A sermon based upon Ephesians 6: 10-20
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fifth Sunday in Lent-C, April 7th , 2019
(14-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)
In these weeks leading up to Easter, we’ve been focusing our minds and hearts on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. But today we come to the final message from this amazing letter, which was one of his prison letters.
Today’s message focuses on Paul’s discussion of how our Christian life is part of a great struggle. We are not only in a personal struggle to do and be good, but Paul reminds us that we are part of a greater cosmic conflict, where good must overcome evil, where light must shine to expose the darkness, and where human weakness must continually challenge the ‘powers and principalities’ that too often dominate in this world. The only way we can remain this fight, Paul says, is to be ‘strong in the Lord…’
WE WRESTLE…AGAINST...
If you are my age, you can recognize the majestic, musical score, of the 1977 blockbuster hit movie, Star Wars. I heard it being played recently even on a classical music station. The movie, the music, and the characters are today considered ‘classic’. And part of the reason ‘Star Wars’ became such a blockbuster hit, is not just because of the famous actors, the great acting, or even its imaginative characters.
Right up there, on that big screen, people observed a very obvious, and also ‘unobvious’ struggle between good and evil. Who can forget its major villain, “Darth Vadar”? Behind that mask was a mysterious, conflicted and most destructive evil—the kind of evil we all know still appears and incarnates itself in our world.
Even though we all know that evil is very real, both in low places and in high places too, we seldom heard much direct, public talk about ‘evil’ until after 9/11. I will never forget hearing President Bush, say this word; a word I had mostly only heard in church, until that evening when the president addressed the nation with a word, I hadn’t heard a president use before, and had mostly only heard at church, when he said: Today “thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.”
Still today, the public, and many Christians still don’t know much how to talk about ‘evil’, and even less how to talk about ‘the devil’. “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in. their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Paul does not make either of these errors. He has not left out mentioning the devil and his schemes, but he has also not made the devil ‘front page news’.
Here, in this text, Paul tells us about the devil because he believes, and we should too, that to live as a Christian and to answer God’s call with our lives, will draft us into a battlefield where spiritual warfare is taking place. You may hardly notice it, when you’re not trying to say anything, do anything or be anyone; but just begin to open your Bible, hear God’s voice, and even attempt to respond fully to God’s call, and the jolt of resistance is so strong, you’ll feel it.
In his commentary on Ephesians, N.T Wright wrote that often when he writes about passages like this dealing with spiritual warfare, he “runs into problems.” One time a workman outside his home accidently drove a nail into an electrical wire, and his power went off, disabling his word processor. As he was writing about this text, his computer jammed, just as he began to write. “It’s as if certain hidden forces would much rather we didn’t talk about it, or that we would sweep it under the carpet….I have come to accept this as normal—and to be grateful that this is all that has happened, thus far (Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pp. 72-73).”
Of course, discussing the devil is difficult for us today for a lot of reasons. “The majority of Christians don’t believe in the literal existence of the Devil”. That’s why Christians psychologist, Richard Beck, says that we need to consider ‘Reviving Old Scratch’. Have you ever heard of the devil named ‘Old Scratch’? You find the Devil called ‘Old Scratch’ in the writings of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Some think the term comes for the old Norse word skratte, which means goblin or wizard. It is a term once used in New England, but is almost forgotten today, just like talking about the devil has become awkward or embarrassing in this ‘secular age’.
As close as most people get to really thinking about the devil is in horror movies, like those from Stephen King, or perhaps even the other 1970’s blockbuster movie, ‘The Exorcist’. C.S. Lewis was right; we either think about the devil too much—with to much dramatics, or we don’t think much about him at all. But Jesus did. The Gospel present to us a Jesus who ‘cast out demons’ and was ‘tempted’ by Satan in the wilderness.
Paul, Peter, and the rest of the New Testament reminds us too, as Paul does here, when he says, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph. 6:12 NIV). If the devil and his schemes (v. 11) are real, what kind of struggle is this? Can we name it. How might we sum it up, as the Bible’s presents it too us?
One of the very first books I read about our struggle was a book I purchased in my college days, especially aimed at young Christians minds. It was a book written by John White, entitled ‘The Fight’. I still have the book, and I reopened recently and noticed that White categorizes the devil with three actions; the tempter, the accuser, and the deceiver.
(See, The Fight, by John White, IVP Press, 19786, p. 78-91).
The Devil as a ‘tempter’ dominates Jesus’ experience as he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1ff). Later Jesus taught his disciples to pray, Lead us not into temptation (Matt. 6:13), but the Bible most often makes temptation a test (1 Peter 4:12) or trial (James 1:12) that ‘proves’ us faithful or unfaithful in life (1 Cor. 4:2). “No one should say, ‘God is tempting me’”, wrote James (1:13), but God allows us, like Job (1: 7-12) to have our faith tested by trials and troubles (2 Cor. 13:5-7). But even when tests come, Paul said, God is faithful not to allow you to be tempted (or tested) beyond what you can bear and always provides a way out (1 Cor. 10: 13).
So, what’s the difference between being tempted or tested? Scripture makes it clear that the devil, or Satan is the ‘tempter’, while God only allows us to be tested in life (See Job 1). James said that what makes this difference is our own desires that drag us away and entice us to sin (James 1:14-15). In other words, because of Jesus’ victory over evil, the devil has no direct power against us unless we grant it. Satan’s power as a tempter is only as an accuser (Rev. 12: 10) who deceives (Rev. 12: 9, 20:6). Through faith in Jesus we can ‘overcome’ the devil, because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world (1 Jn. 4:4).
In this text, Paul say we can be strong in the Lord because through God’s mighty power we are able to stand against the devil’s schemes, that have now been exposed by the love and light of Jesus Christ. Knowing that it is the devil and his schemes that we are struggling against, is how we begin to overcome and stand against him. I recall in one of my seminary classes in the 1980’s, we were studying the book of Revelation, and a discussion broke out about whether or not the devil was real or just a symbol of evil. After having the discussion go on and on, one exasperated student blurted out: “Well, all I can say is if there is no real devil, what in the *&%# are we here in seminary for?” That student had a good point. We don’t have to believe that there is an animal with horned ears, pitchfork and pointed tail running around tempting us, but we do meet the devil, each of us personally, through the temptations, accusations and deceptions that come to us, mostly in the wilderness moments of our lives.
THE WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD
When we find ourselves up against the schemes of the devil, how can we, as Paul says, struggle and stand against him? Did you notice how Paul said that we must ‘put on the WHOLE armor of God? The implication is that we leave ourselves vulnerable when we only put on PART of the armor. If you’ve ever seen ancient ‘armor’, it’s quite heavy and burdensome to bear, but when you know you are in a battle, you don’t mind the weight of wearing it every single piece of it, do you?
What Paul basically does in this passage, when he describes the Christian’s armor against the devil’s schemes, is to take an ancient Roman soldier’s battle uniform and spell out our best defense against evil, piece by piece. What Paul implies, is what the best army always knows; that the battle is normally won before the actual battle, through combat readiness, preparation, and best of all through prevention.
Make no mistake, the Roman Empire produced the longest period of peace in the ancient word, not through fighting bloody battles, but most often by preventing those battles from ever breaking out, through the ‘strength’ of their readiness as the most well-fitted, well-trained army in the western world. So, what kind of armor was this Christian armor? It’s very familiar to us, but let’s review briefly, noting the strange ‘order’ that occurs.
Paul first speaks of the Christians defense against evil as wearing a belt of truth; that is, living and telling the truth. Here we know that Paul is not taking the solider image literally, for who puts their belt on first? Then, Paul follows with his order, that wearing ‘truth’ enables you to put on a breastplate of righteousness. By living the truth, you live for what is true and right every day and it then follows, that by living honestly and rightly, you put on shoes of peace, living with feet firmly planted in a life lived ‘peaceably with all people’ (Rom. 12: 18). What lasting good, value, or stability, or strength comes without aiming to be at peace.
Next comes the shield of faith. I find it very interesting that Paul did not begin with faith, but by this order suggests that faith flows best out of truthful, right, peaceable living. We don’t normally think of it that way. We think that right living flows out of having the right beliefs. But Paul is more realistic, I think, when he understands that the potential to have faith stands on its best foundation, when it stands on human concerns for truth, goodness, and compassion. Having a shield of faith, that is, both having faith and being faithful to that faith, is at its strongest when it flows from a moral, ethical, and human concern.
Even stranger still, Paul suggests also, that the helmet of salvation, that is, knowing and having God’s saving hope in us, is the most natural outflow of all these concerns; truth, goodness, compassion, and faith. The point here is not that we are good before we can be saved, (for Paul certainly wasn’t), but that God’s salvation is the ultimate crown of everything all that God made us humans to be.
The only offensive weapon mentioned of our Christian armor against evil is the welding of the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (vv. 14-17). It is most fitting that Paul ends with source of all spiritual power: God’s word. The word of God, which releases the Spirit into human hearts, is not the conventional kind of weapon, because our struggle is not the conventional kind of battle. This is spiritual warfare, which is much more than people fighting against people, but we are up against ‘powers of darkness’ and against ‘spiritual wickedness in high places’ (6:12) . You can’t fight these ‘powers’ on their terms, or you will always lose. If you want to resist and overcome, then you must fight on God’s terms.
This is exactly what I saw happening, recently when I learned about Daniel Barenboim, a Argentinian born, Jewish musical conductor, who was using a whole different set of weapons to fight against the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians. I don’t guess, in our lifetime, there is any conflict more resistant to a peaceful resolution. What this Jewish musician did was to use all kinds of spiritual weapons, which were quite controversial to many Jews and Palestinians. He said that he was embarrassed by the way Jews had treated Palestinians, by building such a dehumanizing wall and segregating them in the West Bank. He stated, challenging the very moral fabric and soul of Israeli citizens who have occupied Palestine: “The occupation, of course, is catastrophic for Palestine – everybody knows that – but it is very negative for Israel too. It has eroded all sense of decency and humanity and morality from people like me [Jews], who had been persecuted for over 20 centuries.”
While everyone may not agree with Barenboim’s charge, what is most remarkable about him is not just that he saw the problem as moral and spiritual. But he also did not see the solution of the problems in a usual way. Instead of going after challenging laws or changing geography, he invited talented Palestinian and Jewish musicians to play in his orchestra together, along-side each other, with each other. He had them practicing and performing together; he had growing to appreciate each other, and he had them subduing their own cultural, religious, and political differences to live for something higher; having a musical, if not a spiritual connection.
In this way, he took a very different approach to relating to Palestinians as a Jew, which went beyond ‘us’ verses ‘them’. He went beyond the ‘call of duty’ to become a Palestinian citizen himself. Now, like all of us too, he humanized Palestinians by becoming not just one with them, but one of them (https://thewire.in/culture/daniel-barenboim-israel-palestine. ).
PRAYING ALWAYS… WITH ALL PRAYER
Paul believed too, that if we are going to resist, and even overcome some of the worst evils of this world, we’ll have to do with more than ‘bullets and bombs’, laws or legislation, or use something other than conventional weapons. In fact, the greatest empire in world history, the Roman Empire, did not fall due to any lack of military strength or readiness, but if fell from within. The decline of the Roman Empire is well documented as the result of years of moral, internal, political, social and personal corruption.
In the same way, only when we realize, as Paul says, that we ‘wrestle not with flesh and blood’, but against ‘spiritual wickedness’ can we resist the greatest evils that seeks to devour and destroy. And if we want to win the great spiritual battle, our weapons for our daily victory over evil, beginning within ourselves, must be God’s weapons, if we really do want God’s victory. The question is, do we really want it?
This is why Paul ends his discussion with prayer. Prayer is most powerful weapon in the Christian’s arsenal because it the most revealing. Prayer is the internal weapon that puts the deepest corner of our hearts on display. More than anything else, prayer discloses what we want. When you see a person praying; when you hear a person praying; when a person prays or asks you to pray for them, this is when you know what is really going on the inside of that person. This is when you know that they truly understand that any lasting victory in life or death depends only on God.
Notice how many times and how many different ways Paul speaks of prayer in his concluding words to the Ephesians. He speaks of all kinds of prayers and all types of praying when he says, “Pray in the Spirit… with all kinds of prayers and requests,” or when he says “kept on praying for all the Lord’s people” and then concludes, “Pray also for me…, an ambassador in chains...that I may declare fearlessly…the mystery of the gospel” (18-20).
How Paul prayed was who Paul was and how Paul lived, just like how we pray is who we are and how we live too. But what is most important to understand here, is that for Paul, prayer as a weapon was not just words, but it was also Spirit, it was not just making requests, but it was also attitude and perspective. Prayer was only something you do in a sacred moment, but it was what was always on your mind making you to be alert and causing you to be fearless to evil, while connecting you with God and to the needs of all God’s people. In other words, prayer is not just a privilege in life, it was also the position of one’s life in God on all occasions and in every moment you are most strong in the Lord.
The German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was one of the young, great theological minds in the history of Christianity. Because of his involvement in the Valkyrie plot to overthrown Hitler and Nazism, which was an attempt to stop one of greatest evils the world has ever known, professor Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging early on Monday, April 9th, 1945, in one of the last vile evil acts of Hitler’s regime.
Bonhoeffer came from a well-known family in Berlin, as his father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was one of Germany’s finest psychiatrists and neurologist. When Bonhoeffer announced his call to become a pastor, the family was somewhat shocked, because they were not used to such public displays or involvement with religious devotion. But Bonhoeffer was not so shy with his faith, as he fully believed that religious life and public life were not so easily separated. Even as a public figure, and a scholarly professor, Bonhoeffer believed in the confessing church and was a man of regular, disciplined prayer. His daily devotions in the Nazi prison camp (now written in a book that has become a devotional classic), gave him tremendous stability and so much calm, that his fellow prisoners, and even wardens, sought excuses to consult with him.
It is clear to see in his own final writings, that Bonhoeffer’s prayer life is what gave him strength, even in the presence of his enemies, even the last enemy, death. Our very last picture of him is the picture of a man praying on the morning of his own execution. It comes from the prison doctor who wrote many years later: “Through the half-open door of a room in one of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, still in his prison clothes, kneeling in fervent prayer to the Lord his God. The devotion and evident conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating man moved me to the depth.” As one of his biographers wrote: “It was there, finally, naked under the scaffold in the spring woods, Bonhoeffer knelt for the last time to pray. Five minutes later, his life (on earth) was ended.”
But it was as they came to lead him to the gallows, that he spoke his final audible prayer: “This is the end---for me, the beginning of life.”
Who can live with such strength and determination, in the face of the most destructive evil? Paul says the person who lives with truth tight around them, whose heart is secured with right living, who plants their feet in peace and shields their life with faith by putting on salvation, so that they can weld the sword of God’s Spirit through word and prayer. A person who protects their own heart will prevent much evil, or they can stand firm and take on the greatest ‘powers of this dark world’ and prevail, even with the chains of life or death wrapped around them, because Christ’s undying love has already conquered and is Lord of all.
Dear brothers and sisters, will you be strong in the Lord? Will you take your own stand against the devil’s schemes, both in your private life and in the world which we know? Will you put on the WHOLE armor of God, rather than pick and choose? Will you keep on praying in the Spirit and praying for all the saints? If you will, then you can have, no matter what comes against you, the peace and love with faith, which comes to us through the grace of God, who gave his love through the Lord Jesus Christ we also love with undying love. Amen.
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