©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

07-17-05

War Of The Worlds Pt. 2

7/17/05 War Of The Worlds Pt. 2

 EPH 6:10-18 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. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may 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 missiles 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...

We are going to pick up our study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians

where we stopped last week.

If you were with us

you will recall

that we have been looking at Paul’s final words of preparation

given to us as he seeks to equip us

to function effectively as the physical body of Jesus Christ on this earth.

We spent our time last week

looking at that critical attitude

that must be present within us

if we are to be prepared for this life we are called to live.

The only way this life we live each day

will ever make any sense

is if we realize that we are at war.

It’s not a game,

it’s not part time,

it’s real,

and it matters more than we could ever imagine.

Paul wants us to know

that there are right now

powerful forces seeking our destruction, our defeat.

We can’t see them,

we can’t hear them with our ears,

we can’t touch them,

we can’t sense them with any of our human senses,

but that does not mean they are any the less real,

or powerful,

or potentially destructive to us.

And I tell you honestly

that this life we are living

will never make sense

until we understand it

and approach it in the context of those two worlds in constant interaction -

the physical world we can sense and the unseen world we cannot -

and if we then understand the real warfare

driving those forces that are continually interacting with us.

And we concluded our time together

by looking more closely

at what Paul describes as “the flaming missiles of the evil one”.

We saw the way in which Satan wages a war against each of us,

a war rooted in a carefully formed strategy

of wounds,

lies,

and misinterpretations.

His campaign against us

begins from the day we enter this world,

a campaign in which he seeks to bring wounds into our lives in childhood,

wounds that record emotional lies into us,

wounds that then provide the doorways through which he can attack us for the rest of our lives.

I will not go back and reteach what we’ve already seen,

but I will say that the more I’ve thought about this part of Satan’s strategy against us

the more impressed I am with its effectiveness.

Just for example,

let me show you what I mean.

Here’s a typical wounding scenario

that Satan plays out in male/female relationships.

It begins in childhood.

It is not uncommon for a little girl

to grow up in a family structure

in which the dynamics of her home communicate to her

that, because she is female, she simply exists to be dominated and used by males.

Men rule,

women serve.

And tragically,

there is even a twisted perversion of so called “Christian” teaching

that supports such a message.

Of course the same message can also be communicated to a little girl

through physical or sexual or emotional abuse.

And once it’s etched into the child’s belief system

it becomes a potentially life-long open doorway

through which Satan can attack the person’s sense of value and dignity.

And it’s equally common for little boys

to be emotionally emasculated

by a dominant mother or a heavy-handed, insecure father

who, through their words and actions,

embed into their son the belief that he is in some way less than a man

and that he’ll never make it in a man’s world.

As a result

the boy enters his adult life

with a desperate driving need to prove his manhood to himself and to others,

and what better way

than through taking a dominating, controlling approach to women.

Isn’t that what “real men” do?

And then these damaged women and men start looking for marriage partners,

and guess who they choose ... one another.

It just feels right to both of them -

the woman being dominated,

and the man dominating.

It makes for a hideous relationship, of course,

one in which neither person finds any healing from the lies.

The woman continues to have her own true value and identity

crushed under the man’s dominance,

and the man’s brutal and irrational dominance simply intensifies his tremendous insecurities

about his own male identity.

Rather than receiving the respect,

and gratitude,

and appreciation and validation for his leadership that his spirit longs for,

he sees his wife and children forever resenting and fighting against his abusiveness.

I know I’m getting a bit sidetracked here,

but do you know the only approach to family leadership

than can ever bring a man

both growing peace with himself

and a true sense of fulfillment in life,

knowing he has handled well what was entrusted into his care?

It’s revealed to us by our God in a single remarkable sentence.

EPH 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her...

Did you think that was just some religious platitude

tossed into the Biblical record

so that preachers would have something to read a weddings?

That statement

is one of the greatest gifts ever given to a married man by his God.

It is the key to true, enduring life fulfillment for the man who marries.

It sets up the parallel between Christ and His people

and the husband and his wife,

the parallel that then gives us the perfect mirror

in which to see ourselves,

and the perfect pattern in which to bring about real healing from our woundedness

in both the man and the woman.

Where were we in Christ’s list of priorities?

Where are we now?

Well, given what He did for us on that cross,

and what He now does in us and for us each day

as He lives His life out through us,

I’d have to say that we were and are at the very top of the list.

What was He willing to give up

in exchange for our healing,

for our deliverance,

for our freedom?

How about His own life.

And in the most remarkable way,

when a man takes the same approach to his family,

when he chooses to put their care,

and their needs,

and their emotional well being above all else -

above his career,

above his hobbies,

above his toys,

above his image and posturing before other men,

when he knows that he has in a very real sense given himself to become their redeemer

from the forces of evil they have faced,

only then can he really find enduring peace with his own masculinity.

Men, do you want to find true, deep fulfillment and satisfaction in life?

Give yourself for your wife and to your wife

as Christ gave Himself for the church and to the church.

But let me get back on track here.

The point I was trying to make before I got side-tracked

is simply that we all bring with us into our adult years

wounded areas from our past and especially from our childhood,

wounded areas that, if not brought to light by the Spirit of God

and then healed through Him,

will continue to give Satan access to us throughout the rest of our lives.

And we saw last week

that the warfare strategy used by Satan

begins with those wounds early in our lives,

and then continues into our adult years

through the use of direct lies he throws at us,

and through his skillful misinterpretation of events in our lives.

Every thought entering our minds that suggests to us

that God doesn’t care,

or doesn’t notice,

or doesn’t feel our pain,

or doesn’t understand our needs,

or isn’t really concerned about whether those needs are met or not,

every time we feel alone,

or feel unprotected,

or feel as though our only real resource is ourselves,

every voice within us or around us

that tells us our situation goes beyond His grace,

or beyond His power to heal,

or beyond His love,

every time we look at ourselves

and feel as though our failure is beyond His redemption,

or our suffering is beyond His ability to comfort,

all of these and so many others like them

are lies used by him to attack us.

And if he cannot reach us through direct lies,

then he will attempt to misinterpret the events in our lives

so that they become “proofs”

that God either doesn’t really love us,

or that His love is a nasty, conditional sort of thing

in which He “accepts” us if we’re “good”

and rejects us when we fail to measure up to His standard.

And this is the warfare in which we Christians live each day of our lives,

a warfare designed to blind us to His love

and through that blindness

rob us of the life He died to give us.

But then Paul goes on in the rest of this passage

to outline for us

both the offensive and defensive weapons given to us by our Lord

for the battle we are called to face.

He does it in the form of an illustration,

an analogy that came right out of his own life at the time he wrote this letter.

Paul wrote this letter and three others,

Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon,

in 62 AD.

He wrote them from his prison cell in Rome,

as he waited for his appeal before Nero

on charges of treason against the Roman Empire.

Every day,

every hour at that point in his life

he lived literally in chains

with an armed Roman soldier standing guard over him.

And when he reached this point in his letter,

wanting some way of imbedding into our minds

the way in which our Lord Jesus Christ

has equipped us for our role in this warfare we inherited

when we inherited Him, and He us,

there it was, standing right next to him,

the perfect visual illustration

of what we have been given by our God.

But for this to accomplish what Paul wants it to accomplish in our lives

we must, in a sense, get past the illustration

and hear what he’s really saying to us.

So let’s see where he goes.

OK, after preparing us for the reality of the warfare,

the next thing he says to us is this.

Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.

Twice in this single statement

Paul communicates one more vital piece of information to us.

Take up the full armor of God...

and having done everything...

Do you see what he’s saying?

He wants us to know

that everything he is about to mention

works together as unit.

To grab one or two items on the list

and then go charging into battle

will not work.

In my forty years in the family of God

I have seen more damage done than I could ever express

by Christians who have dropped their helmet of salvation on their heads,

grabbed their sword of the Spirit,

and then started flailing away at anything that moves.

And all too often

all they succeed in doing

is shredding their fellow warriors with their blows

while the enemy stands by at a safe distance

and watches the carnage

and laughs.

Before Paul goes any farther,

he wants us to know

that all of these pieces work together,

and depend upon one another.

Then he begins.

Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth...

And what in the world does that mean?

Well, this is one of those places

in which the analogy doesn’t work so well for us

because our style of dress

is so different from what was common in the 1^st century Roman world.

The well dressed Roman,

or even the poorly dressed Roman

did not wear jeans and a T shirt.

He wore robes.

But robes were utterly unsuitable for warfare

because they would result in the warrior stumbling over his own clothing.

So, in preparation for battle,

the warrior would begin by pulling his clothing up to insure freedom of movement,

and then fastening his robe securely around his waist with a belt.

He would “gird up his loins”.

And for us

our belt is truth.

It is what insures our security from defeating ourselves.

It is what gives us

our first huge step into the individual freedom we need

for the battles we are called to fight.

Exactly the same message

was given to us in that statement made to us by our Lord

in which He said simply, (JOH 8:32) “...and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

And of course the question then is, “What truth?”

And the answer in the broadest sense

is simply all truth -

the truth about ourselves,

the truth about our God,

and the truth given to us by our God.

But, because this is the first step in our preparation,

because Paul selects it as his starting place,

I believe he is referring to something more specific.

You see, when it comes to our relationship with our Creator,

there is always a starting place,

only one specified doorway into the world of truth for each of us.

We spent a whole morning on this just a few weeks ago.

It is that point at which

we step out from behind the bushes

and bring to our God

that one aspect of our life

we have tried the hardest to keep hidden from Him,

that part of us

that brings us the greatest sense of shame,

or the greatest fear,

or the greatest feelings of failure,

or the greatest suffering or tenderness when it is touched.

You see,

we only have so much mental and emotional energy each day.

And until we have stood honestly before our God

and seen His response to us

in the face of what we fear the most,

we will of necessity

use our mental and emotional energy

to keep ourselves in hiding from ourselves and from others.

And with all of our energies invested

in hiding,

and protection,

and posturing and image-building,

there will be no energy left

for the real warfare we are called to fight.

Do you want to hear some of the phrases

that have the power to bring tremendous freedom into our lives?

Here are a few of them.

My Lord, I have sinned.

My friend, I was wrong.

Folks, I just don’t know.

Father, I’m afraid.

Do you think those are statements of weakness?

Do you think they are statements of defeat?

For many of us

the beginning of our discovery of the love of our God

comes at that point at which our spirits finally stop playing games

and we drop to our knees before Him and say, “I have sinned.”

It’s a funny thing about truth -

our acceptance and admission of it

brings a freedom to our spirits

unlike anything else we’ve ever known.

And it has the same affect on us

when we bring truth into our relationships with one another.

We can spend days,

or weeks,

or months,

or years trying to justify some offense we have committed against another person.

We may have worked out

all sorts of mental hiding places for ourselves,

telling ourselves why our actions were justified,

or why their offenses against us were so much greater,

and therefore our actions don’t really matter,

or why we really had no other choice at the time.

But none of it will ever bring the kind of freedom

that comes into our lives when we say simply,

“What I did was wrong. I am so very sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

That’s when freedom begins.

And the same principle applies

to so many other areas of our lives.

Our natural fears and insecurities

so often drive us into believing

that freedom comes from building

the best possible external image

and hiding our weaknesses at all costs.

But in reality

only an honest life,

only the truth can set us free.

Do you know when I finally found tremendous freedom in my Bible teaching?

It was when I finally found the courage to say, “You know, I just don’t know.”

When I no longer felt as though I had to have the answer

to every question I was asked,

I finally gained the freedom

to teach the little bit I do know with boldness and certainty.

Well,

Paul begins his description of our protective armor

with the one item we most desperately need

and most fervently try to avoid - truth,

honesty before our God, before ourselves, and before one another.

It is what provides us

with our first huge step

into the freedom we need

for battles we are called to fight.

Next week we’ll look at those other items in our arsenal.