A Warrior's Mindset

“A Warrior’s Mindset”

Topic: Spiritual Warfare

Text: 1 Peter 5:8 & Ephesians 6:10–24

Introduction

Tuesday, June 6, 1944; 6:30 a.m.: 5,000 ships carrying 160,000 Allied Troops approached the southern beaches in France for the largest invasion in modern history, what we know now as D-Day.

Some of the men who survived the invasion said that they remember the steady stream of exhortations being broadcast over the ship intercoms in the final minutes as the ships approached the French beaches.

· ‘Fight to get your troops ashore. Fight to save your ships. And if you’ve got any strength left, fight to save yourself.’

· ‘We may die on the sands of France, but we will never turn back.’

· ‘This is it. Pick it up. Put it on. You’ve got a one-way ticket and this is the end of the line.’

Over 2,500 Americans died that day, many in a span of about 15 minutes. As the boats reached the shores, disembarking soldiers literally had to crawl over the bodies of other soldiers to get ashore.

Images like that make us grateful for the men and women who have given their lives for the cause of freedom, but I share it to emphasize that the men that approached the beach at Normandy that day had no delusions about what they were walking into.

· None of them thought they were going to an exotic beach in France for a vacation.

· They knew they were walking headfirst into the onslaught of an enemy who wanted nothing more than to destroy them.

At the end of the book of Ephesians Paul pulls back the curtain on life and shows us that we are in the midst of a battle no less stringent with an enemy no less fierce.

· The tragedy is that many of us have no idea we are even in a battle.

· We approach life as if it were a vacation, rather than a war; like a playground rather than a battleground.

· But it’s not. And you and I might wish all day long it were, but that doesn’t change the fact that we really are in a battle, with a real enemy. And unless we wake up to that, we’ll probably end up as one of the casualties.

· How silly to show up on D-Day with a beach towel and ducky.

· But that’s how many of us spiritually are showing up for this battle.

So, Paul starts his conclusion to the book of Ephesians by saying, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, (not earthly powers) against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12

· Some of you are like, “Are we about to become a weird church, now?” Umm… maybe. But first, if the ushers would come forward with the poisonous snakes.

· Just kidding. Snakes come at the end of the service.

· But I want to start with the obvious: Paul believed in an unseen spiritual realm.

· And for what’s it worth, Jesus did, too.

In fact, Jesus spent a large portion of his ministry in direct conflict with the demonic and summarized his whole ministry as proclaiming liberty to captives. Captives, of course, imply that there is someone or something you are captive to.

So, Paul just picks up right where Jesus left off.

· Throughout Ephesians he refers to the believer’s life as a struggle, a fight, and warfare against evil forces.

· And he’s going to end the book of Ephesians with a list of weapons we need to engage in that warfare.

C.S. Lewis said, “When it comes to the demonic, people usually fall into one of two errors—Either they take him altogether too seriously or they do not take him seriously enough.”

· Maybe you’ve known some Christians who fit into that first category. They attribute to Satan every inconvenient circumstance—a dead car battery, a traffic jam, a price increase at Chick-fl-A. “Oh, Chicken sandwiches are now $3.40. Satan’s trying to ruin my budget so I can’t tithe.”

· But others commit an equally dangerous error—they ignore him altogether. Not only does that ignore a significant theme in the Scriptures, if what Jesus said is true it would be like walking onto the beaches of Normandy with no clue there was an enemy with machine guns pointed right at you!

(PTR) Satan could care less whether or not you believe in him, because he’s not after your recognition; he’s after your destruction.

· In 2 Corinthians, Paul calls him “an angel of light,” which means he’ll transform himself into whatever form is best suited to deceive you, even if it means you mistake him for an angel of God.

· It makes sense that in the modern, Western world, his best deceptions would not come from making someone’s eyes roll back in their head or foam at the mouth and levitate 6 feet above their bed, but from working stealthily, invisibly behind the scenes.

1 Peter 5:8 (KJV 1900)

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

That shows me two things:

1. First, Satan is like a hunter, and hunters don’t care if you see them—in fact, they’d prefer that you didn’t.

2. Second, Peter calls Satan a lion. Which means Satan is part of the cat family. I knew it! Cats are demons. But just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he isn’t there.

Illustration

In 1864, a physician named Ignaz Semmelweis stumbled onto a theory we now call ‘germ theory.’

· In those days, everyone thought diseases would spontaneously generate in the body because there was something wrong with the body, like having too much blood or getting too hot or something like that.

· And so, doctors would go between patients without ever washing their hands (plus, it was believed in those days that a gentlemen’s hands didn’t need washing, because they were clean), and so doctors would go from working on the corpse of a dead person to delivering a baby which is why death rates in the hospitals were so incredibly high.

· Semmelweis began to suspect that they were carrying diseases with them, in small particles invisible to the human eye. He didn’t know what to call them, so he called them “microbes,” literally “little pieces of flesh.”

· It seems so obvious to us now, but nobody in those days thought that way.

· He tested his theory by having just the interns wash their hands with water a little chlorine before delivering babies and found the mortality rates went down dramatically.

· But even then, the doctors wouldn’t accept the theory because the idea that all this destruction was caused by something you couldn’t see just seemed unbelievable to them.

· At a famous conference, he pleaded with these doctors, “Gentlemen, for God’s sake, please, just wash your hands!”

· But nobody listened—for about two decades until Louis Pasteur came along. Even his own wife didn’t believe him! He died in an asylum.

(PTR) Many Christians are equally naïve when it comes to what’s happening in their lives because they are just as disbelieving of what they can’t see.

· But can’t you look around and see the evidence of the demonic everywhere?

· Andy Stanley says that if you want to see evidence for the demonic, you won’t find it by looking through a microscope but by looking in the rearview mirror—not at your kids—but in the rearview mirror of your life.

· Can’t you look back and see how certain temptations were just too perfectly timed and specifically tailored for you to be merely coincidental?

o How the wrong person was put into your life at just the right time?

o Or the right questions were planted in your head to throw you off track?

o Or the suspicion in your heart came at just the right time?

o Or the perfect storm seemed to happen in your marriage or small group to really drive a wedge between you?

o Or maybe you can explain away all that—“Well, the reason my wife and I had these problems is because our personalities are ill-suited for each other” “the reason I struggle with these temptations is because my dad did, too.”

· But then, every once in a while, you encounter something where something inside of you says, “Now that is evil.” Acts of terrorism, mothers killing their children…

· Or you watch a special on the Holocaust and you see how embarrassed Germany is now and they say, “How could we ever have done something like that?”

It’s because we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, and spiritual evil in high places. God tells us about these things for two reasons we see here in Ephesians 6:

1. To make us (vs. 18) more alert.

a. When you recognize there is more to your temptations than lusts or doubts or relational problems, that there is an Enemy strategizing your destruction, it will make you more aware.

2. The other reason he tells us is to drive us to greater dependency on God. If this were merely a battle against other humans, or with my own lusts, that would be one thing. But it’s against an enemy with supernatural power.

And so, Paul concludes the book of Ephesians by reminding them of the presence of these spiritual forces in an attempt to turn them once again away from trusting in themselves. He says,

Ephesians 6:10–13 (KJV 1900)

10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. 11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Two phrases there:

o ABLE TO STAND: First, you can’t escape this fight:

o There’s only two places in the Christian life in which Paul says a Christian can and should flee:

§ sexual immorality and the love of money.

§ When it comes to moneys and honeys, you get out of town.

o Everywhere else, you have to learn to stand firm, because you can’t escape.

o Listen, you can’t protect your family from Satan by putting your kids in private school or homeschool or limiting their access to the outside world—and I’m not saying that those things are necessarily bad—my family has done all of those things, but you have to learn to stand firm in the battle not think you can always run from it.

o BE STRONG IN THE LORD AND THE POWER OF HIS MIGHT: This has got nothing to do with your power (which has been a recurring theme in Ephesians. It’s about his might in you.)

o In fact, in this battle your strengths are more often liabilities because those are the places you forget to depend on God and lean on his strength.

o If you feel weak and unqualified to engage in the spiritual realm, that’s a good thing, because you are more likely to lean on God’s power in those places.

o In the Christian life weakness is an advantage because dependence is the objective.

(PTR) If dependence is the objective then weakness is an advantage because weaknesses are places you most naturally depend on God.

You see, here’s something important to remember here: Paul is not introducing NEW content right here at the end, like something he wants to add on and say, “Oh yeah, these random pieces of spiritual armor are important, too!” Every writer knows you don’t bring up new material in the conclusion. These are simply ways of applying the gospel Paul has talked about now for 6 chapters.

Many years ago when I first became a Christian and started working with children. I was introduced to the spiritual armor through flannel graph discipleship—you know, little images of each piece made of flannel that you’d put on a board—and I thought of spiritual armor as these strange, mysterious things that you had to have to ward off demons, like magic.

o And I think a lot of Christians think of it that way.

o They really want to analyze: What exactly a ‘flaming dart?’ Name your flaming dart! Find it, bind it, then rewind it.”

But that’s not what Paul is doing here. Each of these 7 pieces of armor is simply a way of applying the gospel that Paul has just spent 6 chapters talking about, to your whole life. Some of them are, in fact, repetitive, getting at similar concepts: putting on the helmet of salvation and taking the shield of faith are not two fundamentally different ideas.

o The more important idea is that the gospel should cover every part of your body, your life, because where the gospel has fortified you, Satan cannot attack you.

o Putting on these pieces is how you fulfill Paul’s command in vs. 10 to be “strong in the Lord.”

o You see, the gospel message that Paul has taught now for 6 chapter is that you were weak, sinful, walking in darkness and spiritually dead when God saved you.

o You are saved when you realized that you didn’t have the strength to save yourself and if you were going to be saved he was going to have to do it.

o In the same way, you gain spiritual power when you realize, “I don’t have the ability to overcome Satan in my life. I am going to have to trust in God’s grace and power to do it.” So, these pieces of spiritual armor are where you apply the gospel of dependence on God’s grace to an area of vulnerability or weakness in your life. (7 Pieces Our Spiritual Armor)

Transition Statement: So, with that backdrop, let’s look at each piece of the armor. There are 7 of them, so we’ll move quickly:

First piece: “Take up… the belt of truth” (vs. 13–14)

• Your belt goes around your core. It holds all your weapons and the rest of your armor in place. o Now, as far as the metaphor goes, this one is really important, because nobody wants to go into battle with their pants down.

• What does Paul mean by “belt of truth?” Two things.

· Well, we always think of truth as primarily a “what,” but in Scripture it is first a… “who.”

· John 14:6 “I am the way… the truth!”

· John 17:17 “sanctify them by truth…”

· Gird yourself up with Jesus. Make your identity in Christ the center of your life.”

o I’ve always heard that your identity is based on what the most important person in your life thinks about you.

Question: Is that PERSON Jesus and have you made what he thinks about you your core identity?

o Gospel: That there is nothing you could do to make God love you more and nothing you have done that would make him love you less? Or are you still basing your identity on your performance?

o Do you still care more about what someone else thinks about you than Jesus?

• If so, that’s a place Satan can and will attack. That’s how Satan attacked Jesus in the Temptation: “If you are the Son of God.”

o If you are a Christian, you wouldn’t struggle with this.

o If you really were a son or daughter of God, your life wouldn’t be so hard o If God really exists, thins would be different.

• The second thing “belt of truth” implies is that you have grounded your perspective on thing in what he says: on things like sexuality, marriage, the purpose of life, generosity, and etc.

Question: How do you determine what is true and right in your life?

· For some people, they rely on this internal compass—what feels right?

· They let God influence, but at the end of the day, it’s what they feel is right.

· For others, they follow the whims of popular opinion— whatever their friends or professors or their favorite stars in Hollywood think.

(PTR) The only way to escape the deception of the Enemy is to let the word of God shape your thinking.

Question: Do you know the Word of God?

· Friends, THESE ARE NOT just doctrines to learn, they are means of survival.

· Wherever you are not covered in the truth of Scripture you are exposed to the attack of the enemy.

· Satan’s 1st attack on us was to say, “Has God really said this…?” For centuries now he has not been able to come up with a new line. He doesn’t need to.

· His goal is to get you to do 1 of 2 things with God’s word:

1. Doubt it, or

2. Neglect it… which works just as well.

Question: What do you believe about this book and does how you treat it line up with that?

Example:

o A professor of NT over at UNC, skeptic who is credited with leading thousands of college freshmen away from faith, always starts his class by holding up the Bible and asking…”how Many of you believe that the Bible is the word of God?” 2/3 of the class will raise their hands. Then he asked “how many of you have read it cover to cover?” usually only one or two students will raise their hand. Then he says, “Really?” This is a book written by Almighty God and you haven’t even read it? He’s trying to show them that they don’t really believe it is the Word of God after all.

(AT&T) Do I treat the Bible like the life-saving truth I confess it to be?

Second piece of armor… “Take up… the breastplate of righteousness” (vs. 14)

• A breastplate covers your vital organs. What does he mean by covering your vital organs with righteousness?

• Well, again, for Paul, being covered with righteousness first means embracing our identity in Christ.

· I think the breastplate gives us a really interesting picture here, because you’ve seen Roman breastplates, right? They have the pecs and abs all cut in. Which means that if I put on the breastplate of righteousness, you’re going to see perfect pecs and abs, regardless of the jiggle that’s going on behind that breastplate.

· Was Paul really thinking about that? I don’t know. But, you have to admit, it is an interesting metaphor.

· 2 Cor 5:21 says that God made Jesus to be our sin so he could give us his righteousness. It’s called “gift righteousness” or “Imputed righteousness.” The love handles of our sin becomes his, and his perfect abs of righteousness becomes ours.

• So, first, it’s taking Christ’s righteousness as ours. But I think there’s also an obedience element here. Not only are we covered in Christ’s righteousness, we bring our lives into conformity with it.

· Again, Satan will use whatever part of you that is not surrendered to God and conformed to his truth as his focal point of attack.

· Maybe that’s a bad habit you have that you know is sinful but don’t take seriously enough to really break; or a temptation you can’t say no to. Men (or women) – That indulgence in pornography is a ticking time-bomb. You may think things are fine now, and it’s not bothering anybody, but it’s just a matter of time before Satan uses that to destroy you and those around you.

· Maybe it is someone you won’t forgive; a bad relationship you won’t let go; a or just an area of your life not under God’s control—like your dating life or how you spend your money.

(PTR) Whatever part of your life is not brought into obedience to God’s word will be Satan’s focal point of attack in your life.

• Or let me ask it this way: If you knew, a year from now, that Satan was going to bring you down, what would be the thing he uses to do it? What would he use in your life today? Third piece of armor: “As shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.” (vs. 15)

· I often heard that the Sword of the Spirit, which we’ll get to in a minute, is the only offensive weapon in the Christian arsenal. That’s not true.

· Your feet are offensive weapons, too—because they carry you forward into battle. Paul says we overcome Satan by going on the offense with the gospel. This overcomes Satan’s work in both other people’s lives as well as our own. First, sharing the gospel with people is how we overcome Satan’s work in others.

· Sometimes we only want to share the gospel with those who are interested in it. But that is putting the cart before the horse.

o o How can they ever get interested in it until it has had a chance to work in their lives? The gospel has the power in it to set the captive free and give sight to the blind, to give spiritual life (interest) to those who are disinterested. And that can’t happen in the lives of people who have never heard it.

o o One of most effective personal soul-winners I’ve ever known told me that there’s two things every evangelist believes: Salvation belongs to God. Faith only comes by hearing. The Word of God can only go to work once it has been spoken to someone. Hearing the Word of God is the only thing that creates interest in the Word of God. Isn’t that how you were? You weren’t interested in hearing the gospel. But then someone shared it with you and it made you want to hear it.

· You need to learn to share the gospel.

• God has made it so that we are only healthy when we fight. The Church is not a hovel of saints cloistered together trying to keep out the barbarians but a missionary people battering hell’s gates. 1

Fourth piece: “Above all, taking the shield of faith, by which we extinguish the fiery darts of the wicked one” (vs. 16)

• This is really a way of summing up all the other pieces.

• Satan’s main weapons are the lies he throws—like fiery darts— into our hearts.

• Listen: You are not supposed to try to try to out-reason those darts. To do some foot ninja work to avoid them. That won’t work. o You are supposed to hide from them behind your shield, which means coming against them in your mind with what God has told you is true in the gospel.

• So, Satan hurls at you:

o “You’re no good.” “You’re nothing.” “You’re pathetic.”

o “After what you did, do you think God still loves you?” “You can never make a difference.” “He’ll never use you.”

o “Your marriage will always be bad.” “You’ll never be a good parent.” “You’ll always be sick.” “You’ll never get out of debt.”

• BOOM! You put up the shield!

o “Surely goodness and mercy…”

o “I am blessed coming in and blessed coming out.”

o “Greater is he that is within me…”

o “God has plans to prosper me…”

o “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

o “My God is working all things together for good…”

o “He will never leave me or forsake me.”

o “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he’s watching me.”

• And I can assure you that when you get through a montage like that, Satan will not be anywhere near.)

• (One other thing: A Roman soldier’s shield was created to be linked with his brothers next to him (“300” movie/Gladiator).

(PTR) Sometimes your own personnel faith isn’t enough to get you through a situation—it wasn’t meant to be—be part of the church.

o Maybe end every small group yelling SPARTANs. That would be cool. And help you remember.

Piece five: “Take up… the helmet of salvation” (vs. 17)

• Again, this repeats in a new way some of what he has already said. But, specifically, your head is where you think. Paul is telling us to let the truth about our salvation and God’s grace in our lives permeate our minds.

• Every morning there are two things I tell myself; it’s part of a gospel prayer I wrote to saturate my mind in the truth of the gospel before I start each day:

In Christ, there is nothing I can do that would make You love me more, and nothing I have done that makes You love me less. Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy. As I pray, I'll measure Your compassion by the cross and Your power by the resurrection.”

Sixth piece: “And taking the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (vs. 17)

• Now, we transition to exclusively offensive weapons. We’ve already talked about our shoes.

• Now we’ve got our sword, which is the Word of God. (Of course, the Word has been in each of the others.)

• But he’s telling us, again, to so master this book which gives us the ability to counteract Satan’s lies.

· o Your ability to overcome Satan is directly proportionate to your knowledge of the Word of God!

· o Your kids’ ability to overcome Satan is directly proportionate to their knowledge of the Word of God! So yes, have them in CASL and dance but make sure they leave your house with the knowledge of God’s word. Those other things may help them in life a little, but God’s word will save their soul for eternity.

• So, learn it, read it, memorize it, meditate on. As I often say, “Be so saturated with it that when life cuts you, you bleed God’s word.”

• In order to be a good disciple-maker, you have to first be a good disciple, which means knowing the Word better than you know anything else.

Finally, “and praying at all times in the Spirit…” (vs. 18)

· Many times, people don’t include this in the weapons. But it is. It’s our main one.

· Notice that prayer is not something we do only in preparation for battle, but what you when you are dressed for the battle. I say this because we often treat prayer like it is only preparation for ministry. According to Paul, prayer is the ministry.

o o The book of James tells us the same thing: that the most effective thing we can do is prayer. The fervent prayers of righteous people CHANGE history. Elijah changed the weather with his prayer!

· Prayer is where we put into practice what we believe about the gospel. It’s where we say, “God, I believe you are as compassionate as the cross says you are, and as powerful… Prayer is not the only thing we do, but it’s the first thing we do, and the most effective thing that we do. o Apostles in Acts: 10 days

· Some of you have that gift of intercession and need to use it… Boiler Room. But for all of us, though—it should be the primary way we see ourselves fighting.

· A pastor in FL is a former bodybuilder. He says that in that way a lot of Christians are like bodybuilders. He says that when I was a body builder I never did anything with my strength. I worked out all the time but never fought, never played any sport. Only flexed.

o A lot of Christians are like that: they puff themselves up, but never do anything. They know all this stuff about God but never exercise that belief in bold, frequent prayer! They just show up and church and flex.

o Bold prayer is how you take the doctrines of the gospel and do battle in the world!

· Do you know how much power and compassion God is ready to pour out if we just pray?

· Ask, Jesus tells us, ask, ask! Specifically, he says… [18] praying at all times in the Spirit… making supplication for all the saints, [19] and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel,

· People in your small group, and pray for me! I need it.

· If Paul needed it, y’all, I surely do. How am I supposed to give you what you need from the Word of God to you each week? Like Paul, I need you to pray for me to have God’s words. Y’all, I’m never short on words. But you don’t need me up here giving you my words, you need the Spirit’s words. My words only educate; his can liberate. My words can fill your mind, his will save your soul.

· • You need God’s word, not mine. That will only come through your prayers for me. I need you to pray for me.

Conclusion/MUSIC

So, Paul’s last words are to tell us that yes, life is war, but we can and should be confident that we have a God who is willing to fight for us.

Ultimately, all these pieces of armor are simply learning to apply the gospel Paul has preached to your life. They are not new spiritual strategies to learn; but learning to cover your life in God’s strength.

The way to fight Satan is not to focus on Satan, but to cover your life with the gospel!

In Luke 11 Jesus told a parable about a man that had an evil spirit living in his house. He managed to drive it out and cleaned up the house. Think of this as the guy on drugs who gets him together and gets a job and a family. But during that time he’s cleaning up his life the demon goes out and finds 7 demons to come back, and they moved into the man’s house and the last state of the man was worse than the first. So, sus says, “When you drive a strong man (a demon) out of a house,” you need someone stronger than him to keep that man out.” The stronger man is Jesus.

You can’t defeat Satan and keep him out of your house in your own strength!

You need to fill your house with the stronger man. You need to cover your life with these armor pieces of the gospel.

The way to resist Satan is not to engage Satan, it is to get filled with the presence of Jesus, the stronger man.

Charles Spurgeon: “The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil.” How do you get the devil out of your home? Your head? Out of your church? Preach Christ. Trust Christ. Dwell on Christ!

As a Christian, we don’t have to fight for victory over Satan, but from a victory that Jesus has already won and given to us as a gift! AMEN?

The gospel Paul has proclaimed in Ephesians is: You have a problem. Sin. Shows up horizontally, but main problem is vertical. Condemned, dead sinner. But God. But God chose you; and sought you and drew you. When you were guilty, he forgave you. When you were dead, he raised you! In Christ, he has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, which means victory in him over all of Satan’s forces. So, lean into his power!