Ephesians 6 details the spiritual armor necessary for Christian living and spiritual warfare. The sermon explains each piece: the preparation of the gospel for the feet, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. These elements are crucial for quenching the enemy's attacks through consistent living, unwavering faith, the assurance of salvation, and the Spirit-guided use of Scripture. The message also stresses the importance of prayer, including specific and intercessory prayer, as a vital weapon in spiritual battles, encouraging vigilance and thankfulness.
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Somebody said to him, oh, no, it's kind of an unkind thing, but he said, your feet make so much noise, I can't hear your mouth. This is a very bad thing to happen to a Christian. If you want to keep Satan from throwing up to you, what you do is wrong. Have your feet shot with the preparation of the gospel. Live consistently with the gospel. Now, this doesn't mean that you never talk about the Lord. Because once you have lived as you walk before a person, then, of course, you should talk to that person about Christ. And then in verse sixteen, above all, that is on the outside of all this armor, protecting you in addition to all of this other, taking the shield of faith, wherewith he shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Not ninety-nine to forty-four one hundredths of them, but the whole business. It is not necessary for anything to get through to you. Now you do this with a shield of faith. I used to be bothered with this because I thought of a shield as something about like the of a bushel basket that you wore on your arm and all. You had to lift this up and down, right and left, and maybe you zig when the other fellow zags and then you're done. I'm afraid I'm not smart enough to do this. And then I looked up the word for shield and I found that it's a word that comes from the common Greek word for a door. So I got interested in this and I went back into some of my encyclopedias and I discovered that in the first century The soldiers did have these things that they called bucklers, fastened them to buckle them on to their arm.
But in addition to that, they had a shield, which was the word that's translated here, and it was about the size of a door. Some of them were made of such heavy material, they even had wheels on. And a man had a kind of a handle here, and he just pushed this thing ahead of him. And you can't shoot a man standing by in the door, you know, not a sealed door. And the Lord isn't saying to you, I want you to be real clever with this shield. What he's saying is you get behind there and stay. Now, what is there? It's a shield of faith. You say, I don't understand all the Bible. All right, when the devil comes at you with a temptation, you say, I don't know, but I believe God. Would he ever have caused Eve to fall, Adam, if they believed God?
That's how they fell to unbelieve. When he came to the Lord Jesus with these temptations, what did the Lord Jesus say? He said, it's written. See, I believe God. And you can do the same thing. You don't have to be smart. You just have to stay behind the sheath. The sheath of faith. And then in verse seventeen take the helmet of salvation. Now this is to protect the head. And of course this has to do with the mind. And salvation here is the total word that stands for all that God has for it. You see, if you're going to If you're going to believe God, you'll have to believe him about your daily salvation, as well as about your original salvation.
And then you'll have to believe him about your future salvation, because he's still going to save your body when he comes back again and takes you out of this world. So he wants you to have this guarding your mind. And then we have the first piece of offensive armor. or weapon, and that is in verse seventeen, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Now, I've heard people say, well, I've got my sword with me, meaning a Bible. But he never said throw his Bible at Satan or an evil spirit. That is what you do. It's all. What he uses, the word he actually uses here, not the word logos, which is one word for a word, but he is the word rhema, which means a saint.
Now when the Lord Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, three times Satan tempted him to do something, and three times the Lord answered him, and he answered him from passages that in a section of Deuteronomy it can be read in five minutes. Somebody suggested maybe that was his reading that morning. No. Anyway, this could happen to you. You read something from the Word of God and you say, I don't know how I'll get any help out of Deuteronomy. Well, the Lord Jesus did. He got exactly the three sayings that he needed to meet these three temptations of the devil. And if you read the words, you get into the book, then the Spirit of God can bring to your memory exactly the right thing.
I have thank God many times when I have been tempted to think a wrong thought that some scripture would come to my mind instantly. It would just offset that evil thing or that wrong impression or that wrong idea that I had but offset it immediately. And the Spirit of God promised to do this. The Lord said, When He has come, He will guide you into all truth. He will bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. So this is what the Word of God is for. And what you do is to answer the temptation of Satan with a rough death of the Lord. And verse eighteen says, Praying always with all prayer. Now in John Bunyan's Tobin's Congress, he says that when Satan was fighting against, I mean when a pawn that he was called, really Satan, was fighting against a pilgrim or a Christian, the character, you know, that makes this journey from city of destruction to the city of Rome.
He said that he was knocked down and his sword flew out of his hand. And then a pawn pounced upon him and he thought I'm done for it. And then he remembered that he had a dagger called all prayer. And he pulled this out and he let him out of that, and that was the end of the battle. Potting and slew away in a rage. He wasn't dead, but he was wounded. And this, I think, is a good illustration of what he's talking about here. When you can't do anything else, don't forget to call upon God. I don't wait till you can't do anything else. But I mean, if you feel a battle is lost, you don't know what to do. Don't give it up. Just call upon him.
praying always with all prayer and supplication. A supplication is a word which means a specific petition. Some particular thing for which you're asking. Watch your prayers if they don't get too general. Lord bless us. Thank you for everything. If I've done anything for which I'm Sorry, I'm lovingly forgiven. Those are prayers. They don't mean a thing. Might as well have them framed and just point them as you crawler as bad. They're not prayers at all.
But if you will do this, if when you pray, you will be specific, you will say, Lord, help me to quit hating my brother. Don't say, Lord, help him to quit being hateful. That doesn't mean any good. You'll never get over these things unless you name sins when you cry to God in your prayers. Or if it's a matter of things that you need, you say, Lord, I simply can't remember. I read and it runs through me like a seal. I can't remember. Well, then ask the Lord for a memory. After all, he controls the human mind. Ask him to give you a good memory.
Ask him to help you to remember. Be willing to work at it. but asking to help you. Be specific in the things that you want. If you say, I'm filled with unbelief, or I ask God to strengthen your faith, and then use what he's given you here so that we'll strengthen, because faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. See, this is what he means, he's being specific. And we do this in the Spirit. All prayers are in Spirit. The eighth chapter of Romans says we don't even know what to pray for. let alone knowing how to pray. But he said, the Spirit helps me. So make sure that the Holy Spirit is ungrieved. Make sure there's nothing in your life that would keep the Spirit of God from helping you to pray.
And then watch for it. Watch there and to with all perseverance. Expect an answer. I don't know if you're this methodical or not. I'm not. But I'll pass this on for what it's worth to you. Some people get a little notebook. like a testament which they carry with them. And on one side of the page, they write down the petition, whatever they pray for, and the date. And then across from that, they write down when they get an answer. And Noah's an answer, same as Jess. When they get an answer to this, they put it down. And they go back over this and they review this to make sure that they are really following up their petition.
You ask God for something, and the next day it happens, and you say, well, why am I lucky? Boy, how did that happen? And you've forgotten that you prayed about it. See, this kind of prayer is not pleasing to God. We're not using our weapon to our warfare properly. So watch. In another place, he says, watch for Thanksgiving. Now, I cherish this a little bit further because we don't want to become selfish. It isn't just simply your problems and the health that you need, but he said supplication for all things. And by the way, if there's somebody you don't like, this is a wonderful way to get to like them. Start praying for them.
You pray for somebody and you'll find you just simply can't hate that person. I mean, really pray for them, really take an interest in them. There was a man whom I very hardly disliked and had a dislike from my father. I never heard anything else. about that man. Never heard anything good about it. I don't think he was Christian of God about that, but my father so hardly disliked him that I grew up feeling the same way about him. I was convicted of this. I felt ashamed. And I was like, what can I do? And then I saw this passage, supplication for all things. Well, he's one of God's saints. Why don't I pray for him? And I began to inquire about it. I began to find out where he was working, because he was in Christian work.
I began to find out what his needs were, what his problems were. Don't start this much, he mean business, because I even got stirred up and sent him some money. How can it cost you, you know, you'd be a real outman of Christian. That'd be terrible. But anyway, I began to take an interest in this man. I began to watch for, listen for reports about it. And I began to rejoice when he was successful and when things were going well. And then I got word that he was coming to our town. And he was going to visit a neighbor of ours. And I said to him, I want to meet that man because I haven't seen him for years. But I want to meet him. And I found myself looking forward to meeting this man whom I had formerly so hardly disliked.
And you know what I found out? I found out that he wasn't the man at all. He really was a pretty nice fellow, and he was my brother. I'm sure that God took that dislike out of my soul because I had tried to do what he told me to do, and you tried. Then Paul said, don't forget to pray for me. Now, Paul was in the Mammurteen prison when he wrote this, but he didn't say, verse nineteen, and for me that I may get out of this stinking hole, for it was an awful place. If the Lord ever lets me go to Rome, there's one place I want to see and it's not St. Peter's.
I have the slightest ambition to see that place. I want to see the Mamertine Prison and I want to see the dungeon hole where Paul was let down in. It's shaped like a, kind of like a bottle that comes to a small opening where there's a minion hole on the top. I've seen pictures of it. And down in that hole was where they kept that. dampness, and I suppose the rats and everything else. But down in that hole he wrote, Pray for me. Not that I get out of this place, but that utterance may be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.
For which I am a prisoner, I am an ambassador in chains. Doesn't that add dignity to his suffering? An ambassador wears a red or purple thing down across here, you know, with some medals on it. Oh, they're just proudly punched. Oh, but I've got my medals, too. They're chained. That's what you hear clanking, dangling from my wrists and from my ankles are the marks of my ambassadorship. Oh, this is wonderful. We could get a side of this, but we could see the only thing that really counts is the honor of the Lord, never mind about that personal comfort. And this is what he asked for.
But there he and I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Then he tells them about Tichicus. I'd like to meet this man. He had a wonderful balance of lovely traits. He was a brother beloved. And he was a faithful servant. The word servant, minister is servant. Now a faithful one is one who will tell you the truth. Some people are so faithful that they just take the hide off. And some people are so beloved that they're just doing. But here's a man who was a nice balance of the two. Isn't that what it is?
And this is the way God wants us to be. You can be a brother or sister beloved and you can be a faithful servant at the same time. They don't know much about this because he's only mentioned in three other places in the New Testament. And not much more than this was said about it. But here's why he was going to send them. Verse twenty two says, Who am I to send them to you for the same purpose? Two things that you may know our affairs. I want you to have the truth. I want you to know exactly how things stand. That's not simply Paul's affairs, but what concern all of us. And secondly, that he might comfort your heart. Here's the two things that he did, because he was the two kinds of a man.
You see, being a brother beloved, he could comfort them. And being a faithful minister, he could tell them the truth. So he said, I've sent him to you for this purpose, and I want you to have your minds filled with the truth, and I want your hearts to be filled with God's comfort. If we could keep these two things in mind, wouldn't we be a wonderful help to the Lord's people? Because we need all of that. We need both of these. You need to be taught, but you also need to be comforted. You have a head and a conscience that needs to be thought. but you have a heart that needs to be warm. And then he finishes with this lovely benediction, Peace be of the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now after all of these thoughts, we are returned to the original subject we had in the beginning. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ. In some sense. He says, if any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. That means a curse. He says, we love him because he first loved us. We do too, though. So this benediction is to always love our Lord. And he adds an amen, which I hope all of you can add to the close of this study.
Please don't think you understand the book of Ephesians. I know I don't. But I hope that this will give you enough of an appetite for it because you'll want to go into it. Really give it some study. Now we have a few minutes. Do we have any questions or any comments on it?