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Well, the elders have suggested that we deal with the subject of spiritual warfare during this fortieth anniversary, and, uh, it's a subject that's so important and so critical to all of us in our lives that I'm just delighted to be able to engage my thinking and my thoughts and my own personal spiritual life around this subject once again. Not too long ago, I heard George Beverly Shea give what I think is probably the finest compliment I've ever heard a person give to his mother. He was, uh, going to sing at the School of Evangelism out at Lake Louise, where I was speaking, and, uh, it's obvi- I tell you, it's an awesome thing to have to speak after George Beverly Shea sings.
That's very intimidating, and he was up singing just before I had to speak, and, uh, he gave his, he gave his mother a wonderful compliment. He said he can never remember hearing her saying anything bad about anyone. Isn't that an amazing thing for a man to be able to say as he looks back on his childhood days with his mother? He did, however, confess that on occasion it became very provoking and irritating. She always had something good to say. One day, he said, his sister came and said, watch at supper tonight, I'm going to catch mother. So supper time came, and during the course of the meal, his sister turned and said, Mum, what do you think of the devil?
Bev said, I think she's caught mum. I mean, what good have you got to say about the devil? Well, Mrs. Shea thought for a moment, then turned to the two children and said, well, I've always admired his persistence. And that's what he is. We discovered in our study together this morning, he is persistent in his determination to destroy. To destroy marriages, to destroy families, to destroy testimonies, to destroy Christian churches. He's d- persistent in his determination to destroy. How do we protect ourselves?
How do we defend ourselves such a persist- against such a persistent and against such a powerful enemy? Well, let's turn in our Bibles to Ephesians chapter six, and we will get some help from looking at this miniature manual, uh, for spiritual warfare from Ephesians chapter six. You'll remember now this morning, we took the prologue to this manual, and, uh, that prologue is in verses ten through fourteen, where Paul says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
Now, why? Here's his explanation. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of wickedness, uh, world against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Now here's his summary. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything that is at the end of the battle, to stand firm. That's the prologue that introduces us to this manual for our defensive warfare. What we've understood and that we're beginning to grasp and realize is that Satan's determination is to destroy.
What he wants to do is to rob us of the possessions that we have in Christ. The joy of the Lord, that's our birthright. The peace of God, that's our birthright. Freedom from sin, that's our birthright. Power in our lives, that's our birthright. All of those are our possessions in Christ. They are part of every spiritual blessing that belongs to us because we are in Christ, and what he wants to do is to rob us of those blessings. In terms of our walk, what he wants to do is to trip us up.
In terms of our walk in our marriages, instead of harmony, disharmony. In our walk in this world, instead of purity, impurity. And our walk in the church, instead of unity, disunity. He is persistent in trying to bring disunity to churches, impurity to Christian lifestyles, and disharmony to marriages and families. He's just persistent in doing that. That's his existence. Day after day, day after day, he's committed to destruction. When I was just a young lad in Toronto, I can remember almost quite vividly, as though it were a week or two ago, one afternoon when my brother and I were playing out in the sand field behind our house.
We had trucks, and we were making garages and pathways and roadways and bridges and all kinds of stuff. I looked over at his, and I thought his was so much better than mine. And so I started moving over toward him and asked if I could run my trucks on his road. Just as young brothers are inclined to do on occasion, he said no. And as older brothers are inclined to do very infrequently, I got up and trampled his roads down. I paid for that down the road, but it was sure fun doing it. As I've grown to understand spiritual warfare, that has become a vivid image to me of what Satan is doing.
He looks at your marriage, he looks at your life, he looks at your family, he looks at your children, he looks at your church, and he says, if I can't have your devotion, if I can't have your allegiance, if I can't have your servanthood, then I'm going to do everything to do, I can do to destroy you from loving Christ, from serving Christ, from walking and pleasing the Lord. He is persistent in that determination. What kind of defense do we have in our spiritual warfare? Well, Paul is now telling us in this manual how we can resist, how we can stand, how we hold our ground. May we remind you, Ephesians chapter six is only defensive. Tonight we're going to talk about our offense.
How do you retake, repossess territory in your life, in your marriage, in your church? How do you repossess territory when it's lost to the devil? Territory that belongs to the Lord, how do you retake that? Well, that's taking the offense, and we'll be talking about that tonight. But that's not Ephesians six. Ephesians six is only defense. Ephesians six is so that we will know how to stand, so that we'll know how to hold our ground, so that know how to defend ourselves, so that the devil won't get inroads into our lives and into our marriages and into our churches. And the answer, of course, is we do that by putting on the full armor of God.
I was speaking at a conference grounds a couple of years ago on the subject, and I was just about at this particular point, and, uh, I was asking people, you know, how do you do that? What's it mean to put on the full armor of God? And we made a few suggestions as to what some people think. After the service, a lady came up to me, and she said, when our children were growing up and going to school, every morning I met with them at the front door before they left, and I dressed them in the armor of God. I said, and how did you do that? And she told me.
I said, I'd like to talk to one of your children. She said, well, one of them is working in the kitchen here in the conference grounds. So I went over and found that fellow. He's about seventeen or eighteen. and I said, tell me what happened at the front door of your home every morning before you went to school. And he went through it. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience to hear about from this great big lumberjack of a guy, how from his first days at school, right up through his high school years, they dressed the full armor of God. How do you do that? How would you go about dressing yourself in the full armor of God? How would you put this on your children?
Well, that's what we want to reflect upon. Let's first of all look at some things about the armor in general before we start looking specifically. There are three or four things that can be said about the armor in general. The first thing that can be said is that the basis for this description of the full armor of the Lord is the Roman warrior. Now, we mentioned that this morning. It's not the infantryman, it's not the new recruit to the Roman army, it's the warrior, and the way that warrior would dress would be witnessed by Paul over and over again as he lived in the Roman Empire. It's very possible that right in the place where he was imprisoned, a day after day in his, right in his environs, he watched and he saw these, these warriors walk by with their armor, and the word that Paul uses here is the word to describe that complete set of armor that was worn by the Roman warrior.
So the, um, the basis for the description is the Roman warrior. The interpretation, however, for these pieces of armor is not the Roman warrior, it's the divine warrior. In the Old Testament, the Lord, the captain of the Lord's hosts, the Lord dresses with these pieces of armor. As a matter of fact, of the six pieces of armor, one of them, only one of them, is not worn by the Lord in the Old Testament. He wears the belt, he wears the shoes, he wears the helmet, he wears the breastplate, uh, he wears these things. The only one he doesn't wear is the shield, which is an interesting one.
But if you want to interpret what these pieces of armor mean, what you do is you go back into the Old Testament and see what they meant when the divine warrior wore those particular pieces of armor. So that's how we will interpret these pieces. The third thing that can be said is that this is the armor of God. Now, what does that mean? Put on the full armor of the Lord. Well, it could mean, of course, that this is the armor that the Lord, the divine warrior in the Old Testament, wears. I'm rather inclined, however, to think what it means is this is the armor that the Lord designs and the Lord recommends if you want to stand on the spiritual battlefields of life.
You can read all kinds of psychology books on how to handle anger and how to come overcome temptation. You can read all kinds of books from sociologists on how to deal with various of these subjects, but this is the Lord's recommendation. If you want to hold your ground when Satan attacks, this is what he says you need to do. This is the armor he recommends. This is the attire that he proposes. This is the wardrobe that he says is going to give you victory on the battlefields of life. That's important for me to understand, and if this is his recommendation, if this is his proposed wardrobe, I want to pay good, close attention to it.
Another thing that can be said generally is that in order to survive on the spiritual battlefields of life, you need to be completely dressed. You will soon sense as we start going through the pieces of armor specifically, how absolute- absolutely ludicrous it is to go out into the battlefield with five of the pieces on and not six or seven. I mean, what a foolish person it would be to step out all dressed from the shoulders down without his helmet. He might as well have left all the rest of it off. If you really want to hold your ground and stand on the spiritual battlefields of life, you need to put on all of the armor. We would need to commit ourselves to every piece, and as we go through the pieces together this afternoon, I'd like to invite you to be as honest with yourself as you can.
Which one of these pieces of armor are you least inclined to wear as you step out of your house into the day? Which is your weakest area? Uh, which one of these pieces of armor is the one that you're most comfortable wearing? Well, we want to pick out one or two of these where we need to be really concerned about including those into our spiritual warfare wardrobe, and I want to invite you to do that. Now, the last thing that can be said about this armor generally is this. It can be viewed both corporately as well as individually. That is, generally, it seems to me, when we speak about putting on the full armor of God, I'm thinking of it for me personally, individually, in my personal life.
But I want to suggest it applies to Shore Acres Chapel too, as a church. So every time we talk about one of these pieces of army- armor, it applies to you personally. But it also applies to the church. That is, if the church is going to stand against Satan's attacks as a congregation, as an assembly, as a community of people, we need, as a group of people, to put on the belt. As a group of people, we need that breastplate. As a congregation, we need to have our feet shod. It's a corporate kind of thing, and my sense is that one of the reasons why church after church across the country is falling prey to satanic intrusion, and demonic forces are rampant in Christian families and homes, is because we've missed the idea of corporately putting on the armor, not just individually putting it on.
Now, of course, you could argue it could only be corporate to the degree that it's individual, and of course there's a sense in which that's true. That is, if the, if the Shore Acres Assembly is going to put on the breastplate, that will only be true to the degree that everybody who's part of Shore Acres will put that on. But we want to think one step beyond just the personal application and start thinking of ourselves as a congregation and say we need as a church to be committed to this. We need as a church to be putting this on. When we meet together as an assembly, when we meet together as a board of elders, when we meet together as a missionary committee, when we meet together as a group of Sunday school teachers, we need to put on the full armor of God because Satan and the forces of darkness are determined to mess up our assembly, to destroy this church, to divide and to undermine in any way he can.
So corporately, we need to put on this armor. Okay, are you with me? Now, those are the kinds of things we can say generally about the armor of the Lord. Now let's begin to look specifically at the armor. There are seven pieces of armor here. Let me show you generally, not, I can't use the word generally, let me show you in a survey how the armor works. The first piece of armor is your undergarment. It's your underwear, and that's the first thing you put on when you get dressed in the morning. It's your undergarments. The next five pieces of armor are the outerwear. Those are the things that show outside.
The last piece of armor is the overwear. It covers the over. So when you get up in the morning, you begin, if you will allow me to be a little crude, you begin by putting on your underwear. You wouldn't want to go out in your underwear, not most of us anyway. And so over the underwear you put your outerwear. And then, especially if it's, um, in Burlington in the middle of February, before you go out, you put on your overwear. All right, you get the picture? One piece of underwear, five pieces of outerwear, and one piece of overwear. A well-dressed warrior has seven pieces of clothing that he or she puts on when they roll out of bed in the morning, before they step into the kitchen, before they grapple with the children, before they head for the office, before they get off to the campus.
A well-dressed warrior who's going to hold his or her ground, who's going to stand, who's going to resist. A well-defended Christian warrior is going to have these seven pieces of armor on. And what I want to invite you to do is to dress this afternoon for spiritual warfare to hold your ground. Let's look at the pieces of armor individually then and specifically. The first piece of armor, verse fourteen says, stand firm, therefore, having gird your loins with truth. Some of you will have a translation that says, putting on the belt of truth. The belt for the Roman warrior would be the first thing that he would put on as he would start to dress.
It was made of leather. He would wrap it around himself. It was the means of taking up that long, flowing linen garment and holding it up above his knees or above his waist so that he'd have some movement with his legs and be able to be mobile on the battlefield of life. After all, you wouldn't want to get out on the battlefield and trip over your skirt. And so the warrior takes that long, flowing undergarment of linen and wraps it up around his waist. He girds it around his waist with the belt. The belt had another important function. The breastplate was held in place by the belt. The sword, which we'll talk about down the road, the sword hung from the belt.
You didn't see the belt of a Roman warrior, but if he survives the battle, you know it's because his breastplate has been attached to the belt, and because his sword has been attached to that belt. The sword was fundamental. It was the undergarment. It was that belt. Now, what the belt is to the Roman warrior, truth is to the Christian warrior. That's the picture. What the belt meant to the Roman warrior, truth is to the Christian warrior. We're to put on the belt of truth. Now, there are two aspects to truth in the Bible.
One aspect is what we call objective truth. This is objective truth. It is the truth of God. And w- sometimes when truth is used in the scriptures, it's objective truth. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. That's objective truth. Now, there's also subjective truth. That is, there's truth here, truth in me. I am a person of truth or a person of truthfulness. Now, which is the case here? What the belt was to the Roman warrior, truth is to the Christian warrior. Is it objective truth, or is it subjective truth? And the answer to that is going to be found by looking at the divine warrior over in the book of Isaiah.
So slip back in your Bible to Isaiah in chapter eleven, and you will see that the... that the, uh, divine warrior was, uh, girded in this belt of truth. It says in Isaiah chapter eleven verse five, also righteousness will be the belt about his loins and faithfulness the belt about his waist. Now that word righteousness in my translation, in some of your translations, is truth. Truth will be the belt of his loins and faithfulness the belt about his waist.
Now it's obvious in the description of the divine warrior that it's not objective truth here, but it's subjective truth. So what the belt was to the Roman warrior, truthfulness is to the Christian warrior. Truthfulness here. Someone has, I think, put it very graphically when they said, before all things, the Christian warrior is true. There is a reality, there's a genuineness, there's a truthfulness about his life. Now, we have a word that's very popular in English today, in our vernacular, uh, that catches that concept. It never occurs in the King James Version, but it is a very, very critical and important word.
The concept wrapped up in that word is captured in this idea of being a person of truthfulness, a person of genuineness, a person of reality, and of course, you know, it's the word integrity. What the belt was to the Roman warrior, integrity is to the Christian warrior. For a Christian to put on the belt of truth is for that to Christian to roll out of bed in the morning and to step out into the spiritual battlefield of his life and to make a commitment to be a person of integrity, to be a person who's real, to be a person who's genuine, to be a person who's authentic.
If you were to look up integrity in the Bible, in the dictionary rather, you would find it means the state of being undivided. A person of integrity lives a life that is undivided. There is no difference between what they are in public and what they are in private. There is no difference between their reputation and their character. My reputation is what you think of me. My character is what God knows about me. And in a man of integrity, there is no division between reputation and character. There's no division between what I am at home and what I am at church. There's no division between what I am when I'm with people and what I am when I'm all by myself.
There's no division between what I am in Burlington and what I am when I go to San Francisco on a business trip. There's no difference. There's no division. There's absolute integrity. There's togetherness. In a life of integrity, there's not that kind of division. I used to have an automobile that had a steering wheel with three spokes on it. It was very helpful. It was my daily reminder about integrity. A man of integrity, there is no difference between what he says, what he does, and what he is. That's integrity. And ladies and gentlemen, we are suffering from a serious, serious problem with AIDS in evangelicalism today.
When I speak of the AIDS that we suffer from, it's an acquired integrity deficiency syndrome. We are suffering from that. There's a book on the market called Exit Interviews. William Hendrickson, William Hendrickson did a survey of people who have left evangelical churches in North America over the last numbers of years. The most frequent reason for leaving was because of the lack of authenticity in Christians' lives. Now, that's an attack on our integrity. We're living lives where integrity is a rare kind of thing. And if you and I want to stand on the spiritual warfare of battlefields of life, we need to get up in the morning, step out into the battlefield, and commit ourselves to be a person of integrity, with genuine, authentic honesty.
No division between what I say, what I do, and what I am. That's where protection comes into your life. Without integrity, there are all kinds of gaps into your life where Satan can attack, and integrity is a marvelous protector in our lives. Take your Bible, and let me ask you to look at a couple of verses. Turn over to the book of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter ten. Proverbs chapter ten and verse nine. It says, he who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his way will be found out.
Back to Proverbs chapter two. It says in Proverbs two verse seven, he stores up sound wisdom for the upright. Notice, he is a shield to those who walk in integrity. There are few things that are more protective in spiritual warfare today than a commitment to be a person of integrity. Um, a couple of months ago, I had the privilege of speaking to twenty or thirty young emerging evangelical leaders in Ontario. Boy, it was longer ago than that. It was around Christmas, because I went to somebody who I know who's a ceramic expert, and I ordered three dozen mugs, and I asked him to put on these mugs, each one, a text, and I wanted to give this text to these men at this pastoral leadership conference I was speaking at, a select group of people, and asked them to put this mug on their desk or in their office and to keep it there.
The verse I had put on it is Proverbs chapter twenty, verse seven. Proverbs chapter twenty, verse seven. It says, a righteous man who walks in his integrity, how blessed are his sons after him. I wanted these men to understand, if you want to leave a legacy of blessing for your children, commit yourself to be a person of integrity. There's no legacy that you can leave for your family that's greater than the legacy of a reputation of being a man of integrity. There's tremendous protection that comes in our lives when we simply commit ourselves to be a person of integrity, and that's what Paul says is the foundation garment.
That's the girdle, that's the undergarment. Everything else is held into place. We begin with a commitment to be a person of integrity. The second piece of armor, it says in Ephesians chapter six, in the very next ver- phrase, it says, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness. Now we're starting to talk about the outer garments, and the breastplate was the first piece of outer garment that the Roman warrior would put on. The breastplate was a huge, heavy piece of material. It was, um, overlapping discs of metal about the size of a silver dollar, maybe a little bit bigger, medallion kind of thing, sewn to heavy canvas, weighed about fifty or sixty pounds.
There were two pieces to the breastplate. There was a front and a back, and they buckled together under the arms, and they were held in place by fastening those two pieces to the belt. Can you imagine a Roman warrior stepping out on the battlefield and forgetting to take his breastplate? Absolutely ludicrous, simply inconceivable. What an absolute fool that man would be to step out on the battlefield without his breastplate. That breastplate covered him from the top of his shoulders to his loins. You immediately recognize all of the vital organs, the organs in the abdomen, the organs in the chest.
All those vital organs are protected by the breastplate. You'd be an absolute crazy person to go out into the battlefield without your breastplate on, says Paul. What that breastplate is to the Roman warrior, righteousness is to the Christian warrior. To put on the breastplate means to make a commitment to be loyal to the holy law of God. It's a commitment to be loyal to the holy law of God. I think it's very important for us to understand that that's the essence of this kind of, um, uh, this kind of righteousness. Uh, says, uh, Dr.
Erdman, anyone who binds himself about with a determined loyalty to the holy will and law of God is secure against the deadly thrusts of the tempter. That's our protection when the devil comes. It's that commitment to the holy law of God. I'm often astounded at the life of Daniel. We're introduced to him as a man who's somewhere in his teenage years. We see him in the last chapter of his life, a man of eighty years of age. He gets dealt a pretty dirty deal.
He's torn away from his family. He's put into captivity over in a foreign country. Got a good case for a little resentment against God. Mom and dad aren't looking over his shoulder, he's free. He's living with a bunch of guys in the palace, he's got lots of advantages and possibilities. How do you explain those sixty-some some years of Daniel's life, where at the end of the game, he's standing tall and strong? How do you explain it? Well, I suggest to you it's going back to the very first chapter of Daniel, where it says at the beginning of those moments of his life, Daniel determined in his heart that he would not defile himself.
He committed himself to be loyal to the holy law of God. That's the way we protect ourselves. When we wake up in the morning, we simply make a decision, and the decision is that today, by God's grace, I'm going to be loyal to God's holy law. If we fudge in the morning, if we're ambivalent about an area or two as we start out the day, that just opens up the crack, and that's where the enemy gets in, and he begins to attack our lives. We need to recognize that to put on the breastplate is to simply commit ourselves to be loyal and true to the holy law of God.
Let's come to the third piece of armor. The third piece is mentioned down in verse fifteen where it says, and having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Well, now we've moved from the breastplate down to the shoes. The shoes of the Roman warrior were very interesting. They were sandals, of course, that's what they wore in those days, but they were hobnailed sandals. They were sort of like, uh, for you, uh, golfers, they were sort of like those golf spike shoes that you wear. Or if you're a baseball player or a football player, those spikes or those cleats that you put on. Uh, the Roman warrior wore shoes like that.
Now, why would he wear shoes like that? Well, exactly why you wear spikes when you go golfing. You want to get your feet s- Thank you for your word that addresses subjects that sometimes are very controversial, and this one certainly is. Sometimes they're very perplexing and even a little frightening, but they're very, very relevant, very personal, and enormously important. And as we address this subject this afternoon, Lord, I would like to simply pray that our young people here with us this afternoon, businessmen who are under enormous satanic attack in a hundred different ways. Marriages, families, Christian businesswomen, pastors, elders, leaders, Sunday school teachers, Lord, that we will learn what it means to put on the full armor of God.
And now just let me ask you, with your heads bowed and eyes closed, which of these pieces of armor have you been most delinquent with? I asked you at the beginning of our time to, as we go through them, to pick out the one that you are most delinquent with, that you have been most irresponsible with, that you have neglected. And I'd like you to ask the Lord this afternoon to give you the grace and the wisdom to put on that piece of armor. You may have four or five, but without that one or two, you're vulnerable.
And make that decision this afternoon that you are going to be a person of integrity. That in that particular area of your life, your thought life, your moral life, your ethics in business, that you're going to be loyal to the holy law of God. Make that commitment this afternoon. Put on that piece of armor right now. Lord, two students go off to university, both Christians. One is a reluctant Christian testifier and witnesser.
The other is a ready one. Which one is more vulnerable to satanic attack? See, it's the reluctant one, the one that hides their light under the bushel, the one that doesn't take that stand. They're much more vulnerable. Now, this other one may be the one who's attacked a little bit more, but the one who's vulnerable is the person who hasn't really taken that stand. The same kind of thing in an office. Two people go to work in an office. One is a reluctant Christian, and the other is a ready Christian. Which one is going to be more susceptible to the temptations that are going to take place in that office? What Paul says is the person who's reluctant.
When you go into that office, nail your colors to the mast. Take a stand. Don't be obnoxious, don't be offensive, but you be available. I think it sort of means waking up in the morning and saying, uh, Lord, now that I've understood the gospel, I realize that I have a responsibility to share that. And I want you to know that I'm available to do that today. You give me an opportunity, Lord, and I'm going to take that opportunity. I'm not going to be offensive, I'm not going to be a bull in a china shop, but I'm available to you, Lord. And I submit to you that that's the kind of attitude that gives a person footing to stand in the spiritual battlefields of life.
It's putting on those shoes. The next piece of armor is the shield. Come with me on to that. The shield is mentioned to us when we come into, um, verse sixteen. In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which we will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. Well, what was the shield that this Roman warrior wore? Well, it wasn't the little round disc shield that you see on the arm of the warrior in most of our pictures for Sunday school. That was the kind of shield that the infantryman wore. The Roman warrior didn't have that kind of shield. The shield of the Roman warrior was about two and a half feet wide and four feet high.
It was big. And it was big enough so that he could hide behind it. And this is, by the way, a very interesting corporate application, which we don't have time to address, uh, today. But what they did when they were in a battlefield situation is that they would line up, and they would take their shields and overlap their shields like this, down the line, and hide behind their shields so that they were impenetrable. What a wonderful church that would be when it comes to spiritual warfare, where the people of God line up, and with their shield of faith overlapping, they protect themselves from the attacks of the enemy. That's the picture that's involved here.
Now, Paul says, what the shield is to the Roman warrior, faith is to the Christian warrior, and that means a trust in the promises of God. It's by a putting a faith and a trust in the promises of God that the flaming arrows that are designed to blow us apart and wipe us out are going to be extinguished. How do you extinguish those flaming arrows? It's by taking a promise from the word of God and trusting in that promise. That's how that flaming arrow is extinguished. Let me illustrate. The children of Israel are at Kadesh Barnea. God has said, the land is yours.
The spies go in, the spies come out, they give their report, and fear paralyzes the nation. Where's that fear come from? Those, that's one of the most flaming arrows of Satan that paralyzes you and me in our lives. Fear. And what the children of Israel needed to do to extinguish that flaming arrow was to take the promise of God and say something like, God has said that he will be with us, he will give us that land as we go in and take it. Let's dare to trust God.
If they had done that, that flaming arrow of fear would have been extinguished, they would have gone in and they would have taken that land, but they didn't extinguish the arrow because of unbelief and their refusal to trust the promises. You get that picture? That's the way you and I need to deal with fear in our lives. I know what it is to struggle with fear. When I left North Park Chapel in London and went to Toronto, I was scared to death. I was scared of failing. I was scared of what was going to happen with our children. I was scared of criticism. I had lots of fears, almost enough to paralyze me. Just before we left, Marilyn gave me a gift.
A couple of years before, we were in Egypt, and we stopped at a plant that, uh, put together papyrus, and, uh, that was the kind of material that the New Testament documents were written on. We bought a little square of it, and I said to, uh, Marilyn, someday I'd like to get one of my friends to write a nice little text and put it on that piece of material. And so here it is, just before we moved to Toronto, Marilyn gives me a text, a gift. I open it up, there's the piece of papyrus, and she went to one of the elders in our church that did nice calligraphy work, and she had him put on Joshua chapter one, verses eight and nine. Those were the promises God had given me and that I was holding on to with this move that was frightening me to death.
The wonderful words that God gave to Joshua, be strong, be very courageous, don't be afraid, don't be dismayed. As I was with Moses, I'll be with you. And I was holding on to that, and she had it done. It was a beautiful gift. I put it up in my office, and I need to say to you that many times I would get up from my desk and walk across, and I'd take a hold of that, and I'd just hold on to it and say, Lord, that's what I'm holding on to. I think that's what Paul says is the, is the, the, uh, the shield of faith, where we take a promise that applies to a particular situation, and we dare to believe it. We're going to trust God. We're going to believe what God says.
We went through an enormously difficult time with one of our children, and I was enormously discouraged. One morning I got up and, um, I didn't want to go to work. I didn't want to go to ministry. I didn't want to preach. I didn't think I should preach. I was awful discouraged. Marilyn walked across the bedroom floor, took me by the lapel of my suit jacket. She said, Bill, this is Satan attacking our marriage and our ministry, and we're not going to let him win. That was a turning point, when we began to realize that the discouragement I was struggling with, the fear I was grappling with, the sense of failure that I was perplexed over, that all of that was a flaming torch sent by Satan, designed to destroy, designed to paralyze, to marginalize, to neutralize.
And how do you extinguish that kind of flaming torch? You take a promise, and you hold on to it. The promise we took was Philippians chapter one verse six: He who begins a good work in you will continue to perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. And we looked at that teenager that was breaking our heart, that was tearing us to pieces, an attack of Satan upon us through our child. And it made me so angry that he was the battleground, he was the instrument that Satan was using to attack us. And we took that text, and we just pinned that text upon that child.
And over and over again, we would take that verse and say, Lord, you promised that if you begin a good work, that you're going to continue to perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. And that, holding on to that promise, extinguished those flaming tarts, uh, darts that were threatening to just undo us. I need to tell you, and I say it very humbly but enormously gratefully, today he's in a missionary discipleship training program, preparing for the mission field. That's God's marvelous, marvelous, transforming work. It's a miracle that is God has done to the glory of God. But we saw ourselves through the next two or three years that were very difficult by taking that promise of Philippians one six, one of the great promises in the scripture for us, and holding on to it.
That's how you extinguish the flaming tart darts of the evil devil. You wake up in the morning and you reach out and pick up the shield, and as you pick up the shield, you say to yourself, today I'm going to trust in the promises of God. When it's fear, when it's anger, when it's, um, discouragement, whatever those flaming darts are, I'm going to address those in the confidence of the promise of God. That's taking up that shield. Well, there's another piece of armor, and that's the helmet. Come on into verse seventeen. It says, and take the helmet of salvation. In uh First Thessalonians chapter five, it says the helmet is the hope of salvation. The helmet is a very interesting piece of armor.
Uh, it had a peak on it like this, so that when, uh, the enemy came with a huge, big broadsword upon the head of that warrior, which was intended simply to split the skull in half and to destroy that warrior, the sword would be diverted by hitting that helmet, and you just simply, friend, you just simply don't go out to war in the Roman days without a helmet on. That's, that's, that's, that's insane. You don't do that. And Paul says what that helmet was to the Roman warrior, the hope of salvation is to the Christian warrior. So to put on that helmet, I suggest, is simply to delight yourself in the assurance of salvation, in the hope of salvation, in knowing that after life there comes the presence of God and the home of God and the fullness of blessing and the fullness of joy at the right hand of God forever.
And that kind of assurance is a tremendous defense against Satan's attacks when he comes in various areas of our life. The sixth piece of armor, and that is the fifth piece of outerwear, is the rest of verse seventeen. It says, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. There were two swords that the Roman warrior carried. One was the broad sword, the huge big sword that would simply split a man in half. The dagger that he wore hanging from his belt and he used in close hand-to-hand combat, and that's the one that's mentioned here. The sword of the Spirit is not the broadsword that you demolish people with, with a mighty stroke.
It's the dagger. By the way, that's a, that's, that's very, very interesting because you remember Peter in the garden when he took his sword and took Malchus's ear off. The sword that he used was his dagger. It wasn't the broadsword, and he comes down on this warrior's head with this little dagger, and it cuts off one of the ears. It's deflected in the... So it's one of the great humorous moments in the Garden of Gethsemane. There weren't many humorous moments, but it just shows what a, what a strange kind of person Peter was, attacking this Roman warrior with this little dagger when the, the broadsword was what he really needed. Anyway, the, the what the sword, what this little dagger is to the Roman warrior, Paul says...
The word of God is to the Christian warrior. It's the sword of the Spirit. That means it's the sword that comes from the Spirit and is used by the Spirit. It's the word of God, and perhaps you have already studied this, but if not, let me take a moment to simply say, in the Greek text, this is not the Logos of God. You know that the Logos is the written word of God. This is the Logos of God. The word that's used here is not Logos. Now, hear me very carefully. This is not referring to the Bible. The sword of the Spirit is not the Bible.
It is not the Logos of God. The sword of Spirit is the rhema of God, and the rhema is an appropriate, authoritative word from God that comes from here. It comes from here. It's an appropriate word that comes from here. It's an authoritative word that comes from here, and you use that in that crisis moment of attack, of spiritual attack, of temptation. You use that to thwart the devil. James says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. How on earth do I resist the devil? What match am I for him? How do I resist the devil?
This is how we resist the devil. We resist him with an authoritative, appropriate word from God. That's what Jesus did when Satan attacked. Now, you need to be careful just to follow me on this, because many of us refer to the sword as the offensive weapon. That is not true in this text. The sword is not an offensive weapon here. The thor- the sword is a defensive weapon. When Satan attacked, Jesus is on the defensive. Satan says, do this, do that, and Je- and the Lord responds by saying, it is written, thou shalt not, thou shou- it is written. And so he takes from the scriptures an authoritative, appropriate word, and he speaks that to that given situation, and Satan backs off.
See, the sword of the spirit, the rhema of God, is an appropriate, authoritative scripture that comes from the word of God, that's spoken in a specific situation that's appropriate, and that's what is used by the spirit of God to resist the devil. The temptation of Jesus is the model and the example for that, and your life and my life needs to practice that over and over again. My suggestion to young people when I'm talking to them on this subject is that they need to identify the major areas of their life where Satan is attacking them, and get a good scripture from the Lord that you can take out of the Word of God and use in that given situation.
You have a problem with, um, losing your temper, being angry. You need to get a hold of the last couple of verses in Ephesians chapter four. and when Satan comes and attacks you toward losing your temper, being unkind, being unforgiving, being angry, then you respond by saying, thus saith the Lord, be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. Got it? That's the sword of the Spirit. It's that spoken authoritative word that's appropriate to that situation that we use to resist the enemy when he comes to attack us.
When I was a bit younger and had all kinds of problems with lust and sexual temptation and all those kinds of pain areas in my life, I found First Thessalonians chapter four to be the rhema of God. That verse says, verse three or four, but this is the will of God, even your sanctification abstain from fornication. And when Satan comes to tempt us with sexual temptation, you need to have a word, an authoritative word from God, where you use, which you use as a thrust, that little dagger, it's a thrust, and that's how we resist the devil.
This is the word, this is the will of God. That's not the will of God. This is the will of God, even your sanctification or your holiness or your purity, and abstain from fornication. You need to have a good rhema from God, a good appropriate text from the scripture that addresses the areas where Satan attacks you in your life. And that's how we pro- hold our ground. We use it as a rhema from God. Well, those are the pieces of the outer garment. Now there's one last piece, and of course it's the overgarment, and there's no parallel with the Roman warrior. The overgarment is distinctively Christian, and so Paul concludes the overgarment piece by saying in verse eighteen, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.
Neil Anderson is, uh, in my judgment, one of the most helpful persons to us today in understanding the realities of spiritual warfare. He says that the most, the most astounding deliverance that he experienced was a high priest, uh, in the Church of Satan in his part of the country. That man was converted Six months after he was being discipled by Neil Anderson. They asked him to give his testimony Sunday night at the church service. And, uh, as Doctor Anderson was interviewing him, he said to him something like this. He said, coming from the other side, after having been involved in Satanism all your life, coming from the other side, what is the most important piece of advice that you would give to us as Christians?
And this converted high priest of Satanism turned to the congregation and said, pray. And when you meet, when you pray, mean it. Then he went on and made a very interesting observation. This is the first line of defense in the life of a believer when it comes to spiritual warfare. It's pray. Now, that makes all kinds of sense to us, doesn't it? When you dress, you dress from the inside out. But when you attack, you attack from the outside in. So what Paul says, the overgarment, that's the last thing you put on. That's the overgarment.
The reason why that's the last thing that you put on is because it's the first line of defense when the enemy attacks. It's simply emphasizing to us, dear friends, the absolute priority of prayer. Now, I didn't complete the story I told you about Marilyn. When she came across and took my lapel and said, Bill, this is Satan attacking our marriage and our ministry, and we're not going to let him win. She almost pulled me down to my knees beside our bed, and that morning we began, after having been married for thirty years, we began to seriously pray together as a husband and wife, spiritual warfare prayer.
It was another two or three years before we got a phone call from our child telling us that God had touched life and changed him. My sense is that prayer was what did the deed. We found a group of people in the church where we were going, seventeen people. We knew that they cared, and we asked them to become prayer partners. We got a band of people together who were prayer supporters. The night our son phoned and told us that he had straightened things out and given his life back to the Lord and so on, the next morning I phoned those people, thanked them for prayer. Three months ago, when he left for the mission training program, he wrote a letter to sixty people.
He said, I know that you have been praying for me during these difficult young years of my life. I just want you to know what God is doing and what I'm doing now. He got a letter back from one of the elders at the chapel at North Park, and the man said, I have prayed ten years for this young man. Prayer is what does the deed. Excuse me, it is the overgarment. If you want to hold your ground, you need to learn to put on the full armor of God. And to put on the full armor of God means that you begin the morning by putting on the belt, which is simply a commitment to be a person of integrity.
And then fastening on the breastplate, which is a commitment to be loyal to the holy law of God. And then putting on the shoes, which is a commitment to be available. I'm ready. And then putting on the shield, which is a commitment that today I'm going to trust what God has said. I'm going to believe his promises. And putting on the helmet, which is a commitment to hope for, confidently expect, and delight in the ultimate future salvation that we have in Christ. And then to take the sword, those scriptures that are particularly appropriate, that particularly fit this situation, and say when that temptation comes up, the way I'm going to resist the devil is not by clenching the teeth, teeth, not by flexing my muscles, not by running to get away.
The way I'm going to resist the devil is I'm going to say, thus saith the Lord, it is written, this is the will of God, even your sanctification, abstain from fornication. That's how you resist the devil. And then over the whole thing, the outer garment, the overgarment, is that commitment of prayer, where we claim the freedom that we have in Christ. We claim the victory over Satan that the cross has accomplished. We claim the joy and the peace and the blessing that is part of our birthright in Christ, and we move forward to stand and to hold that ground. That's how we put on that full armor of God, how we hold our ground, and how we stand.
And I hope that more and more of us will learn to dress for war before we step out into the battle. Let me ask if there's a question or two. We've got a couple of minutes before we need to get into supper here, and I'd be glad to, uh, address any kind of question that needs clarification from what we've been saying this afternoon. If you want me to expand just a little bit, be glad to comment.