The Church was made to BATTLE More

Flying Artillery

Just a few short miles from here is the Palo Alto Battlefield. I routinely visit the battlefield. It’s a great place to park and make and phone call. 176 years ago, though, it would not have been a great place to have a phone conversation. One of the most decisive battles in Texas and eventually the United States was fought on that site. The issue, of course, was the location of the Texas and Mexican border. Mexicans were insistent that the border should be the Nueces River, a couple of hours north of here at Corpus Christi. Zachary Tayler and the Texans were adamant that the Rio Grande should be the border. So the Mexican army marches north of the Rio to meet and push back the Texans, who were coming south. And they met in the prairie brush of Palo Alto near a pond along the Point Isabel road.. both of which no longer exist. The Texans were outmanned by more than 2 to 1. By all measurements of warfare of that day, they should have lost. But they won. They won that battle and then they won again the next day, pushing the Mexican army back across the Rio. There are numerous reasons why they won. But one of the biggest reasons they won was their weapons. One of the main heroes of that conflict was Major Samuel Ringgold, who had developed what was called the Flying Artillery, small cannons on wheels that could be pulled by horseback. Moveable cannons. And it soon became apparent that the Texans’ cannons were better at navigating all the thick brush and mesquite trees of Palo Alto. The Flying Artillery also employed science engineers for soldiers, guys using math to point the cannons to hit their targets with precision. They knew they were outmanned. They also knew the terrain. They knew the limitations of the enemy and the immobility of the enemy’s cannons. The Texans won. And we live and worship right next to that battlefield. Ringgold was one of the four Texans who died that day. He didn’t live to see the success of his Flying Artillery. But there’s a street in Brownsville running from the zoo and Dean Porter park and the Camilla Playhouse to the art museum that bears his name. We use that street all the time to relax, and learn, and play. Because of Ringgold’s Flying Artillery.

The church militant

The church is in a war. Sometimes it seems the church has forgotten it is in a war, and at other times, when it is talking about war, both the enemy and what’s at stake are sorely misunderstood, misstated, and the entire discussion is misguided. In fact, the passage that we are in has been terribly misinterpreted and misstated to say all sorts of things that it is not saying, while at the same time, missing Paul’s point to a church in Ephesus that is being attacked spiritually. Much of the Christian battle and war imagery that shows up in our social media conveys a message that cannot be sustained by this text. And it runs opposed to Christ’s grand statement that His kingdom is not of this world. The culture wars we hear so much about have very little to do with this passage, and yet these verses are invoked time and again. In fact, as we will see, these verses themselves would place many engaged in the culture war on the wrong side of the equation in these verses.

The Mission

Paul begins the entire section with the mission at hand. Before he jumps into the specifics of what he’s talking about, he states the mission right up front so that the congregation doesn’t miss it:

Ephesians 6:10 “Be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.”

Be strengthened. That language is crucial to getting this entire passage right. And if you don’ get this right, the rest of the passage is bound to go off the rails. Do you noticed how this reads? BE strengthened. This isn’t “be God’s strength”, which is often the way this is spoken. The passage is this: Allow yourself to be strengthened by Jesus, who is always “the Lord” in Paul’s writing. Allow Jesus to strengthen you.

The church has a bad fascination with power. It’s part of the fall. We want to win. We live to win. What is part of our American individualism and manifest destiny pretty soon finds a place in the way we think about power and the church. And spoiler alert: there is no language in this entire paragraph about winning. But I digress. Allowing Jesus to strengthen us presumes that we are weak to begin with, a healthy acknowledgement for all of us. As Jesus fills us with himself, through His Word, he is giving us His strength, a strength that is marked by the Gospel and its gentleness and meekness and humility, not some cultural power trip.

The Enemy

We need to receive from Jesus His strength because there is an evil one who is up to no good against the church. There’s an ancient piece of battle wisdom that Paul is employing here: know your enemy. If you find yourself in a war, you better be able to identify your enemy. Paul says it in verse 11:

Ephesians 6:11 “Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil.”

We don’t have time to jump into all that is meant by “schemes of the devil”, but what we can say is the devil is opposed to the big picture in Ephesians. Paul started this entire letter with the idea that God has filled Jesus with himself, Jesus is filling the church with himself, and the church is filling all things, the church is filling every corner of the world with Jesus. And there is a big baddie that doesn’t want to see that happen. The devil is not interested in the world being filled with Jesus by the church. He crucified Jesus and lost. Now, his aim is at Christ’s bride, the church. This evil day that the church lives in, this time period between Christ’s resurrection and His return has an Evil One trying to use the evil day time period to thwart the purposes of Jesus in His Church. It’s why Paul begins this section with “allow Jesus to strengthen you.” If the church is going to fill the world with Jesus, the church must be filled with Jesus’ strength because there’s an evil one out to do the church harm.

The enemy is also listed in various ways here. It’s not your typical enemy, and that too tends to be forgotten. Here’s what Paul says:

Ephesians 6:12 “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.”

Paul says that the struggle for the Ephesian church is an unseen enemy. Again, we’re not going to take time to unpack everything these phrases mean. What we are supposed to see is that the enemy is other worldly. Cosmic forces in the unseen world. Spiritual warfare is real. But way too often, that first phrase is either totally skipped over, or reinterpreted in a way that Paul is attempting to speak against here:

The struggle is not against flesh and blood. Flesh and blood are sinners just like the rest of us.

The struggle is not against people. I have to shake my head every time I see some cartoon or meme depicting people on the other side of the aisle with Satan’s horns. First, that’s dehumanizing. Second, they aren’t the enemy. And I would venture to say that more often than not, the positions they take also don’t rise to the level of evil.

Do you know what the evil Paul opposes throughout the book of Ephesians?

Disunity

Lack of love

Personal immorality (not the immorality of the next guy)

Lack of forgiveness

Slanderous and obscene speech

Failing to fill all things with Jesus

There’s more here in this letter to this church, but you get the point. Paul’s list doesn’t come anywhere near the lists we typically draw up in the so-called culture wars. This doesn’t mean there isn’t evil out there. But Paul’s evil in Ephesians, what he’s talking about there is all about what’s happening inside the church and inside the flock. What we see in social media is people so gung-ho to take a stand against this or that and all the while, these same people can’t forgive family members, and have a lack of love for fellow church members, and have no trouble walking over people to get where they are in the culture wars. That’s the evil Paul is talking about here. Not the evils in the culture war that get us all spun up.

And the irony of it all is… even in the lists that Paul draws up, he’s talking about all of us. No one escapes the law. We’re all guilty of Paul’s vice lists. The real evil being opposed here is already resident among us because we are all sinners. Our struggle isn’t against the next guy. It’s not against people who don’t vote like us or think like us or look like us. It’s against an enemy that is at war with the church over its soul… over the gospel (which is where all of this is going, but I digress).

The Commission

What does it mean to be strengthened by Jesus? That’s the second part of Paul’s opening statement, which, again, is a summary of the entire paragraph. Part two of Paul’s summary is this:

Ephesians 6:11 “Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil.”

Two phrases we need to see here in this verse:

Put on

Stand against

We are to put on… so that we can can stand against.

Stand against. That’s the posture. Paul doesn’t call for attack mode. You can’t make that case from this paragraph. Christ’ said his kingdoms are not of this world. The one who is attacking is the one who is of the evil day… the scheming of the evil one involves attack mode. Paul does not say counter-attack. That would be foreign to the idea of Christ’s kingdoms not being of this world. The world knows power. The world knows glory. What we often call “the theology of glory” is precisely this. Human efforts, using human tactics, using human strategies, with the human desire to win. Win God’s approval, win the argument, win the conversation, win, win, win. Winning is never promised in this passage. Because winning is what the evil one is after. There’s only one win we need to be concerned about: the cross. Jesus defeated Satan using weakness and humility and dying to self. Not with a better argument, not with a better strategy, not using power to gain the upper hand.

Stand against. Resist. Those are the words here. Those are passive stances. I think one of the most often used phrases we see in social media is “take a stand”. It comes from this passage. But when we begin to unpack what many believe about taking a stand, it’s anything but what this passage is talking about. Pop Christianity is all about the attack mode. That’s not taking a stand. That’s buying into the world’s tactics to get the same thing the world wants: the upper hand in the conversation.

Some of the great Christian music of the 80’s had this all wrong. A couple of my favorite albums from that era are full of the “taking to the enemy” and “taking it to the streets” mentality. We see this every day on social media. There is no taking it to the streets in the language of “stand” and “resist”. Paul uses these words multiple times in this paragraph so that the Ephesians don’t miss it. Filling every corner of our lives with Jesus doesn’t involve attacking evil. It involves resisting the evil that comes our way as we fill all things with Jesus.

The Church was made to BATTLE More!

And that’s the irony of this entire section of the letter. Paul says put on the whole armor of God. Paul doesn’t say, here are your arrows, here are your bombs, here are your howitzers. Here’s your armor.

Put on the armor. Put on defensive, not offensive gear. Paul says “full armor”. There’s that word again. “Full”. It’s easy to miss it. But Paul still has his main theme for Ephesians in the front of his mind when he writes about our spiritual warfare. He uses the word “full”. Full armor is needed as the church fills all things with the fullness of Jesus. That’s the main thought for Ephesians… filling all things. Every area of our lives: Live, work, play, learn. Filling life with Jesus needs “full” armor because we have an enemy who doesn’t want to see Jesus use the church to fill all things with himself.

We’re going to get to the armor and the gear next week. Come back here for that. But we do need to say this. This attack mode mentality bleeds into the way we not only read the culture, but the way we read our Bibles. Our quest to have the upper hand has its roots in the garden and Eve’s temptation. The serpent, the real enemy, offered Eve the upper hand. And we have been pursuing the upper hand ever since.

The church was made to BATTLE more, not against flesh and blood, but against an enemy that wants to do the gospel harm. Christ’s death and resurrection and his salvation of sinners who don’t deserve grace is an affront to the evil one. It’s an affront to those who spend all of their time trying to gain the upper hand. There is no gaining the upper hand here for the church. In fact, stand and resist is the mission because Jesus has already gained the upper hand and won. Paul already said in the place where we started this entire series:

Ephesians 1:20-23 “God exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens—far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.”

Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, and everything is already subject to him. Seated in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority and power and dominion. Doesn’t that sound familiar? We wage war against rulers and authorities and spiritual forces in the heavens. Same language. Paul says those who wage war against us have already lost. Already lost. In Christ’s death, resurrection, and exaltation to His throne he defeated the very forces that seek to do the gospel harm. The very first blow on your behalf is in your baptism. The blow has already been struck on your behalf. In Christ’s death, Paul says,

Ephesians 5:25-26 “Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.”

Christ loves the church. Loves you. You’re clean with the baptism of water by The Word. Jesus saves you. He cleans you. He gives you a new heart. He calls you his own. The war we wage in standing and resisting is against an enemy that has already been defeated. The church does battle resisting and standing in the PROMISE of Christ’s love and grace for us and for the world. Remember this, where you work, where you play, where you live, and where you learn. Jesus already has you.

Let’s pray.

This table is a Table that wages war against sin, flesh, and the devil. This table is Jesus defeating sin, flesh, and the devil. He has already done so, in his broken body and his shed blood. Forgiveness of sins is the death of the enemy. The most famous Psalm of David talks about a table being prepared in the presence of the enemy. That’s warfare language. We live in the evil day. We have an enemy who is the Evil One. And in the middle of all of it, Jesus shows up to give us life and forgiveness. The Evil One is defeated. The Evil Day is not to be feared. They both have their end in this Table where Jesus meets us.