Hey guys, welcome back to week 21 of our Restored series. I'm hoping that you're experiencing exactly what the title of this series is about and that everything that God intended for you is being restored to you. Everything that got stolen, everything that's been damaged, taken away, burned down to the ground. Maybe you came to Christ and your whole life felt like it had been destroyed. He's able to make all things new. If He can raise the dead, He can raise everything back in our lives and restore everything that's been taken from us. So today I want to talk to you about spiritual warfare.
It's a really important subject. You may have noticed already that there's certain things about walking with Jesus, certain things about being a son of God that have invited like an extra level of hardship into your life. And if you're still carrying on with the Lord, it means that you persevered through some things already, for which I'm grateful and I want to commend you. But if it feels like warfare, you're not crazy. It's common to all of us. It's really common to all people who are alive. It's just that in Christ now we've become aware of certain things.
We used to tolerate certain ways of feeling and living. We used to tolerate depression. We used to tolerate anxiety and anger and just kind of shrugged it off as, well, you know, that's life and life stinks sometimes. But in Christ we know that we've come to have life and that more abundantly. And because of that life and that more abundantly, we have a higher standard and we recognize things are not as they ought to be. And there is such a thing as spiritual warfare. There is a real devil. There are real demons or, you know, spirits of darkness.
And they really do attempt to destroy our lives. And so not everything is just because we've messed up. I want to be quick to say a couple of things about what spiritual warfare is and what spiritual warfare is not. Spiritual warfare is an external threat against us by forces of darkness that operate spiritually. And so it can take on the form of like a, almost like a voice that comes to us and discourages and lies. Or it can come in the form of circumstances that just seem to happen out of nowhere, where things go awry and go wrong. It's important to recognize that those things don't come from God, that we have a devil whose job is to steal and kill and destroy.
And he's able to do things. Is he all powerful? No. Only God's all powerful. In fact, what I hope to show you this week and next week is that the only way that the kingdom of darkness led by Satan himself has any access to our lives in terms of affecting our heart is if we give him permission to. He has no authority. All authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me, Jesus said when he rose from the dead, which leaves no authority left for the kingdom of darkness. And so that's the first thing we want to know about spiritual warfare.
It's already victory. We've already come on the other side of victory. So we don't war for victory. We war from a place of victory. Now, just like a vanquished foe, that doesn't mean that there won't still be troops fighting the good fight. You may have heard of post-World War II and all of those little islands around Japan. There were scouts on every island in that area. And there were stories about a guy who would shoot at tourists and shoot at fishing boats when they'd come by. This is 20, 30 years after World War II was over.
And it turns out that it was one of the Japanese spies who was assigned that island, who believed it was propaganda that the war was over and the Japanese had lost. So he was fighting for that island, anybody who would come onto it. It was a tiny little patch. But obviously, you know, it's almost laughable on this side of it. But so is the kingdom of darkness trying to hold on in our lives after Jesus has already defeated them by us being in Christ on the cross. And so the good news is we've already won. The warfare news is he's still trying to put up a fight.
As my pastor once said, the devil, when the first prophecy about the Messiah came in Genesis 3, verse 15, it says that he will strike your heel and you will crush his head, speaking of the Christ. And my pastor always said when the devil, when Jesus crushed the devil's head, the devil got brain damage. And that's why he's still fighting. But the reality is it's real, it's harmful, it hurts, and it makes life miserable sometimes for us. Spiritual warfare is that. What spiritual warfare is not is sowing and reaping. So if I don't pay my electric bill and my electricity gets shut off by the power company, I shouldn't be telling my friends I'm in the middle of real spiritual warfare right now.
No, the reality is you didn't pay your bill and that's why your power got shut off. That's called sowing and reaping. And so that's not spiritual warfare. That might reflect warfare on the inside, which we'll talk about next week in the form of spiritual strongholds. What we do want to talk about this week is found in Ephesians chapter 6. And I want to show you what the scriptures teach us about how to stand strong and stay firm in our faith when that evil day comes. So it's when that disaster happens or when we lose the job or when we find a relationship is falling apart.
Those are the days that we get into where our faith is really being tested. And if the enemy has his way, he separates us away from this Jesus that we've been walking with. So in Ephesians 6, it says this, starting in verse 10. If you please open your Bible with me and read this along with me. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you might be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. That word schemes means manipulations.
It means efforts to get us to view life from a certain lens that will rob us of our faith and our trust in God. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. That's what our warfare is against. So although it may seem like that person who is screaming at you or that person who just betrayed you or that boss who just, you know, tanked the company with poor decisions, it seems like maybe they can be your enemy at times, but the real enemy is in the invisible realm. It's the leaders of the kingdom of darkness that we're warring against.
And always they have the same goal in mind to do what they can to separate us from the love of God in Christ. Now, I hope you remember from Romans chapter 8 that it's impossible. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ, but that's what the warfare is, just like it was in the garden. The enemy didn't just attempt to make Eve and Adam eat from the tree that they were told not to eat from. He did so by making them question God's love for them. Is God trustworthy? Did God really tell you not to eat from this tree?
He just doesn't want you to be wise. He's holding out on you. There's always some kind of a lie. When we're in warfare with the devil, it's a lie to separate us from the love of God and our trust-love relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are in, it says, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Another way of translating that, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. And that's a more accurate probably word to use here because the kind of fight that we're in, it's not like dropping bombs and shooting things.
It's wrestling. It feels very intimate. Wrestling is an intimate form of combat. And it feels like sometimes, you know what I'm talking about, it feels like everything in us is fighting against something and we don't understand why. We're not wrestling against an enemy who can conquer us, but we are wrestling against an enemy who fights dirty and he plays to keep. And spiritual warfare can be an ugly thing, but it's like a wrestling match of Olympic proportions. And what's it all about? It's about anything the devil can do to cause us to lose our faith.
Anything to get us back to the place where Jesus found us, back into that pit that he pulled us out of when he rescued us and called us his sons. So the armor of God is used, and we're going to walk through the different elements of the armor of God because this is the scripture's instruction to us. How do we stand firm and not lose heart and not lose faith in the middle of this warfare that we're caught into? And when we talk about the armor of God, it's not like the metaphor of the armor of God is simply to tell us we're clothed with Christ. So in other words, you know, this chapter starts, oh, this portion of scripture starts out, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
And the first thing we need to understand is that this armor that we wear and this battle that we fight, we don't do in our own strength. Wearing the armor of God means remain clothed with Christ. In other words, stay in him. He does the heavy lifting. We have no power in our own strength against spiritual forces. If you've ever tried to imagine what a demon is like, we humans and our bodies that are subject to sickness and weakness and get tired and all of that, we're no match for spiritual forces, but Christ in us and the power of God through the resurrection of Jesus in us, they're outmatched when we remain in Christ.
And the entirety of the armor of God and all of the purpose of spiritual warfare, if you just remember this one thing from today, is to remain in Christ. So if we're in Christ, we're still able to praise him. We're still able to remain at peace. We're still able to stay with joy, a deep joy, maybe not happiness because there's some moments of life that are just not happy, but joy, which is deeper than happiness. It's an abiding sense of, I know it's going to be all right, even though I can't see it right now. If we can hold on to those things, we're winning. Like we say about worship, if you're praising, you're winning.
And so this is how to stay in that place. So verse 13, we come back to the armor then. Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm. So the evil day, these are those moments in life when it seems like everything's falling apart or maybe just something really, really deeply hurtful has just happened. And it makes us question, does God really love me? Should I continue to walk with Jesus? Maybe this Christianity thing is a little bit too hard for me.
That's the evil day. And our instruction and what we're learning how to do is stand firm. Don't let those circumstances rob you of all of what Jesus has been giving you. The life, the righteousness, the peace, the joy in the Holy Spirit. That's what the warfare is contending over. Therefore, take that armor up. Stand firm then it says in verse 14 and I'll just read this section and then we'll revisit the pieces of the armor one by one and talk about what that means and how to practically do that in everyday life.
Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. And in addition to all, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one and take on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God with all prayer and petition, praying at all times in the Spirit. And with this view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Be on the alert. That's the first thing before we go to the pieces of the armor is to be watchful and pay attention. People don't, for example, if you consider somebody who's committed adultery, a man who falls into a woman's arms, of course he doesn't fall into her arms, who commits adultery with a woman who's not his wife, right? It doesn't happen in a moment.
It doesn't happen in a moment when we're strong. It doesn't happen in a moment when we're feeling the love toward our wife and we're worshiping God and everything seems to be going well. Sin happens in the fall of the evil day and the fall that can happen in the evil day happens when we're weak, when we're overtired, overworked, when we're stressed, when all of life has just become such a burden to us. Those are the moments the enemy goes around prowling, it says, like a roaring lion seeking whom he might devour. It's in those days but it doesn't happen just like that. It happens little by little. It happens with first, for example, in adultery, a glance that lasts too long, a thought in the mind that we meditate on for too long, a thought in the mind that becomes inappropriate when we begin to imagine and fantasize about things that we might do, this man might do with that woman and it leads to a little bit of an action, a little bit too long of a touch of the hand and embrace that lasts just a little bit long, a conversation that gets into subjects that only belong between a husband and wife, not between a man and another woman and little by little we're falling into a trap or we're stepping into a trap willingly.
So when it says, be on the alert with all perseverance, that means don't allow even a foothold for the enemy to come in and cause us to behave in a way that could lead down a road. Remember last week when we looked at the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation, there's a funny bumper sticker that says, lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself and although that might be funny, it's not funny in real life because these things destroy families, they destroy our lives and can destroy our entire future if we are not on the alert. So the first part of the armor of goddess is having girded your loins with truth or having a belt as it were of truth in ancient times and by the way the armor that we're looking at here was based on the armor used by the Romans. They had the technology of the Roman Empire in terms of warfare is what made them this empire that conquered really almost the whole known world in their day and they ruled with an iron fist and they were, I mean, if the Roman army came after you, you may as well just surrender because they were almost undefeatable and this was the kind of armor that they wore and all the components of it.
So, as you know, back in ancient times they wore robes, they didn't really wear pants yet, they didn't wear shirts cut off at the waist like we do in modern times they wore full robes and a belt was designed to pull that robe in tight just like on pants today if our pants are loose fitting we wear a belt to hold them up and keep them in place. So, this belt of truth is what holds the garment close to us. What's that garment? Remember, we're clothed with Christ and the belt of truth keeps Christ close to us. And what does truth mean? Well, truth means the truth about who we are and whose we are.
So, we're never going to let go of the truth. We're going to hold it tight like a belt holds clothes close to our body. Hold on tight to the truth that we were chosen, we were called by name and we are His. That you're a son, you're a daughter of God and nothing can change that. That truth remains. It's also though holding true to what God says is true. So, we have the scriptures, we have the written word of God and we know and we're holding on to this saying, no matter what the devil tries to tell me right now, I am going to hold on to what God says is true even though this enemy is pretty deceptive and he's really good at lying and that's really the enemy's only weapon against us is that he's a good liar.
The problem with deception is it's very deceiving. The problem with deception is we don't know we're deceived until we're knee deep in the trap. And so, holding tight to the truth of the word of God is awesome. Living true also means I'm walking in the light. I'm living in the truth. I'm not lying to myself. I'm not lying to Jesus as if that were even possible. I'm not living a double life. That's what our belt holding truth tight to us means I'm not going to live one way out here and another way back home or in other words it means living with integrity.
And the promise of the scripture in 1 John 1.7 as we saw was if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ the son cleanses us from all unrighteousness. That's what it means to hold tight to the truth that we don't live lies we don't live a double life and we hold on to the word of God and we hold it as if our life depended on it. And we don't just hold on to the written word as you know by now we're not talking about a belief system that has rules that are imposed on us from the outside we have Christ in us and so living by the truth means Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life.
In other words I didn't just come to show you the way I didn't just come to tell you the truth and I didn't just come to give you the life my presence is all of those things and we hold tight to the presence of God standing strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. It says next having put on the breastplate of righteousness righteousness so the breastplate you've seen it it's a strong piece of armor protecting all of the vital organs most especially the heart so the breastplate of righteousness is what protects our heart living righteously righteousness means following through with what we know to be true with action so if we know something's wrong we don't do it if we know something's right we do it without hesitation it's putting our faith into practice that's righteousness righteousness righteousness is not just believing in what's right and wrong righteousness is the practice of doing what's right and the practice of not doing what's wrong and so the proverb says keep your heart with all diligence for from it spring all the issues of life and the truth of the matter is if we've been willfully sinning and I'm using that phrase intentionally it's a biblical term for it if we've been saying I don't care I'm going to do this sinful thing anyway we shouldn't be surprised that we're doing damage to our new heart our new heart is grieved over that our new heart's broken over that and if we're not careful and we keep behaving unrighteously on purpose saying again not just falling into sin which all of us do not just having a moment where we do something we go oh I wish I wouldn't have done that I feel convicted about that but willfully sinning we can actually harden our heart all the way back over again the scriptures refer to it as searing our conscience as with an iron and you've seen when somebody gets burned and there's a scar there you can't feel anything anymore in that spot and that's what we do when we perpetuate sin on purpose in our lives and willfully continue to go into it the breastplate of righteousness means we're living this way when we permit sin to have the rule over us we actually do damage to our own heart and we're not protected from what the enemies desire is which is to destroy our heart harden our heart and just make us unusable in the kingdom of God having shod your feet it goes on with the preparation of the gospel of peace now Romans one of the reasons why the Romans were so fierce was that they wore sandals and they put cleats on the bottom of them that was some of their technology that I believe they invented in their day so if you charged against the Romans and they were standing there with their shields up you were going to have a hard time pushing them backwards because their feet could dig in to the ground remember the phrase if you read this passage stand firm keeps showing up over and over again don't let the enemy push you around stand firm having your feet shod with the preparation of the good news the gospel the word gospel means good news the good news of peace the good news of peace if you can hold on to your peace in the middle of warfare you are winning and you are standing firm so as soon as anxiety or fear or anger begins to dominate our emotions it means we're not standing firm with the good news of peace the prince of peace lives on the inside of you saint of God the prince of peace protects you and surrounds you and that's where your feet are standing on you're standing on a rock that cannot be shaken and a rock that cannot be moved and its name is Jesus Christ he's the cornerstone of your life he's the beginning of your faith and he's also the ending of your faith so one of the key components of spiritual warfare is to stand firm in a place of peace following that he goes on and he says in addition to all take up the shield of faith with which you'll be able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one here's how the enemy works as he lies and he accuses the accuser of the brethren is one of the nicknames of Satan that we find in the book of he's the accuser of the brethren meaning he's the original legalist why he wanted Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he is intensely legalistic and in fact he's bound by law the enemy can only work in the realm of law the law of sin and death you do something wrong you have to pay for it and he's the ultimate legalist and he's like a prosecuting attorney you broke the law and therefore you have to pay a price for it and the lie that he will always come after us the flaming arrow and the lies some of them will sound like you know maybe you're not a son of God right now because sons of God don't sin like that or sons of God don't turn their back on God ever they don't have days where they say I'm done following you Jesus I'm angry with you right now and I'm just not going to take another step of following after you the lie of the enemy will be you sinned therefore you're still a sinner those are the kind of lies those are the flaming arrows that the enemy shoots our way and a flaming arrow means it penetrates and it feels like a burning on the inside you know what it feels like to be under condemnation you know what it feels like to feel guilt and shame that doesn't go away all of us does whenever we're feeling all of those things just know this it means a flaming arrow from the evil one managed to penetrate your shield of faith because godly sorrow produces a repentance that brings faith the sorrow of the world produces heaviness a condemnation which brings death so if it's coming from the evil one a fiery dart feels like shame on you you may as well pack it in and quit that's the enemy's lie the shield of faith is when we stand behind and say I know what the Lord says about me and I know that I just blew it again but I also know that I can go running home like the prodigal right now and repent and I know that my dad will receive me back into the house I know that I blew it maybe it's the 70 times seventh time today but my father is forgiving and merciful and I know that he'll receive me back he's not going to cast me away from his presence he's not going to take his holy spirit from me he's going to restore to me the joy of my salvation that's the shield of faith I have faith in God's ability to keep me more than I have faith in the devil's ability or even my own ability to snatch me away from his hand that's what the shield of faith means one very important thing to note about the shield of faith is again back to the Roman armor version of it you've seen in the movies Roman shields were very tall they went from the chin all the way down to the ankle and they weren't designed for hand to hand combat that's not really effective really for going one-on-one against somebody going one-on-one against an enemy was a Roman soldier's last resort they fought in packs they fought in lines that were just unbreakable and you may have seen in the movies where if there were arrows coming at them they took this from many ancient people had done the shield wall is what it was called the Romans called it a tortoise and what they would do is get their shields locked together some above some in the front and they were impenetrable they were now inside of a fortress that was made up of not just their shield but the shield of the one on their right and left and the one in front and behind and together they were protected against these fiery darts or flaming arrows and what the shield of faith tells us is that you don't fight alone yeah you got the Lord Jesus Christ and you're clothed with Christ that's true but you also don't need to battle any battle if you're doing this series right now you already have somebody or a couple of people that are walking with you invite them into your warfare even if you're ashamed of the struggle that you're having even if it's with the kind of sin that brings shame with it and there's several that we could name no matter what the struggle is just know that the one on your right and the one on your left they also came to Christ the same way that you did and they've got their own struggles they're also wrestling against principalities and powers and spiritual forces and heavenly places they also are they know what it means to fight those things maybe they've shared some of those things with you already but there's nothing there is no such thing as shame in Christ invite them in and say I'm really struggling right now with whatever it is maybe it's not just sin that's going on inside maybe it's I'm in a situation my life has fallen apart I'm about to lose my business my wife's about to leave me my kids hate me whatever it is all those things don't battle alone you have a body and you have an army standing by you that also wears the armor of God two are better than one ten are better than one so bring people in that's the shield of faith finally it says take on the helmet of salvation the helmet is designed to protect the mind we've been given now the mind of Christ right we've been given the ability to think like God thinks and we're going to get more into that next week when we talk about strongholds of the mind protecting the way that we think is essential for spiritual warfare if we begin to entertain the lies of the enemy and give them room how we think will become what we believe and what we believe becomes how we live our lives so we could be in Christ we could be saved we could be living in the Father's house but still come to believe lies about ourselves lies about our life the helmet of salvation this thing that we acknowledged at one point that Jesus I need you to pull me out from this thing thinking with the mind of Christ says Jesus without you I can do nothing I can't afford to entertain a thought in my mind and neither can you that did not originate in heaven so if it's not in the scriptures if it didn't originate from Jesus then it's not a thought that deserves room in our mind at all don't ruminate on those things whatever those thoughts are that we permit to ruminate in our mind those are the thoughts that determine who we will become finally it says take up the sword of the spirit which is the word of God Jesus had a battle with the devil for the ages in the wilderness when he had just come away from his time of baptism and he was in the wilderness and the devil tempted him and the devil knew I'm going toe to toe with the word made flesh I better not just tell a flat out lie I'd best manipulate the scriptures to lie to the son of God how did Jesus respond if you read that in the gospels Jesus responded with the word of God why because he knew the word of God he knew how to use it he knew what it said so the sword of the spirit the word of God have been exhorting you be in the word of God listen to it read it memorizing it knowing the word is the best way learning scripture is the best weapon to combat the lies of the evil one because if you know the word says it to be true then there's no spirit that can tell you opposite what the word of God says that's the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and it finally says where prayer and petition pray at all times how do you pray all day it doesn't mean bow your head like this and stop and have devotional time it means stay in constant communication with heaven we can't afford to look at any life situation without inviting the Lord's presence into it and without asking the Father can you show me what to do in this situation I need you right now I need you now is the cry of somebody who's wearing the armor of God and you'll be able to stand in the evil day if you at all times wear the word of God wear the breastplate of righteousness all the armor of God stand firm and you're going to see victory after victory God bless you