Strong Armor for Weak Sheep, Part 1

Just before the holidays, Chuck Swindoll placed his study in Ephesians on temporary hold in order to concentrate entirely on the significance of Christmas and preparing for the New Year. Today on Insight for Living, we're pleased to resume Chuck's verse-by-verse teaching through Paul's letter to the Ephesians in this helpful series called Becoming a People of Grace. It's remarkable to see how Ephesians chapter 6, where we're picking up today, contains profound wisdom on how to survive the spiritual battles all of us will face in 2021. Chuck titled today's message, Strong Armor for Weak Sheep. I want you to hear something that someone gave me several weeks ago. It's called Blessed.

I think it will encourage you. If you own just one Bible, you are abundantly blessed. One third of the world does not have access even to one. If you awoke this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people around the world today. If you attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than almost 3 billion people in our world. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep tonight, you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish somewhere in your home, you are among the top 8% of the world's most wealthy.

If your parents are still living and still married, you are very rare even in these United States. If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over 2 billion people in the world who cannot read at all. If you believe in the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, you are part of a very small minority in the world and the most blessed. Isn't that helpful for perspective? We awake in the morning and we immediately, if we're not careful, get weighed down with what I call the little things, the thorns and the cares of this world, and before you know it, we're all discouraged for the day. One quaint expositor once said, You may think it's strange to have that word picture in your mind as we read together Ephesians 6, 13-20, but it's fitting. This passage is not written to those who are strong.

It's written to those who are sheep. The strength is never in ourselves. It is always in our God. That's why we are told to stand strong in His might and to wear His armor. I want to read for you Ephesians 6, beginning at verse 13 down to verse 20. Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 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. And pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To search the Scriptures with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now let's resume the message titled, Strong Armor for Weak Sheep. When I first saw the two words, I frowned. I thought maybe the author had mistitled his book. Or perhaps the publisher had misprinted the title, Roaring Lambs. Bob Briner had written the book, and by now many in the Christian community have read it, but back then it was, well let's put it this way, the title accomplished its purpose.

It got the attention of the reader. I mean, lambs don't roar, right? Lions roar. Intrigued with the whole idea, I quickly rehearsed our favorite psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. I reminded myself, we're sheep, we're lambs. We're never even called cubs.

We're never called lions. And then I raced over to Psalm 100, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture, remember? I called it the Vacation Bible School Psalm. We all learned it in Vacation Bible School. We're told there were sheep, and it's true.

And I thought, when do we roar? And if you are as intrigued by that whole oxymoronic thought as I was, Romans 8, 37 or 36 will only drive you deeper. If you look at your Bible, Romans 8, 36 states, we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

Not only are we lambs, not only are we sheep, we're now standing, getting ready to be slaughtered. In the first century, the Apostle was familiar with martyrdom. He himself was a martyr. He was awaiting martyrdom. It wasn't uncommon for families to be torn apart by the sword, as they committed to Christ, as his lambs and sheep were about to be killed for the faith. So it isn't just nice words that he's lifted from Psalm 44, verse 22.

This is a true statement. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. Then when do we roar? You see why I was confused? See why I frowned? When do lambs roar? The best we can do is, meh. Not very intimidating sound, is it? Well, look at the next verse. It'll tell you when. But.

This is called a particle of contrast. Having given one concept in verse 36, the door turns on the hinge of the word but. But, even though we are sheep awaiting slaughter, but in all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. Literally, we keep on being conquerors to a greater and greater degree.

We keep on winning a more glorious victory. How? Through him.

Look at the words. Through him. Through him. When the lion roars, and he is the lion of Judah, right? Christ, the lion of Judah, when he roars, it comes out of our vocal cords. Lambs do roar, but it isn't our roar, it's his roar. When it's strength on display, it isn't our strength, it's his strength. And when the weapons of our warfare become formidable, they're not our weapons, they're his weapons. And when we need protection in the battle, it isn't our armor, it's his armor. It's all about him. We're just lambs.

I love it. Anybody who's traveled from west to east in the southern route has taken Highway 10. And you always get your hopes up because about the time you get from California to El Paso, you think, we're almost there. And only people from west Texas know how far they have to go from El Paso to Dallas or El Paso to Houston.

And I know you've gone through it like my family and I have. You invariably have to stop to eat. It takes a day to get there, and so during the day you stop at one of those west Texas cafes. Every one of them has a postcard rack. And in every postcard rack, there is the same ludicrous postcard. There is a jackrabbit with a saddle. And there's this cowboy wearing chaps, swinging this cowboy hat or shooting his revolver in the air, and we send that silly postcard back to people in California and say, you think you've seen Big Animal. That is the jackrabbits in west Texas. Yesterday I had some firewood delivered, and the guys who delivered it were from Oklahoma. It was a great experience.

First of all, it took me about 30 minutes to start understanding them. And so we got on the subject of rabbits, and having this thought in mind, I thought I'd run it by them. And he said, Jackrabbits, you from Texas never seen jackrabbits. We got big jackrabbits. He says, we call the male stallions and the females mares.

Isn't that crazy? They're like horses. They're so big up here. Now, where am I going with all of this?

Hang on. Can you imagine the Marine Corps advertising, trying to win the attention of a bunch of strong-hearted guys by having this advertisement on television with sheep? Little lambs running around going, baa, baa.

And the lion coming out saying, we're looking for a few good lambs. What's wrong with that? It's not a picture of strength. We like strength. We like swords that kill dragons and blood all over the place and climbing up these tough things. We like the Olympics. Signs of strength, these runners with these washboard stomachs.

You notice that? We with refrigerator stomachs look at these guys with washboard stomachs and we'd say, look at the strength of the runners and the swimmers and the jumpers and the marathoners and the triathletes. We like strength. So when we get to a passage like lambs and sheep, we want to go on to the next part because that's not very attractive, but that's the whole point.

That's the whole reason we need armor. We are not athletes. We don't run fast. We're sheep. All we can do is stand and grow wool.

We just get thicker and thicker as time goes by. That's what sheep do. They can't defend themselves. They're not that bright. I mean, you've never been to a circus where a guy says, we have trained sheep in the center ring. They can't train them to do anything. They just stand and grow wool.

That's all they do. And the Lord has the audacity. I think he's an audacious God. To come to us with words of battle and warfare, with an enemy in chapter six of Ephesians, and it's enough to make us think, oh, we've got to be so strong. We have got to stay in shape because this enemy is coming and he is real and he's relentless.

Wrong. That's true of the enemy, but you're still a sheep. You're still sheep.

This is what makes the account so fantastic. We're just sheep. We can't fight. We don't run very fast.

We can't roar until we have on his armor, and then lambs roar because we are going in the strength of his might. We're not adequate. We don't get any credit for the win. It isn't our victory. We are more than conquerors.

You just read it. Through him who loved us. That's why when you turn to Ephesians 6 and you get to verse 10, he says what he does. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of your own lamb-like legs. No, that is not what it says, in the strength of his might. Verse 11, put on your own wool.

No, that's not what it says. Put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Why, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. You and I don't fight an enemy that we can weigh on the scales or measure with our measuring sticks.

We don't know what a demon weighs. You would never be able to pick Satan out of the crowd. Unless he made himself visible, he would never see him. Or any one of his enemies. Or our emissaries. You'd never see the enemy. So not only are we lambs who are defenseless, can't even roar, not only do we have no strength in ourselves, we can't even see the enemy. So it stands to reason that when he mentions armor, it's armor that can't be seen. Right?

That's what's there. See, we are so enamored of physical appearance, image, strength, that when we get to a warfare subject, if we're not careful, we will think only in terms of physical strength. Has it been so long since you have read of one of the strong athletes from the Olympics, caught taking drugs? How many do you know who are strong of physical strength, who can hardly pass a temptation on pornography? Physically very strong, morally weak. This isn't about physical strength. This is the inverted picture. It's the strength within.

All of us lambs. It's armor that is within. And he happens to use a soldier in Rome as a model for his word picture.

But it's only word pictures. These are allegories. These are analogies that illustrate the invisible.

You track it? You going with me on this? When he talks about a belt, it isn't a literal belt. When he mentions the breastplate, it's an invisible breastplate. The helmet is not a literal helmet. The sword isn't a literal sword.

The shield is not a shield you could touch or measure. These are all invisible armor, pieces of armor, because the enemy is not flesh and blood. And the best we can do is stand and resist. Stand and resist.

Sheep can do that. Let me show you why he uses an armor or a Roman soldier as an example of the armor. Look at verse 20. End of the chapter, Ephesians 6 and verse 20. I am an ambassador in chains.

You know what? He really was. The apostle Paul, according to the last few verses of the book of Acts, spent two years, count them, two years under house arrest with a Roman soldier chained or locked to him.

We would call him handcuffed, we would say today. For two solid years, he had a chance to look at this soldier, part of the crack troops of Caesar's best, right there in the heart of Rome, standing guard over Paul during this arrest. He saw his helmet, he saw his breastplate, he studied his belt, he saw the leggings, he saw the boots, he saw the shield over there, he saw the sword that was never that far away from a Roman soldier, and these became perfect word pictures for an invisible battle.

But don't get so caught up in the image that you miss the representation of the image. That's verse 13, for example. Take up the full armor of God.

This is not Rome's armor, this is not a soldier's armor, though those are the word pictures. Take up the full armor of God, why? So you may be able to resist in the evil day. And having done everything else, stand.

That's what sheep do, stand. Shout till you're blue in the face and you will never impact a demon. Swing a sword all across the room or whatever territory you're in, whether it's day or night, and you will never slice a demon. You will never touch a demon with a shield, a literal shield, or be protected from a demon with a literal helmet. These are all images that represent things that make the demon back off.

Cause Satan to stand off. Look at the passage, it has to do with truth. Righteousness, verse 14. Peace, 15. Faith, 16. Salvation, 17. The word of God, 17. That is what is important and it isn't even the printed word of God, it is the saying. We'll get to that in a moment.

Let's look at these six. Get your pen handy, I want you to mark your Bible. I want you to circle the word truth, verse 14. Your loins gird with truth, circle that. Circle the last word in the verse, righteousness.

Put that on. Circle the last word of verse 15, peace, mark that. Faith, verse 16, circle that. Salvation, 17. And the word, 17, the end of verse 17.

Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the word. Weak, defenseless sheep roar when they wear this kind of armor. Because the strength is coming from the Lord. We go in the strength of his might. We stand against the enemy in the equipment God has provided. Truth is first, I like that. The belt of truth, stand firm, verse 14. Having wrapped yourself around with the belt of truth.

I'm going to pause and let you picture it in your mind. The Roman soldier didn't wear a decorative belt. Most of us wear belts that we kind of take or leave.

They're not that significant. I used to be able to see mine right here. I've got one on. And it goes with this outfit.

It's maroon and it fits. My wife has taught me where things that go together. So I got one that goes with this. I got a black one that when I wear black shoes, I wear a black belt. And that's the closest I'll ever be to being a black belt. I've got a black belt. Now, we can unbuckle our belt and take it off, lay it over there, it's not that big of a deal.

A soldier could never do that. For the soldier, it was often a belt of mail. It was wrapped around and kept his toga. The flowing garment that went over his undergarment, it kept it from flying all around and getting caught here or snagged there. And the belt wrapped it all around and held it all close.

Kept him in a fighting readiness. This is truth. Forget belt now.

Forget the belt. Except it's what wraps itself around the believer. And it's not the truth.

A little technical insight here. The definite article isn't here or in the original. It's truth, truthfulness. It's living truth, telling truth, representing truth.

It's the absence of duplicity, hypocrisy. It speaks of an authentic life and lifestyle. Nothing is hidden that is shameful when you are girded with truth. If you are going to do battle with the enemy on enemy ground and in enemy terms, you are going to have to be a person who lives in and models truth.

You're listening to Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll titled today's study in Ephesians 6, Strong Armor for Weak Sheep. And to learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org.

It's challenging to model the truth in a culture that's entirely unsympathetic to biblical values. And along these lines, Chuck has picked a resource that he believes will help you gain confidence. So let me direct your attention to the book Chuck selected for you. It's called A Practical Guide to Culture, helping the next generation navigate today's world.

Maybe you've tried to engage your children or grandchildren in meaningful conversations about the faith, and perhaps you've been stymied by issues they bring up, such as sexual orientation, gender identity, racial tensions, to name a few. Well, the authors of this excellent book, John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkel, are fully in touch with our times. Their insight will help you speak into the cultural issues that can't be ignored by anyone living in the real world. To purchase a copy of A Practical Guide to Culture, go to insight.org slash store. There's a second book that might be helpful as well. It's for younger ages and called A Student's Guide to Culture.

To purchase either book, call us. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888. Insight for Living Ministries is supported not by the purchase of resources, but through the voluntary contributions of grateful listeners. And we invite you to join our mission to help lead the way toward a life that honors Christ in all 195 countries of the world.

People in every nation need help, knowing how to navigate their way through the powerful currents sweeping through our respective cultures. So to give a donation right now, call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 1-800-772-8888. You can also automate a monthly donation by becoming a monthly companion. To sign up, just give us a phone call. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888, or go online to insight.org slash monthly companion.

Tomorrow, Chuck Swindoll continues his study about becoming a people of grace, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Strong Armor for Weak Sheep, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.