Introduction Today we are considering HOW we get STRONG, and why we MUST be strong. We are in a COSMIC battle, against enemy forces that are seen and unseen. So Paul in Ephesians 6 COMMANDS us to be strong. This is no time to pet and cuddle and luxuriate in our weaknesses. Ephesians 6:12 But that does not mean God REMOVES our weaknesses. Instead, as God said to Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul doesn’t cherish his weaknesses, but instead he uses them as a springboard to strength: 2 Corinthians 12:7–10 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Now, Paul never commands something without saying how we do it. We gain strength BY grace, through faith. The grace is the words of this letter. Which have to do with how we get strong: Eph. 6:2: By putting on THREE PAIRS of God’s armor. Three pairs of God’s armor. Ephesians 6:11 The Passage Paul says in v. 12, that there are different categories of these spiritual enemies. The different titles here refer to different kinds and levels of authority. Now, where do they come from? For the sake of time, I can only draw you a map. But I’m happy to sit down with you and look more deeply. These are spiritual, god-LIKE beings that God created BEFORE He created mankind. They have hierarchies, as we see in the title the ARCHangel. At some point, some of these beings fell into sin. And now to this day they still possess authority, yet they wield it for evil. The implication is that these beings are constantly interacting FROM the unseen world, with OUR visible existence. And they are dead set on seeing the name of God besmirched, his kingdom thwarted, and His will perverted. Now, before we get to those, let’s stop here and acknowledge that some of us are quite uncomfortable with the language of Eph. 6:11-12, and all this talk of the devil and spiritual beings of evil in the heavenly places. It’s usually the more “biblical”, “Berean” folks who keep a safe distance from such language. If we’re honest, we’re a little embarrassed by such language, or a little scared of it. For two reasons, I think. 1. We may have known more charismatic or Pentecostal people who took the Bible’s language of spiritual warfare and ran with it in a way that was decoupled from the rest of the Bible. So we rightly don’t want to be like them. 2. But we often overcorrect. If the one side hyper-spiritualizes everything, then we drive into the other ditch, the ditch of rationalism and naturalism. We are much more rationalistic and natural men of our age than we realize. But the Bible is FULL of the strange and the alien, not least of which is an empty tomb. It is instructive that Paul doesn’t feel the need to do much explaining to his original audience, which were people much like us. He simply mentions these powers and then moves to his main point. Which means the original audience had more ease with the unseen realm than we do. Just perhaps the Enlightenment led US astray. We are left with many questions. Why doesn’t God just take them out? Ephesians will give us a partial answer. But we must be content with the level of information that our pay grade deserves, which is not a lot. So the question God poses to us this morning is, regardless of our questions, are you gonna go with me on this or not? The Armor Imagery Now, Paul does not just get this armor idea from his own head. As is so often the case, he’s thinking about the Old Testament, specifically here about Isaiah 59. In this oracle God describes how our sins have separated us from Him. And it describes how those in authority have not solved this problem. V. 16, God saw that there was NO man, so then, v. 17, God HIMSELF is said to come, wearing a breastplate of righteousness, and a helmet of salvation, and as clothing, vengeance and zeal. Isaiah 59:16–17 ESV He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. v. 20, a Redeemer will come to Zion. In other words, Jesus. Jesus is the conqueror, reconquistador of the lands and people taken captive by these evils beings. They were the ones that fell and led the world into sin before the flood, in Genesis 6, and they are the ones Jesus proclaimed triumph to, on the Saturday before Easter (1 Peter 3). So now Paul takes the same military imagery, and applies it to us, with a few modifications to the Isaiah armor. First, vengeance is left out. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. But then he takes the other pieces of the Isaiah armor, and he ADDS one item to each. Now, why does he feel free to do this? For two reasons. First, because GOD is God, and we are not. We need more armor than He does. Yet though He is the mighty conqueror, He has chosen what is weak in the world to DEFEND what he wins. That’s why the verbs here are, v. 11, Ephesians 6:11–12 stand, and v. 12, grapple, and WITHSTANDING and STANDing firm. Our job is to faithfully hold the ground that our God wins. The second reason is that the armor here also maps over from the priestly garments of Aaron, in Exodus 39. We are God’s warrior-PRIESTS, who serve Him in His temple which, as He conquers, becomes the whole world. In order to serve Him rightly in His temple, the world, we must wear the garments HE specifies. The reason why many Christians are weak in our day is that we come to the battle line dressed like golfers. And the enemy says, look at this nut job. Easy Pickens. The First Pair of Armor: Truth and Righteousness The first pair of armor is truth and righteousness. We wear the breastplate of righteousness by putting on the belt of TRUTH. Ephesians 6:14 We see this pairing in the very structure of Ephesians itself. The first three chapters are all about truth. There are NO commands in the first three chapters. Then the second three chapters are ALL commands. Almost nothing but. The lesson here is this: Right doctrine, or what is called orthodoxy, leads to right living, or orthopraxy. Truth leads to righteousness. Or to put it in the negative: the reason we have messed up living is that we have messed up believing. So the way we put on Christ’s breastplate of righteousness is by BELIEVING the glorious doctrines of God’s sovereign grace. I can tell you for myself - this has made ALL the difference. To open yourself up to and believe that, no matter who my spiritual enemies are, 1:3, God has ALREADY blessed me with EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in the unseen realm. This he did, v. 4, as a consequence of His choosing me and you, Christian, BEFORE the foundation of the world. Though these spiritual beings chose evil, God’s choice of me was greater. This he did purely in love - v. 5, he predestined us to be adopted as HIS sons. This was all according to HIS free WILL, HIS choice. And all of this He did, v. 6, to the glory of His grace. And when He’s good and ready, in the fullness of time, v. 10, he will unite ALL things in heaven, in the unseen realm, and on earth, in Christ. Then, Ephesians 1:11. This truth humbles us, and grounds us, and unites us, gives us a new identity, and creates new societies and families and worlds. All of the righteous living of the last three chapters flows out of this TRUTH. Christian doctrine is not some dry, dusty thing, but the backbone of all that we DO, whether in the family, church or society. The Second Pair: Zeal and Faith The second pair of armor is the shoes of readiness, or, as the Isaiah armor put it - zeal. A zeal for spreading the gospel that brings peace. Ephesians 6:15 But in order to have this same zeal of Jesus, we must pair it with the shield of faith, Ephesians 6:16 which we use to extinguish the arrows of the evil one. Those arrows are LIES. The devil is the FATHER of lies. Lies are his main weapon. So we must take up the shield of FAITH, that believes the TRUTH. This faith protects our zeal and propels us forward. Faith that, Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins everyone is DEAD in their trespasses and sins. Dead. And what can a carcass do to improve their situation? Nothing. But God, 2:4, being rich in mercy, because of His great love, v. 5, makes us alive together with Christ. He raises the dead. All according to His sovereign choice, before time began. So FAITH in this truth does TWO things. First, it humbles us, that, v. 8, even our FAITH is a gift of His grace. Thus NO ONE can boast. But then, surprisingly for some, this, v. 10, sets us on a path of ZEAL, to DO good works, which God ALSO prepared for us beforehand. The truth that God already HAS His elect, in this city, if we would BELIEVE that, is what then propels us FORWARD, to zealously go and find them. For, FAITH SAYS, they ARE there. Already. Since before the foundation of the world. And this keeps us going, past all the devil’s lies, that say, • Oh, you’re terrible at this • California will never be Christian again • America will never be Christian again • Those Sikh’s will never believe • That guy in the turban, he’ll never believe Damn lies, all of them. But lies that too often squelch our zeal. The greatest missionary endeavors in history were driven zeal, protected by THIS faith. But they’re dead and gone now, and here we are. And there’s the shield. Who will pick it up? The Third Pair: Salvation and Word The last piece of armor from Isaiah is the helmet of salvation, which we are to pair with the sword of the Spirit - the WORD of God. Ephesians 6:17 The helmet of salvation protects our mind with the truth of the gospel. We must never graduate from or take for granted the gospel. For it is BY the gospel that we STAND in the evil day. We are saved by faith, and we are being saved, day by day, as we rehearse the gospel to ourselves. In THIS way, we hold our ground, and defeat the evil one. John saw it this way, in his apocalypse, Revelation 12:10–11 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Though the devil accuses us night and day before the throne of God, we conquer him BY the blood of the lamb, and BY the WORD of our testimony. The grammar of this verse has a subtle but crucial nuance to it. The word BY does NOT mean instrumental, like, I hit the ball BY swinging the bat. Instead it is the more rare sense of LOCATION. Or more literally, UPON. We conquer the evil one UPON the blood of the lamb, and upon the word of our testimony. On that ground, his lies and accusations have no power. Which is why we need the Word, the sword of the Spirit. This is where we get our testimony from. Why are you a Christian? Because, the Word says, Christ died for ME. And by the Word, we are able to fight and stab to death the devil’s lies and accusations. Thus it is no coincidence that Jesus in the wilderness, emaciated and weakened to the extreme, defeated the devil himself by doing nothing - literally NOTHING - but quoting Scripture in defense. The sword is our ONLY offensive weapon. Our General does not permit us to fight using the enemy’s weapons or schemes. We are not permitted to lie, slander, cheat and murder. The change the metaphor: He only permits us to fight with clean water, blood-red wine, and broken bread. Knowing all the while that salvation belongs to the Lord, our Mighty Warrior. How Then Shall We Live FAMILY When you see yourself in the Bible narrative, you get a whole new perspective on your marriage and family. You begin to see that your household is the entire cosmos in miniature, and the cosmic battles that rage out there rage in here, too. And this is where the new world gets made - as we stand, grounded in the Word of Christ. But we won’t see this unless we are grounded in the Word. Especially us MEN. Ephesians 5 maps over directly from Ephesians 1 and 2. You see this, and it changes everything. Guys, is this you? Are YOU grounded in the Word? Do you see your family through the lens of the Word, or do you add just one more letter to that, and see it through the lens of the world? That one letter makes ALL the difference. CHURCH There is hardly ANY space in Ephesians where Paul thinks of us individually. We fight as a platoon. No individual soldier is strong enough to withstand the forces of darkness alone. But TOGETHER we possess supernatural strength. This is why Paul immediately exhorts us to PRAY all the time, not only for ourselves, but for each other. Paul himself asks for prayer. Are you praying for others in this church? Prayer for one another is one of our cornerstones of membership. That we would each be STRONG in the Lord, strengthened by the TRUTH, by FAITH, in the WORD. SOCIETY As for society, I only want to say this: don’t believe your eyes. Walk by faith. Refuse to believe the paper tiger power of our modern day tyrants. They preen and prance as if they are untouchable. But our King is on the move. Remember that at one point, Christianity was just twelve country bumpkins from Galilee. And God is in no way finished. Not with you, not with Elk Grove or California. He is a mighty warrior.