“Finally be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.”
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is clearly divided into three main subjects. The divisions are so distinct, that most commentators who have taught from this letter have developed their entire outline accordingly. I have even broken this study of Ephesians down into three series. I’ve called Chapters one and two, “Every Spiritual Blessing”, chapters three and four, “The Unfathomable Love of Christ”, and chapters 5 and 6 “The Christian Victor”.
Now the divisions are not clearly made at the chapter breaks. Paul’s transitions are smoother than that. But his structure, basically, is that he teaches us first about our relationship with God, then goes on to teach us how our interpersonal relationships should be as believers under Christ our Head, and then finally, and what we are now entering into, the warfare of the Christian.
Therefore we take note that whereas an earthly army trains for battle by running, climbing over walls, firing weapons, studying field tactics and the like, the Christian’s basic training is in coming to full knowledge of what Christ has done and brought us to, and growing in maturity to a place of relating to one another in the Spirit of Christ. Only then are we ready to enter into spiritual warfare, with Christ as our Captain.
After all, an army that knows its leaders well, knows itself and its mission. And an army must be united in purpose with one another, soldier to soldier, in order to ever be effective against a common enemy.
E. K. Simpson wrote:
“There is a holy war afoot with the powers of darkness; and who so qualified to animate the sacramental host of God’s elect as this scarred veteran of the cross, himself no carpet-knight, but versed in all the strategy of the campaign and cognizant of all the tactics of the enemy?”
STANDING STRONG
As I began to contemplate this final portion of this epistle, and how it should be applied to us, it occurred to me that in making personal application, and relating it to our congregation, it would be wise to take a look at where we are, before venturing to move forward.
A well-trained soldier, in the field and about to engage in battle, will first stand very still and take in his surroundings. His senses will be heightened. He will consider his back trail, sights and sounds all around him, the strength of his allies at his side and the intelligence information he has received concerning the strength and position of the enemy he is about to engage.
So in an attempt to put myself into this mindset for the purpose of sermon preparation, I stopped for a moment and considered our back trail.
Over the last few weeks something has happened that I think directly relates to this passage we’ve come to.
You are all aware that we gathered with the Olathe (Oh-lay-thuh) congregation, and their pastor, Jay Crenshaw brought us a very powerful sermon concerning prayer and spiritual warfare.
You also know now that the sermon I had prepared for the following week, unbeknownst to Jay, was on the same topic, from a different passage of scripture.
Now we all recognize that without our conscious planning of it, the Spirit of Christ had led Jay and I to bring the same fundamental message to our combined congregations for two weeks, one after the other.
At the end of our services two weeks ago, Jay made a very interesting point to me. This is not an exact quote, but he reminded me that when Jesus wanted to impress upon His hearers that He was about to say something they should give heed to and listen very carefully, He would say, Truly, truly, or ‘verily, verily’. In other words, the double usage of the word was an alert to their ears that He was going to say something very important.
Well, said Jay, He has said something to us twice.
So, fellow-believers, fellow soldiers, we need to realize that it is no chance coincidence that Jay and I were inspired to bring those messages about spiritual warfare and the authority of the believer in prayer, just as we here at Cornerstone were about to enter this final phase of our study of Ephesians.
Here we stand. Our back trail shows us something pertinent to where we are and how we got here. That God has gotten our attention and made us alert to the fact that we are here, at this time, for some purpose of His. Over past months, maybe longer, He has been drawing people to prayer, all over this region. Little pockets of people suddenly, almost irresistibly, coming together for intercessory prayer; and out of those prayer meetings are coming desires for new areas of ministry and outreach.
In several churches in our own association, there have been recent inexplicable losses in membership and attendance; as though God is doing a pruning work.
As some of us pastors have gotten together for prayer and fellowship, we’ve noticed among each other a renewed focus on spiritual warfare and the need for fervent and concerted prayer and watchfulness.
God is on the verge of doing something, folks; and He is preparing the way, by doing a work in the hearts of His people. So we need to be alert. Perk up our ears, check the direction of the wind, don’t blink. Don’t miss out.
Now let’s consider our strength and its source, before taking our next step.
Paul said to be strong in the Lord. Now there’s a number of ways to apply that exhortation. The first is obvious to us all, and even though we constantly violate it, we all know the truth. We do not and cannot stand in our own strength. When we try, we fail. That is the obvious application.
We’ve been quoting the verses lately, that say it all. “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.”
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts.”
David, a seasoned warrior, and no slouch in his own physical power and prowess, understood very well!
“It is God who arms me with strength
and makes my way perfect.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;
he enables me to stand on the heights.
He trains my hands for battle;
my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”
Psalm 18:32-34
Another way to look at this, is that we are, nevertheless, being told to do something.
We’re being told to be strong. Granted, we are to be strong in His strength and not our own, but Paul did not say, “Finally, stand back and watch the Lord do all the work.”
He said to be strong, and a person needs strength for a purpose. If you have no purpose, no duty, no goal, no drive, no challenge, then you do not need strength. But Paul says we need to be strong in the Lord. So we must have a purpose, and there is a need for strength for that purpose.
And since he’s telling us to be strong in the Lord’s might and not our own, that should raise some red flags.
If I was standing at the edge of camp, ready for the order to march out against the enemy, and my Captain walked up, looked at my rifle, and shook his head and said, “You need a bigger weapon”, I would want to know what he knows about the enemy that I don’t!
Are they really big? Do they just have bigger weapons? Are there more of them than I thought? What am I supposed to know here, Cap; and just how big should my weapon be?
Well, our Captain does know things about the enemy that we don’t. He knows what lies in the days ahead. He knows what lies in wait for each of us, and He knows precisely the job that He has for each of us to do.
So He sends word from Headquarters through His Apostle, to say, “You’d better stand in My strength and the power of My might. Because only My strength will be suitable for what you’re going to face ahead.
Ok, so what does it mean, exactly, to stand strong in the Lord? I think there are a lot of people in the Lord, who are not strong in the Lord. I think there’s a whole lot of desk jockeys out there, who want to be in God’s army, but they want to type memos and deliver dispatches, but not go out into the jungle themselves.
So how do we stand strong in Him? The first step, I think, is obedience. Which is a learned thing.
In Romans 5:10 Paul said that “…while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son”. So if we were conscripted into God’s army as enemies, then now that we’re on the right side, we have a lot of bad habits and attitudes to surrender. We need to learn obedience.
In military basic training the very first thing they do, is to teach new recruits obedience to orders. When the Lieutenant yells “Charge!” and races across the field, running at the enemy, right about the time he can see the whites of their eyes, he doesn’t want to look back and see all of his guys back there at the starting line, waving, playing checkers, reading novels and taking naps.
God can’t use a disobedient servant, believer. And as Ray Stedman wrote, He will not give new light until we are obedient to the light we’ve been given.
To stand strong in the Lord we must be obedient to the Lord.
Next, we have to know about His strength. We have to know about it, so we can have confidence in it. If a man is going to lower me over a cliff by a rope, I want to know first, that he can hold my weight, and for the length of time it will take to lower me to safety.
In a sermon titled, “The Call to Battle” by Lloyd-Jones he says this:
“Where do I see His strength? I see it in His life. I see Him here in this world in the ‘likeness of sinful flesh’. I see Him in the same world as I am in. I see that obviously He knew hunger and thirst and physical weakness and tiredness, that He knew what it was to be disappointed with people. He has gone through it all. And yet what I see, as I look at Him, is that He stands, He always stands. There is never a wavering, still less a failing or a faltering, or a falling. He stood, with the world and the flesh and the devil - everything- against Him. He stood. Therefore as I look at His life I see at once One who walked through this world without deviating in any respect. He just went on steadily.”
We see His strength in every recorded event of His life. He had strength to resist evil, strength to resist pre-mature Kingship, He had strength to win in the Garden, and to walk nobly and in absolute control, to trials of mockery and a horrible death. And by so doing, He now has power to save and to keep us forevermore.
Stand in that strength. Stand in the power of His might, believer. Stand in obedience and in prayer and in His word, and you will be ready for the coming battle.
WHY PUT ON THE ARMOR?
Why put on the armor, then, if we’re standing in His strength?
Well, as I said earlier, it is His strength in which we are to stand, but Paul said ‘be strong’, meaning we are to be actively engaged in something that will require strength.
Now here again, there are a couple of different ways we can approach and apply this idea of armor donning.
First, if we need armor to accompany strength, then the activity we need strength for must be war. Not a sport. Not a contest. War.
War has victories and spoils, but it also has casualties and defeats. Paul wants us to stand strong in the power of the Lord’s might, and put on God’s armor, to minimize the casualties and maximize the victories.
Another way to apply this, is that it takes strength to even wear armor.
Notice he says, ‘be strong’, and then he says, ‘put on the full armor of God’.
I read somewhere once that in medieval England, the suits of armor worn by the kingdom’s knights weighed approximately 90 to 125 pounds. Imagine having to carry a 45 pound shield on one arm, and swing a 15 pound sword for a couple of hours, wearing all of that.
Imagine falling on your back and having to get up quickly!
I saw an old movie with a young Tony Curtis. I don’t remember now what story it was, but it was set in 16th century England, and he was training for Knighthood. The first day he wore his armor he fell backward, and lay there struggling like a turtle on its back, trying to get up. He needed help. Then over the days of training his strength grew greater, until he could navigate quickly and nimbly in his armor.
Fortunately, Christian, God’s armor is not cumbersome, and our weapons are not heavy.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.”
II Corinthians 10:3,4
And we are made strong to carry them, by Justification and Sanctification. This is the power of His might (Romans 1:16). And as we’ll see in the coming weeks, His armor is made up of truth and righteousness and peace and faith and salvation and His Word and intercessory prayer.
THE SCHEMES OF THE DEVIL
So why do we have to stand firm against the schemes of the devil? Think about this for a moment. Christ defeated Satan at Calvary; right? We’re His now, and He sends His Holy Spirit to live in us. The Spirit of the One who is strong, living in us.
So can’t He just tell the devil to leave us alone? I mean, Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Comforter, didn’t He?
But when we think that way, we have things a little backward. We’re not understanding something about our spiritual development and what God intends for us.
On the morning I was to begin preparing this sermon, I attended a weekly prayer meeting with several of our association pastors. One of them read a passage of scripture to us that made me sit up and take notice, considering what I was planning on saying here. It was from Judges 3:1-4
“Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan; only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, those who had not experienced it formerly); These nations are, the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. And they were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses.”
For generations, the children of Israel had been in Egypt, in slavery, knowing nothing of life except how to make bricks and otherwise serve the Egyptians. Just as we, before we were saved, were in the ‘Egypt’ of sin. We were enslaved, held in bondage and bitter labors under the devil’s thumb, and knew nothing of God or Heaven.
Now, He has saved us out of Egypt, but not for sitting and pampering ourselves, Christian. Not for playing checkers and reading novels and taking naps.
There is a war being fought over souls in this world, and we have been given the command to stand strong in the might of the Lord of the ages, to don His armor, and take the battle to the enemy.
And just as God left these other nations in the land for the sake of teaching these people war, who had never known war, or had the strength to fight even if they were so inclined, so He has assigned and allowed our testing, in order to develop us into warriors for the Kingdom, and to test us, whether we will obey His commands.
Satan may occasionally be directly responsible for our battles; not always. But when he is, it is by leave of the Lord of hosts.
And Christian, we need to be aware of our enemy and his schemes. We can’t stand against them if we’re not aware of them.
He really only has four or five basic schemes, but he reshapes them and disguises them and brings them to us from different angles and directions so he can keep trying to fool us.
For instance, getting people to think he doesn’t exist; that may be his Sidonians.
Or fooling people into thinking that even if he does exist he has no interest in us or power over us; that may be his Canaanites. Or deceiving people into thinking their religiosity is what saves them, could be his Philistines; and on the crest of his Mount Lebanon his Hivites may be his lulling people into thinking they are good, obedient Christians, when in fact they have gotten so used to ignoring God’s voice that they are calloused of heart and deaf in spirit.
So God calls us to do battle, Christians, thus proving our obedience to His commands, and being trained and perfected as warriors for the Kingdom.
CONTINUE TO STAND
Time is over for sitting, church. In fact, there never was a proper time for it.
The call and commission of God to the church from the very beginning, has been to don his Armor and follow Him into the fray.
He started His church in enemy territory, by winning over enemies and then teaching them His ways.
Now we are in the final days of earth, and I am convinced in my spirit that He is very close to doing something right here in our midst that will shatter the darkness that has held this region in its grip for so long.
Other branches of this army are responsible to follow Him where they are, and be fighting the battle where He has placed them. But you and I are here, and He is preparing us; He is preparing pastors, and He is preparing congregations, and He is preparing individuals who are obedient and yielded to Him, and whose heart’s cry is ‘amen, come Lord Jesus’.
He wants to train your hands for war, believer. Because only by marching into the fray, can you share with Him in the sweet and poignant taste of victory.
Stand and continue to stand in the strength of His might, dressed in His armor and standing firm against the devil’s schemes.
Because the day is coming soon when the nations will “…hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war.” Isaiah 2:4
And on that day you will stand in the victor’s circle with Him, and hear Him say, ‘well done’.
But that day is not yet. Today is the day of battle, and the war rages. And souls are the spoils. Are you making ready? Are you standing?
