If you would turn with me to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians 6, we'll be reading tonight verses 10 through 13. Ephesians 6 verse 10, I have the courage to record their lifeands against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.
Let's pray. Father, thank you that you are our strength, you are the power at work in us and by your grace you accomplish the sanctification of your people. Thank you that as we face the difficulties of life in this fallen world, as we are daily confronted with evil, that we do not stand alone but we stand in your strength and in your power.
You are our refuge and we thank you. We ask, Holy Spirit, that you be our teacher in this hour, that the Word be quickened in our hearts, that we be changed into the likeness of Christ and conformed to his image. Through your Word, we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.
You may be seated. Well, tonight we continue our journey through these last three chapters of Ephesians where Paul is guiding the church into the practical amplification of all those doctrinal statements that he made in the first three chapters. He there treated all the elemental principles of the Christian faith.
He gave them a doctrine that is foundational to our understanding of what salvation really is all about. And here in these three chapters, he is applying that and showing us what it means to live out this life that is ours in Christ. As we begin, I want to remind you of the need for watchfulness daily in our walk with God. The enemy of our souls never sleeps.
He is looking for those that he can devour. And we need to be aware that moments in attention can give the devil an opportunity that can lead to days and weeks and years of misery and the consequences and the struggle and the difficulty that come from a lack of being alert and being watchful. We know this to be true in the temporal affairs of the world. We've seen in recent days an attempted assassination and though unsuccessful yet has caused things that will change the course of our nation in days and weeks to come. This can happen and we've seen this in past history. Some of you know Eric, for example, is a history buff when it comes to military things.
And he probably knows more about this than I do as I tell you what I've discovered. But on June 28, 1914, a young student assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and the events that transpired from that led eventually to World War I, probably the bloodiest war in our history and more than 9 million military casualties and some 8 million civilian casualties over the next few years. Just one little moment in time can have such long-lasting consequences.
Of course, the biggest one we know about is what happened in the Garden of Eden in a moment when Adam failed to fulfill his role as a caretaker for his wife and being her one who protected her and ever since we've been living in a fallen world. So as we come to chapter 6, verse 10, we enter into the final section of the apostles' teaching with regard to the walk of the believer on the basis of what he has shown us in the doctrinal statement, shown us how our position in Christ means that we're different. We're not what we were.
Things are different now and this is how we're to live that out. And so he gives us this instruction and he comes now to what we might call a call to arms. The apostle reveals here the nature and the strategy of the enemy and the supernatural armor that is provided for us by God and points to the certainty of the outcome of the battle. So a proposition tonight is this, that because the devil hates God and seeks to destroy his children, Christians must be aware of the peril and must put on and use the armor that God has provided and must rest in the certainty of Christ's victory. So let's begin to look at this first of all by considering who the combatants are in this war.
If you look at verse 12, we can see who we're up against here. There's a necessity in war of knowing the enemy as much as you can know the enemy and know who he is and how he operates. One of the great difficulties in modern warfare has been the fact that it's hard to identify the enemy sometimes. When we were involved in Southeast Asia, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, there were times when the threat came from young children and there was no uniformed army that you were looking at. It was hard to know who the enemy was.
Same thing happens in the Middle East nowadays. You can never know exactly where the enemy is and who the enemy is. Evil men in our day are willing to involve children and civilians in their strategy and they will locate their operations in hospitals and residential areas. And so it's difficult to know who the enemy is, where they are, and when it comes to the realm of the spirit, we have a need to know the enemy, to know who he is and what the difficulty is. And so as we look at verse 12, Paul tells us first of all who is not the enemy.
He says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. Our struggle is not with other people. Even unbelievers are not really the enemy because they are just captured by Satan to do his will.
And so we don't need to look at other people as the enemy. We need to recognize that Satan is the enemy of God and he is out to destroy and to devour and to kill. We are not at war with flesh and blood, we are at war with the devil himself. Satan in the New Testament, the word devil is used 32 times, Satan 33 times, other names like Belial and Beelzebub and things like that, but this is who the enemy is and this name simply means an adversary, one who is an accuser, who comes against us. He's called the father of lies, he's the great dragon, the serpent in Revelation, the deceiver.
And the enemy, it's not just the one lone spirit, that would be terrifying enough, but a third of the angels fell with him we are told in scripture. And so Satan's minions are I think what we see pointed to here in verse 12 when Paul says that we are battling against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers over this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil. Those words have different meanings, we are all talking about the same army here, but they have rank and position just like any army would. That word rulers has a meaning of one who is first in rank, chief in the position of rank. The authorities refers to a sense of power and of ability, competency. Cosmic powers speaks of just world rulers. I think here he's talking about those that have rule over this present world system, talks about the cosmic powers over this present darkness, the world in which we live indicates the fact that Satan's influence is worldwide, it's all over, it's everywhere, the world system that is a part of this fallen world. Spiritual forces of evil, I think the main thing we need to recognize in this is that it is telling us that this warfare is not carnal in nature, it's in the spirit realm.
And it points us to the spiritual nature of the war, there are a couple of extremes when it comes to thinking about Satan and our war against him and his demons. There are those who are in denial, the rationalist discounts the whole idea of a spiritual realm, everything has to do with just the natural world and there is no acceptance of the biblical idea of the evil one, of Satan. There are even many in our day who profess to be Christian and yet who do not accept the reality of this evil one who is opposed to God. But to deny the spiritual realm is in reality a rejection of the authority of Scripture because that's what Scripture teaches and so we can't fall into that ditch of denying the reality of Satan. On the other hand, there are those who get so obsessed with the idea of the spirit world and demons and looking for a demon behind every bush and everything has to do with demonic activity and they almost ignore the fact that most of our problem is us, our flesh, more so many times than the world and Satan and his war against us. So that's who we're talking about, the combatants, we're talking about the spirit realm, we're talking about Satan and his opposition to God which has been there from the beginning of the world and started in the Garden of Eden and is still ongoing. And we know that he is ultimately defeated but God allows him to continue the war against us.
So, let's look then at the weapons that are involved in the war. In verse 11, we're told that we're to put on the armor of God so we can be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. This word speaks of the methods, the ways, it has the idea of one who is lying in wait to ambush and so we need to recognize that there is a danger of sudden unexpected attack and the need for constant vigilance in this spiritual realm. Peter warns us to be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. The enemy is always looking for opportunity and little things like Paul tells us in Ephesians earlier that we are not to let the sun go down on our wrath and give place to the devil and we keep anger in our hearts. The enemy is very wily, he schemes, he deceives, he twists, he even uses scripture twisting and perverting the truth for his wicked purposes. We all know of the experience of Christ when he was being tempted in the wilderness and the devil took him up to the holy city, set him on the pinnacle and quoted scripture to him about how God was going to care for him and not let him be hurt and the angels would come and bear him up and use the scripture in a twisted and perverted way. He uses scripture, he deceives, casting doubt on the word of God, in the very beginning in the Garden of Eden he came to Eve and said, has God really said and then he twisted and perverted what God had said. He is a liar, he is even called the father of lies and in order to combat him we have to know the truth. If we don't know the truth we don't recognize the lie and so we need to be sure that we understand that the truth is what keeps us from being deceived by his lies. Paul tells us in Corinthians that he disguises himself as an angel of light and so we need to be very aware, very alert, in fact the devil even uses the promise that good can come out of doing wrong. He twists things that way, when he spoke to Eve in the garden he said, if you just eat this fruit you will become wise, you will be like God. He had a similar temptation with Jesus, if you will just bow down to me I will give you all of this, it is in my power, I will give it all to you. You don't have to go to the cross, just bow down to me.
We need to know the enemy, we need to recognize his schemes and his devices. But then on the opposite side of course there is the Christian's armor. Verse 11 and verse 13 Paul says, put on the whole armor of God, take up the whole armor of God. We see here a juxtaposition of sovereignty and man's responsibility, of God's divine sovereignty and our responsibility. We cannot fully reconcile those two realities and truths in our minds and yet this is what the scripture reveals to us, that God is absolutely sovereign and at the same time we are responsible before him. So we have to put on the armor of God and use it in the battle, but it is the armor of God and we can only put it on and use it by the grace of God, the power of God at work in us, it is by his sovereign grace that we can use and effectively wield this armor.
So look again at the overarching command at the very beginning of this passage in verse 10. Paul says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. As believers, as children of God, we are in Christ and in him we can do everything we need to do. He is our strength and in another letter in Philippians Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Because we are in Christ, because we are in him, we have the strength that we need to do whatever it is God has called us to do. I really like the King James version of that verse, it says, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. That word just to me relates to the battle a little more, the power of his might.
Think about the power of his might. In creation he spoke and it came to be. Psalm 33, 9 says he spoke and there it was. In Hebrews chapter 1 we are told that Christ upholds the universe by the word of his power.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon, flashes forth flames of fire, shakes the wilderness, makes the deer give birth, strips the forest bare. He is God Almighty. When he made covenant with Abraham, he spoke to Abraham in Genesis 17, he gave him that name God Almighty, El Shaddai. He is the Almighty God, nothing is too hard for him, Jeremiah says, nothing is too hard for God. In fact, earlier in Ephesians, that is part of what Paul prays for the Ephesians. In chapter 1, he begins praying in verse 15, he says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. God's power that raised Jesus from dead to resurrected life, that is the power that is in us. And Paul is praying that believers would know and understand, be enlightened to the fact that that is the power that is in us, that God has given us that power. And again in chapter 3, he prays in a similar vein in chapter 3 verse 16, he says that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being.
In fact, he goes on to say then that this God can do exceedingly above everything that you can ask or even think. God's power is so great and it is that strength, that power that is available for us to stand in this battle, in this war which we are involved. In our next study as we continue into this passage, we will look at the armor that God gives in some detail but for right now, let's look for a moment at the victors of the war.
In verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil and then in verse 13, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand. The goal, the end result of all this is that we be able to stand, to stand firm against the enemy, having done all to stand, to stand firm. The victory is in Christ. He himself will build his church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it and we are in him and the victory is ours because we are in him. In other letters, Paul says things like this, now to him that is of power to establish you, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith.
The Lord is faithful who will establish you and keep you from evil. We stand firm in Christ. We will not be defeated in Christ.
We can overcome. In Revelation chapter 12 verse 11, we are told that the believers overcame by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, they loved not their lives even unto the death. There is a price for winning the war that is already won and yet God gives us the privilege and the responsibility of being a part of the battle. Victory in Christ may mean death in this physical world.
For certain, it means a spiritual death. Jesus says in Mark 8 35, whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. And so in Luke 9 23, a very familiar verse, Jesus says, if anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. The Christian life is a war, a battle that is won by death, death to self. So a reminder of the first martyr. We know the story of Stephen and how he stood about to be stoned and he says to the crowd as he is about to be put to death for faith, he says, I look up and I see Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
There is the price sometimes of physical death, but daily there is the price of death to self. But in it all, Christ is in us and with us and we have victory that is in him. Just a couple more verses to remind you of the gift that is ours in Christ and the fact that we will be conquerors in this war and Paul's second letter to Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14, he says, but thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. He always leads us in triumphal procession. We are more than conquerors in him. And then again in the first letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verse 57, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Kind of an old gospel hymn. We all are familiar with the chorus, I'm sure, oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever. He sought me, he bought me with his redeeming blood.
He loved me ere I knew him and all my love is due him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. We will win this war. We will win the battles because our strength, our power is in Christ and we are in him and he in us. Amen. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you that you have defeated the enemy. You have held him up to open reproach at the cross. And you have cleansed us and forgiven us of all transgression and clothed us with your own righteousness so that we stand against the enemy in your strength, in your power and one day we'll stand in the very presence of your glory with great joy. And we thank you in your precious name, amen.
