward.
These outward.
Armor and the outward weapons, and and he goes.
To fight the battle, but he goes through the eyes of faith.
And so over in verse 45, he comes, and he confronts Goliath. And David said to the Philistine.
You come to me with sword.
With a spear and with a javelin. But I come to you.
And the name of the Lord of Hosts.
And the God of the armies of Israel.
Whom you defied.
And then down in verse 37. Then all the assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and beard.
For the battle is the Lord's.
So David is fighting this through faith.
Right. It's it's he's not.
He's not looking for earthly armor. He's not looking for earthly weapons to defeat this giant.
He recognizes that it's God who gives the victory, and it's only gonna be God who.
Is going to work through him.
To provide this. So.
That's the that's the the backdrop. That's the.
That's the mindset that I want us to have as we look at this passage today and Ephesians chapter 6, that I just read.
We're not in a earthly battle, as it says here, we're not.
Wrestling against flesh and blood.
Our physical weapons are of no use here.
There's a different kind of enemy, and it's going to require a different kind of fight.
And so I want us to take a look at this and.
B
Sober minded about it, because we.
I've said this before. I'm sure you've all heard it before.
We? We didn't wake up today on a neutral playing ground. We woke up in enemy occupied territory.
And whether you want to be in a fight or not, you're in one.
It doesn't matter what your desire is.
You cannot be neutral in this. Either you're either the Lord or you're against him. There is no neutrality.
And so, no matter what what your desire is, you want to be divinely left alone, you won't be.
You can't be neutral. There's no spiritual Switzerland right.
You're either on one side or the other, and.
I want us to take that into consideration. As we're looking at this this morning.
So I kind of threw together an outline about.
This passage, and there's kind of 4.
Pretty much broken up into 4 sections.
The 1st section.
Is Ephesians, it's 10, and then the 1st part of verse 11.
And I called up the authority of the Almighty.
It's. It's God's authority.
In this armor in this conflict. It's God's authority that we have.
Access to our second section would be the second half of verse 11 and verse 12, and that's the antipathy of our adversary. So we have the authority of Almighty, but we also have the antipathy of our adversary. We have an enemy who's against us.
And he's trying to actively undermine God's authority in this world, and we have to be aware of it.
Versus 13, through 17.
Would be our 3rd section here, and this is the armor that's available to God's allies. So it's it's Aaa. It's roadside assistance. It's always there for you when you need it. Right. This is God's army guards.
God's armor, that we always have access to.
And so.
That is the the 3rd section, the 4th section.
Would then be versus 18 through 20.
And that's the actions of the ambassadors.
And so those are the 4 kind of sections that I want to to break this up and and to look at.
This morning. So the 1st one is.
The authority.
The Almighty.
Here in verse 10, it says finally, brethren, be strong.
In the Lord.
And then the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God.
So it's it's God's authority, it's it's what God is able to do, what God has accomplished on our behalf.
That gives us the ability to fight.
In this war we put on the whole armor of God.
If we only take certain elements of the armor, we're going to be vulnerable.
We need the whole package, or there's going to be.
Areas that we're going to be weak.
And.
We need to put the whole thing on, which means that.
It's our responsibility to do this right.
Has given it to us, and we have the ability.
To use these resources that are available to us.
But we also have the choice to not.
And when we choose not to.
We're weak and we're vulnerable.
And so we have this whole armor that's available to us.
That you may be able to.
Stand stand is a military idea.
It's to assume a position.
To resist an attack.
So if Dan just said, I hate your face, and I don't like you anymore. And he walked up here to punch me, I'd be pretty dumb to just stand here and let him do that. I would want to assume.
And this is the extent of my ability to ward him off.
Assume some kind of a position to.
To prevent that from happening.
But that's the idea. Here. It's a stand.
There's all kinds of famous stands, the battle of Thermopylae, the 300 Spartan soldiers against the 1 million.
Marauding.
Whatever they were from people who come down, and these 300 soldiers, they have their last stand, and they're warding off all these.
You know these innumerable forces that are going against them.
And so this is the idea. This we're going to stand firm. The difference between the 2 is that they were overrun. But we can't be overrun.
Right. The battle is the Lord's. He's already won it. So we're not in a last stand that's going to be sung about.
About these tragic people who were, you know, taken down and and and whatever like.
The the battle is his, the battle is won, so our stand is.
A victorious stand.
We're not going down.
We have the ability to stand.
So the idea here, though, is that we need the whole armor in order to do that.
You. You need every piece in order to make a successful stand. So it kind of implies that without the armor.
You're not going to be able to do it.
Without this divine protection, without this divine help.
We're going to be just destroyed.
And I can speak from my own experience when I'm not.
When this is not my mindset, I do get destroyed.
I don't know about you guys.
But I am so susceptible to attack. I am so.
Weak in myself when I'm looking to myself to win these.
It doesn't go very well.
When I am resting in the accomplished work of the Lord, and actually thinking about these things.
The victories.
Our shore, and and the success rate is 100%.
But my problem is is that.
Too often. I'm looking to myself, or I'm not taking this very seriously.
And then there's trouble.
So this 1st section is the authority of the Almighty.
It's God's power.
With which we have, we have the ability to.
And that is sure. And that is true.
The authority of the Almighty.
Our second point here antipathy of our adversary. Let's look at how many times the word against is used here in the second half of verse 11, and verse 12.
So put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers.
Against the rulers of the darkness of the age, against spiritual hosts.
Of wickedness in the heavenly places.
I count 6 times.
So we're against someone. We have an enemy.
There is an actual.
There is a an actual.
Group, of of.
Created beings that are.
Violently opposed to God, and trying to undermine his authority, trying to destroy what He has created.
Trying to thwart his plans purposes, and we know that they can't succeed.
But it still happens it's still going on. This is still something that we wake up in the morning, and we're bombarded with it.
And if we don't take this seriously, we're going to fail.
And I was thinking about this against the wiles of the devil.
So.
Everybody has probably seen a movie where the.
It's a military movie, or it's a police movie or something.
The the captain walks in with a picture of the target, and he slams it on the desk, and he slides it across and says, Here's the target, boys, and we need to go get them. And we need. This is where he is. And this is what we're going to do.
And I was thinking about that as I was reading this portion. This is kind of what God is doing. He's slamming the picture down against the devil. This is the enemy.
I'm going to tell you exactly who it is. It's him.
I was thinking about this against the Principalities, so that would be.
The rulers or the authority figures.
In this Satanic demonic.
Organized.
Of.
Spiritual force of people. This is not like a bugs. Bunny cartoon of this.
Red guy with a pitchfork, and he's just sort of like laughing maniacally, and it's just one person like.
This is an organised group of people who are systematically with intent.
Trying to.
Destroy God's people and destroy his purposes.
They are ruthless, they are.
Very well structured, and there's hierarchy, and there is a whole group of them out there.
I don't know how many it is. I've never seen them. Obviously.
But it doesn't mean that we don't feel their effects. We've all lived in this world long enough to recognize that there's something opposing us.
And it's not this haphazard thing.
And so God slams the picture down. He says it's the devil, and it's his people. And he says we're against these principalities. The the rulers of this system.
It's against the powers.
So that would be their authority to rule.
Against the rulers of the darkness of this age.
So it's the rulers. It's their authority. It's a specific time.
It's right now it's it's only this age. This battle is limited. This is not an eternal battle.
Right. There's going to come a day.
Where this age is over, and there's a new age.
And that new age is going to be the age of God, dwelling with man.
And all of this, this adversary, and all that, he stands for his undermining of God and His authority. That's going to be done with.
And so this is a temporary struggle.
And we already know what the end is.
But while we're here, while it's called today, we're called to stand.
We're called to resist.
And so it's against the principalities. It's against the powers, it's against the rulers of this age. It's against the spiritual wickedness.
In the heavenly places. So we know who it is.
We know what their limited authority is. We know the time that they're limited to.
And we also know their location.
So God, as a general or God is the the chief of police. He has all the intel on the enemy. He knows exactly who they are. He knows exactly what they're capable of. He knows exactly where they're located, and.
He has a plan.
To win the battle, and he wants to use us.
That's an incredible thing to me, because I look at myself. And I think, Wow, I don't think I have what it takes, and I don't. I'm looking at me like Saul is looking at David. You can't win this War man.
You're gonna go out there, and it's gonna be bad.
And that's true.
Accept that. It's not up to me.
The battle belongs to the Lord.
And he's already won, and he's given us everything that we need for this fight.
And so we know who the rulers are. We know what their authority is. We know the time that they're limited to, and we know their location.
And so.
The next thing that we look at is the armor that's available to us.
The armor that's available to God's allies.
Verse.
13, therefore.
Take up the whole armor of God.
That you may, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. That's the second time that we've been told to take up the whole armor of God 2 times.
So Paul.
Want to let us know that this is an important thing.
It's also the second time that we've been told to stand.
And then here it comes again in verse 14.
Stand there for having girded yourself.
Having girded your waist with truth.
Having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
Above all, taking the shield of faith.
Which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
And take the helmet of salvation.
And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So there's.
Basically 5 pieces of armor.
And one weapon that we have.
In this battle.
We have a.
A belt of truth.
We have a breastplate of righteousness.
We have a.
The the shoes, or the.
The footwear of peace.
We have a shield of faith, we have a helmet of salvation, and we have a sword of the Spirit.
Now I have.
All the weapons that we.
Right here.
And these are super effective.
Obviously for battle.
Because.
Why would she plastic fill? But.
So here's the idea is that we have this equipment. And I was thinking about it. I was like, where did Paul get all this imagery from like, did he? Is he just making stuff up? Or is this.
Actually like, is there? Does this.
Basically appear in the Bible at other places.
And it was interesting to me, as I was starting to ask those questions and think about it.
In.
The belt of.
Belt of truth.
I was thinking about in Proverbs.
Chapter 3. Let not mercy and truth forsake you.
Bind them around your neck.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
So this idea of we're binding truth around us.
That's a significant thing.
That.
That this isn't like. He didn't just pick this out of the air, and it was just like a belt of truth.
This is pointing back to something. And so this idea of we're binding truth around us.
What is truth?
Truth, we might say, is the objective reality.
About who God is.
And what is done, who we are. As a result.
Of God's finished work in Jesus.
So.
To narrow it down.
Truth is, what is.
It's, it's, it's objective reality. This is what truth is.
And so that's what God gives us. Why does God give us.
Like this belt of truth? Why is truth so important.
Why is that the 1st one that's mentioned here.
Especially if he later says, above all, take up the shield of faith. Wouldn't faith then be the most important.
But it seems like truth.
Would be the 1st one and the most natural one to lead off.
Because the devil attacks us.
With lies.
Satan is the father of lies. So that's the 1st thing when we think about the Garden of Eden, the very 1st thing.
That Satan did? Was he undermined God by telling Eve a lie?
It wasn't an enormous lie, but it was just enough truth to cause a shadow of doubt on the character of God, but it was.
It wasn't true. It was off.
And so we need this belt of truth. I was thinking about belts.
A belt goes around your waist, your waist is like your stomach, and your stomach is your appetites.
And this idea of the truth.
Is
Protecting us.
And even like our appetites, sometimes tell us things like, Hey.
You need that 3rd piece of chocolate cake.
And your belt reminds you you don't need that 3rd piece of chocolate cake. The truth is, you've had enough already.
And so your belt is protecting you. Your belt is there to.
Keep everything together.
And so the belt of truth that's buckled around your waist.
The devil attacks us with lies, so.
A lie would be a falsehood about who God is, about, what he's done, about who we are.
So isn't incredible. That exactly where Satan attacks us.
Is exactly where God provides armor to protect us.
You ever think about that.
Right where we're vulnerable.
That's where God supplies us with exactly what we need.
We are prone to believing lies. And so he.
Gives us this safeguard of.
And we find truth in the Bible we find truth.
The person of Jesus Christ. He's the embodiment of truth.
And so we have this safeguard.
We have this.
This piece of armor, that right where Satan wants us to be weak right where he knows that we are weak. God's protection comes in and saves us.
Number 2, the breastplate of righteousness.
What is righteousness. I was thinking about this for a while, and.
The best thing that I could.
And come up with was that righteousness is.
It's being in good standing with God.
It's upholding God's values.
God is, is.
God is righteous. And I was thinking about how could that be the case? But God exists in a triune Godhead where there's.
3 distinct personalities, that.
Combine the one true God.
And so there's relationship between.
The aspects of the Godhead, and.
They exist in good standing with each other.
Jesus Christ is pleasing to God the Father, even though they're one.
They're they're.
I don't know. How do you talk about the Trinity? It doesn't make any sense. But.
Like they're
Their ability to relate to each other isn't always in perfect standing.
The same with the Holy Spirit, and and so they're all in good standing with each other. And so we have the righteousness of God.
In Jesus Christ.
So we have.
Perfect standing with God.
And.
So righteousness.
Is being in good standing.
So if if we were to perform a righteous act, it would be something that would be honoring to God.
That's the best I could come up with. If you have something better use that. I'm sorry. That's what God gives us. God gives us.
There's there's good standing. He gives us this shield of protection over our hearts. Why would our hearts need to be protected.
Why why is is this.
Something, and.
It's because our hearts are prone to wander. We're prone to leave the God that we love.
And he's protecting us there. He also knows that that's where the devil attacks us. He attacks our righteousness.
He wants us to either believe that we're self-righteous. We're good enough on our own.
Or that we're not righteous at all.
Right you. You're not good enough.
Or you're fine apart from God. He doesn't care which way you go.
He's nondiscriminate as long as you choose.
Self-righteousness or no righteousness.
But he does not want us to believe that God is our righteousness, and God is.
Good enough.
That that what he's done is good enough for us.
So that's where he attacks us. And so that's why we need this armor.
Well this idea of righteousness as a breastplate. Where does that come from?
Isaiah, 59 is.
Really.
Beautiful and poignant passage about.
How God.
Saw, the the wicked.
And the the hearts being far from him, and how separate.
His people were away from him, and justice is far from us. No one does righteous.
We looked for light, but there was darkness, and it's just bad bad time.
And down in Isaiah, 59, in verse 15. Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased him.
That there was no justice. He saw that there was no man.
And wondered that there was no intercessor.
Therefore his own arm.
Brought salvation for him.
And his own righteousness.
It's sustained, and for he put on.
Righteousness as a breastplate.
And the helmet of salvation on his head.
And down in verse 20, the Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression. And Jacob says, The Lord, so God is using the breastplate of righteousness. He's using the helmet of salvation. This is his own imagery.
To redeem his people.
So that that would.
That would be our.
Goal as well. We're here as his representatives on this earth.
To, to seek out and define those who are lost and those who are far away, and to bring them back to God.
We read that this morning, and.
I think Dan talked about it in a second.
Corinthians,
Where ambassadors.
I don't remember where it was, but we're ambassadors on God's behalf here, and our mission is to.
Essentially speak for the Lord we're speaking on his behalf.
Be redeemed. God, like.
God has has paved this way, and so the breastplate of righteousness.
This is God's own imagery of how he saves his people.
And now it's being applied to us on his behalf. The righteousness of God applied to us that we can go out and be a part of this.
Redeeming work. Incredible.
The shoes of peace.
What is peace would be harmony. Peace would be being at the right place at the right time.
It's.
That that's the the feeling of peace. But then there's also the stated piece, which would be like an official government act where we're not at war with somebody. Now we have peace.
There was a time where we were at war with Germany, and then.
At the end of the war peace was made. And now we're not at war with Germany anymore. There's an official we can have relationship with each other. Because of this declaration of peace.
And this is what.
We have to protect our feet.
I was thinking about that. Our feet. Why would our feet need to be peace?
But like.
So.
Satan and attacks us with anxiety. We get nervous feet. Do you ever watch a football game?
And the commentators talk about the quarterback's nervous feet. He's moving all around in the pocket. He doesn't seem settled, and he's shifting this way or that way.
We can be like that. I I'm not confident that I'm where I'm supposed to be, and so I'm going to come over here. I'm going to do this, or I'm going to do that. Well, if we're on a battlefield.
And we're arm to arm.
With soldier to the right, soldier, to the.
If somebody's like really nervous and moving all around the line isn't going to be very strong. You're not going to be very effective.
But if you're if your feet.
Are sure of what they're standing on. If you have peace.
In your feet. Then you're going to stand firm. You're going to be able to resist.
And that's exactly again how the devil attacks us. You need to do more. You're not doing enough. You need to be this. You need to be that. And so we can get nervous, and we can start thinking about well, I'm not in the right place. I'm not doing what I need to be doing. I need to be moving here. I need to be moving there.
But that's not the the armor that we've been given.
The armor that we have is.
The the shoes of peace.
And again, this is another callback to Isaiah. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news.
Who proclaims peace.
Who brings glad tidings.
Of God, things who proclaim salvation, who says, I am your God, reigns again. This idea of this is the redemptive work.
The feet of peace, the shoes of peace that are bringing the good news.
Of the gospel, that.
Your God reigns, and God is for you, and this is what we have on our feet.
Which is exactly where Satan hits us.
He wants us to be in doubt. He wants us.
To
Be nervous and anxious, and moving all around.
The shield of faith.
With which you will be able to quench.
All the fiery darts of the wicked one.
We've got a.
An engineer at work who anytime I write all in a report. He's like, you want to be really careful about all.
All means, everyone. And if you didn't test every single one of these, you don't want to say all because that might give the idea that we did more than what we did, and.
He's he's very good, and I've learned a lot from him.
And so I try not to use the word all. But when I saw that here I was, like all the fiery darts of the wicked one. So you want to be careful.
Because if you say all that actually means all.
And yet here it is.
You will be able to.
All the fiery darts of the wicked one with the shield of.
So we have specific.
Bits of armor that protect specific parts of our body.
And yet we have this shield, which is much bigger and much more effective than the one that.
I brought that is able to protect the whole body.
The the areas that were weak.
We're holding onto this, and this can be moved. And this can be used to quench every single fiery dart that the wicked one.
Sends our way.
Faith.
I was thinking about where.
In the Old Testament. It's number of times.
Where it specifically talks about God being your shield. It's in proverbs. It's in the Psalms.
God is your shield, but.
I was thinking about how the 1st time that I could think about it was.
In Genesis, when.
Abraham or Abram at the time comes back.
From battle against.
The King of.
The different kings, or whatever, and he has that interaction with the king of Sodom. And then God comes to him and says.
Abraham, I am your shield.
Your very great reward, and that's the section.
That's I think it's Genesis 15 where he is talking to Abram about his future.
Air, and everyone's like I don't have an air, and so he tells him to go look up at the stars and.
Abraham believes him, and it's credited him as righteousness. So that's kind of like the 1st really seminal moment of faith.
And Abraham's life, and.
I was thinking about how. That's the exact same where.
God comes to him, says, I'm your shield. And so Abraham by faith believes that, and.
I don't know. I just thought it was.
Beautiful, but the devil attacks us with doubt. He wants us to.
Not believe in God's character. He wants us not to believe in His Word. He wants us not to believe in God's love for us, or his provision for us, or whatever it is.
And so we have this shield of faith.
By which we can quench all the fiery darts of the enemy.
The helmet of Salvation.
Salvation is the Shorty.
Of the rescue.
Once we've been rescued. Once you've been saved from a burning building.
Like once you're out of it.
Do you.
You can kind of live this traumatic life.
Where you you don't believe that you've been rescued, and you can kind of always live in fear, or you can believe that you've been saved, and that everything's okay. Now.
And
So we have this helmet of salvation that's protecting our mind.
The helmet not only protects our minds, though, but I was thinking Jamie and I were talking about it, and she's the one who actually brought it up.
Protects our eyes, protects our ears, protects our mouth, it protects our whole head.
It's. It's more than just our minds. It's it's everything in our head. And it's this salvation that we have in Jesus Christ that.
God has given to us. And that's again exactly how the devil attacks us.
He wants to disparage the Savior.
He wants to hold up old warrants for arrest, and say, Look, you're still mine. I still got you these old custody papers. These are still true.
And they're not. God has saved us from that. We don't have to live there anymore.
And so again, exactly where we're hit, exactly where we're weak. That's where God provides strength.
The sword of the Spirit is the only weapon that we have, and it's effective against warding off.
Every single attack from the enemy.
We're out of time, but we see that in the temptation of Jesus Christ.
That's the only.
He uses that against.
His own temptation with Satan. He just simply speaks the word of God, and that's it.
This is what we have.
This is our one weapon is the word of God.
Do we know what it says? Are we studying it? Are we effective.
I'll tell you. There's many times where I find myself.
Floundering, for.
Knowing how to combat.
Different temptations that I'm faced with, because.
I don't know the Word of God like I should, and that's egg on my face.
But we can still get better. We can still improve. There's still room for growth.
So we've we've looked at the authority of the Almighty. We've looked at the antipathy of our adversary.
We've looked up the armor that's available to God's allies.
And lastly, this won't take long.
The actions of the ambassadors were called to 2 things in this chapter.
Verse 18, praying.
Always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. Being watchful to this end, with.
All perseverance and supplication.
For all the saints.
All prayer, all perseverance for all the saints.
That's our. That's 1 of our 2 calls to action here.
Is that we're praying for each other. What are we praying for?
An ability to stand an ability to.
With stand.
We're praying to strengthen each other. We're praying to encourage each other. Our enemies is not each other. Our enemies is.
The the wicked one, and he wants to stir us up against each other so that we're ineffective.
But our call is to pray for each other.
And lastly, our second call to action.
And for me, that the utterance may be given to me, that when I open my mouth.
Boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I'm an ambassador in chains.
That in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. So there's 4 different ways that Paul here is saying.
That he is trying to proclaim the gospel he utterances, opening my mouth, make known! Speak.
And he wants to do this boldly. He wants to proclaim Jesus Christ to people who don't know it.
So we're to pray for each other, and we're to boldly proclaim the good news of the gospel. We're ambassadors.
Ambassadors are representatives.
To a foreign government.
If the United States or the United States Ambassador to.
Russia. He's an agent of the United States, and so he's representing the United States. Their values, our character traits.
He's going for us, and he's speaking for us on foreign soil.
So that's what we're doing today. This is not our home.
We are ambassadors for Christ.
We are here for a while.
For a time during this conflict.
And we're speaking.
Our supreme authority, and we're representing him.
And this is one of our 2 calls to action.
We pray for each other, and we're sharing the good news of the gospel with the people who need to hear it.
I'm thankful for the armor of God. I'm thankful that it's better than this cheap stuff.
I'm thankful that when we wake up in the morning we have the ability to put on the entire armor of God every day, and we can go out and be victorious in this world.
Let's pray.
Our Heavenly Father. We thank you for your word again. We just thank you that you have.
Already told us in the Book of Revelation, how this all ends.
As sure as the noses on my face, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.
You will be victorious in this conflict.
Jesus says, Take heart, for I have overcome the world. This is a done deal.
And we're just so thankful to be your children. We're thankful that you provided for us exactly where we're weak.
And help us all to collectively rely on you.
And to use the armor that's available to us, that we might.
Wind soles for Christ, and encourage each other along the way. It's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen.
Thanks.