I’d like to start by reading two short passages from Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe.
Ivanhoe is set in the 12th century, a time when soldiers fought with swords and arrows and knights wore chain mail armour.
Ivanhoe is a young Saxon knight. He’s fighting alongside Sir Robin Locksley, who turns out to be Robin Hood, and the Black Knight, who turns out to King Richard I. This is a fictional story!
Maurice de Bracy is a Norman knight. He’s kidnapped Ivanhoe and a woman named Rowena and taken them to a fictional castle called Torquilstone Castle. A young woman called Rebecca has also been taken captive and is there too.
Sir Robin Locksley and the Black Knight come to rescue them. The Black Knight and Ivanhoe’s father, Cedric, advance across a drawbridge. When they get to the gate, they take cover, and the Black Knight uses his axe to try to break into the castle. But above them, De Bracy is heaving a coping stone out of its place to land on them. Locksley sees what he’s trying to do. Let’s hear what happens:
‘Thrice did Locksley bend his shaft against De Bracy, and thrice did his arrow bound back from the knight’s armour of proof. “Curse on thy Spanish steel-coat!” said Locksley, “had English smith forged it, these arrows had gone through, an as if it had been silk or sendal.”’
There’s some archaic language there!
De Bracy’s armour protects him against the arrows. Scott describes De Bracy’s armour as ‘armour of proof.’ It means armour that had been tested and PROVEN to give protection against the arrows.
De Bracy gives up on the idea of throwing a stone down on the attackers and comes down with a group of soldiers to fight them. They open the gate, and the Black Knight forces his way in. Before long, De Bracy and the Black Knight are fighting hand to hand. Let’s hear what happens:
‘And well and chivalrous did De Bracy that day maintain the fame he had acquired in the civil wars of that dreadful period. The vaulted passage to which the postern gave entrance, and in which these two redoubted champions were now fighting hand to hand, rung with the furious blows which they dealt each other, De Bracy with his sword, the Black Knight with his ponderous axe. At length the Norman received a blow, which, though its force was partly parried by his shield, for otherwise never more would De Bracy have again moved limb, descended yet with such violence on his crest, that he measured his length on the paved floor.’
De Bracy’s crest was the emblem on his helmet. So, De Bracy’s shield and helmet gave him some protection from the Black Knight’s blow, but not entirely. He has now fallen.
‘“Yield thee, De Bracy,” said the Black Champion…’
A few pages on, the Black Champion finds and releases the various captives.
The passage gives us a picture of a battle. The combatants put on armour, and they take up weapons. Some things they do are defensive and some things are offensive.
That is exactly how the apostle Paul depicts our Christian life. He tells us that we’re in a battle, and God has given us armour to put on and weapons to use.
There are three spheres in which this conflict is fought.
The first sphere is EXTERNAL attack. The attack comes from the world around us, but it is Satan and his forces who are behind it. An example of this is persecution of Christians. It could be killing of Christians in North Korea or it could be mocking of Christians in the UK. In this sphere, we have to be defensive.
The second sphere is INTERNAL attack from Satan’s lies and temptations. An example of this might be Satan telling us, ‘You’re no good. You’ll never be able to do this job.’ We have to be defensive in this sphere too.
The third sphere is OUR attack on Satan’s territory. In this sphere, WE attack. Jesus came to ‘proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.’ Jesus didn’t just defend. He freed captives. He attacked the castle – just like the Black Knight did.
Paul tells us that God has given us a set of armour and weapons for this fight. If we’re going to win, we need to put them on or take them up as appropriate.
Three weeks ago, we looked at the first two pieces of armour in Paul’s list: the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness. Today, we’re going to look at the remaining four.
The third item in Paul’s list is ‘feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.’
‘Readiness’ means being prepared. Soldiers certainly need to be prepared. Some British army units can be deployed in a matter of minutes! The British army is ready to go. In some cases, it might go as a peacekeeping force.
I’d like to make a distinction.
Soldiers might be ready to go somewhere to bring peace.
But the Christian’s gospel of peace makes him or her ready to go.
How does that work?
Let’s imagine two girls, Elena and Ayesha. They’re both 17.
Elena has a great relationship with her parents. She feels secure and she has a good view of herself. At school, her teachers encourage her and give her freedom to plan her studies. She has friends she goes to when she’s having a tough time.
Sadly, the same isn’t true of Ayesha. At home, her mum and dad don’t give her much time. When her parents do talk to her, all too often, it’s to criticize her. She’s recently changed school. Her new teachers don’t have much time for her, and she’s struggled to make friends.
One day, there’s an announcement at school for a summer trip to South Africa. Who is more likely to go? Elena, or Ayesha? Almost certainly, it will be Elena. There’s plenty of evidence to show that a person who has a secure base will feel safe to venture out, to try new things, or to take on some new academic challenge.
As Christians, we have received and accepted a gospel of PEACE. Our most important relationship of all, our relationship with God, is the most secure, supportive, and peaceful relationship that anyone can have. We have the most secure base it’s possible to have! The peace we have with God gives us the readiness to step out and face challenges or perhaps opposition. We know God is on our side and with him on our side, we’re ready to storm the castle!
Having this gospel of peace also makes us ready in another way. A salesman won’t want to promote a product which he knows doesn’t work. But the gospel of peace? We've experienced it. It works! We’re not only ready to share it; we definitely want to!
Isaiah wrote, ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news’ [Isaiah 52:7]. We have very, very good news!
So, let’s remember the secure base of peace with God which we have. Then, confident in that base, let’s be ready to launch off! Let’s also remember the wonderful message of peace we have, a message we’re more than ready to share.
The fourth item in Paul’s list is the shield of faith.
What are we to use the shield of faith for? Paul says that we can use it to ‘extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.’
Satan tempts us in all sorts of ways: to lie, to boast, to commit sexual sin, and so on. But I don’t think these are the kinds of things Paul had in mind when he talked about the flaming darts of the evil one.
Paul tells us to take up the shield of FAITH. We need the shield of faith to deal with DOUBTS.
As Christians, we face a huge range of doubts. The kinds of doubts change as we go on in our Christian lives. But I think doubts tend to split into two broad groups. One kind of doubt is about who God is. The other is about who I am.
When we think about WHO GOD IS, we might wonder if God is real. I did, when I was a young Christian. We might wonder if God is good. Perhaps something bad happens. We think, God could have stopped it! So, we doubt that God is good. We might wonder if God listens to us when we pray. So, we doubt that he is really our heavenly Father. In these situations, we need to take up the shield of faith.
We might wonder if God will take care of us. In August, we had King’s Praise in King’s Park. I wasn’t sure how it would go but we went ahead. We displayed faith that God would take care of things, and he did. We took up the shield of faith. If we hadn’t, if we had let the darts of the evil one through, we would never have started.
I expect we know the story of Peter walking on water. Peter starts off well, but then he sees the wind and waves and starts to sink. He loses faith. At one level, what happened was a physical event. Peter really did walk on the water. But the story is also a metaphor for a spiritual principle. Jesus calls all of us to walk on water! By that, I mean that Jesus calls us to take actions which are, humanly-speaking, risky. We’re not confident that we can do them. In fact, we’re fairly confident that we can’t! But if God is calling us to do something, he’ll sustain us. We need to take up the shield of faith.
We can also have doubts about WHO WE ARE. When the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he came to Jesus with three specific temptations. But before each one, he said, ‘If you are the Son of God...’ Satan wanted to sow seeds of doubt in Jesus’ mind about who he was.
Last Thursday evening we started a course called Freedom in Christ. The first lesson is titled, ‘Who am I?’ The authors of the course believe it’s essential that we grasp who we are. They write, ‘Regardless of the mess you may have made or how bad you feel about yourself, the truth is that, if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord, YOU ARE NOW A SON OR DAUGHTER OF GOD HIMSELF.’ Wow! This is such a wonderful and amazing thing that we could easily doubt it. But we need to take up the shield of faith and remind ourselves who we are.
We’ve got two more weapons to take up.
The fifth item in Paul’s list is the helmet of salvation.
Every item in Paul’s set of armour comes from the Old Testament. Most of them are descriptions of God and most of them come from Isaiah. Let’s have a cross-reference. Here’s Isaiah 59:17a: ‘He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head.’
The ‘he’ in this verse is God. God doesn’t need salvation! When God puts on these items, he reveals who he is and what he will do. Do you know the Hillsong song, ‘Mighty to save’? It tells us that Jesus is ‘author of salvation.’ Hillsong is just repeating what the Bible says [Hebrews 5:9].
Jesus gives us salvation; we put it on!
David wrote, ‘In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?’ [Psalm 56:11]. Let’s hold onto this truth! Whatever else happens, I am saved! My eternal situation is secure! If that’s the case, why should I be afraid?
The sixth and final item in Paul’s list is the sword of the Spirit, which Paul tells us is the word of God.
Normally, when we read the phrase, ‘The word of God’ we think of scripture, the Bible. We should understand the word of God that way here.
When Satan tempts us, we should do what Jesus did when he was tempted. We go to scripture to understand what God’s will us.
When we proclaim the gospel, we should do what Jesus did when he proclaimed the gospel. We go to scripture to explain God’s plan of salvation.
When we read the Bible to ourselves, God speaks to us and little by little changes us.
WE are the ones reading the Bible. But according to Paul, when we read scripture, we take up the sword of the Spirit. We give the Holy Spirit his favourite weapon – and the Holy Spirit knows how to use it! Sometimes he will defend us with it and sometimes he will launch an attack with it. We need to put it at the Spirit’s disposal!
But perhaps taking the word of God means more than just reading the Bible. There are two Greek words which are translated ‘word’ in the New Testament. One is ‘logos’; the other is ‘rhema.’ Logos often refers to the written Word of God, the Scriptures. Rhema is used less frequently. It generally means a specific, spoken word. It might be a word that’s spoken for a particular situation. For example, we read that ‘The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness’ [Luke 3:2]. This was the rhema of God, God’s specific word. On that basis, John went out to proclaim Jesus’ coming.
The sword of the Spirit is the rhema of God. That could mean a specific word of God that’s spiritually discerned. Or I think it could mean a verse or a passage of scripture which God is really impressing on us. If we have that, then let’s lift it up, hold on to it.
We have come to the end of Paul’s six items of armour.
Can you remember them? They are the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
We need to put them ALL on! Then, we’ll do what Paul wants us to do. We will withstand in the evil day, and having done all, we will stand firm.
TALK GIVEN AT ROSEBERY PARK BAPTIST CHURCH, BOURNEMOUTH, UK, 28TH SEPTEMBER 2025
