Sermon Tone Analysis

*SPIRITUAL WARFARE: PART 2: ARMOR: PART 1*

 

"In spite of all the complications of our life, path and ministry, if we closely examine our weapons we will find that they are invisible and intangible, and therefore cannot be snatched from us by the KGB or any persecutors in any country.

These spiritual weapons are accessible and active everywhere -- they are not subject to territorial limitations.

They cross all borders freely because they are passed vertically, from above.

These weapons cannot be destroyed by listening devices, by electronics, nor by prisons!

Our weapons are powerful, because the Lord God is acting on our behalf!

Even though there are so many arrests now, neither prayer nor faith, neither trust nor righteousness have been taken from us.

Nothing at all has been taken, because these weapons are made powerful by God!"

 

We have many difficulties, but God's weapons are powerful, and help us to overcome our enemy!

 

2 Corinthians 10:4-5:  "/The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

5  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ/." (NIV)

 

Gennady K. Kryuchkov, President of the Council of Evangelical Baptist Churches:

 

In this sermon, I want us to look at the first three weapons which help us to defeat our enemy, Satan.

We will look at the remaining weapons in the next sermon.

(REVIEW): Last message: We set the stage, by looking at Ephesians as an orientation about the Christian life as to why spiritual warfare is essential.

We covered three areas that provide a background for our topic: a) the city of Ephesians and its involvement in worshipping false gods; b) that Christ is exalted and we are able to have conquest over the enemy; c) the character, or nature of spiritual warfare.

Now, we are ready to launch in to this sermon.

Ephesians 6: 13-15:

* *

*13  Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15  and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

*(NIV)

 

The theme of chapter 6 in Ephesians can be taken from this section, which is "the church is a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

Ephesians, chapter six begins with the Christian in His relationships:

 

God begins with the Christian in his or her home.

Then God has something to say to him or her as a contributor to the welfare of contemporary society.

Now, Paul uses the language of a Christians as a soldier, and that as soldiers, we have an enemy.

There is a battle being fought.

As a child of God is in a battle, and the battle is being fought along spiritual lines.

As individuals, and the church, we need to prepare ourselves for battle, taking on our weapons to defeat the enemy.

Our warfare is in progress now!

There is a demonic world around us and it is manifesting itself at the present hour.

It is happening, and you and I alone -- in our own power -- are no match for it.

Satan has a well-organized group, and his organization is manipulating in this world right now.

The heartbreak, the heartache, the suffering, the tragedies of life are the work of Satan in the background.

He is the cause of the great problems that are in the world today.

We have the enemy located and identified.

That enemy is spiritual.

It is Satan who heads up his demonic forces.

Satan is like a roaring lion, and wants to devour us!

We need to wake up!

In our Ephesians passage, Paul listed seven spiritual weapons (one furnishing).

Five of these are objective endow­ments from God: 1) truth, 2) righteousness, 3) the gospel, 4) salvation and 5) the Spirit~/the word of God.

Two of them, stress our responsibility: faith and prayer.

Our responsibility is also implicit in the five gifts from God.

While this list of spiritual resources (“weapons”) does not exhaust all divine bestowments avail­able to Christians, it represents the essence of all that is vital to waging successful warfare against the powers of darkness.

The nature of spiritual warfare, as Paul portrayed it here, is primar­ily concerned with Christian conduct and spreading the gospel—not with exorcism or eradicating structural evil.

The heart of spiritual warfare could best be summarized as resistance and proclamation.

Let's now talk more about this warfare & our first three weapons:

 

 

As the representatives of God’s kingdom here on earth, we find ourselves involved in an all-out war with a highly-organized opposing kingdom ruled by Satan.

This is a kingdom of evil spirit-beings (persons without bodies) whose headquarters are in the heavenly realms.

The battleground on which this war is being fought is the minds of humanity.

Satan has built up strongholds of prejudice and unbelief in the minds of the human race to keep them from receiving the truth of the gospel.

His *main weapon*, therefore, is *deception*.

If Satan can deceive, we begin to crumble.

If he cannot deceive us, then the enemy is rendered powerless.

Our God-given task is to break down these mental strongholds, thus releasing men and women from Satan’s deception, and then bring them into submission and obedience to Christ.

Our ability to achieve this God-given task depends mainly upon two factors.

First, that we see clearly from Scripture that on the cross Jesus totally defeated Satan on our behalf and that it is now our responsibility to demonstrate and administer the victory which Jesus has already won.

Second, that we make proper use of the necessary spiritual weapons with which God has provided us.

In verse 13 of our text, Paul gives a further reason, “/That you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm/.”

Notice the phrase, “the evil day.”

{I do not believe this means the Great Tribulation or some prophetic disaster that is going to come on the world (although I do believe there may be such disasters).}

I believe in that context “the evil day” refers to something that every Christian will go through.

This will be a time when a believer must confront the forces of evil, where his or her faith is going to be challenged, and where every kind of opposition and problem will be loosed against the believer.

Paul does not question our need to face the evil day.

It is not an option but a certainty.

There is a parable that Jesus gave concerning two men who built houses (Matt.

7:26-27).

The foolish man built on sand, and the wise man built on rock.

The foolish man’s house collapsed, but the wise man’s house stood.

The difference between those two houses was not the tests to which they were subjected because each house was subjected to the same test the wind, the rain, the storm and the flood.

The difference was the foundation on which they were built.

Nothing in the Scripture indicates that we, as Christians, will escape these tests.

We will not escape “the evil day,” we must be prepared to go through it.

In the light of this, Paul says, “/Put on the whole armor of God/.”

The verb /aorist/ is an im­perative, which construction issues a command given with military snap and curtness, a command to be obeyed at once and once for all.

Thus, the Christian is to take up and put on all the armor of God as a once-for-all act and keep that armor on during the entire course of his life, not relaxing the discipline necessary for the constant use of such protection.

Paul takes his picture from -- more than likely -- a Roman soldier of his day and lists six pieces of equipment that a Roman soldier would normally wear.

Let me list them for you:

 

First, the belt of truth;

 

Second, the breastplate righteousness;

 

Third (a furnishing), the shoes of preparation of the gospel;

 

Fourth, the shield of faith;

 

Fifth, the helmet of salvation;

 

Sixth, the sword of the Spirit.

A seventh, not worn, but a weapon or "energy," is prayer.

If you put on these first six pieces of equipment, you will be fully protected from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet with one exception.

There is no protection for the back, which we will discuss at the end.

Here are the first three:

 

*1.)

The Belt of Truth:  *The first item of equipment is the belt of truth.

We must understand why a Roman soldier would need a belt as part of his equipment.

Remember that in those days, men s clothing (as well as women’s) was usually a loose garment that came at least to the knees.

In the case of the soldier, it was a kind of tunic.

When a Roman soldier was required to do something active, such as fight or use his weapons, he would need to take care of that loose garment.

If he did not, its flaps and folds would hinder his movements and prevent him from using the rest of his equipment effectively.

The first thing he had to do was to tie his belt tightly around his waist in such a way that the tunic no longer flapped freely and could not hinder his further movements.

This was essential and it was the basis for everything else.

That is a good explanation as to why probably Paul mentions the belt of truth before he speaks about anything else.

Quite often the Bible speaks about a man “girding up his loins” (i.e., Acts 12:8; 1 Peter 1:13).

This is what is meant by that phrase.