Ephesians 6::10-17 “ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” This episode is about the armor of God and how we can use it to protect against our enemies. It also touches on who our enemies are. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Armor of God
Ephesians 6::10-17 “ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
I know this is more verses than we usually cover, but I didn’t think I could talk about the first part without talking about the second part. The first part of this verse talks about who we need to protect ourselves from. The second part tells us that we need to put on the armor of God, and it explains what that means. This verse starts off very strong. It tells us to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. Did you know that God’s power could strengthen you? Next it tells us to put on the armor of God, which will be explained a little later. The reason we need to put on this armor is so that we can stand against the devil. The next line is one that I don’t think many of us want to hear and even if we do hear it, we don’t want to believe it.
“ For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh. This is what we don’t want to hear. We don’t want to talk about spiritual warfare and we don’t want to listen to anything about spiritual warfare, because we don’t really understand it. If we don’t understand it, then usually we are scared of it. We, as a society, tend to shy away from things we don’t understand. Things we can’t explain and don’t understand make us feel uncomfortable. No amount of ignoring will change the fact that there is a spiritual war going all around us.
The devil is not happy that God made us and especially not happy that we are made in the likeness and image of God. The devil wants us all to perish. Each day you are met with good spirits and you are met with bad ones. I think it is so important to understand this verse because it helps you with your relationships. I say it could help you with your relationships because often times we get upset with our loved ones. We think they are the ones that we are fighting with. However, if we can remember that our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, then maybe we could be more understanding with our loved ones. Maybe we could look deeper than their actions or words and look for the motivation behind them.
The enemy wants us to fight with our loved ones, he wants us to feel alone. In just this one week I have heard about 4 people that have committed suicide. That is the enemies doing. He wants us to feel hopeless, alone, and like no one loves us. You can’t fight the enemy of darkness the same way you would fight a person. Your fists won’t hurt him. However, your words could hurt him. Call on the power of Jesus Christ to fight any spiritual attacks on you or on your loved ones. God also talks about His armor that will protect us. Let’s go over what He means by that.
“Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Fasten the belt of truth around your waist. The devil is the father of lies. He will take a half truth, or a kernel of truth and twist it into a big fat lie that we believe. If we want to stand in God’s armor then we must focus on the truth and not let the enemy twist it. Know your truths, know who you are, know what you believe, and if you are struggling take the time to see if your thoughts are actually true. Ask someone else, bring those thoughts into the light. If you are afraid to ask someone because you feel ashamed, or guilty, then those are probably thoughts from the enemy. He wants you to feel those things so that you don’t ask anyone. Once your dark thoughts are brought into the light, the enemy starts to lose control of them.
Next it says put on the breastplate of righteousness. Stand in your choices. Do what is right in the Lord’s eyes and you can be assured that He is right there with you protecting you. The father of lies will not have any ammunition to use against you if you are living a righteous life. If you are following the Lord’s laws then stand firm in that truth and you will be protected against the enemy. Next it says, “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” The Lord does not want us fighting. If we can strive for peace in all circumstances then the evil one will have less to come at us with. The enemy is happy when we are upset with one another. When we are arguing and fighting then we are not united and the enemy loves that. He lives for chaos and confusion. So, the next time you are being stubborn and not wanting to be the first to apologize, take a minute and consider why you feel that way. Remember who we would be making happy by refusing to apologize, God, or the enemy?
Next, the verse says, “With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” That sounds awesome. I can actually visualize holding up a shield that is glowing with a bright white light and their are all these flaming arrows headed towards me and they just disappear into the shield. I don’t even feel the impact of them. So, what is this shield of faith? It is our faith. Our faith in God, our faith in all of His promises. Sometimes it is hard to have faith, especially when all is going wrong. I can imagine the loved ones of those four people that committed suicide this week may be struggling with their faith. It can be hard to have faith when we don’t understand things. I am sure they are asking how God could have let this happen. This is something that we all probably ask God at one time or another throughout our lives. God is not to blame though. This is the enemy twisting the truth and trying to get us to turn away from God. The enemy knows that our faith is a shield against his attacks and he will use any method necessary to shake our faith and try to convince us that we can’t trust God. It is a lie, he is a liar. When you are in the middle of a crisis, this is when you need to lean more into your faith, knowing that God is there for you and He is helping you through it, even if it feels like he isn’t.
The verse ends with two last pieces of armor. “Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” To be honest, I was not sure what the helmet of salvation meant. I was going to just skip over it and move on to the next thing. I am glad I didn’t because when I looked up what it meant it is definitely something we should all hear. The helmet of salvation is talking about our thoughts. When we put the helmet of salvation on it blocks out those negative thoughts. When you are wearing the helmet of salvation you can hear what is right and what is true. Are you wondering how you can put on the helmet of salvation? That is the thought that came to mind when I heard it helps us protect our thoughts against the enemy. I decided to look it up as I didn’t want to tell you there was armor out there to protect your thoughts and then not tell you how to put it on. When looking for the answer, I found a you tube video for kids that did a much better job explaining this armor than I did. I will put a link in the show notes. Let me just do a quick summary of what he said because I think he did a really good job summing it all up.
This is an excerpt from The Helmet of Salvation: A Sunday School lesson about the Armor of God for kids on Douglas Talks (Click Here to watch). “All the other armor of God has to do with how you live. Through your own effort you can make your armor stronger, but that is not the case with the helmet of salvation. Your salvation is like wearing a helmet into battle. And being saved from your sins is not something that happens because of your effort. We are saved from our sins because of what Jesus Christ did for us. John 3:16 says, “Whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Because of Jesus we can be saved from our sins. All the other parts of the armor can be strengthened by how you live. If you are speaking the truth, if you are being honest you will have the belt of truth, if you are doing what is right you are going to have the breastplate of righteousness, if you are ready to tell people about Jesus Christ you will have you feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. If you hold fast to what you believe you will have the shield of faith. You can have all of these things, but you could be lacking the most important, which is the helmet of salvation. We need to realize that we can’t save ourselves, Jesus is our salvation.”
I really liked how he talked about the fact that we can put the other pieces of armor on ourselves, through our own actions, and yet the helmet we need to rely on Jesus for that one. It is such a great reminder that although we are responsible for our actions and following God’s law, that alone is not enough. We need Jesus to do any of this. He is our salvation. We are not in this alone. I think knowing this also takes some of the pressure off of us. We are not responsible for doing everything ourselves. Jesus already died on a cross for our sins. One last thing we did not talk about and I am sorry as I know this is longer than usual today, is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The word of God can be a great defense against the enemy. Remember, when Jesus was in the desert after being baptized? The enemy came at Him to. Yes, the enemy tried to trick Jesus. Jesus did not fight back, He simply quoted scripture. If you don’t remember this you can find it in Matthew 4:1-11. I won’t recount it to you as we are out of time, but I do suggest if you don’t remember it, that you read it because it is a great illustration of how powerful scripture can be.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. I ask that you help us to put on the armor of God. Help protect us against the lies of the evil one. Lord, when we are falling prey to the enemy we ask that you shine a light into the darkness that he is casting on us. We thank you for sending your son down to die for our salvation. We ask that you help us remember that we cannot save ourselves we need to rely on you. Help us to develop the skills to strengthen the armor we are wearing. We want to be protected against all enemies. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.