Phil: God wants us to learn about His provision, but to exercise it. What good does it do to know the doctrine of all of this, and then to walk around and we’re dirty? We make choices and we just hide them and we pretend and we go along and we don’t bring them to the cross. Oh, what an awesome provision that there is. But God wants every one of his children, not just to know about the provision of the cross and the blood that was shed, but to take hold of that and to be clean in his eyes. That’s the awesome thing. We can be as clean as if we had never sinned.
But there’s a part that we have to play in that. We can’t just sort of, Oh, well, it’s all taken care of. That means me coming with an honest heart, and repenting and agreeing with him about it. Not excusing it. Not just saying, Well, have they done better? Nothing, but like what David did in Psalm 51, I’m the only one Lord. This is all on me. You’re completely right, I’m completely wrong. But Lord I come to you for forgiveness. Praise God!
So the truth is we can stand before the devil as righteous as Jesus is. But there is a part we play. That’s why Paul is bringing this. It’s is not simply to remind us of a doctrine. This is a reality where I need to take something. I need to walk in this. You get that? Okay.
All right, now where we are. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Obviously, if you’re a soldier, you better have some good footwear on. What good is it if you’ve got all the rest, and you can’t find your footing because, well, you don’t have the right footwear?
Well, what he likens the footwear to here is peace. Now, what I’m seeing in this, whatever else it means, it certainly has to do with my relationship with God. You remember how Paul deals in Romans 4 with how we get to be righteous? He talks about Abraham and how Abraham believed God, and he was declared to be righteous.
And then he begins chapter five. Therefore since we’ve been, I forget the exact words, anyway, Since we’ve been made righteous, let us have peace with God, or, we have peace with God. But if I’m going to stand against the devil, and he’s coming against me in some fashion, what good is it if I have some disagreement with God? It got quiet. But think about that. God wants there to be a full-fledged state of peace between you and God.
Now, we had that message a while back about, are you mad at God? That’s just one example. But there are all kinds of ways in which we can not be quite okay. We don’t like how He’s doing stuff. We don’t agree with this or agree with that. We wonder about this, wonder about that. And just, our will is somehow engaged other than just in surrender and agreement and yieldedness to Him.
But He said that you put on the whole armor. What if I ignore this? I’m not gonna have a very good standing, am I? Because the whole point is, that no matter what the devil does, I have the power because of what God gives me, not because I have it. But I have the power to stand and be the one standing at the end of the battle.
But if my feet aren’t properly fitted with what He’s given me, that’s gonna be tough, isn’t it? So you see, all the songs we sang this morning about surrender. I surrender most of it. I surrender all. May God give us that kind of a heart where there’s nothing between me and Him. I have no issues with Him and how He does things. I recognize that in all of this, His character, His heart towards me is love that I can’t even begin to comprehend.
And the devil’s gonna attack that sense in every way he can think of. He’ll throw in every kind of suggestion that begins to question, Did God really say? What’s His motive here? What’s going on? Why did He do that? Why is it this way and not that way?
I want to have a heart that just says, Lord, I’m surrendered. You know what You’re doing and I know You love me, and I know You’re gonna help me to stand. I’m not gonna fuss about how, you know, Who You are and how You do stuff. Boy, I’m gonna have good footing under me, aren’t I or am I not? Praise the Lord!
Okay, belt of truth, breastplate, the feet, and take up the shield of faith. Now, that’s interesting. The shield of faith is not something you just put on and it’s there. This is something I gotta have, but I gotta do something with it. I can’t just lay it down and say, Huh, I don’t know. I got questions about this.
David almost, you know, was kind of on the verge of that, wasn’t he in that Psalm? Why are you against me? What’s going on? I don’t understand. But in every case throughout that Psalm, is it 42, I think? Somewhere around in there. He wound up picking up the shield, didn’t he? That’s what God is looking for.
And the devil’s attack in every instance is going to use the fact that we live in a sense world, we have so much that is able to look at conditions, to have feelings. All these things that are contrary to faith, contrary to trusting God, and knowing that He’s on the throne. What do we do with it?
Well, what do the folks in Hebrews 11 do? They looked at all of that and said, I don’t care what that says, I don’t care what that looks like, what it feels like. God is on His throne and I’m trusting in Him. That’s what God is looking for.
If we do everything else from the standpoint of the armor, but we don’t do this, what are we doing? Oh, poor me. Instead of saying, Devil, I may feel bad. Things may look totally contrary. But I’ll tell you, I serve a God Who’s on the throne. He is allowing it to appear to be a certain way. But I know my God, and I don’t care what you do and what you say. I have the right and the authority and the equipment to deal with you, right, in this particular issue. You can’t get through to me this way. Praise God!
By the way, where do we get faith? Oh, that has to come from Him too. So I’ll tell you when we’re even struggling there, do we not have the right to go to God and say, God help me? Well, didn’t the man in one occasion when Jesus was talking, was healing people, casting out devils, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, Jesus didn’t have a problem with that. That was where he was at. That’s all God wants is from right where we’re at to reach out to him and to begin to do what we know to do, trust Him.
And I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who will give us the victory because it’s His power, it’s His will, its His purpose in growing us up and making us strong. We aren’t born as warriors. We have to learn that in the field of battle, just like David and others did. But was God faithful to David? Yes He was. Even when he fell into that sin, God brought him out of it, and he had a lot of consequences from that. But God even brought him through every one of those.
You go down and you read the last words of David, which is about where we’re at in some of our Bible reading, some of us. And you’ll see how his declarations of Who God is and His faithfulness. And you realize the experiences that went into that when it looked like there was no hope. Everything was gone, every reason to have any natural hope was gone. And yet God was faithful, and he learned it’s not just the shield that blocks the spear or the sword or the arrow or whatever. It’s the shield where I’m still believing in you Lord.
God’s going to lift you up and give you the strength to do that when you don’t have it. And every one of us is in that place. That’s, of course, why we need prayers. He talks about down below. Because we can get in a weak place. But notice that this is not something that just happens automatically. God is telling you and He’s telling me, Take it up. Don’t just sit there, and let the devil shoot arrows at you and entertain them. You don’t have do that. God wants to grow faith and make it stronger because we live by faith and not by sight. Praise God!
All right. Take up the helmet of salvation. Obviously, there’s a lot more you could go into in all of these, but the helmet of salvation. And two particular applications of that occurred to me. One of them is this. I need to understand, this has to do with my mind, right? I don’t ever, ever, ever need to get to the place where I forget my place in the scheme of things. I am not somebody who’s cool and who’s got it under control. When I get up in the morning, I need a Savior.
Now, I needed a Savior to enter into life, and to become God’s child. But salvation is a lifelong process where we are always in need of God and His grace and His mercy and His help. We don’t ever get beyond that in this life. Always, God is going to, and He’ll have ways of reminding us, but I need a Savior.
Lord, that’s the position that I want to take. I want to understand that. It needs to shape the way I look at everything. God, you’ve allowed all kinds of things to happen. Maybe I’m in a battle that I didn’t even plan. Maybe, yes. But I’ll tell you, Lord, in all of this, I understand you didn’t put me here to see me fall. You didn’t put here because you were mad at me. You put me here because you love me.
But I understand right now I need a Savior. You didn’t put me here because I couldn’t, you thought I could handle it. You put me here because you wanted me to learn something more about trusting in you. So that’s part of it. But how many times does Paul in other places especially deal with our thinking and our minds and what goes on there?
Suppose you get all the rest of the armor, okay? But there are ways that the devil can drop thoughts in our minds and pull on our nature that aren’t quite in harmony with what God has called us to. Do you suppose he gets a little bit of an advantage out of that? What good is the rest of it if our thinking is messed up?
And here’s where it can get to be a problem. We can get to a place in our walk with the Lord where we understand, you know, I’m not supposed to do this or do that. That’s sin, that’s wrong, that’s whatever. But I wonder how many times we do those things here. We think about them, we entertain thoughts that are very much out of harmony with the Lord. And I will not ask for a show of hands. Mine would have to go up twice.
But think about it from God’s point of view. For example, Jesus said, If you hate somebody in your heart, you are a murderer. You may have never acted upon that, but there was something going on in here. If a man looks at a woman to lust after her in his heart, he’s an adulterer. See, God views a lot of our thinking, a lot of our fantasies, a lot of the things that we entertain, He views them the same as if we’d gone and done it. That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?
But God wants us to learn how to discipline our minds. Now, if we come short, we know where to go. We know what to do with it. But are there needs here? Is this a need for anybody? Yeah. Is this an area where the devil has schemes? He pulls on our nature. We know I shouldn’t do that, but I can think about it and that’s okay. Is it? The Lord sees it as the same as doing it. Doing it.
And I just pray that God will help every one of us to learn how to discipline our thinking. You know what? Whatever things are good and honest and all the things that Paul describes in Philippians 4. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love. And the King James says a sound mind. But other translations say self-control. You get the sense of what the original was about.
It means, I get to be in control of what goes on in here. And if it starts to go in the wrong direction, I have every right to step in and say, Wait a minute, Lord, I need your help here. But I’m not going down that rabbit trail. Sin shall not have dominion over me. I am not under the law, but under grace. Your grace is enough to help me not to think about that and allow that to settle in my mind and stay there.
But what if it does? How equipped are we at that time to really stand up against the devil? He’s kind of gotten in, hasn’t he? He’s planted some of his lies in there. A lot to think about, isn’t it? But see, we have a part in that. God just doesn’t automatically take over our minds and make us think lovely thoughts all the time. We’ve got to step up and learn and take hold of what He’s given to us. We have everything we need. The question is what do we do with it?
And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Now, I notice in that expression and in the expressions about prayer to follow that it’s the sword of the Spirit. There’s got to be more in the words that come out of our mouths, especially in times of battle like this, than just the right words.
Now, I’ve used this expression or this illustration many times we read in the word about how the Lord said in the beginning, Let there be light. Well, I can read those words. I can say them, I can look them up in the Bible. I believe that’s the word of God. But I don’t care how many times I say, Let there be light, there ain’t gonna be no light. The purpose of God speaking is to accomplish something.
Do you think when Jesus resisted the devil and he quoted the word to the devil, do you think that was just proof text? I believe this and you can’t get to me that way. There was life. Jesus said, The words that I speak to you are spirit and life. God wants to bring his people to a place where what comes out of our lives, our mouths more and more actually are expressions of the Spirit of God.
God wants to bring us to a place where it’s not only that we know what the word says, but we can absolutely speak it forth in the face of the devil. And I’ll tell you, it becomes a sword when the Spirit gets behind it. We overcome him by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. Now, this is where God gets involved because He lives on the inside, but now we’re walking with Him to the point where He can help us to understand what’s not just look up a proof text. But this is God’s word in this situation.
I know many of you have testified to that. When you’ve been in a situation and God has brought a thought and a word and you’ve been able to rest in that, and speak it out with life and its power. God wants to bring every one of his children to a place where what comes out of us is Him and not us.
And I’ll tell you, you talk about the devil being afraid. The devil didn’t want this this morning I can tell you. He fought, and there’s no virtue in me, I can tell you that. All you do is follow me around enough and look on the inside and see all the stuff that God sees. You’d know that there’s nothing special about me. Boy, is everything special about Him and everyone who has Him living in you, you’ve got Him. Greater is he that’s in you than he that’s in the world.
But God wants us to take hold of these things and to walk with Him in such a way that we can be in touch with Him, and He can drop a word in our hearts. I mean, it is almost like being a prophet in a sense. We’ve put these labels and try to picture these grandiose things. But I’ll tell you, every one of us has the power to speak words that have life. We speak them to one another if we’re willing, if we’re willing to learn. God can put expressions of His Spirit.
But here we’re trying to stand against the devil. When Jesus gave the answers that he did to the devil, I’ll tell you, there was a sword that went out. That wasn’t just some, I’m combating your idea with mine. Mine’s better. This was power on power. The devil exerted real spiritual force in what he said. And Jesus came right back with the sword of the Spirit. And the devil had no answer.
And he has no answer against any one of his children that puts their trust in him. This is the place that God is longing to bring us. But do you not see why Paul said, Take up the whole armor? Is there any part of this that we can afford to say, Oh, well, that’s just extra. That doesn’t really matter. Every part of this matters.
And I’ll tell you, there’s a Lord who longs to share this with us. He sees every battle, he allows every battle that comes. But in every case, he wants to turn you, weak, whatever your track record is, whoever you are, he wants to turn you into a warrior. Not because you are anything in yourself, because he, the great warrior of all warriors, lives on the inside. He wants his children to be overcomers.
Is there anything he has not given us? Has he failed to give us anything that we actually need? So where’s the issue then? You see why Paul says, Put it on, take it. Take it up. Understand why this matters. Get ahold of this. And it’s not just your theology. This is a matter of getting up in the morning and facing real-life situations and knowing what to do and how to handle them. God will teach us step by step by step if we are willing to learn, if we’re willing to have that heart that David did.
Well, you see where he took up the shield of faith, don’t you? And, again, he brings in, we mentioned this in the past. I remember a service a while back where he mentioned about praying in the spirit and how much we need to be talking to the Lord, not just as a form. This is an actual, like David was reaching out. This is longing. This is saying, Oh God, I need you. Or even more, it’s Oh God, my brother, my sister needs you. Praise God!
You know, Leon, their family needs you and others. Lord, we need you. Help them, give them strength right now. Has God not put within us the power to actually express the very life and Spirit of God that can make a difference? That’s what God wants us to know. This is part of the armor. God wants us to call upon Him, not only for ourselves, but for one another.
And God is building of an army. We call it the body of Christ, but it’s an army too, because we’re gonna have to stand in the evil day of all evil days. But everything that we need, God has given to us. But we need to lay hold of it with every kind of prayer and request and being alert. Always keep on praying for the Lord’s people.
And he says, I often think of this in terms of ministry. Pray also for me that whenever I speak, words may be given me. You don’t need my words. You don’t need me to dig into a book and come up with a theology lecture. I don’t care how scriptural it is. We need to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and He will respond if that’s what we’re crying out for.
God, we need to hear your voice. We need to hear what You’re saying at this hour right now, today for the needs that we have. We do not need to practice a religion, no matter how correct it may be. We need You to be right here to be our active leader. Don’t ever get away from that. We do, we’ll die. But Jesus is Lord and he is on the throne, and he has given us everything we need to stand up.
Let’s put on the whole armor. Let’s honor him. Let’s do what he said. Let’s play our part in all of this that we might grow up and stand there one day in glory, and I’ll tell you if there’s any crown he puts on your head, you know what you’re gonna do with it, don’t you? Throw it down at his feet and say, You’re the one who’s worthy. I’m only here because of what you did. To your name be glory. Praise God! Let’s put on the whole armor. Praise the Lord!
