Ephesians 6:10
So hear God’s word, Ephesians
chapter six, beginning at verse 10. This is the apostle Paul
sort of giving his closing to the epistle. He says, 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 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. 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 as 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. Amen. This is God’s holy and
inspired word. In the book of Ephesians, you
have the apostle Paul writing whole lot of wonderful theological
passages. And in the early chapters of
Ephesians, he takes us to this little phrase, that in Christ
Jesus, we have been raised up and we have been seated in the
heavenly places. In a real sense, though, your
feet do touch the ground. All of you have shoes on and
you’re walking this earth. You are living in a higher plane,
a spiritual realm, a realm where there is a cosmic battle between
good and evil. Probably many of you in your
Sunday school and even vacation Bible school days, you had a
lesson on the whole armor of God. And maybe if you go back
to the felt board days, I can remember those. where you had
a little soldier and you took the felt board and you put on
him the shield and the sword and the buckle and the breastplate
and the shoes. To many of us, it was kind of
cutesy. You’re gonna be in a battle, so you need battle equipment. And it hearkened back maybe even
to the same flannel board characters as David and Goliath. Remember
David was gonna fight against Goliath and he was given Saul’s
armor. It was a little too big for him.
And so he goes out there, not in the strength of men, but in
the strength of the Lord. And so I want us to understand
as we embark on a study of Ephesians chapter six, verses 10 through
20, this whole armor of God study, I want us to understand that
we live with a serious enemy. And it’s not cutesy felt board,
flannel board, Sunday school cartoons. We are in a real battle. Now we understand, we know well
that there are three classic enemies. for the Christian. What are they? You know them.
The world, the flesh, and the devil. We know and understand
the world as an enemy very well. We understand the world has its
ways, its rules, its way to go about life, and it is a worldly
system and not a godly or heavenly system. We know about the flesh. We know about remaining sin in
us. We know that in our justification,
our sin is pardoned, and that in our sanctification, our sin
is subdued. But there is that old nature
in us. There is that old man in us. There’s that remnant of
sin inherited by us from Adam that is pardoned. We’ll never
stand judgment for it. and it is subdued, it is still
there. And remember, we often speak
of that remnant sin as all it needs is a little fuel and you
can cause a raging fire and that sin can reign in your life for
a time. But the devil, the devil is an
enemy. We don’t think about that very
often. We think of the devil as a funny little creature with
a, what do we say, a bifurcated tail and a pitchfork. And some
of you who know my family are Duke fans, you come up to us
and you say, why would you cheer for a devil? We have our little
jokes. Some of y’all remember down the
way when Graham High School used to be, what’s their motto now?
They’re still the Red Devils. Are they still the Red Devils?
Yes. Oh, good for them. Good for them. Good for them.
But the devil is something of a joke, something of a cartoon.
So we make too little of the devil at times. but often we
can make too much of the devil. Martin Luther said it so well.
He said, the devil is God’s devil. He is God’s devil and God has
got him on a chain. I think I’ve told some of y’all
before about in our family’s furniture business and Graham,
we have a set of warehouses. And when I was a little younger,
we used to go up to the warehouse with my grandfather on a Sunday
afternoon. He always had to go check the warehouses and whoever
drew the short straw and was sitting in the far passenger
side of the truck, had to take Papa George’s keys and go open
the gate. Well, along either side of the
gate were Doberman pinchers. You know what a Doberman pincher
is. They’re the meanest, nastiest looking dogs until Pit Bulls
came along. Well, he bought the food. for the owners on either
side. They were houses he owned, and
these were renters, and he paid for the food and kept up these
dogs for the sake of keeping people out of his warehouses.
And I remember those Doberman pinchers, they were on chains.
Now you’re not allowed to tether a dog. I think that’s inhumane,
as we like to say for animals. They’re not human, but anyway,
these dogs would be on chains, and they would run the length
of the fence. They’re teeth snarling, and guess what would happen when
they got to the short end of the chain? And the whiplash would
come. That’s what the devil is like.
He’s God’s devil. These were our doberman pinchers.
These were to protect the family furniture business. This is God’s
devil. He’s on a chain. He can only
go so far and his chain catches him, ka-chink. So we don’t want
to give the devil too little and just poke fun, but we don’t
want to give him too much. So our study of Ephesians six,
I think can help us in that. We’re told in this passage, put
on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against
the schemes of the devil. Verse 11 tells us that. And then
if you go on and look at verse 12, it says, we don’t wrestle
against flesh and blood. Just as you are not really standing
on dirt and clay ground, you’re up in the heavenly places. You’re
seated with Christ. Your battle is not against your
neighbor, flesh and blood. It’s against rulers. It’s against authorities. It’s
against the cosmic powers over this present darkness and against
the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. That’s
why we must take up the whole armor of God. But let’s land
for just a few moments on verse 10. It says, finally, be strong
in the Lord and in the strength of his might. So the apostle
Paul is at the end of this letter that he’s writing to the Ephesian
church. He’s writing this letter and
he’s gone through chapters one, two, three, four, and five. He’s
explained to them about how God, before the foundation of the
world, chose us in Christ to be a blessing. He chose us in
Christ to do good works. He chose us in Christ and he
goes on and on about all the spiritual blessings we have in
Christ Jesus as we live in the heavenly places. And then he
begins to explain how that works itself out in the church. God
has given us pastors and teachers to equip us to do the work of
the ministry, He wants us to grow up in the knowledge of Christ.
Then he goes on and talks about marriage. He talks about children.
He talks about those who are under the authority of a master.
And then he talks to us about how he wants us to live in light
of this cosmic battle taking place. Now you can’t understand
the cosmic battle of Ephesians chapter 6 without first going
back to the early chapters of Ephesians and realizing that
if you’re raised up in Christ through salvation, you are in
this battle. You’re not just living on the
dirt of the earth, you are living in a spiritual realm where there’s
a real spiritual war. But there’s also something else
in the Bible you can’t ignore. You can’t ignore all of the Old
Testament imagery about the people of God battling against the enemies
of God. Think about the life of Joshua. and Caleb, think about Saul and
his battles, David and his battles. Think about the conquest of the
promised land. Think about all of the battle
scenes you read about in the Bible. And you remember over
and over and over that the same theme that we basically pick
up with in Ephesians chapter six, verse 10 is there. We fight battles. We fight battles
with big, bad, scary enemies. We fight foes like Goliath. We
fight foes like Herod. We fight foes like the Assyrians. We fight foes that outnumber
us in battles that we can never win, but we don’t do it in our
own strength. We don’t count up the noses of
men and soldiers and say, we got this, we’re okay. No, we
do what Ephesians chapter 6, 10 says. Finally be strong in
the Lord and in the strength of His might. I don’t know if
you think about it very often, but we are soldiers. We are athletes. We are those
who persevere. That’s how the Bible portrays
us as Christians. We are instruments of war, and
we live the Christian life. And we live the Christian life
in the strength of God Almighty. And guess what? Anybody who comes
up against us is up against a formidable force. Do you remember? Was it
10, 12, 15 years ago? 15 years ago, I guess now. What
did our president, then George W. Bush, say the people in the
Middle East were going to see when we showed up? It was shock
and awe. And friends, that’s what we have
at our disposal as Christians. We have shock. We have awe. We
have the formidable tools of battle from the divine, from
our God, we forget very often that when we come to these little
battle phrases in the New Testament, we forget how big and bad God
is in the old. Think back to a couple instances. There was that time when the
Assyrians numbered, what, 144,000? And they saw them in the battlefield
and one leader said to another, let me show you something. And
they looked and on the mountains beyond were the host of heaven.
And those hosts of heaven routed all the Assyrians and they whipped
them and put them to death. And over and over and over, we
read examples of how when God fights our battles, it goes well. Think of David and Goliath. David
was nothing against Goliath, but he did what the Lord told
him. And there was victory, God’s people were saved. So finally,
be strong in the Lord. I want you to understand something
about this command. It is a command. Be strong in
the Lord. It’s not a suggestion. It’s not a suggestion that, oh,
life is hard, so be strong. You know, put it up on the fridge. I mean, that’s not a bad thing
to do. This isn’t a cutesy little biblical reminder. This is a
divine command imperative. Be strong. And it comes to us
in the middle voice. Now you know what middle voice
is, right? Middle voice is something you can’t do yourself. Be strong
in the Lord. If you and I were standing and
we could see the cosmic battle right in front of our eyes, what
would we say? Not me. No, thank you. I think I’ll go
home and I’ll lock the door and I’ll get under the covers and
I’ll put my pillow over my head. But God is saying to us, when
you see this battle, when you see this spiritual warfare, you
be strong in the Lord. Be strong in the Lord. He is
the source and in the strength of his might. One of the things I hope we have
learned as we’ve made our way through the Psalms now, Psalm 75, is
we see over and over in all these various Psalms, a display of
God’s character, a display of God’s wonderful character, his
strength. I think particularly of Psalm
24. Psalm 24 is one of those wonderful Psalms that speaks
of God’s strength. And if you think of Psalm 24,
it says, He who has clean hands and a
pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false,
who does not swear deceitfully, he will receive blessing from
the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation, such
as the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of
the God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O gates,
and be lifted up, O ancient doors. that the King of glory may come
in. Who is this King of glory? It’s the Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates,
lift them up, ancient doors, that the King of glory may come
in. Who is the King of glory? It is the Lord of host. He is the King of glory. Who
is this Lord of host? It’s Yahweh and his army of the
host of heaven. And that is who is at our defense. That is who is our strength.
And that is who we have on our side, the infinite God, the divine
warrior, the creator, the one who makes you able. He is the
one who raises even the dead. And so what is our response to
this command? What is our response to be strong
in the Lord? Well, what’s the very next phrase?
We’ll get into it in the coming weeks, but what’s the very first
phrase of verse 11? Put on the whole armor of God.
Don’t put on, your concealed carry. Don’t go get your boxing
gloves or your blackjack or maybe the baseball bat that you keep
in the corner in case somebody breaks in the house in the night.
Don’t go get your brass knuckles from your karate days or gangster
days or whatever. Don’t go get your human weapons.
Put on the whole armor of God. And so in the coming weeks, we’ll
take a peek at what this means, what this battle looks like. But I want us to end with this
thought from verse 11. The result of putting on the
whole armor of God, the result of being strong in the Lord is
that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. Isn’t it a great grace that God
in Christ Jesus has provided us with these great gifts? Let’s pause and pray together.
Our Lord, we thank you so much that in this dark world, in this
world full of deceitfulness, this world full of trickery,
we can find strength and grace to make this battle through you
and through what you provide. Help us, help us to see that
the battle is real and that the tools you give us, the resources
from heaven are ours. We pray it in Christ’s name.
Amen.