STANDING TRIALS, STANDING STRONG, STANDING FIRM (Prt 1)

General Dwight Eisenhower once said (source unknown), “War is a terrible thing. But if you’re going to get into it, you’ve got to get into it all the way.”

I sense that many Christians are defeated in their Christian lives because they are not seriously engaged in the warfare to which we are called. J. C. Ryle saw this in the 19^th century. He wrote (“Soldiers and Trumpeters,” Home Truths [Triangle Press], 1:90), “The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity.” He went on to say that they go through the motions of attending religious services each week. Then he added (ibid.), “But of the great spiritual warfare,--its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests,--of all this they appear to know nothing at all.”

Perhaps they came to Christ under a false “sales pitch.” They were told, “Jesus will solve your problems. He will give you peace and joy. He will give you a happy family life. Come to Jesus and enjoy all of these blessings and more. He promises you abundant life.” And so they signed up for what they thought would be a wonderful life of peace and happiness.

All of those claims are true, but they’re only half of the picture. Jesus promised to give us abundant life (John 10:10), but He also said that He was sending us out as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt. 10:16). That picture might not fit your idea of an abundant life! Jesus promised peace, but in the same breath He said that in this world we would have tribulation (John 16:33). He assured us of His love, but He went on to say that the world would hate and persecute us (John 15:12-13, 18-21). In Ephesians, Paul has just shown how the Spirit-filled home is a glorious picture of the loving relationship between Christ and the church (5:18-33). But he continues by telling us that the Christian life is nothing less than warfare against the hideous enemy that Luther called “the prince of darkness grim.”

It is vital for your survival as a Christian that you realize that when you became a Christian, you were drafted into God’s army. Daily you are engaged in a battle with an unseen spiritual enemy that seeks to destroy you. Otherwise, when trials hit, you will think that something is wrong. You will wonder why God has allowed this. You won’t understand the reality of your situation.

I have seen even pastors that think that because they are serving the Lord, He should bless them by keeping them from conflict and personal attacks. So when they are criticized or slandered or when problems hit their families or their churches, they run from the battle. They don’t understand that when God blesses a work, the enemy will increase the attacks against it. When a man’s ministry is effective, the enemy will work overtime to bring him down. It may be through internal problems in the church or through key leaders who turn against him or through discouragement or through temptation to moral failure. When Paul was in Ephesus, he wrote (1 Cor. 16:9), “for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” He did not say, “but there are many adversaries,” but rather, “and there are many adversaries.” Adversaries go along with open doors for effective ministry!

So the apostle Paul closes his letter to the Ephesians with this great section on the Christian’s warfare. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote two volumes of sermons on these verses. The Puritan, William Gurnall, wrote almost 1,200 pages of double-column, small print on them (The Christian in Complete Armor)! I promise to be briefer than either of those great expositors! The text falls into three sections: (1) The explanation for the fight (6:10-13); (2) The equipment for the fight (6:14-17); (3) the effecting of the fight (6:18-20). Today we will only look at the first half of the first section, where Paul makes the point:

continues tomorrow.....................God bless you