©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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09-11-05 |
The Shield Of Faith |
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9/4/05 The Shield Of Faith
EPH 6:16 ...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.
For a number of weeks now
we have been studying the armor of God
that our Lord has made available
to every one of His children.
The passage of Scripture
that contains the information we’re looking at
is found in Ephesians 6:10-17.
Our study this morning
has brought us to verse 16 of that passage,
and brought us, too,
to what may be potentially the most important morning we will spend together
in this whole series.
And before we move into this study,
let me offer just a few words of explanation
for those of you
who may be new to the whole idea of relating to the Bible
as a resource that contains absolute truth
and that has absolute authority over our lives.
My role as a Bible teacher is, for me, a fascinating thing.
It is not my responsibility to figure out what truth is
and then find some way of teaching it to you.
In myself, I don’t know what “truth” is
any more than you do.
My responsibility is simply to share with you
what our God tells us is true.
And to the degree I am able to do that,
to that degree our times together
will help equip all of us for this life we are called to live.
And our primary resource
for understanding truth
is the Bible.
It is the purest,
most accessible,
absolutely reliable source we will ever have
for understanding the mind and heart of God Himself.
As a Bible teacher
I have grown accustomed
to several distinctly different responses to the teaching I do.
Just recently I had a person talk with me following our teaching time
and basically accuse me of reading their mind,
even suggesting I must have had some secret access to information
about things going on in their life.
Some of the information they had received that morning
was causing them to rethink some major issues in their life.
That’s great!
That’s that remarkably healthy response
every Christian will have at times to God’s truth
when we find ourselves thinking,
“I don’t like that!
I know it’s true.
I know it means I’m going to have to rework some major things in my life.
But I really don’t like that because it makes me uncomfortable.”
Welcome to growth in the family of God.
Then there are times
when someone will say to me,
“Larry, I don’t think you handled that passage correctly.
When I read it
I see something very different.”
That, too, is great.
If I’m handling my role as a Bible teacher correctly
I am not your authority.
I am simply a resource through which
it makes it easier for you to relate to the authority of God
as He has revealed it through Scripture.
If there are times
when you read a passage
and come away from it convinced
that is says something very different
from what I said it says,
I urge you to trust the passage as you understand it,
not me.
And then there is another very different response
that I sometimes see to my teaching.
Sometimes I’ll have a person say to me,
“I don’t believe it!”
or “I think that’s wrong!”
It’s not that they think I have mishandled the passage,
it’s that they think what the passage says
is just simply not true.
When I see that response,
I never try to argue,
or debate,
or convince
because I know that their battle is not with me,
it’s with their God.
Prior to our submission to Christ,
all of us work very hard at creating for ourselves
an approach to life that keeps us in the center of our own world,
allowing us to be our own god,
our own final authority.
We come up with all sorts of solutions
to how we can go about meeting our own needs,
how we can handle the pain in our lives,
how we can rationalize our weaknesses,
and ignore our failures.
It is a process that requires a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics
because we are all trying to do the impossible -
to put together a world view
that excludes our submission to and trust in the Creator of this world.
And for obvious reasons
we all get it very wrong
in some very major areas of our lives.
It’s not surprising, then,
that, when we start listening to truth
as it is revealed to us by God in His Word,
there will be points where what we hear
will conflict in a powerful way
with what we have believed in the past.
And when that happens
it is only the patient working of the Spirit of God within us
that can bring us to the point where we say, “My God, I was wrong, You were right.”
And when I see that type of battle going on in another person
I don’t try to convince them of the truth,
because I know that only God’s Spirit
can accomplish that work in our lives.
But I mention all of this
as we move into our study of what Paul calls “the shield of faith”
because it has a direct bearing
on what we’re going to see
with this remarkable piece of our protective armor.
Paul’s instructions are given to us in a single phrase.
EPH 6:16 ...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.
Now, before we look more closely
at what this shield of faith is,
I want to make a couple of comments
about the purpose of the shield
as it was used by the Roman soldier.
This is obvious, of course,
but the purpose of the shield
is to stop the enemy’s attack
before it ever gets to us personally.
There is a classic James Garner film called “Support Your Local Sheriff”.
It is James Garner at his best.
He is a drifter in the wild west
who needs a job
and applies for the Sheriff position
in a gold-rich town that’s out of control.
The city council offers him the job
and when they hand him the Sheriff’s badge
he notices that there is a deep indentation in the center of the badge
where a bullet hit the badge and was stopped.
James Garner says, “I bet the last Sheriff was grateful for that!”,
to which the head of the council responds,
“Well, he sure would have been
if it wouldn’t have been for all those other bullets flying around as well.”
In first century warfare
the shield stopped all those other bullets,
or more correctly, all those other arrows.
It stopped the attack
before it could ever inflict pain
or injury.
And Paul says that our shield,
the thing that stops the attacks on us,
is our faith.
And right there
I know I run the risk of losing you
because there is certainly no term in the Church world
that is more abused,
more misunderstood,
and as a result more meaningless than faith.
Here we are, being given by our Lord
a shield with which we can stop the attacks from reaching us,
and the word itself
has little if any practical meaning to many of us
because it’s been twisted and distorted to the point of becoming meaningless.
“Just have faith!”
“Just live by faith!”
“If you only have faith, everything will turn our great!”
By the way,
it shouldn’t surprise us
to discover the degree of confusion swirling around this word.
Given the fact that true faith is the most important single element
of our interaction with our Creator,
given the fact that it is “(EPH 2:8) ... by grace you
have been saved through faith;...,
and that, taking up the shield of faith, ... you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one,
is it any wonder
that our enemy has invested so much effort
into creating such a great fog
surrounding the true nature of faith?
Now, to help us make some sense of this whole faith thing,
it is essential that we keep Paul’s instructions about the shield of faith
in the context of what we’ve seen so far
concerning this warfare in which we are involved.
Keep in mind Satan’s central strategy
in his efforts to defeat us as Christians.
He seeks to inflict into each of us,
both individually
and into the human race as a whole,
wounds that cause us to question or openly reject
the love of our God for us.
We spent several weeks earlier in this study
talking about the way in which
Satan seeks to inflict those wounds into our lives during our childhood
in such a way as to make it extremely difficult
for us to trust God’s love as we move into our adult years.
Well, the basic nature of Satan’s attacks against us
do not change even as we move into our adult years.
He still seeks to attack us in such a way
as to arm us with “proofs”
that God simply could not love us as He claims to.
“If God really loves me, then why doesn’t He...?”
“If God really loves me, then why didn’t He...?”
Why did He allow those planes to hit the world trade center?
Why did He allow that tsunami to do such devastation?
Why did He allow that hurricane to cause such tremendous loss?
Those are the flaming missiles of the evil one.
Those are the attacks.
Those are the wounds that have the ability
to cause such tremendous turmoil in our lives.
I don’t know if this will help you in your own thinking or not,
but it has been of tremendous value to me personally.
You see,
contrary to popular belief,
Satan’s goal in all of His attacks against us
is always the same.
It isn’t to try to tempt us into sin.
It isn’t to try to pull us into some intense lust,
or some greed,
or some act of rebellion or rage.
His goal is to create within us
deep doubts about God’s love for us
and about His compassion,
and His desire to show us kindness,
and His commitment to care for us more perfectly than the best human father has ever cared for his child.
You see,
once he has succeeded in creating within us
doubts about God’s love for us,
acts of immorality and disobedience
will just naturally follow.
Do you know why Christians sin?
It is because Satan has succeeded in convincing them
that there is no way their needs can be met
within the moral framework given to them by their God.
In other words,
God really doesn’t love them enough
to care about their needs,
or to understand them,
or to provide for them an approach to life
in which those needs can be met.
Want me to simplify it?
If I listen to my God,
if I trust what He says,
I will get ripped off!
I will lose.
I will miss out on the best life has to offer.
I cannot trust God’s love for me at this point.
Every act of disobedience,
every act of rebellion against God
is preceded by our rejection at some point in our lives
of the belief that God is really there
or that He really does love us deeply, personally.
Those flaming missiles of the evil one
are attacks against our trust in the love of our God for us.
So what is this shield of faith
and how do we use it?
I don’t want to oversimplify this faith thing,
but the truth is
I don’t think I can.
Faith, by its very nature,
must be something that is accessible
to every human being who has ever lived.
In fact,
Paul told the Corinthians
that the people who would have the most trouble
in understanding and accepting true faith
are those among us with the higher IQ’s and greater gifts.
1CO 1:26-29 For consider your calling, brethren, that
there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise,
and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are
strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the
things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man
should boast before God.
Basically he is saying
that all of those principles for success
that work so well on the human plane,
all of those things that have the ability
to make a person highly successful within human society
simply do not work in the family of God.
We know before we get out of 1st grade
what brings about success.
The smart people,
the pretty people,
the wealthy people,
and the ones with the charismatic personalities -
those are the ones who’ll come out on top.
But that’s not the way it works in the family of God.
Our initial entrance into the family of God
and every forward step we make toward greater health
and greater effectiveness from that time on
rests on just one thing.
HEB 10:38 But My righteous one shall live by faith...
And what in the world does that mean?
Faith,
true Biblical faith
is your choosing to believe
that God really does love you,
and that everything He has said to you is true
and that His every word and every action toward you has been motivated by His love for you.
Let me simplify it.
Faith is choosing to believe in any given situation
that God really is good
and that His heart desire is to be good to you.
And let me try one more time.
Faith is choosing to believe
that what you need most
for the most fulfilling life you could ever know
is what God longs most to give you.
And let me try one more time,
and this time simply borrow the words of the author of Hebrews.
HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him,
for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
those who seek Him.
Faith is choosing to believe He’s there,
and choosing to believe He will be absolutely good to you
whenever and where ever you reach out to Him.
Everyone of us entered this room this morning
with our own mental list
of those things that are causing us to question God’s love.
There are some things that happened this past week
that have caused us pain,
or loneliness,
or financial stress,
or confusion,
or fear.
With each one of those things
our initial response to what happened
or to what we think might happen
is to question whether God is really there
or whether He really cares about us -
whether He really loves us and is acting in love toward us.
Those are the flaming missiles
that have been shot at us this past week.
We take up the shield of faith
when we counter each of those attacks
by choosing to reaffirm to ourselves
the true nature of the heart of our God toward us.
PSA 84:11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord
gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk
uprightly.
Are you in a dating relationship right now?
Have you been wondering
why your God has said the things He has said
about the way He wants you to handle that relationship sexually?
Have you wondered if maybe He’s just trying to cheat you
out some stuff that will make your life so much richer if you could have it?
My friend, choose to trust Him.
Choose to trust
that He knows what really works
and what doesn’t in male/female relationships.
He knows what will build trust,
what will build self-respect,
what will keep your relationship free from the inner shame that comes
when you know you’ve used another person for your own pleasure,
or the self-loathing that comes
when you’ve allowed another person to use you
for fear you’ll loose the relationship if you don’t.
Trust His love.
Have you had some tragedy enter you life either recently or in the distant past?
Or has your life not worked out the way you thought it should?
Has it caused you to question your God’s love for you?
My friends,
this is the only possible world available to us.
It is a world that is filled to overflowing
with the accumulated evil
of countless generations
who have shaken their fists in the face of their God
and arrogantly proclaimed, “I did it MY way!”
And in the process
our selfishness,
and anger,
and stubbornness,
and greed,
and lust have inflicted tremendous pain
both on ourselves and on one another.
And still our God loves us,
and still He reaches out to each of us saying,
MAT 11:28-29 “Come to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from
Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your
souls.”
I don’t know what evil has touched your life,
nor do I know how you’ve responded to it.
But one thing I do know -
your God loves you with an everlasting love,
and whatever evil you bring Him,
whatever wound,
whatever scar,
whatever hurt or emptiness or loneliness or pain,
He will take
and then reshape into the most remarkable window
through which you will be able to see His love
as you’ve never seen it before.
Most of what I now understand
about the depth of the love of my God
I have come to understand
as the result of some form of evil
that entered my life.
And right there is the heart of this warfare in which we live.
Satan will find his voices in your life
who will tell you that what you have endured
proves your God doesn’t care.
But when we see God’s communication of Himself to us through Christ,
it’s as if He were saying to us,
“My child - when you begin your thoughts about Me,
begin at the cross.
See there My response to you
when you were still in rebellion against Me.
See Me offer my life in your place for your sins
so that you and I could be reunited forever.
And now,
with each new assault that comes against the truth of My love for you,
take up your shield of faith.
Choose to reaffirm the truth -
that there is nothing and no one
that can ever enter your life
that can separate you from the reality of My love for you.
And you WILL find My love adequate for you
no matter what I allow you to go through.”
Paul said it far better than I ever could.
ROM 8:31-39 What then shall we say to these things? If
God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who
will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is
the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised,
who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "For Thy
sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be
slaughtered." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through
Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is that truth most of all
that forms our greatest defense
against those attacks that Satan will use against us.
And our choosing to believe that truth
is our shield of faith.