The Sword of the Spirit /The Word of God

Good morning, brethren. Good to see as many of you here as are here. Always wonder on the first steamy weekend of the year how many people will brave the heat. And it's nice to see that I don't think it's had a lot of effect on attendance, which is delightful to see. A couple of weeks ago, there were a group of us in Tacoma for the men's Tacoma retreat, and the subject for that particular session was the armor of God. So each of the pieces of the armor of God was discussed, and we had interactive sessions on each of them. It was my assignment to cover the sword of the Spirit. So I'd like to share with you for the sermon today the content of that particular session and the subject of the sword of the Spirit. Turn with me, if you will, to the book of Ephesians chapter 6, where the armor of God is discussed. I think all of us are familiar with the armor of God, the analogy that is connected to different aspects of spiritual strength and hope and need. And the last of the entire group, after we finish building the armor, the shoes, the breastplate, the shield, the helmet, the very last item in the series is the sword of the Spirit. And so if you turn back to Ephesians chapter 6, and we go to verse 17. Verse 17 covers two of the items in a compound sentence. And in the second half of that compound sentence, it simply says, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So it describes by analogy a tool, a sword, and it connects that with a particular portion of God's tools. And in this particular case, the sword of the Spirit is described as the Word of God. Interesting as we read this, I was reflecting when I read it earlier upon a reality that happens sometime, and I'll just put it in the sense of asking you if you've been there. Have you ever been at the place where you know everything and nothing at the same time? Now, we just gave you everything.

But in one sense, we gave you nothing. Because the real question is, where is your sword? When were you issued that sword? And how have you used that sword? And we didn't answer any of that. So in the theoretical, we answered everything. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. In the practical, we answered nothing. We didn't answer, do you have one? When did you get it? How do you use it? And so this morning, we'll talk about the practical aspect of the sword of the Spirit. Now, when you look at the raw definition, the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Now, the Word of God, we all have it. Every one of us, whether we have it heartbound like I have it, I usually bring my iPad, and it's a lot lighter, and I can put both mine and my wife's in my briefcase, and it weighs less than my Bible, so I use an electronic. So some of you are using iPhones. Some of you are using hardbound. But all of us, however we use it, we have the Word of God. So if you have the Word of God, you have the sword, don't you? You know, it's interesting. I looked statistically to see where we are in the world right now, and the most recent statistic was 2020.

By 2020, the Bible had been translated into 1,000—this is the full Bible—the full Bible from Genesis to Revelation had been translated into 1,551 distinct languages. Now, the New Testament alone had been translated into well over 2,000 distinct languages. Now, by having the Bible translated into 1,551 languages, that means that on this globe that we live in, five and three-quarter billion people on this earth have the Bible in a language they can read. But having the sword of the Spirit is more than simply having a Bible and having it in a language that you're capable of reading. Having the sword of the Spirit is about understanding what it is that you are reading and how it is supposed to apply to your actual life. I'm going to put together a string of scriptures—a short string, it's not a great long string, one, two, three, four, five, or six, depending on how you count. Now, every one of these scriptures is very well known to all of you here, but I'm going to package them together in a way that I don't think it is often packaged so that we can deal more in depth with this issue of why you have the sword of the Spirit and why 5.75 billion people on the earth may not. Matthew chapter 13—and again, as I said, every one of the scriptures is highly recognizable, but whether you have coupled them all together, that's a different matter. And Matthew chapter 13 is that famous location where Jesus Christ issues His first parable, and the disciples are savvy enough as they're listening to the parable to realize that telling a story doesn't necessarily impart understanding. You know, sometimes you tell a story, and it enlightens. Sometimes you tell a story, and it covers. And the disciples were listening to the story, and they realized that the story that Christ was telling was not imparting knowledge to the listeners. And so we arrive at that famous location in Matthew chapter 13, verse 10. And the disciples came and said to him, why do you speak to them in parables? Now, as I said, the implication here is, we understand that what you just said, they didn't understand. Why did you do that? And he said, because it's given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Of the kingdom of heaven. But to them, it has not been given.

He said, I have said it so that you may understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, to use the language common in Matthew. But he said, I didn't give it to them.

And so here was a crowd, I have no idea what size it was, that heard what he said, but only 12 out of that group were given permission, so to speak, to understand what it was about. And the rest all went home, no wiser than they were when Christ began speaking. The moral of that, brethren, is that you can have the Bible, but you still don't have the sword of the Spirit. You can have the Bible, you can have the words, you can read the words, but if you don't understand the words, if it has not been given to you to use Christ's terms to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God, then you still don't have it.

We all know John chapter 6 and verse 44, so let's go there. And like I said, this is simply a coupling of very well-known scriptures. But they all are part of a whole. John chapter 6, Jesus Christ was saying to his disciples, John chapter 6 and verse 44, he said very simply to his disciples, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Very simple formula. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him to me.

It's an invitation. It is a very simple formal invitation. Oh, you don't receive a piece of paper. Nobody gives you a text or a phone call or an email, but it is just as real, if not more real, an invitation than any of those mechanical tools. And as Christ said, no one comes to me and understands me. That's the implication, unless the Father draws him. Passover evening, Jesus Christ revealed a couple of more layers of this whole picture, and did so quite eloquently between John 14 and John 17.

So let's turn to that Passover evening, because he begins to flesh out some of these things. John 14, first of all, after he had finished all the ceremonial portions of the Passover, and Judas had left to betray him, he then talked to the remaining eleven, and began to enlighten them more deeply about what all of this is about.

And John 14, we remind you every year at Passover that repeatedly, in every one of the chapters where Christ is talking to his disciples, he is letting them know that, I'm not going to leave you on your own. I am going to send help. Some places he talks of the comforter, other places he talks more directly, simply of the Spirit. Same thing, one direct, one not so direct. But in John 14 and verse 17, verse 16 says, And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive. So he says, I'm going to send you the Spirit of truth.

Now, I'll read the Scripture to you later, but remember toward the end of this evening, Jesus Christ in the very, very short verse defines truth, where he says, Thy word is truth. You can't get much more compact than that. Four words. Thy word is truth. So, when you see truth being mentioned, understand the interchangeability with the word, the word that is described as the sword of the Spirit.

He says, I'll send you the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. So, at that point in time, God's Spirit was with them, but later on through baptism and the laying on of hands and through the endowment on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit would go from being a companion, if we use the analogy, to actually dwelling within them.

But he reiterates the same principle that was shown in Matthew 13 and in John chapter 6. There is an invitation. Not everyone receives the invitation. You have received the invitation, and I then will give you the guidance. Further on in this same chapter, verse 26, now he uses more direct terms. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

So now we see him using direct terms. The Holy Spirit is going to be your teacher. How is the Holy Spirit going to teach? We go back to Ephesians. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The tool for teaching is here. 5.75 billion people can read this book. But we've already covered enough turf so far so that you can begin to see very, very clearly that just because you have the book doesn't mean you have the understanding, the sword of the Spirit. Chapter 16, a reiteration of this same principle. Chapter 16, verse 13, However, when he the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth.

For he will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak and will tell you things to come. As I mentioned, before this evening is over, Jesus Christ, who has talked about leading them into truth, revealing them to the truth, giving them to truth. He doesn't leave any ambiguity there because in John chapter 17, John chapter 17, a chapter where he has transitioned from talking to his disciples to praying to his Father.

Chapter 17 is a prayer to the Father. The previous chapters were conversations with the disciples. And as he prays to the Father, John 17, 17, he says to his Father in heaven, sanctify them, set them apart by your truth. Your Word is truth.

So, let's summarize what we've covered so far, brethren. As I said to begin with, I can read to you, and you can read for yourself, the last half of a sentence in Ephesians chapter 6, 17, and you have everything you need to know and nothing that you need to know all at the same time. You know that this book is the sword of the Spirit, but that doesn't tell you anything about do you have it, do you don't have it. It doesn't tell you if you do have it when you got it. It doesn't tell you when you've used it and when you haven't used it, and it doesn't tell you how to use it. And so, all the practical information that would be in a how-to book is all absent from Ephesians chapter 6, verse 17.

I'm going to talk to two groups. One group is very small in this room. How many of you in this room are first generation?

A relatively small group. There are less than 10 hands that went up in a quick look, about seven. When did you first use the sword? So, I'm going to talk to those who are not first generation. You can listen in, and I'll talk to you in a moment. But to those of you who are first generation, when did you first use the sword? Now, let me put it in probably a little more practical terms because you're saying, well, what do you mean? When did I first... What was the first time that you took a step to obey God's Word that had been revealed to you?

There was a calling, the calling described in John 644. In that calling, there was a progression of things that you had to face as you read the Bible and realized that your life was out of sync with that book. And you then had to make decisions. What am I going to do? The book says this, I do that. Am I going to do what the book says? Am I going to just simply say, go away, leave me alone, and do what I want to do? And the fact that you're sitting here says, you made decisions to say, the book rules. What was the first one in your life? I've shared with you before, in a family sense, we lived in Caldwell, Idaho, and my mother's parents lived in Walla Walla. And when we had opportunities, we'd drive to Walla Walla to see the grandparents. And we'd come over Cabbage Hill and down through Pendleton. And the last little vestige as a kid, where your pulse raced, was going through College Place, the last little suburb before Walla Walla. College Place is an Adventist community. As we drove through, I can remember as a child sitting in the back seat, looking at people going into the church building dressed like I am on Saturday. And I said to my mother over the seat, Mama, why are they going to church today? And my mother, sympathetically, not judgmentally, but sympathetically, looked back and said, Bobby, they don't know any better.

God gave the family a chance to put their money where their mouth was, to realize they weren't the ones to be pitied. We were. Now, we knew we were right. At least we thought we knew we were right. We had been devoted to that way for generations, family-wise. We were confident we were doing what God wanted us to do. And then God said, Hey, come over here. Let me show you something in the book.

Take your calendar out and look at the calendar you use every day. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. What's seven? Well, that's Saturday. Is that when you go to church? No, I go to church on Sunday. And we go on down the line, and we go through all the reasoning, and you eventually reach the place where you say, I've got to make a choice. Everyone in this room, whose first generation had a progression of choices, dominoes that fell. You were issued a sword at the point in time where you took the Word of God, and you used it to transform your life. Among those of you who are employed, you may have taken that sword into your employer, and he may have said, you need to go somewhere else and find another job. You may have taken it to your children's school principal, who said, well, your children can no longer be in these activities and these activities because they're on Saturday, and you've got to make a choice.

Every first generation person here can go back to their school, can go back, close their eyes, and find that place in time where they first picked up that sword and used it. And they can recount from there time after time after time.

I came from a family whose diet was probably established in a migration across Europe, but was probably established in Germany, a preponderance of it, which meant that pork was the mainstay. And to find out that we were no longer going to be slaughtering hogs, rendering lard, making our sausages, and all the rest, when that was a part of the comfort and culture of our life, that wasn't an easy one. We still laugh as if we—well, when all the family was still alive, we would sit and laugh at times, at the last time that we had a family reunion out behind my grandfather's house under the cottonwoods, two long sets of tables, and the worker went around to those on the side of the family that God had been calling, go down the right side—there were two rows of tables—go down the right side, because the hot dogs on the right side are all beef. Well, the rest of the family didn't know there was a difference. And so some of us, by the time we got to the hot dogs, there were no hot dogs left because our pork-eating relatives had gone down the wrong table and eaten our stuff, and we weren't going down the other table and eating theirs. So it was potato salad and watermelon and whatever else had to be, but there was no meat that time. We all have our examples. We all have our stories, some of them amusing, some of them challenging, some of them very difficult.

This is when you first picked up your sword. So you can take the theoretical off of Ephesians, chapter 6 and verse 17, and you can go from the theoretical to the practical, because that was when you put your hand on the sword and you began to use it. Now, if you go back to the beginning of the armor of God, Paul is telling the Ephesian church to put that armor on to battle against the schemings of the devil. So when you ask, well, what have I got it for in the first place? It is to fight against the schemings of the devil.

You can go back to Christ's temptations, and you can see scheming out the kazoo. In all three of the temptations, he was scheming. If you be the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. You haven't eaten for 40 days. You've got to be hungry. I'm sure you're a macho. Throw yourself off the wall. Scripture says the angels will bear you up. You won't even bump your toe. Oh, by the way, you know where this is all going to end, and I can solve that for you. If you'll just bow down to me, I'll give you everything in the world. You won't have to be crucified. Schemer, schemer, schemer. Schems with all of us. Schems with all of us. And so, as your brain tries to justify why you can do what your eyes and your opening mind says you can't do, the only defense you have is the sword of the Spirit. The word of God.

Now I want to talk to the majority of you here. Second, third, fourth, whatever generation you may be. I was telling the fellows in Tacoma, I said, I have an unusual situation because, and I said, I enjoy it when somebody feels somewhat inferior because they're not first generation. I simply look at them and I said, it's most fun when somebody's in their teens or twenties because they know the difference between my age and their age. And I can look at them as they say, well, I'm second or third generation. And I can look at them and honestly say, okay, so what effect does that have? I'm third generation. We had the unusual situation where first, second, and third generation were all learning at the same time. In that grouping, the second generation responded to what was being learned first. First generation responded second. And third generation was too young to do anything but choose to either accept or reject, to obey, or to drag feet. I was third generation. Turn with me, those of you who are anything but first generation, and the rest of you will turn there too, but those of you who are second generation and beyond. Turn to 1 Corinthians 7.

Because I'm going to be asking you the same question that I asked the first generation. When did you first use the sword? 1 Corinthians 7 and verse 13.

I think I'm in the wrong Corinthians. Hang on. We'll give you a timeout for a second.

I'm in the right place. My trifocals just aren't focusing. Okay. You're in the right place. I'm finally in the right place. 1 Corinthians 7 verse 13. It's talking about marriage, and it says, If he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. That can be a somewhat convoluted verse, but it simply means if you have a marriage and one is in the church and the other is not, stay together. You're actually, as a member of the church, a benefit to your unconverted mate. And, oh, by the way, your children are holy. That's a pretty heavy word. In the world of religiosity, there should be angels singing and lights shining and all the rest. Holy simply means you're consecrated. You have been set apart. You have been acknowledged as somebody who has the opportunity to take advantage of special privilege. You may not. You may. But it's theirs. Which means that every one of you who was second generation and beyond had a sword reserved for you from the time you were born.

You had to choose somewhere in life whether you were going to pick it up and use it, but it was on a shelf saying reserved for. And if you walked away, it stayed there. If you didn't walk away, you ended up exactly like your mother and father. Or if you were in a divided household like your mother or your father, you are now equipped with a sword of the Spirit. So it doesn't matter whether you're first generation, second or beyond, those who were first had to make a choice of whether they were going to pick up the sword of the Spirit. Those who are second, you had to make the same choice, but you had a very great honor. You had it reserved for you. It's yours. All you have to do is take it. So I could ask the same thing of those of you who were second generation and beyond. When was the first time that you picked up that sword and used it?

When's the first time that you made a spiritual decision to go the right way when you had the option not to? Or let's make it even a little more sophisticated than that because it's just as valuable. When did, up here and here, in your mind and in your heart, when did you plant your feet in agreement with the right way on your own volition without mom and dad saying, this is what you've got to do. This is what you're going to do. This is what you're doing and you have no option to do. I still remember, as I said, we lived in Caldwell, Idaho. I still remember my dad, don't know if my dad or my mom, somebody came outside and said, my dad wanted to sit us down and talk to us. And at that time, I was 12 years old. And I thought, my dad has never sat us down and talked to us from the day I was born. So if he's going to call the three of us in, I was 12, my brother was nine, and my other brother was five. And I remember walking toward the house and I said, I think this is about Christmas. And that we're not keeping that anymore. And I remember walking to the house saying, that's fine with me. I had sat with my father and my grandfather, in my grandfather's old Chevrolet. He would drive down the gravel road from the farm with the antenna up until he found a spot along the road where the reception to XELO or XEG in Mexico was strong enough that he could hear the world tomorrow. Then he'd turn the ignition off, park along the side of the road for a half hour, listen to the program, then turn it back on, drive back in the farmyard. Sometimes I was in the car, sometimes I wasn't. So sometimes I'd see the dust trail coming back and I realized dad and grandpa were going to sit in the farmyard and probably talk for the next hour, hour and a half about what they'd listened to. Other times I was sitting there with them. So, as I said, this has got to be about Christmas and that's fine with me. We were far enough along. I had heard enough. I had heard enough conversations, had read some, and realized it wasn't of God. Went inside waiting for my dad to say, no more. And my dad went through the spiel and got to the end and he said, this will be our last one. And I still remember saying, whoa, what's that all about in my head? It wasn't until I got older and realized what it's like for a father to stand in front of a five-year-old son and say, Santa Claus is dead and dad didn't have the heart. So we had one more. It was a real bummer, but we had one more. And then that was history. It was the first place in my entire life that I'd lived where they had organized sports. And I was in my last year of eligibility for Little League Baseball. I played shortstop for a team. It went undefeated the entire season. The championship was on Saturday. My dad said, you can't go to the championship game. We'll go to the city park, to the swimming pool after it's over and find out how it went. I remember being totally in agreement. Now, for those of you that are second, third, or fourth generation, those are examples of a reality. There may be cases where you don't have a choice, but at the heart level, you're all in. I had no resistance. I had no resentment. I had no, well, why did he do that? I was totally on board. So I know, I know, at this level, when I first picked up the sword. Now, you can do the same thing. Now, you go on from there to time where you actually had to tell somebody, no, I can't do that.

That's simply using the sword in a little more dramatic sense. But they're both using the sword. So, you ask yourself, second to beyond, when was my heart, when can I go back, how far can I go back where my heart was fully in this way of life? Well, it wasn't a matter that just because mom and dad said so, it was because even if I didn't have a mom and dad, I would be doing that. When I went to Ambassador College, there were young men there that had been listening to the world tomorrow in households where their mom and dad didn't agree from the time they were 12, 13, 14 years old and waited till they were simply old enough on their own to be able to attend college because they were of age to make their own decisions.

Those challenges can be met very, very early. So, you have a sword.

You can go back and you can look at places that you've actually used it.

How do you develop greater skill?

Second Timothy chapter 2.

You know, it's like the old saying, it ain't rocket science. Second Timothy chapter 2.

Verse 15.

Be diligent, an attribute that was covered very nicely in the sermonette this morning, be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

The old King James puts it better where it says, study, study to show yourself approved. In this case, the new King James had done a great disservice to the reader because the fundamental element, brethren, is you have to practice if you're going to develop a skill. Again, some of the groundwork for some of the realities of this sermon were laid for you in the sermonette. How you're going to use the sword? You practice using the sword. If the sword is the word of God, then you study the word of God. It's an interesting statement. I'm not sure if it's the only time it's used in the New Testament. Paul and his writings will use the familiar Greek of the day and even coin phrases once in a while, but here in this particular place in Second Timothy 2.15, he says, I want you to study, and I want you to study diligently. I want you to study diligently so that God can look at you and say, I approve of what they're doing. I want you to study so that you don't have to be ashamed. And as we go down the line of where the end of all of this is, the end of it is, the shame goes away and the approval goes up when you can, quote, rightly divide the word of truth. Now, what that's referring to is the ability to cut a straight line. No wobbles, no deviations, no tearouts. Just cut a nice, smooth, straight line. Now, it's an analogy, but can you go to the Word of God and go straight to the simple truth and not go sideways into speculations, not go sideways into presumptions? Just simply cut a nice, smooth, clean line. He says, I want you to know that well enough that that's what you can do. I want you, figuratively speaking, to have a sword that's sharp enough that you can simply cut right down straight as an arrow.

I don't know how many of you work with edge tools. I couldn't sharpen a sword properly if my life depended on it. There's a certain science in sharpening a sword that I haven't acquired. I work with woodworking tools, and I can take a blade out of a plane, and I can sharpen it to the place where you can shave your face with it. But I can't sharpen a knife. Go figure how that works. But in this particular analogy, I'm going sideways, just a very short sideways. It doesn't matter whether you can sharpen a knife, whether you can sharpen a chisel, or a plane, or whatever. Everyone who works with edge tools that need to be sharpened all understand one rule. A dull tool is a dangerous tool.

I see rod chambers who worked in cabinetry sitting there shaking his head as knowledgeable that, yeah, if you want to get hurt, if you want to up the chance of an accident, work with a dull tool. A dull tool is unreliable. You don't know whether it's going to work or not going to work. You use it assuming it's going to work, and it may bite you. Reliability works in conjunction with sharpness. And so it may be counterintuitive to somebody that doesn't work with sharp tools that, oh, sharp tool, I can hurt myself. No, a person who works with a tool knows it's the dull tool that will hurt you. Casual reading of the Bible, superficial reading of the Bible doesn't cut it. It doesn't cut it. It doesn't cut it.

I remember the first time I caught a salmon and decided to fillet it.

That was the biggest mess of bad meat that you could imagine. I didn't know how to rightly divide that salmon. I heard, run down the backbone, do it this way. I got finished. You wouldn't want to have seen the mess. By analogy, when we don't keep a sharp sword, it is very easy to make a mess.

Hebrews chapter 5. Hebrews chapter 5 changes the analogy, but it doesn't change the principle.

Hebrews chapter 5.

We've gone from tools and armor to food. So the analogies are radically different, but the principle is identical. Verse 14, Hebrews 5, But solid food belongs to those who are of full age. That is, it belongs to those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Very simple principles that apply across all crafts and all art. By reason of use, you exercise your senses to discern. Every one of you who is a part of any craft, and doesn't have to be a craft that has an edge tool in it, you understand as you develop the skills, you reach the place by reason of use to reach that place where you can discern very, very well whether things are going where they should or they're going where they shouldn't. Let's conclude by asking one more question. What are you fighting against?

We said earlier, but let's read what we said. Ephesians chapter 6. We said earlier, but let's read what we said. Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians chapter 6. Let's start with verse 10.

Paul says, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

The margin says scheming.

You know when he said to Eve, tell me about these trees. And so Eve told her. He said, you know, it'd make you wise if you ate it. And you know, you're not really going to die. Beautiful, beautiful classic cases of scheming. He was playing her like a fiddle, playing vanity, curiosity, desire. He's a schemer. He's a schemer. Whether you're aware of when you're actually being played with, what the scheme is against you, or whether you don't, doesn't change the fact that Satan's basic approach to life is to scheme. And Paul says, this is your defense against that scheming. All the other things are important. Obviously, you can't cover everything in one message, nor even should you try. But all the rest is put on. This one, you have the ability to fend off something. The others protect you from blows that you will encounter. This one allows you to fend off your knowledge, your awareness, and your skill in using the Word of God, fends off Satan. Whether somebody comes at you and you say, no, that's not right, or whether you're simply wrestling with your own desires. 2 Corinthians chapter 10, companion to what we just read.

2 Corinthians chapter 10.

A beautiful companion to Ephesians chapter 6. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, the analogies are both dealing with weaponry and warfare, and it begins in verse 4. He says, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They're not physical. They're not tangible. I don't have a sword at my house. I have a Bible, but I don't have a sword.

They're not physical, but they're mighty.

And they're mighty because they are in God. They belong to God. They are from God. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strong holes. So it pulls down strongholds. It casts down arguments. My son came home one Friday, and we sat down to Friday night dinner. My son was a senior in high school. His high school football team was pathetic. He had a new principal from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a rough and tumble, let's get in there and scrap. And he looked at my son and said, why aren't you playing football? And he said, because the games are on Saturday and I keep the Sabbath. Now, his response told me exactly what his religion was because he said to my son, well, why don't you ask your pope for a dispensation? And so this was the table topic at Friday night dinner as he reported that to us. And I said, Phil, when you go back to school Monday, tell Mr. Breidinger, that was his new principal, that I'm your pope and there are no dispensations. And we all had to chuckle and continue on with dinner. Pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments. Now, for him, I can get a dispensation, and then I can do what I want. For us, there are no dispensations. That's not a valid argument. We don't have the Sabbaths that are exceptions. We don't have Holy Days that we don't keep. We don't have, and we can go on down the line. There aren't dispensations.

And he says, all of these things, the strongholds, the arguments, what do they do? They exalt, I'm going to use the plural, they exalt themselves. Against the knowledge of God.

You know, brethren, it's a whole sermon in itself sometime, but what is being covered here without using the terminology is the greatest enemy to skillful swordsmanship is reasoning. And this is what he's touching on right here, where he says it exalts itself against the knowledge of God. The history of Christianity is the history of a religion over 2,000 years that has reasoned itself out of obedience to virtually all of God's great to-dos. The moral side of it is there is thankfully a universality in understanding the moral side of it. But when God says, do this and don't do that, sadly Christianity has reasoned itself out of the practice of a huge amount of what God requires us to both believe and do. Those are the wiles. Those are the schemings. Those are, as 2 Corinthians describes it, the arguments. Those are the high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. You've been given a great honor. It's good at times to stop and reflect upon what it is that God has given you as blessings and as gifts. And one of them is a sword. A sword that is so much a part of your life that is very easy to take it for granted. I hope those of you that are second generation and beyond can realize the honor that it was to have that reserved for you on the day that you were born and saying it's yours. Pick it up. Pick it up along this journey any time that you want to pick it up and use it. And hopefully you will use it skillfully.

And in that you come to know your enemy, as we've said, described as the wiles or the reasonings.

If you go back and reflect in your own study upon the temptation of Christ, the schemings of Satan in temptation one, temptation two, and temptation three were all reasonings. They were all trying to reason Christ into doing what He should not do. The tactic has never changed. And your greatest weapon against it is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.