Sermon for 9/27/09
We are at war. We are fighting battles every day. And there are casualties every day. But I am not talking about the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan—although for many of us that is an all too clear and personal reality. No I am not talking about that kind of war. I am talking about a spiritual war. A Holy war, if you will. This is what our lesson today is about.
We are living in a spiritual battle ground. We are constantly wrestling with Satan and his influence in the world. This is what Paul is getting at in this message to the Ephesians. He is preparing them for a battle of faith. This war is over the souls of believers and it is for eternity. To illustrate his points Paul uses familiar war imagery
As he describes the armor of God in this passage he is using familiar pieces of the Roman soldiers’ uniform. You see, the roman soldiers were a constant presence in the market places and civil activities of the ancient world. People knew who the soldiers were and they certainly knew what the uniforms looked like. Paul is using this imagery to help his listeners remember and understand his point. Hopefully we can do the same here today. But before I get ahead of myself we must first establish what the problem is. That is, we must figure out who the enemy is.
So who, or what, is Paul talking about here? In verses 11 and 12 he gives us the answer. This war is against the devil (Satan), and the spiritual forces of evil. We are fighting a war against Satan and Sin. But we’re not really warriors are we? We can’t actually be expected to stand against the power of Satan and sin? Paul seems to think so. Here in verse 13 he tells us to do everything we can to stand against these evil forces. This means we really are supposed to engage Satan in this spiritual warfare. I don’t know about you but to me that is a terrifying expectation. Satan is far too powerful and sin is everywhere.
It was a very clever tactic for Satan to choose sin as his primary weapon against the forces of God, because sin is like an atomic bomb. When sin first entered the world there was a huge mushroom cloud of destruction. The first sin resulted in the shattering of relationships. It severed the relationship between God and man—Adam and eve were banished from the garden. It corrupted the relationships between people. The book of Genesis tells us that original sin caused the struggle between men and women. This is the initial destruction of sin but as I said it is like an Atomic bomb so there is fallout too.
Sin’s radiation infects every aspect of our lives. We must now struggle and toil to supply for ourselves and our families. Death enters the picture. Sin corrupts everything; all of creation feels the effects. All the pain, decay, weariness, fear, loneliness, suffering, cruelty, and evil in the world are all the aftermath of sin’s destructive force. With sin Satan has the ability to cloud our judgment and obscure our view of the world. Sin is a devastating weapon, and with it Satan is winning an awful lot of battles. He is winning them in your life and mine.
We feel the weariness of sin in our lives. We let it get to us too. We don’t treat our spouses with the love and respect they deserve. We hold grudges against neighbors and relatives. We feel trapped in a job that is demanding more and more of our time that should be spent with our families. We let our marriages crumble instead of resorting to forgiveness and love. We give in to peer-pressure. We enable our bad habits that are destructive to our bodies and our relationships. Or maybe we are feeling hopeless from the weariness that life has forced on us. We are struggling just to get up day after day to keep food on the table. We are feeling crushed by the pressures of our jobs or school. We feel like we have nothing left and no one to protect us. We are completely disconnected from our spouse. You’re kids don’t listen to you and constantly misbehave. We are treated like an outcast and left unloved by the world. Maybe we are mourning the death of a loved one. There is no source of comfort anymore. All of these things, all of these struggles, they are Satan winning the battles in our lives. Satan is wining battles and we are living in sin’s nuclear winter. It’s infecting us, we are guilty of sin, in fact we are ripe with it. Satan’s weapon has literally corrupted everything we experience from this world.
I know this all sounds so utterly devastating. If sin is so powerful why does Paul tell us to do everything we can to stand up against this evil? I am not going to lie to you; we cannot do much to turn the tides of this war. And even when we try we will often fail. We cannot defeat sin. So how can we possibly be expected to fight an enemy we are so clearly incapable of defeating? Well this is revealed in our lesson also. Paul tells us to put on the full armor of God.
Paul is not expecting Christians to fight Satan and sin empty handed. No, he describes all of the wonderful weaponry God has given to the Church to help us withstand the attacks of evil. So what is the armor of God and what does it entail? Let’s look at the list. Remember Paul is describing the Roman solider who would have been very familiar to the citizens of the Roman Empire.
Paul begins with the belt of truth. For the Roman soldier a belt kept all of your clothing together and tucked next to your body. This prevented you from being grabbed or snagged as easily in combat. The belt was an important piece of equipment. By equating the belt of a Christian soldier with God’s truth Paul seems to suggest that real truth which comes from God is the part of faith that keeps everything held together. This is important because it reminds us that real truth lies only with God and his Word. John 17:17 reminds of this point also.
Next Paul lists the breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate was also an essential piece of hardware for the Roman soldier. Its strong metal construction protected him from attacks by the blade of both swords and arrows. For the Christian the idea of putting on righteousness is not foreign. Many verses in the bible describe such and act. Job 29:14 is an example. This piece of armor is simply another reminder of how God’s righteousness covers the Christian and protects him from the dangers of sin in the world. By following God’s will and living by his laws we cloth ourselves with His righteousness which both protects us from sin and distinguishes us from those who do not follow God.
After the chest plate Paul talks about feet. The roman soldiers wore leather sandals that strapped part way up their legs. What is Paul getting at with this? Well, similar to the modern tennis shoe or cross trainer, the roman sandals gave the soldiers better grip, which provided them with a firm foundation from which to deflect and deliver attacks. The sandals would have also protected the feet from sharp rocks or other debris that could have injured the soldier. They also provided speed. You can run much faster without having to worry about injury due to slipping or rough terrain. For the Christian these sandals of readiness for the gospel of peace provide our foundation in faith upon the Gospel. Our beliefs are founded on the gospel of Christ. With this we can be assured of our footing as we march into battle against the evil in the world.
Next we have the shield of faith. This one is great. For the Romans the shield was of huge importance and ingenuity. They were often a metal core with a wood and leather covering. The wood and leather covering were then soaked in water before battle so that if the enemy used flaming arrows the shields would literally extinguish the flames. Paul is not just using a vivid image here it is based on Roman military technique. But what else does a shield do? It protects you from attacks. That is exactly what our faith does. Our faith is a shield against the lies and accusations of this world. It deflects every insult, every jeer, every hurtful action. Why can we stand firm when people call Christianity irrational or hypocritical? Because we have faith in the real truth, that God is in control of everything and that sin has corrupted the way even our own rationale works in this world. We have faith which is based solely on God—the only one not affected by sin. The shield of faith can deflect the world’s flawed wisdom. When you are persecuted and put down because of Christ—this is what the shield is for.
Now comes the helmet of salvation. What a wonderful thought: a symbol of our salvation resting right on our heads. You see a helmet not only protects a soldier from blows to the head, it also identifies them as a member of their army. The Roman armies had their red plumes we have the red blood of Christ. Our helmets of salvation are a constant reminder that we are in God’s army, we fight alongside Christ, we are members of eternal life by our salvation.
These items—the belt of truth, the breast plate of righteousness, the sandals of gospel peace, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation—make up the armor God gives us. With this armor we are equipped for battle against sin. But wait, all of these items are only defensive. We have no actual weapon. It is great that God is providing us with protection from Satan’s relentless onslaught of sin, and we know that God is more powerful than Satan but how can we fight back? Are we just supposed to sit back our whole lives and let Satan beat his weapons upon our armor? NO.
This is where the sword of the Spirit comes in. God provides us with not only armor but a sword as well. He gives us a weapon so we can fight back. And what weapon does he give us? He gives us His Word. He gives us Christ! Many are familiar with the metaphor of Christ as the Word of God. John’s gospel makes this connection clear. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God… This is Christ.
Now let me tell you how God used Christ to defeat sin. Remember sin is like an atomic bomb. It had enormous consequences in the beginning, but its radiation—its fallout—infects everything still today. God had to do something equally devastating to win the war against Satan. God had to send his Son, Jesus to die on the cross and rise again to atone for sin—that is to make up for it, to cover it. And Christ’s sacrifice did just that for all the sin of the World. But how did that sacrifice do that? The answer is: with forgiveness, with love.
You see when Christ died on the cross for our sins he did more than just take our sin away. His sacrifice, out of love for us and for the Father, enabled God to declare us forgiven; he spoke words of forgiveness to us. This is what Paul is getting at. Our weapon is not just the death of Christ on the cross. Out weapon is the entire event of the cross and the resurrection, namely the proclamation of Christ’s death for the declaration of our forgiveness. Our weapons are the words and actions of God’s forgiveness—the words and actions of love.
Words of love and forgiveness are far more powerful than sin. Sure Satan is winning battles with his arsenal of sin, but God has provided the end game. These two are not even on the same playing field. God has completely changed the rules. By making Christ into a sacrifice to take away the power of sin God has changed the game and Satan is completely unaware. Satan is playing checkers while God is playing chess. If sin is an atomic bomb, Christ’s death is an ingenious alteration of creation itself that feeds off of the radiation sin leaves behind. Forgiveness uses the damage of sin to point to the healing found in God.
This is terrific news; it means our weapon, Christ’s death, has already won the war. We are forgiven in Christ, and in Christ we have been given the power to combat Satan, but how do we use it? How do we use the weapon of forgiveness and love? We do so with our words and actions.
God declares us forgiven, and we do the same to the world, to our neighbors, to our families, to our co-workers. We proclaim the love and forgiveness of Christ to each other and to the World. We call upon not just Jesus’ name but upon Jesus’ sacrifice and victory—the cross. When we do this it does not matter how many battles Satan wins or how badly sin is influencing our lives, because when we call upon the forgiveness and love of Christ we are calling upon the victory that has already been won, the victory of eternity.
Take heart and stand firm in the victory that Christ has already won for you. God knew you could not stand to this enemy alone so he did it himself, he did it for us, he did it for you. Christ died to take away sin’s consequences so no matter how weary you are from battle; you have the assurance that the war has been won for you. You stand in victory every day.
Now, finally brothers and sisters, we are not alone in our struggle against sin, God has provided our savior, this is true, but he has also provided the Church. He has provided us with strength in numbers. All the saints are in this together. This is another reason why it is so important that our weapon consist of words. We can speak forgiveness and encouragement to each other, and we must. Think of soldiers stuck in the trenches, they must rely on each other for encouragement and building up.
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