Our Spiritual Warfare

Well, the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out for a number of months. I don't do it as much anymore because I found out it was—I wasn't sleeping well at night. I would turn on the BBC and I would watch a half-hour report of Ukraine, you know, what was happening there. And they always had all this footage and they would have people that were actually there, things blowing up behind them as they spoke, you know, and just keeping track of what was going on because it's a fascinating thing.

I mean, there's historical cycles that happen and this is not unusual, what's happening over there. And the long-term effects of this and the global effects are enormous. We've seen the rise of globalism in which the United States was the driving engine and now we're seeing globalism begin to just fray at the fringes. As that collapses, the world's going to become a very strange place, as globalism collapses. I have a sermon I'm going to do on that sometime here in the next few months.

But there's always war someplace. There's wars going on right now which we don't even know about because, let's face it, we have nice cars and air conditioning and coffee and we don't care that someplace in some country in the world we've never heard of, people are killing each other. Yet it's happening. There's wars going on all the time. Nations measure their history by what? Wars. Every nation tells its history through the wars that it's fought.

You and I live in a political environment where it feels like we're at war. I read two articles this week. It was very interesting. One was why Democrats were so rotten that people had to get together and violently overthrow the government. The other was why Republicans are so rotten that we have to somehow get control of the government and get them. So let's just shoot each other and it's just this violent hatred. And if you and I aren't careful, we get caught up in that. We're in a war that we're not part of. This country is in an internal war and we're not part of that war. Just like the world is at war and it's only going to get worse and worse and worse with more wars.

And we're not part of that. Jesus said to Pilate that he didn't have to worry that his followers were going to try to overthrow the Roman Empire because he said, they're not of... my kingdom is not of this world. Else my people would fight. But they won't. They're not going to fight because this isn't their fight. Now I say all that and yet the Apostle Paul tells the Christians in Ephesus that they are in a war. They're in an actual war.

So what did he mean by that? Let's go to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6. And verse 10. Paul's wrapping up his letter. Ephesus, or Ephesians, is one of my favorite letters. Those people at Ephesus are a fascinating church. We know about them because the book of Acts talks about them. We have more history of that church than any church in the New Testament. We know about them here because Paul writes to them. We know about them in the book of Revelation because they still exist in the book of Revelation. So I find this a fascinating church.

And at the end of this letter, this heartfelt letter that he writes to them, he says, finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Now that's a very important statement in what he's going to say next. We have a strength that has to come from God and a power that can only come from God.

So there's a strength and a power that you and I can't have on our own. And then he says, put on the whole armor of God that you might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. He says, now you're going to put armor on because of this conflict, this battle you're going to have with Satan. Now, you know, we don't watch people walk around every day in armor. I want you to put this in the context of where Paul is at this time.

When he writes the book or the letter to the Ephesians, he's under house arrest in Rome. There's a Roman soldier standing in front of his doorway 24 hours a day. Roman soldiers come in and out of where he is all the time. Now he would have seen Roman soldiers his whole life.

I mean, the Roman Empire was based on freedom of economics and freedom of religion, but it was held together by the power of the legions. That's what held it together. The army held it together. So every place you went, you would have seen Roman soldiers. But he's seeing them every day. He's seeing soldiers that are actually trained and the best trained army in the world at the time.

They are trained for battle and they wear all kinds of armor. And so think of this in the context of where he is. He's writing to the church in Ephesus saying, you're in a war and you have to put on armor because he's looking at men every day that have armor on. But he's not going to talk about physical armor, obviously. He says in verse 12, because here now he zeros this in, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

He doesn't say, well, we're at war with Rome, so take up your arms and go fight against the Roman Empire. That's what he says. He says, you and I are in war against real things that are happening in the spirit world. He tells his church, you are in warfare, in battle with the spirit world, and you have to be prepared for that. It's a reality. Therefore, because of this, therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. In other words, you have to have this armor so that you can stand your ground, because if you don't have this armor, you can't stand your ground.

In the Roman world, they understood that. I mean, the Roman army defeated most armies. I mean, every once in a while they would lose, but for hundreds and hundreds of years, they won the great majority of battles they were in, major battles. And it was because of their training and the way they fought.

It was the armor they wore, it was the shield they had, it was the training. I mean, when you went into the Roman army, it was a 20-year stint. So you either learned to fight or you got killed. It was that simple. The discipline was tremendous. I mean, horrible, the discipline. The ability to build – there were Roman engineers, that's why they built the best fortresses and seized weapons and all kinds of things. They built some ramps. To this day, they don't know how they did it without machinery, having machinery.

Well, they did it because the legionnaires could build. And he's looking at these men and he's saying that armor they wear, there's a spiritual equality to that. There's a spiritual armor that we have to put on. One of the greatest, I think, issues facing us today in the church is the reality that we're in a spiritual war.

That's not what we want. What we want is, today was a good day, I went to work, I made some money, you know, I stopped off and got some food that my family's going to enjoy. Hey, let's watch some television tonight. Hey, look at this great buy I got on Amazon. This is what we want. And the truth is, from the moment you get up in the morning, to the time you go to bed at night, you're in some level of engagement in a war.

And that war is for your mind and for your heart. It's a war for your mind and your heart. Now, God is involved in this, which is the point Paul's going to bring out here. God is involved in this to take care of us. But unless we understand that and wear this armor, we're going to take some pretty, we're going to get beat up every once in a while, really badly.

We're going to have difficulties. We don't want to become a casualty in this war. And you don't have to be a casualty in this war, but you must understand it's real. There's a power fighting for your mind and your heart, and it's real. And there's an attempt to influence us. We'll have to look at it a little bit, how Satan does that. So then he goes on and talks about this armor, and he breaks it down.

He breaks it down into the component parts of what a Roman soldier would wear. Now, you've heard this. You've seen, you know, I even have a statue back in my office, and someone gave me, which is all the armor, you know, what the Roman soldier would wear on a little statue.

There's plaques. There's all kinds of, you know, you can buy great big wall hangings with the armor of God on it. But what does it mean? Actually, it would take probably two months with the sermons to do that. So I just want to open up the door. I just want to open up and take a look at what this meant.

You know, think of Paul sitting at his desk writing, and he looks through that doorway, and standing outside is a Roman soldier. He's standing out there guarding and making sure he can't leave. And he looks at that and he says, there's something like that we have to become, an hour fight, an hour warfare.

So then he describes it. First thing he says, in verse 14, he says, is that having girdage your waist with truth. Now it's interesting, they had a, it was usually a big leather belt they wore across their middle section here, protected the liver and the kidneys. They usually had pieces of strips of leather hanging down, looked almost like a skirt.

That was actually to help protect from like sword swipes that hit that leather and not be able to cut through and get to your body. So this had a purpose. Your sword was also attached to this. If your belt fell off, you lost your sword. So there was a big, it was a really wide thick leather belt that came around and it had a purpose. It was to protect your body. That's interesting. That's the very first thing a Roman soldier would put on.

You'd stand up and you'd put on your belt. And he says it has to be truth. This tells us something about Satan's tactics I want to bring out. Satan, main tactic to getting to us is that he tells us lies. He just tells us lies.

There's an interesting way that John 844 is translated. In the New King James and in the King James, they add a word in here that they're not because it's very, it seems difficult to translate. The NIV translates it, I think, is probably much more in this one phrase. It's much more accurate in terms of what John is trying to communicate here.

Actually, it's Jesus that's talking, but John wrote it. John 844 says, he says, you belong to your father, the devil. He's talking to religious leaders here that they wanted to kill him. They wanted to kill Jesus Christ. And he knew it. He says, you know, you're just like your father. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire.

He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. The way that translated. When he lies, it's just his native language. His entire construct of language is a lie. Everything he says is a lie. Everything he tries to communicate to us is a lie. And so the very first thing we have to have in this battle, we think, okay, what we need is God setting out lightning bolts.

No, no, it's very simple. Put on truth. And I want you to notice we have to put these things on because it's very important. We don't naturally have them. The more you understand the spiritual war that you're involved in, the less you depend on yourself because you and I are terribly overmatched. We're just overmatched here. On our own, we can't beat this enemy. We walk into step in the ring, you lose. So what we have to understand, the message is God has to give you something that you must wear.

You must participate in. You must have it become part of you. And truth. I started to write down what are some of the lies that are common in the world today that sometimes in the church we've accepted. And the list got so long, I realized, oh, well, that's a whole other sermon. But I'll give you a few of them. A few lies. If you don't know the truth, your life will not be what God wants you to be. And what's happening is you're fighting an enemy that has no rules. You're fighting an enemy that has no ethics, has no mercy, does not care, just wants to destroy you.

Pure and simple. Now, remember, God holds him back. You're not fighting him alone. You're not intended to. In fact, James says when you draw close to God, Satan runs away. But we have to remember the champion is with us. We have to put on his armor. So Satan can't do to us anything that God doesn't allow, and God only allows what we can with his help resist. What we can with his help resist. Not what we can with our by ourselves resist. But think of the things that he tells us. We just did a Beyond Today program last week on this. The idea that Jesus loves everyone. Love is love.

So whatever two people do in the LGBTQ community, whatever they do is okay because it's love, and therefore anyone who doesn't agree with them can't be a Christian because they have no love. That argument has become so pervasive that we have millions of young people agreeing with it. The only answer to that is to go to the Scripture and say, well, the Bible says God is love. So we then have to go to what Jesus said, what that means.

He explains it. He explains what God is love means. We have to go there. But if you don't know that, if you've never really read the teachings of Jesus Christ, Jesus is all about love. That's true. Well, love is love. Love is love is a book. I think I mentioned that two weeks ago.

It's a book written to teach little children that's supposed to be given in schools that, you know, someone has two daddies or two mommies, it's okay because love is love. It doesn't matter because love is okay and love is good. Now, that sounds good, but it's not biblical. And it comes down to do we believe in Jesus Christ's teaching or not?

That's the core of this. Do you believe in Jesus Christ's teaching or not? How about basically people are good, and so you just accept everybody the way they are. According to the scripture, basically everybody's bad. Everybody has corrupt human nature, and we need God. If everybody's basically good, we actually don't need God that much. It's only when we come to the realization that in the core of all of us, there's something really bad, and we need forgiveness, and we need God's help to change.

There's other ways He comes at us. You are worthless. Therefore, what does God want to have with you? What does God want to do with you? You're worthless. God is not even going to work with you. The you-are-worthless-God-doesn't-want-you argument is just as bad as the other argument. God loves everybody, so He doesn't care what they do. That's Satan saying that. Well, we believe I am worthless, therefore God doesn't love me. He can't save me. He can't work in my life.

That's Satan, because that's not what God says. But you have to know the Bible to say that, to know that. God's just waiting for me to mess up so He can punish me. No, that's Satan. That's not what God says. God doesn't care, and this is actually common in our society, God doesn't care what your religion is as long as you do good things. So the proof that someone is right with God is they do good things. Oh, look, this person does all these good things for other people. That proves that they're truly a follower of Jesus.

Well, are you a Christian? Eh, I'm an agnostic, but I do good things, so I'm okay with God. Those are all lies. Those lies go on and on and on. The very first thing in order to fight this war, as we have to guard ourselves, the first thing we put on is truth. We seek truth. We seek truth in the Scripture.

Now, we don't know all truth. We don't know everything. Nobody's ever going to know everything until Christ comes back, and then we're all going to say, oh, I didn't know that. But the core of what we need for salvation is given to us. Everything we need for salvation is given to us.

Just like every piece of this armor is given to us. Ephesians 4, go back a couple pages here. Ephesians 4, 13. Breaking into the middle of a point that Paul's making, Paul's talking here about the reason God put elders and pastors and teachers in the church, was for the church to grow together to become something together. And that was a mature Christian. So verse 13, he says, "'Til we all come," this is the purpose, "'till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature and the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head Christ.'" So truth keeps us from just being battered about, thrown around, oh, this is right next week, this is right next week, this is right, or not being able to actually defend and understand why we do what we do.

What is the core of our beliefs? Why do we hold on to those things? The belt of truth. The next thing Paul says is that having put on the breastplate of righteousness. Righteousness is having a right relationship with God, and if we have a right relationship with God, we end up doing the right thing. So it's first of all right relationship with God, but in that relationship we do the right things.

He says, you must put it on. I actually have, I've kept it in my computer for years. I think the story is so old, I typed it up. I know it was in the mid-70s and then downloaded it into my computer, you know, later because we didn't have a computer.

I didn't have a computer in 1976, but downloaded it so I have the story because it caught my attention. It was in Los Angeles, and a motorcycle cop got behind a guy in a pickup truck, and the guy ran a stop sign. So the motorcycle cop, you know, pulled him over, got off the, he didn't prepare for anything, he didn't think anything was wrong, he thought the guy, you know, just ran a stop sign. He didn't know the guy just robbed a bank. He walked up to the window, which was down, the guy pulled up a gun within inches of his body, fired two shells right into his chest.

He landed seven feet away. The impact was so great. A couple months later, another policeman there in the LA area walked up to him, there was four other men with him, knocked on the door, they were going to serve a warrant to a drug dealer, knocked on the door, said, where the police, immediately two shots came through the door, hitting right in the same place in the chest.

Now the first man hit the ground, and to the shock of the man inside the car who just froze, staggered up, walked around a little bit, pulled out his gun and shot him. He surrendered. Immediately threw out his gun and surrendered. He shot him right through the door and hit him in the leg. You see, he had his armor on. He had armor on. And the bullets lodged in it. Of course, the impact was he had to be sore.

It sent him seven feet through the air. Probably, I don't imagine it was a high caliber gun at that distance, but it doesn't matter. It had killed him otherwise. The other man, I won't tell you his name, I've even looked him up on the Internet, read about his funeral. 27 years old, a young black man with a wife and kids. He didn't have his armor. He died within a minute. Now his armor was in the trunk of the car.

All policemen believe in armor. All policemen believe you have to wear it, but sometimes you get in a hurry and you don't put it on. Sometimes, I mean, it's heavy, it's hot. You don't want it. It's a pain to put this on.

For all kinds of reasons, you can forget to put it on. But everybody believes in it. And he says, you don't just believe in the breastplate of righteousness. You have to put it on. Every day, you and I have to get up and put this on, because every day we enter into a battle. We don't want to fight that battle. We don't want to be in it, but it's forced upon us by an enemy who wants to destroy us.

It's interesting, in Galatians, the apostle Paul wrote, for as many as you who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ. It's the same term he uses here. Put on the breastplate. You have to put him on. You have to wear Christ. You don't just believe you've got to wear him, because that's that breastplate. It is God who puts this armor on us, and every day we have to have him put it on us.

Ephesians 4 here, we read that just a few minutes ago. I want to go on now to verse 17 in the same passage. Paul says, this I say, brethren, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the nations walk, and the futility of their mind.

You and I get so upset over the things we see happening in our society around this and this happening and that happening, and I don't know. I decided to be a politician in this country, no matter which party you're part of, you have to have some mental illness. Now, let's just say what Paul says. They have futility in the mind. It's futile. It won't work. The reason nothing works is because it's not of the kingdom of God.

That's why it won't work. So he says, we can't be like everybody around us walking in futility of the mind, living life, and it won't work. Nothing will work. Nothing will work in the end. Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling of giving themselves over the lewdness to work all in cleanness and with greediness.

But you have not so learned Christ. You've put on something else. This isn't what you learned. This isn't the life you may have given up that life because all of us are in that life. We're giving up that life. Every once in a while, there's little bits and pieces of that life that wants to come back.

We're giving up that life. If indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, okay, the filthy rags we have on won't protect us in this war, with Satan. We think they will. We think we can protect ourselves. The flimsy, filthy rags we wear will not protect us one bit in the war that we've been involved in. He says, put them off.

Take off everything that you are. He says that you put off concerning your former conduct, the old man, which grows corrupt according to deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which was created according to God and to righteousness and holiness.

We put on Christ. You know what happens? We become a new person. We take off the rags. We put on the armor. As we put on that armor, God is doing something. We can stand our ground, which is what he said here in chapter 6. We have to stand our ground against this enemy who wants to destroy us.

Next, in Ephesians 6, Paul says, having shodged your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, Roman soldiers wore heavy sandals, mainly because they marched every place. Unless you were in a cavalry or you had to be part of the supply chain, a train coming up behind, and you had a wagon, you marched every place, thousands and thousands of miles, and you would have to stop and fix your sandals every once in a while. You had to have a good pair of sandals.

Those leather sandals weren't just something that covered their feet like we get sandals for the beach. They would come up, sometimes, up the ankles. Sometimes there was metal put in front of that in case someone in battle kicked you. I mean, when you're fighting for your life, people do anything. They'll bite each other, kick each other, throw dirt in each other. They'll do anything to survive, right?

So these sandals were important because one thing about a Roman soldier, he had to march every place he was going. Some of the legions covered thousands of miles, and sometimes amazing short periods of time. There's no trains to get in there. There's wagons to get there. You get some outbreak of a war 300 miles away. You march and you got to be there quickly, and you stop every night and you build your fortifications.

You know, sometimes, some of the few times Roman armies were defeated in the 500 years when they were at their greatest was because they would get lazy and not build their fortifications at night.

Other armies wouldn't fight them in the day. You'd always lose, but if they didn't build fortifications, you'd attack them at night. If they built their fortifications, they always won, or most of the time. You marched and you marched and you marched. And what's interesting here, preparation of the gospel of peace, wait a minute, we're talking about a war, and we're talking about one of our weapons is peace. The gospel of peace? Yes.

Satan always has an inroad to us when we're filled with angst and anxiety and anger. Of course, I mean, we all suffer those things from time to time. Every one of us does. But when we get consumed by those things, that's one of the tactics he'll use to get to us.

The gospel of peace. I mean, the first message of the gospel is you are at war with God.

In fact, Paul says you're the enemy of God. Jesus Christ came to die for you.

To what? Reconcile us to God, to take upon himself what we deserve, and say, okay, now there can be peace between you and God. So the gospel of peace starts with you are not at peace with God.

To be at peace with God, you have to accept Christ. You have to repent of your sins. You have to turn the other way. That's where baptism comes in and laying on of hands, receiving God's Spirit. Why?

Now you're at peace with God. We forget sometimes because we still fail, that we're actually at peace with God. We can ask for forgiveness. We can go talk to him. We can take to him our struggles and our doubts and our worries. And even sometimes when we know I'm wrong, I need to go talk to you about this. Why? Because we're at peace. The gospel is the peace that God brings. And that peace happens when we put on Jesus Christ. So this gospel, the gospel of peace, the gospel of God reconciling us to God is how we keep marching. You can't keep marching if there's nothing there to drive you. And no, I can keep going to God in peace and I'm marching in peace. And guess what? God is taking me where I have to be. God will take you where you're supposed to be.

I gave a sermon a couple weeks ago with Murphy's Pearl on that and I'll give it here sometime.

God takes us where we have to go. He promises to take us there. The only way we'll remember that is we understand the gospel of peace that you and I have all become partakers in. You and I already have the preparation of the gospel of peace. Maybe your sandals are just worn out. Maybe we need to rebuild the sandals a little bit because we had to do them all the time. Of course, you know who did their fix their sandals and wash their clothes? They did. Legionnaires did it all for themselves.

These men could survive any place under any condition.

The next thing he says is, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to crunch the fiery darts of the wicked one. Once again, he's not pulling any punches that we haven't seen. He's a enemy that wants to destroy us. His ways are much more subtle. We look for the big frontal attacks and they're usually not. The Roman shield was a real interesting invention and it really worked for hundreds of years. It was about two feet wide. It was curved.

It was about four feet long. Even from a short range, he could stop an arrow.

An arrow with the bows they had, they had a lot of power in it.

In fact, they had an arrow that was shot. The Romans did. They rotated it. So like a Gatling gun and it would fire four at a time. Now that hit your shield, it'll probably knock you down.

But you know what? You'd stagger back up, too.

Those shields were absolutely necessary because something was coming at them and they had to have that defense up there. We're under spiritual attack sometimes. We lose sight. We lose faith.

That's where we have to go ask God, help build my faith. You have to ask for it.

I just have to have more faith. I don't know. I can't work myself up into faith. Maybe one of you have figured out how to do that. I have never figured out how I feel lost. I feel down. I feel like I can't make it. Oh, I just need to give myself a pep talk in faith. It's never worked for me.

I tell you what adds is going to the Word of God and then praying about it.

God has to build our faith. That shield is we don't design the shield. We don't make the shield. God gives us the shield. So we have enough faith to put it on and then we got to keep praying. Give me the faith to keep wearing it. Give me the faith to keep using it. Give me the faith to understand. Give me the faith to grow. And when you fall and you fail in faith, God doesn't throw you away. God says we have more work to do. We have a shield of faith. And then we have the helmet of salvation. And I want to put these two together here.

The helmet was a vital piece of equipment. You know, you could take an arrow some places in the body and if it didn't go too deep and destroy an organ, they could dig that thing out.

You know, of course, there were ex-Roman soldiers running around with arms and legs and hands cut off because, you know, they were able to survive the battle but they were deformed. But you take something in the head, it's hard to survive that.

So that helmet was very, very important. And what does he say the helmet is? It's salvation. God has already said to you, you, through accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, becoming my child, because you have done these other things. I have given you salvation. Now, it's accomplished at this point, but he's already given it to you. You're not walking around with God saying, oh no, today they're probably going to fail. You don't walk around saying, today I thought a bad thought, probably God's going to not let me have eternal life. That's not what this is. There's a helmet he put on you. You didn't put it on. I didn't put mine on. There's a helmet he put on. He said, that's your salvation. Wear it and you can't lose it. Now, you take it off and throw it away. We're in real trouble. That's going in a battle without a helmet. We're in real trouble. So, you know, I'm not saying that one saved always saved. What I am saying is, if we lose salvation, it's only because we choose to do so, because he's already put the helmet on your head and we give up so easy. God's put a helmet on there and said, this is it. This protects your mind, your thoughts. This keeps you where you're supposed to go. You have a helmet on your head. Put there by God.

1 Peter 1.

And I just want to stress that. We may pick up the shield, but God gives us the shield. It's just not laying there. We don't manufacture it. It's the same with the helmet. We may have to pick it up, put it on our heads, but God makes it. God says, it's here. This is my salvation.

It's like we can't save ourselves. So when he says you have a helmet, your mind is protected by God and the salvation he's promised you, the salvation he's promised you, but doesn't make you take it. He says, if you don't want it, you can take the helmet off.

1 Peter 1. Let me get to 1 Peter here. 1 Peter 1 and verse 3.

I should notice how positive these statements are from Peter.

He says, Bless be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

We have a hope, a living hope. What is that living hope? It's the helmet of salvation.

He says, To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. What did he just say? God's got it there, waiting for you.

He's already created it, and he's put that helmet on your head to protect you to get there.

We have forgotten what a great salvation has been offered to us. He goes on, In this you greatly rejoice. He says, We should be really excited about this.

Oh yeah, but the price of gasoline went up again. So what? You have the power of God, and on your head the helmet of salvation. So what? He says, Though for now for a little while, you greatly rejoice, even though for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, the degeneranness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen you've loved. He said, Yeah, being in battle is not fun. We don't want to be in this battle. You and I didn't pick this battle. When God chose you, He put you into a war. You're already, you had already lost to the enemy. You had capitulated before God calls you. You're just, you're just one of the enemy.

Satan is the enemy. Sometimes I think one of the greatest things he does is he makes us forget he's the enemy. So the enemy is the world. Well, yeah, they're the people with the feudal mind that God has to open their mind yet. And He will. He opens everybody's mind in time and they have to choose.

Well, the enemy is each other. Yeah. So we fight each other in the church, or we fight within our families, or we fight with our neighbors, or we fight with the people with the people we work with. We just fight with everybody. We're in a constant state of war because He wants us to fight each other's out of Him. You know, I find it interesting. One of the things the Russians have done when they invaded Ukraine, a sizable number of the Russian soldiers that have been killed and wounded aren't Russian soldiers. They're mercenaries. Everybody hires mercenaries.

In wars anymore. But that's not new. I mean, in the American Revolution, the British hired mercenaries to come fight us because they had so many other wars going on they couldn't send everybody here to fight. We didn't get mercenaries. We just went to the French and said, hey, want to come fight for us? And they said, oh yeah, we'll take on the British any chance we get.

And without the French, we would have not won the American Revolution.

Everybody gets allies, and everybody pays somebody, or gets somebody, or promises somebody.

I mean, the reason the French fought with us wasn't because they liked the American colonies so much. It was because, wow, this gives us a shot at the British.

So everybody's doing it for their own reasons. When we forget all that stuff, remember how a real enemy is. It's not the person next to you, and it's certainly surely not your wife, or your husband, or your kids. It's not even the person you have to work with who's an absolute, that drives you crazy. That's not really the enemy.

The enemy is Satan. These powers in heavenly places. That's what we fight.

And the last point, he says, and when I'm done with this, I'm going to read two scriptures here. When I'm done with the second one, I'm going to give you a little example of what I'm talking about. He says, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. That's interesting. Of all the equipment, this is the only thing that's offensive. Although it's still defensive, because you'd use the pariet. You sure wouldn't want to go into battle with all your armor on, and a nice shield, nice helmet, and an empty hand over here with no sword. You weren't going to be able to fight very well. And the Romans used, they had a short sword. So you think they'd long, they had real short swords. The idea was to get the enemy really close to you and chop them up. And they were good at it. Took discipline and took a lot of training to do what they did.

And using this armor, I mean, they would literally take a cohort and have all their shields put up. So some of them had them over their heads, some on the side, some in the front and the back. They called it the turtle. And all you saw was marching hundreds and hundreds of men covered with shields. They'd shoot arrows into it, and every once in a while a guy would fall. But the whole unit, the whole thing would keep moving forward. And since most barbarian tribes were trained to fight as individual warriors, how would you fight that? How do you fight walls of men standing there, their shields locked together with this short sword saying, come up close to me? So other armies tried to fight them, and the Romans would fight shoving matches. You just march forward with that shield until you run into their shields, and you just keep going forward until you run over everybody like a big bulldozer. I mean, it was amazing what they did in a horrible way. And Paul saw this. He understood this. He said, our battle is we stand our ground. He didn't say go out and try to find Satan in fighting, by the way. He said, all we do is stand our ground. Remember? He said that we stand. And we stand with God. Hebrews 4.11. You know this scripture.

Hebrews 4.11.

Look at verse 12. For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of the soul and spirit and of joints and marrow.

It is a discerning of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The thing about the sword, it reveals to us other people's intentions and their heart, but it also reveals to us our heart.

It reflects who we are. How do we use this sword, which is the word of God? That's why we go back to the belt of truth. Without this, we'll never know the truth. And this can be really, really misinterpreted and twisted all over the place.

I've always said, give me a premise and give me a half hour and I'll prove it in the Bible. I don't care how bizarre it is.

We have to be close to God. We have to know what's important, what's not important.

There's lots of things in life that just aren't important, and there's things that are.

2 Corinthians 10. 2 Corinthians 10.

Let's see. 2 Corinthians 10. I went someplace else. I'm ahead of myself and going where I want to go next.

2 Corinthians 10. And let's start in verse 3.

He says, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, but we're in a war.

But this isn't person against person. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity, into the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your disobedience is fulfilled. In other words, we're bringing ourselves. Every thought comes into the captivity of Christ. We've had to put Christ on so that we're even correcting our own thoughts. We're even correcting our own thoughts.

It's hard to believe that someone as powerful as Satan literally hates you. He knows you by name.

He hates you. We don't want to fight him, but he wants to fight us. That's why we have to let God fight him for us. And God gives us all this armor, because it's all we need, because it comes from him. It comes from him. Let's go to Romans 13, and we'll end here. Romans 13.

And verse 11.

Because this is what we have to remember. And do this. I love the way Paul writes it. Just do this, okay? Knowing the time, that now it is high time to wake out of sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than we first believed. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on, we keep going back to that state, put on the righteousness, put on Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust.

I implore all of you to set aside now that every day, every day, when you get up in the morning, you're going to ask God to please clothe you to help you put on the armor of God.