SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/31/2019 9:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Sword of the Spirit”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:17b
Message of the
verse: “and
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,”
I have just finished listening to
the sermon that John MacArthur preached in 2008 on the Sword of the Spirit and
have learned much from it and so like we did over the last three days looking
at the helmet of salvation from MacArthur’s sermon we will look at this sermon
over the next three days, Lord willing.
The Armor of God: The Sword of the Spirit
In Ephesians chapter 6, we’re looking at the armor of
God, the believer’s armor laid out for us by the Holy Spirit through the pen of
the Apostle Paul. Paul has given all kinds of very foundational and important
instruction in this letter to the Ephesians, instruction which has to do with
living the Christian life, walking the worthy walk, as he speaks of it in
chapter 4 which begins the practical section of this great epistle, the first
three chapters being doctrinal. And he has laid out all kinds of things about
behavior and how we are to conduct our lives and how we are to walk in the
Spirit and manifest the power of the Spirit in every relationship. And then there comes this necessary statement in verse 10 that to live
this way and walk this way is going to demand strength. Finally verse 10 says
of Ephesians 6, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” You’re
not going to be able to do this on your own. You’re not going to be able
to live in a way that honors God, to walk a worthy walk, to experience the
fullness of the Spirit and the blessing that comes with that. Not going to be
able to leave behind you the former things of your life and walk in newness of
life easily. Not going to be able to grow, you’re not going to be able to be
renewed in the spirit of your mind, to speak truth, to be one in the body of
Christ...all the things that he’s been talking about in your own strength. This
is something that requires the strength of the Lord. And he envisions this in a very graphic kind
of analogy as if he is looking at a soldier, no doubt a Roman soldier, of
course, by the tens of thousands they filled the Mediterranean world during the
time of Paul’s ministry and were very familiar to all the people to whom he
wrote and spoke. And so, in that analogy he says, “If you want to enjoy the
strength of the Lord which it’s going to take to live this kind of life, you
must put on the full armor of God,” (verse 11). Because, you have an enemy that
is going to do everything in his power to prevent you from living the way God
wants you to live. It isn’t that he particularly cares about you; it is that he
wants to thwart the purposes of God. You need to mark it as sort of
foundational in the relationship between Lucifer and God, Lucifer hates God. He
hates God. And all his demons who once with him were among the angels of heaven
and agreed to fall with him, a third of them to number them as Revelation does,
equally hate God and the purposes of God and the objectives of God. And they
hate God and manifest that hate in attempting to thwart the purposes of God
that are basically operational in us. And so his assault against us is
primarily an assault against God. It’s a little bit like Paul saying, “I bear
in my body the marks of Christ, people are wounding me and persecuting me not
because of me, but because I represent Christ.”
Understanding this, we read in verse 12, that our
struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against these very categories of
demonic beings called rulers, powers, world forces of this darkness, meaning
the darkness that is Satan’s darkness, against the spiritual forces of
wickedness in the heavenlies. So we are engaged in this warfare.
It is not that you are necessarily in hand-to-hand combat
with demons all the time. I can say to you that in my entire lifetime I have
never knowingly been engaged in a personal struggle with a demon. But I am daily engaged in a
personal struggle against a demonically inspired system that comes at me and at
my sinful tendencies through the world, through the system that is in the power
of Satan who is the prince of this world. It is not that we as believers
have demons running around in us, we are the temple of the Spirit of God, we
are new creations, and we have been transformed and changed. But we are
assaulted by the system around us and we have tendencies to fall to that assault
because of our remaining flesh, our fallenness which we will possess until we
receive our heavenly inheritance and leave this world.
And so, against these assaults that come on us, we have
to defend ourselves with the full armor of God, verse 13, to resist in the evil
day and to be able to stand firm. Now wanting to give us an analogy that is
memorable, Paul breaks
down the parts which really become components of living a godly life.
Girding your loins with truth, or truthfulness means commitment, motivation to
be obedient, motivation to be holy, to be godly, to be Christ honoring
and we have to have that desire. In other words, establishing your priorities,
pulling all the loose ends in like the Roman soldier would pull the corners of
his tunic up and tie them tightly with his...with his belt so that he would be
able to move freely in the midst of hand-to-hand combat, pulling everything
together. It’s about discipline for the struggle at hand, spiritual discipline. And then he talks about putting on the
breastplate of righteousness. And we talked about the fact that means practical, personal
holiness. If you want to win the battle, the routine daily conflict with
the world assaulting your flesh, you need to be living a holy life. A pattern of sin only makes you
very, very vulnerable. And having your feet shod with the preparation of
the gospel of peace is to remember that, what holds you in the middle of the battle, what anchors
you is the fact that you have made peace with God that means God is on
your side. God is your defender. God is your protector. And it’s in that
confidence that you fight the battle. And
those that are the things that are fixed in place. On top of those, in addition
to all of those, you take the shield of faith. And the shield of faith is the
thing with which you quench the temptations that Satan sends. We talked about
the fact that you shield yourself from temptation by believing God. You either believe God or you
believe Satan. When Satan comes with his deceptive lies that lure you
into sin because he promises satisfaction, if you believe him you do it. If you
believe the real satisfaction is found in honoring God, then you do what is
right. It’s your faith in
the Word of God that protects you from believing Satan’s lies and deceptions
that shields you.
The helmet of salvation that idea that you have a future
salvation which is secured to you, protects you against the blows of doubt that
Satan would wield against you, sometimes telling you you’re unworthy of the
goodness of God. God isn’t going to continue to bless you and be good to you
because you’re an unworthy sinner, preying upon you in the times of your weakness
and faltering and making you think that you may not have a future with God. The helmet of salvation is the
assurance of that eternal life which is to come. And when you live in
the light of that assurance, it effects how you live now because you know you
are a permanent citizen of that eternal kingdom. You are motivated to live as
such.”
We look at what David
Jeremiah writes concerning Acts 13:13 in our quotation from “Love in Action.”
“The Jerusalem had
commissioned Paul and Barnabas to carry a letter of affirmation to the Gentile
Christians in Antioch. After delivering
the letter, the two men stayed on in Antioch for a short time ‘teaching and
preaching the Word of the Lord’ (Acts 15:35).
Young John Mark was the source of a strong disagreement between Paul and
Barnabas. As far as Paul was concerned,
John Mark had disqualified himself by deserting Paul during the first
missionary journey (Acts 13:5, 13). But
Barnabas didn’t focus on Mark’s problems; he saw his potential. Barnabas believed in John Mark so deeply that
he parted company with Paul in order to take John Mark! Encouragers see potential where others see problems.”
10/31/2019 11:19 AM
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