2. You
must put on God’s full armor so that you may stand firm against the enemy.
A. STANDING FIRM AGAINST
THE ENEMY IS THE RESULT OF PUTTING ON GOD’S FULL ARMOR.
“Stand” is a key word in
this section. He repeats it in verses 11, 13, and 14. Also, the word “resist”
(6:13) comes from a Greek compound word from the root, “to stand,” meaning
literally to stand against. It’s a military term for holding on to a position
that is under attack. It implies the courage to hold your ground because of
your allegiance to King Jesus, even when others may be fleeing from the battle
because the enemy seems so strong.
An incident
about one of David’s mighty men, Shammah the son of Agee, illustrates standing
firm in the battle (2 Sam.
23:11-12): “And the Philistines were gathered into a troop where
there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the people fled from the
Philistines. But he took his stand in the midst of the plot, defended it and
struck the Philistines; and the Lord brought about a great victory.” Because of
his allegiance to David, Shammah stood firm and he fought, but the Lord brought
the victory.
We rely
on God’s strength and use His armor, but we must take the initiative to put on
the armor and stand firm in the battle because we love Jesus. It’s not a matter
of “letting go and letting God,” where you are passive and God does it all. Nor
is it a matter of gritting your teeth and doing it yourself, with occasional
assistance from God. Rather, it is a blending of His power and our striving. As
Paul puts it (Col.
1:29), “For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His
power, which mightily works within me.”
Many have
suggested that Paul got the idea of putting on the full armor of God from the
Roman soldier that was chained to him as he dictated this letter. That may be,
but it also may be that he was meditating on Isaiah 11:5, which says of the Lord, “Righteousness
will be the belt about His loins, and faithfulness the belt about His waist.”
Or, Isaiah 59:17,
“He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His
head.”
The armor
is just a graphic way of saying what Paul says in Romans 13:14, “But put
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its
lusts.” In other words, Christ Himself is our armor. He is the belt of truth (John 14:6). He is our
breastplate of righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). He is the gospel of peace that we stand
on (Eph. 2:13-14,
17). He is the shield of our faith (Heb. 12:2). He is our helmet of salvation (Titus 3:6). He is our
sword, the word of God (John
1:1). He is our full armor, capable of protecting us from every
onslaught of the devil.
Putting
on God’s armor means that in every trial and temptation by faith you
appropriate Christ’s strength in place of your weakness. By faith you cry out
to Him for deliverance and strength to persevere. By faith you rely on His
promises, even as Jesus defeated Satan by quoting Scripture (Luke 4:1-13).
B. STAND FIRM AGAINST
THE ENEMY BY GROWING IN BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING.
There are three things
here:
(1). UNDERSTAND GOD’S FULL PROVISION.
I’ve already touched on
this, but I remind you that Paul wrote the first three chapters of this letter
to set forth the necessary doctrinal foundation of all that God has provided
for us in Christ. Strong Christians are doctrinally grounded in the truth of
Scripture. Unless you know the Word well, as Jesus did when He defeated Satan,
you will not stand firm in the evil day.
(2). UNDERSTAND SATAN’S SCHEMES.
Martyn
Lloyd-Jones preached 26 messages on this theme (The Christian Warfare [Baker]). Schemes (in Greek) occurs
only here and in Ephesians
4:14. But using a synonym, Paul states (2 Cor. 2:11), “so that no advantage would be taken of
us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” If you’re ignorant of his
schemes, the devil will be able to take advantage of you. His schemes
invariably use cunning and deception. He often works through secular culture,
to carry us downstream with the prevailing ideas of the day. In our day, many
Christians are deceived by the ideas of postmodernism, which asserts that there
are no absolute truths in the spiritual or moral realms (except for the
absolute that there are no absolutes!). Satan launches repeated attacks on the
credibility of Scripture, whether through evolution or by attacking the person
of Christ. Satan lures us into sin by portraying it as pleasurable and by
hiding its consequences. He uses discouragement, pride, selfishness, the love
of money, lust, and many other traps to lure us away from the Lord. To stand
firm against the enemy, we must understand his schemes.
(3). UNDERSTAND WHERE TO STAND FIRM AND
WHERE TO BE TOLERANT OF DIFFERENCES.
If Satan doesn’t get us
through his scheme of going along with our tolerant culture, he pushes us off
the other end by making us intolerant of anyone who does not agree with us on
every point of doctrine. I know of a man who claims to have “biblical
discernment,” but his entire “ministry” consists of critiquing godly men over
minor differences in doctrine or practice. I once received a newsletter from
another man (I should have saved it, but threw it away in disgust) who ranted
on and on about how a seminary professor believed that a particular Hebrew verb
came from a certain word root. But this man was setting the record straight
that the professor was wrong! Really, who cares?
Standing
firm against the schemes of the devil means that we stand firm on the core
doctrines of the faith. We cannot budge on the Trinity, the person and work of
Christ, biblical salvation, or the inspiration and authority of Scripture. But
the Scripture also tells us to show tolerance for one another in love (Eph. 4:2). That verse
implies that we will not always agree with one another on every point of
doctrine or on every method of how to go about the Lord’s work. To stand firm,
grow in understanding of where to do battle and where to be tolerant of
differences.
Thus, standing firm against
the enemy is the result of putting on God’s full armor. We stand firm against
the enemy by growing in biblical understanding. Finally,
C. STAND FIRM AGAINST
THE ENEMY WITH BIBLICAL PRACTICE.
In other
words, put into practice what you believe. Test your armor by gaining some
victories in real life situations. Resist temptation. Avoid Satan’s traps. Get
out of your comfort zone and do something where you have to trust God to get
you through. As Hebrews
5:14 states, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of
practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” Or, as James 1:22 puts
it, “Prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers, who delude
themselves.”
Conclusion
I read about a missionary
years ago in the jungles of New Guinea who wrote the following letter to his
friends back home:
Man, it is great to be in
the thick of the fight, to draw the old devil’s heaviest guns, to have him at
you with depression and discouragement, slander, disease. He doesn’t waste time
on a lukewarm bunch. He hits good and hard when a fellow is hitting him. You
can always measure the weight of your blow by the one you get back. When you’re
on your back with fever and at your last ounce of strength, when some of your
converts backslide, when you learn that your most promising inquirers are only
fooling, when your mail gets held up, and some don’t bother to answer your
letters, is that the time to put on mourning? No sir. That’s the time to pull
out the stops and shout Hallelujah! The old fellow’s getting it in the neck and
hitting back. Heaven is leaning over the battlements and watching. “Will he
stick with it?” As they see who is with us, as they see the unlimited reserves,
the boundless resources, as they see the impossibility of failure, how
disgusted and sad they must be when we run away. Glory to God! We’re not going
to run away. We’re going to stand!
How about you? To stand
firm against the enemy, you must be strong in the Lord and put on His full
armor.
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