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Live out Loud: Living your life as God created you in Christ to live
Ephesians 6:10-20
Do you believe that life is war or are we living in peacetime?
If we are in wartime and not peacetime, what has caused this?
I submit to you that if you want to live the life that God has intended that you live, you will enter into a spiritual battle.
I want to look at the life that God wants us to live according to Ephesians 6:10-20.
The life that God wants us to live actually comes before our text.
In fact the whole book of Ephesians is written to describe the believers union with Christ.
We are in Christ.
In Eph.
1-3 Paul gives us the doctrine of our position in Christ.
He gives a list of our spiritual blessings.
He then gives us our duty, our responsibility of living as a Christian in 4-6.
We are to live lives worthy of the call to which you have been called, 4:1
He then uses the word: “walk” five times to show us how we ought to be walking worthy of the call to be in Christ.
If you desire to live this way you enter into a spiritual battle that Paul says is a struggle, it is a war.
A Christian who no longer has to struggle against the world, the flesh, and the Devil is a Christian who has fallen into sin or into complacency.
They are like the church of Ephesus who it was said they have lost their first love.
A Christian who has no conflict is a Christian who has retreated from the front lines of service.
There is a danger in preaching on spiritual warfare.
If we focus too much on Satan we can become over the top with more concentration on him, even more that the scriptures give him.
He is a defeated foe.
His plans to be like God and to be worshipped have been defeated.
He is a defeated foe who uses trickery to keep the world under his control.
He cannot control the believer but he can trip us up and cause us to feel defeated and discouraged, which will make us in effective for the Lord’s work.
The other danger is to not be alert or aware of all the evil forces around us.
If the Lord were to give us a peak into it, it would horrify us.
I can personally recall a time in my life when I became discouraged.
I was serving the Lord as an evangelist in the MD area.
I let my guard down.
I was not living in sin.
I was not taking my stand against the enemy.
I was not passionate or intense toward the Lord’s Word or His work.
I was just doing my duty.
After a period of time, I lost my passion and joy of serving the Lord.
I was defeated and lost my desire to do anything for the Lord.
As believers in Christ we are no only God’s children, and his servants but we are also His soldiers, sent forth to do battle with the enemy.
Finally: Paul is calling us to action, the trumpet is being sounded forth, we are being beckoned to do battle with the enemy.
Between the two comings of Christ will be characterized by conflict.
The peace that God has won through the cross is to be experienced in the midst of struggle against evil.
In order to take a stand against the enemy:
1) We need to be strengthen by the Lord verse 10, 11a
a) We need to admit our weakness: We cannot live the Christian life without God’s strength.
We need to see ourselves as nothing without the Lord.
John 15:5
We cannot be self reliant, and cocky Christians trying to live on our own strength.
Illustration: Gideon story in Judges 7
b) The Lord is the one who strengthens us on a continual basis.
Present/ passive/ imperative
The Lord is calling us to know God’s strength (1:15-20) and to draw closer to Him.
It is an exhortation to act on what is known.
So don’t just know about His great power use it, live in His strength.
It is not so much how much strength that we have but who the source of our strength is.
What exactly is this power?
Paul spoke earlier in Ephesians about his desire for the church to know or realize the power that was working in them.
It is the same power that raised Christ from the dead.
We need not fear the Devil, because:
God is ultimately in control of the world.
He created all that we see through the power of His word.
He created the spiritual world Col. 1:16.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Satan is no match for God.
God is our mighty fortress; we need to take refuge in Him.
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
That Word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
God has secured us the victory because of the cross
Col. 2: 14, 15
“having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.
And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”
The cross has made us more than conquerors.
For He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col.
1:13)
We who are believers in Christ have the strength of the Lord just because we have the Lord in our lives.
But in another sense we need to appropriate His strength, which comes through his grace- prayer, knowledge of and obedience to the Word, and faith in the promises of God.
We need to avail ourselves of His power and the next verse tells us how.
In order to stand against the enemy:
2) We need God’s Armor.
Verse 11
Paul says, “Put on the armor of God.” Since we know that the battle we are engaged in is a spiritual one, then the armor must be spiritual as well.
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