God's Armory

We’re going to have our time of prayer in just a second, where we do it in the congregation, and you get near neighbors that are close to you, and together you pray. And here’s what I want our focus to be on this morning: the men’s and the women’s ministry that Caroline was just talking about. And what we want to do is just kind of have a good sense of community and grow closer to each other as well as closer. Of course, we always want to be closer to the Lord. And knowing these two studies, especially Experiencing God, I know that one probably better than anything else. It’ll change how you look at Jesus, it’ll change how you look, how you see how God works, and He uses you in the process, and about your relationship with Him.

So let me encourage—I want you to pray for that, and that the men and the women that’ll be involved in these ministries will change. I mean, that’s the whole deal. We want change. You know, folks not crazy about change wouldn’t be crazy about hanging around Jesus because if you—that’s pretty much what He did in the New Testament. He changed everything, but always for good reasons. So get together in small groups. That’s your kind of your objective this morning: is pray for these two ministries, because I want to tell you, especially with the men. When you get men involved in discipleship and they start getting involved more deeply spiritually in the church, God does some neat stuff. And so let’s get together and take our petitions to the Lord.

Father, I just want to say thank You. Thank You for the fact that You not only want to disciple us, which means to bring discipline of spiritual things into our lives, but by doing this we not only get closer to You, but man, You unveil things to us that we can’t even start to imagine. And so, Lord, I just ask that Your hand be upon the women when they meet on these Mondays, be on our men as they start to want to experience You in a variety of ways that they’ll go through in their study. But Lord, take us deeper. You know, sometimes we are such a surface level that we miss all the wonderful things that we could experience by just being closer to You and each other. Lord, this is Your time. And as I speak, Lord, may everybody here not hear me so much as hear You. May You penetrate heart and mind to make us different. Lord, we want to be different. We want to know that we’re not only different Christians, but this is a different church. And we want it to be that when they see us, they’ll see You. So guide my heart, Lord. Guide my words. Guide our minds and hearts that they’ll be receptive this morning. In Your Son’s precious name we pray. And all God’s people said, “Amen.”

Well, thank you. I want to say thank you to Pastor Jeremy Simmons for allowing me the privilege of speaking today. First of all, him and Becca are celebrating their 10th anniversary, which I think is wonderful, and they got to be away a little bit. It’s great having the kids, but it’s also great every once in a while just kind of get away, wasn’t it? And they were well taken care of. Also, the place that him and Becca went for about three days is a little place called The Cove. It’s up outside of Asheville, North Carolina. It’s the Billy Graham Training Center, and about four times a year what they do for pastors. And so you should encourage him at least once a year for them to make their way up there, as they bring them in. All they got to do is get there and pay about 35 bucks apiece for the materials. Everything else is on The Cove. And the reason they do that is so when pastors and their wives get up there, they can be poured into. You know, it’s one thing to be the one who pours into us every Sunday, but it’s kind of hard to pour in from an empty vessel. And so their whole deal is while they’re up there, they’re spoiled a little bit. They stay on the premises. They’ve got great meals. They bring in an amazing speaker who speaks just to them, and they are poured into and treated special. And so you make sure that Jeremy and Becca at least once A year are up there in Asheville at the Cove being poured into because then when he comes back he’s refreshed and he pours into us and that’s what we want. If you’ve got your Bibles, like you, turn with me to the book of Ephesians as we continue our study. We are in Ephesians chapter 6. We’re gonna be just looking at four verses this morning: 14, 15, 16, and 17. But this should help us understand why things are so important. This is our men are going to hear from a guy when we do experience a guy named Richard Blackaby. This is out of one of Richard’s books called Unlimiting God. He makes this statement. He says, “Every local church,” and I want to add every Christian has unlimited potential. Christ is its head as well as its builder. And with these divine resources, churches ought to be turning the world upside down. But they aren’t. And the reason is that congregations also have limits to what they believe God can do through them. Many churches assume God will never ask them to do anything that isn’t covered in their budget. So they don’t attempt ministrings beyond that. But it’s also other things. It’s relationships. It’s God making this work in my life. God making this come back together. God can never use me because of my past. And all the different things that happen in our lives, we just think God can’t use us. And I just want to say by looking at some of these verses this morning that that changes.

So, as we just look, stand with me as again, if you don’t mind, in honor of the Lord’s word, again, looking at Ephesians chapter 6, starting with verse 14. Stand therefore with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest, and your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel of peace. In every situation, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Thank you for standing. Please be seated.

When I was in the military, Beth and I’s first years of marriage were in Germany, a little missile site over there. And about once every three months, they’d run an exercise. And this is how that exercise would go. They’d wait till about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Our detachment would get a message, a coded message from our battalion and our group headquarters, which were about an hour and a half away. And as soon as they started decoding the message, they were on the clock. And here’s what they had to do. You had to do. They wouldn’t then everybody in your on your site would get a message that they had to report in. That means you’re now getting up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. You’re out of a dead sleep. You got to put your clothes on. You got to come in ready to go to work. And then soon and and you’re again you’re on the clock and then not until everyone is there does that clock stop. And all during the deal, when you get about 50% readiness, you know, you you you you know, you report that in. When you get to about 70% readiness, you report that 90%. And then when everybody gets there supposed to be there, that’s the time. And they’re watching to see how you respond. And as soon as you get to the unit, middle of the night, you don’t go to your office, you don’t go to your post. The first place you go to is right slap dab right in the middle of our detachment. It’s called the armory. It’s where you go. As soon as you walk in, you go straight to the armory. And there they start they if you’re enlisted, they’re handing you your M16. If you’re an officer, they’re handing you your 45 caliber pistol and and plus ammunition, everything. And then you go from there to where you’re supposed to be. And every unit has an armory and it’s guarded. But how can you be expected to do your job if you don’t have the equipment to do it? And that’s the deal. You know, the military is not going to send you out there without without weapons and bullets. And they’re not going to send you out there without the stuff to to accomplish your mission. Why would God be any different? Does that make sense? Why would God be any different? Now, I want you to understand as Paul is Writing this, He’s writing to a Christian church. He’s writing to Christians and He’s writing from prison. And so, why would He use some of this language that He uses? Well, probably because He’s in prison when He’s writing it and He’s chained to a Roman guard who He sees every day. And as He’s writing this letter, I can see Him glancing over and seeing the guy’s helmet and seeing the guy’s breastplate and maybe seeing his shield off to the side, seeing the little sword that he carries around, you know, looking at his shoes. I mean, He sees everything about him. And so, He’s writing from experience.

And I want to tell you what I’m seeing many times. I’m seeing Christians going out into the world to fight battles or take, you know, take on Satan and we’re defenseless and we can never win those. Now, one thing we need to understand is first of all that God is a warrior. You ever thought about God being a warrior? Listen to some verses. Exodus 15:3, “The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is His name.” Isaiah 42:13, “The Lord will go forth like a warrior; He will arouse His zeal like a man of war; He will utter a shout, yes, He will raise a war cry; He will prevail against His enemies.” Ain’t that the kind of God you want who leads you into the battles of life that come upon you, but you don’t have to just do it by yourself? That’s the kind of God I want. A God that I can follow and He leads from the front. God always leads from the front. I mean, how many times do we have leadership that leads from the rear and some even the middle? I want a God that leads us into battle. And that’s what He is.

So, He gives us here six pieces of armor. Now, Pastor Jeremy Simmons has already spoken on a couple things that we see in this. He says, “Put on the full armor of God.” So, we’re going to look at these one by one, but I want to tell you, when you put them on, you don’t just put on your shoes and go to battle, or you don’t just take the sword, or you stick a helmet on your head and that’s all you have. When I was in the military, my daddy was in the military and he was in World War II and I can remember him telling stories when he got back about, you know, when he would talk to us and talk about that when he went out, he grabbed as much ammunition as he could take because if something was to happen, he wanted to make sure he had enough. I don’t know what enough was, but he was going to make sure it was close to it. And that’s what he wanted. He wanted enough. And I think when we go out into the world, we need enough of the Lord. And that’s kind of what we get here.

So, let’s look at some of this. First of all, what I want us to look at is what I call two things. We’re going to first look at the priority of the objective. What does He want us to do? It’s in the very first word of our passage. He says, “Stand.” Well, yeah, I want to stand. But what does that mean? God will never ask you to do something that He will not give you the resources to accomplish the mission with. And when we look at the word stand here, He’s given you everything so that when it’s all said and done, we’re still standing. He talks about that we may be able to resist in the evil day, you know, we may be able to withstand, take our stand in the previous verse of 13. When we see 13 and 14 here, “Stand therefore with the truth.” He wants us standing. The whole thing is this: when this battle is over and everybody else is either on the ground or running or doing whatever they’re doing, you’re still standing because it’s going to be tough. So, that’s what He kind of wants you to do.

And here’s the other thing about standing. I never see in this passage, or I never see mostly throughout Scripture, where God says, “Go attack the devil.” I just don’t see that. First of all, we’re in a—it’s not an offensive operation. It’s a defensive operation. We’re not attacking the gates of hell, even though they can’t withstand Us, the Bible says where we’re where to stand. We’re to hold the ground that’s already been taken. Here’s the deal, folks. God has already won the victory. Do you do you realize that? You’re not having to fight to take ground. You’re standing on ground that’s already been taken. And He’s telling you to stay there and do whatever it needs to be everything that you need to be for Christ and to hold the ground. The ground belongs to the Lord. And when He comes back for His bride, which is you, He wants us standing proudly holding the ground that He’s given us. He’s already won the victory. He’s defeated sin and He’s defeated death. And I don’t know if two any two things that can be, you know, any harder to defeat, but He’s already won that victory. So He just wants us to stand where He has put us. That could be at your work. That could be at your school. That could be in your neighborhood. He wants you to stand where it’s already been taken. That’s when it’s all said and done.

So, He gives us spiritual truth. He us tools. He’s going to give us truth, righteousness, His peace, faith, salvation, and ultimately the sword, which is the Word of God. So, what I want you just to imagine for just a moment is looking over Paul just kind of being in prison, chained to a guard and looking over and just seeing everything that’s that this guard has and how he sees it in a spiritual perspective. If I was to ask you, who do you think the greatest boxer of the world is in history? Some of you might say Muhammad Ali. Some of you might say Mike Tyson. Some of you might say George Foreman. If you go way back, some of you might say Rocky Marciano or Joe Louis. In the 1930s, there was a guy by the name of CD Bllelock. Big guy. CD probably was about my size. CD was 66. They called him Big Boy. Big Boy Bllock. Big Boy was in a fight. was from Louisiana and he was in a fight at one point where he went and threw a roundhouse as he threw it. The guy that he was fighting got too close and his arm hit the guy, it bounced off, came back and he caught himself in the jaw at about the same velocity that he threw it out there with. Soon as it hit him, he started to wobble around. He almost circled the ring and then he fell face forward. Faith forward on the mat. He had knocked himself out. He is the only boxer that I know of in history that knocked himself out.

And I tell you that story just for this. When we go out there without what I’m going to be sharing with you in just a moment, it’s like we’re going out into a battle almost at to the point where we’re going to knock ourselves out because we’re not ready to fight it. We’re not ready to go forward. we got the wrong people with us or we got the wrong things with us or we’re going out there alone and we’re going to knock ourselves out. So that’s the priority. The priority is to stand. What’s next? Well, the next thing is the purpose of the objects. Let’s just look at them one by one. He says, “Stand therefore with truth like a belt around your waist.” The Old Testament has a lot of perspectives. When when Paul wrote this, he knew that in the in the Old Testament that there were things that there was references like this. Let me just give you a few of them. There’s the belt of truth. You can find it in Isaiah 11:5. Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist and faithfulness or truth the belt of His loins. The breastplate of righteousness. Isaiah 59:17. He puts on righteousness as a breastplate. Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of those who bring good news, the shoes of peace.” Psalm 5:12, “You bless the righteous, oh Lord. You cover him with favor as a shield, the helmet of salvation.” Where it says, “He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on His head.” and the swords. Isaiah 49:2, He made my mouth like a sharp sword. So these are not new to Paul. Now whether he was referencing back to those, we don’t know. But I do know this with his with his memory and his intelligence and his education and now looking at this Roman guard, he wants to send a letter to tell these folks at Ephesus, let me tell you something. And the church here at Sauldam, you are not in this alone. And God wants you to go out there and understand that you don’t go out weaponless. You don’t go out by yourself hoping that you might win. You’re already standing on ground that has is victorious and has already been taken. And you go out with me.

So let’s look at the belt of truth. Number one, what was the belt for? What is your belt for? I can tell you what my belt’s for. It’s to keep everything up and everything together. And that’s exactly what theirs are. Sometimes they would have long tunics that they would need if they if they were going to run in battle. They would take their belt and they would tighten it, maybe even pull some of their tunics up a little bit so they could run faster. They didn’t want anything dragging them down. But it’s the belt of truth. It holds it.

Here’s the greatest definition of truth that I found this week. It’s an objective standard that stands outside of our experiences and above our opinions. Let me say it again. It’s an objective standard. I mean, there’s no question. Everybody says, “Well, truth is rational.” We’ll talk about that in a minute. An objective standard stands outside our experiences and above our opinions. Truth is truth. I’ve had people say, “Well, well, I don’t believe that.” What doesn’t matter. Truth is truth whether you believe it or not. I can go out saying, you know, the sky looks blue today. Well, I don’t see blue. I I see green. Well, you might think you see green. You may say you say green. It doesn’t matter. It’s what it is. And truth is truth. And God’s word is truth. And what Jesus said is truth. And how we’re to act is truth. It’s an objective standard. Well, that’s not what I experience. Well, it doesn’t matter. That’s how my not my opinion. Well, it doesn’t matter. Truth is truth.

The standard is the word of God. The inherent effective brought on by the Holy Spirit word of God. Now, our culture today said, “Well, truth is relative. It’s really what what you think.” No. And it’s and it’s what I know. It’s my experience. No. Truth is truth.

Let me tell you what the belt of truth does. It keeps us from replacing God’s words with our feelings. See, we we get into the word of God and and our whole perspective is this. oh, I like some of it, but I don’t I I don’t feel about this, and this is what’s going on in my life and my feelings. That’s why it’s so important, no matter how you’re feeling, to be in God’s word, because it’s truth that can’t be replaced with our feelings. The belt of truth.

Let’s look what’s next. The breastplate of righteousness. Why would you need a breastplate? Well, it’s it’s our spiritual flack jacket. You know, our our spiritual bulletproof vest. What does it do for us? It protects one of the most vulnerable and important parts of our body, which is our heart. The Bible says we’re to guard our hearts. You know what you see. I mean, everything I mean what we speak usually comes from where? From our hearts. It protects us and it’s it’s the breastplate.

Now listen to the words of righteousness. What is righteousness? Righteousness is doing the right thing. I always tell folks it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Just do the right thing. And the standard is is is is this book. And here’s the deal. You can have it. Now, here’s here’s a big word in in in theology. It’s called imputation. See, when we come before the Lord, we are bankrupt with righteousness.

I was sharing with a guy a couple weeks ago about the gospel and and I I’ll never forget I asked him this question. I said I said, “Why we were somehow we got on heaven.” And he said, “You know, we really don’t know a whole lot about heaven.” I said, “Well, actually, we we know more than you think, but let me give you he go gave me a little opening. I said, you’re in heaven. and you’re at the ed edge of heaven and and the Lord looks at you and he asks you this question. Why should I let you in? What would you say? And he immediately went to I’ve been a look, I’ve been a pretty good guy. I haven’t done anything really wrong. I try to be nice to my neighbors and and people I I’ve worked with in my life. I’ve tried to be a pretty good guy. The typical works response where I said, “Well, let me ask you this. Have you have you ever lied? I mean, have you ever had a thought that really wasn’t a pure thought in your heart, in your mind? Have you ever wished anything bad on somebody? It may not have been good, something horrible. Because I said, if you have even done it once, you’ve got to deal with that. And there has to be consequences to how you felt and things you said and some things that you even did. There has to be consequence. Somebody’s got to pay for that. And if you’ve ever done that, now when you’re on the edge of heaven and standing before the throne, He looks at you and why should I let you in? And you try to start, well, I’ve done this good and you’re trying to do the little scale thing where my my good things outweigh my bad things. He said, yeah, but there’s some things on the good bad things that you haven’t dealt with and I can’t let any of that into my heaven. So when we stand before the Lord, we stand bankrupt before the Lord. And then He looks at you and He says, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to put the the righteousness of Jesus who never did anything wrong. I’m gonna put it over to you. It’s like it’s like all of a sudden you’ve got some money. Remember when I when April was in college and we had a joint checking checking account and if she would run out of money, I was able to take money from from the account and put it into your her account. Well, God does the same thing when He says, “I’m going to take from Jesus’s account and I’m going to put it into your account.” And He didn’t have to do that. But when we have His righteousness, we can stand. And you can have that right now. See, it’s about being before doing. You need to be a Christian before you can do Christian stuff. You need to be a a son or daughter of the Lord before you can go out and and say, “Well, I’m doing this for God.” And He’s sitting there, I’m going to give you the breastplate of righteousness. And I’m I’m going to guard your heart. Your heart’s going to be different. It’s going to be different how you look at people. It’s going to be how different how you talk to people. It’s going to be different how you act around people because righteousness is the the foremost thing in your mind. See, Paul here is telling these folks, I want to remind you who you are before you go out and do what you do. See, if if our motivation is not is just to do a bunch of good things to get into a good place, that’s not kind of. But if our motivation is because Jesus died for me, imputed His righteousness into my heart and my life, died for my sins, gave me a place where I can go be with Him forever, maybe that motive changes things in my life, the breastplate of righteousness. But then He also adds to that. He says, “Shoes of the gospel of peace.” I want to tell you something about the military. We travel on our feet. You better be able to walk, if you’re gonna be in the Marine Corps or you gonna be in the army, you better be able to walk. And I want to tell you, shoes are important. That’s why we try to keep shoes dry as much as possible. We try to keep keep them together. I mean, you don’t have to go that far back to read about Valley Forge and what Washington’s troops went through and about traveling with either no shoes or just wrapped up in cloth feet or whatever. But I want to tell you, it says the gospel, the shoes of peace. Well, what does that mean? And let me tell you this, there’s a difference between the peace with God and the peace of God. You settle the peace with God when you come to know Christ. You’re never going to know the peace of God till you settle that. Does that make sense? You’re never the peace of God follows the peace with God. When you make peace with God and say, “God, it’s not about me anymore. It’s not about what I want. It’s about what You want. This is where I want You to I want You to run my life. I want You to Come into my heart, my mind. I want You to change me. I want You to make me different. Then all of a sudden, we can make some stands.

Now, let me tell you something about Roman shoes. They had nails in them. They would put nails. And the reason was when they would go into battle, a lot of times they’re in mud. They’re in they’re in and I don’t know if you’ve ever wore if you played sports and you wore shoes with cleats and without cleat, there’s a difference. There’s a difference. So, Roman version pretty much had shoes with cleats so they wouldn’t slip. They could make their stand. They could hold their ground.

And the thing is is when when Satan is is is coming at you, you want to be able to hold your ground because what happens when you get on the ground, you’re vulnerable. And when you But let me tell you something. When Satan throws everything at you and you have peace in your life, you’re not playing that stupid record every time you go to bed at night about all the things in your life that’s going. But God gives you a peace that no matter what the circumstance, you’re okay. He’s gonna love you anyway. It it it brings us back to where we need to be.

One of my closest friends back back in the he talked about back in the 60s when he was on a Navy destroyer and all you guys in the Navy could probably attest to this and he talked about what a destroyer even though it’s a good pretty good size ship. It’s a little thing in the middle of the ocean and you come up and you come up on an incredible, you know, storm and all a sudden that thing and I he said there was one night, he’ll never forget it. He said nobody was going outside and that destroyer was literally almost leaning horizontal and then it would come back up and the storms would blow the waves and it would go back on this side. He said people falling out of bumps. He says everybody’s grabbing trash cans. I mean it I don’t care how long you’ve been in the military. how seaorthy you thought you were. People just I mean they’re just losing everything. And all of a sudden, he says, “But it’s amazing how they built that ship.” And they built that ship that no matter how literally almost horizontal, sideways with the water, it would come back up.

That’s what shoes do for. They keep you standing, keep you upright. And yes, we want the belt of truth and we want the breastplate of righteousness, but we got to have a shoes of the gospel of peace. That Christ brings a peace in our life that we can’t get anywhere else. And that when you get all the the junk thrown at you by the devil every day, could be at your work, could be with with some folks in in your life, it could be family sometimes, it could be a bunch of stuff. You’re anchored.

The fourth thing is a shield of faith. He if he would going to look at that Roman that Roman usually had a 4 foot square shield. I can’t even imagine how heavy that thing was. But I want to tell you if they were going if they were having a battle, they were in the middle of a battle, they wanted that thing with them. He talks here what it’s for. He says you want the shield of faith which can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

And I’m reminded, remember those western movies where all a sudden the Indians are fighting, you know, the wagon train and they circle the wagons and then the Indians do something that you go, “That ain’t fair.” They take the arrows out and they dip them and they they light them on fire and they fire them into the camp. Now, they if you notice, they’re not looking to to to shoot those arrows into the people. What are they looking to shoot the arrow into? The cabin of the wagons and the wagons themselves.

Now, why would they do that? Well, all of a sudden, you’re under a wagon and you’re shooting back at the Indians and all of a sudden the the wagon above you catches fire. What’s the big deal with that? What’s your next thing? You’re not shooting at Indians anymore. You’re trying to put out a wagon fire, which makes you vulnerable. Is that not what Satan’s trying to do here? How many times in a day is Satan just saying, “Okay, light another one.” And He just shoots it at us. Light another one. And He shoots it at us. Light another one. Literally what their shields they would they would it was almost plywood that they would bring together. They would then wrap it in leather and sometimes for a battle they would even soak it in water. Can you imagine how heavy that? But they ain’t go anywhere without it. And it was usually big enough to that if they knelt down a little bit, it would cover their entire bodies.

Let me ask you this. Does Satan ever do that in your life? Does He ever do that in the life of a church? Sure He does. Let me tell you what happens in the life of a church. And this is just from Al experience. He’ll start a little thing over little fire over here. And so the pastor runs over there and he puts out that fire. And he’ll start a little fire over here. Pastor will run over here and put out that fire. Then he’ll start another little fire over here. Pastor will run, put out that fire. Then he’ll start another little fire over here. And pastor will run over there. And what the pastor ends up doing all day long is putting out fires that Satan started.

So how many people get get the gospel? How many times does he get to meet with groups and and and sit there and say, you know, let’s look at this plan. We we can we can go we can grow here. We can we can go forward here here. What do you guys think of this idea? No, we putting out fires all day long. And we do the same thing in our own lives. We put fires out all day long instead of think about how God can grow us and move us and do great things with us.

And He says that that’s what it’s for to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And in our personal lives, these flaming arrows are temptations. See, if I can tempt Al with this or I can tempt Al with this or I can tempt Al with this, Al will be worried about all that. He never does anything for me. I don’t do a whole bunch of good stuff. He just doesn’t doesn’t do anything to grow the kingdom of God. That’s what the shield of faith is for. We don’t need to be helping him put out not start fires.

See, faith in the original Greek language is the same word that is the word in the Greek for trust. When you put your faith in Jesus, that means you trust Him. You trust Him with everything in your life. And I want to tell you, you can do a whole lot of things if you have trust. The biggest thing holding up marriages together, they’ve been married 10 years, him and Becca. The biggest thing in their marriage right now is trust. When you lose trust in a relationship, God never gives us a reason not to have trust. And that’s what faith does.

The next thing we come up with is salvation. The helmet of salvation. It protects the head. Why? Because that’s the one thing Satan always wants to go after. Romans 12, do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We get saved. He starts to he starts to make this different how we think. That’s why you put on a helmet. It protects that.

I love 2 Corinthians 10:5. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets us up against the knowledge of God. Listen to this. We take every thought captive. Why the helmet of salvation? Because you’re saved. You don’t have to worry about it. You’re either saved or you’re not saved. Some days you don’t feel like you’re saved. You’re saved. Unless you sit there go, you know, I have I don’t ever hear hear from the Holy Spirit. I never get excited about the word of God. I really don’t care to go to church that much. You might want to talk to to Jeremy a little bit about your salvation. But when you know, you know, you always got something to go back to.

And the last thing is this, the sword of the spirit, which He says very clearly is the word of God. A Russian sword was a short sword. It was only about this big. It was for inclo personal contact with the enemy. It wasn’t like a javelin that you throw from a from a distance. Wasn’t like a bow and arrow like you could shoot from A distance. This is when things got close. And when things get close in your life, there’s only one thing that helps you. It’s the word of God. I’m here to tell you that Hebrews 4 says it’s a two-edged sword. It’s living. It’s active. It’s sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This book changes everything. And here’s the deal. It’s the only offensive weapon of the six. You don’t smack somebody with your shield unless you ain’t got nothing else. You don’t beat someone to death with your sword. You don’t take your shoes off and throw it at them. The word of God.

Now, here’s an interesting thing about how it’s used here. It’s the Greek word remma. And all it means is this. It’s an utterance. That means you know enough about it that you can speak it. See, spiritual warfare is not just about head knowledge. It’s about actually telling people things. How did Jesus handle the devil? Jesus didn’t try to stab the devil. I mean, He tried to, but what did He do? He spoke the word of God. What did Jesus say to Pharisees when they were trying to trick Him in everything? He quoted the Old Testament. Folks, you can never go wrong spiritually if you know the scriptures. And I know there are people here that say this, “El, I just can’t memorize.” I’m telling you, you can in experiencing God. We’re going to ask our guys to memorize 12 scriptures, one for every session, and they’re not that hard, but you can make them hard if you’re never in this book. But you’ve got to be able to speak them. I want to tell you, the Holy Spirit has to be able to bring something up in your heart. There are so many times I’m dealing with an issue. I’m in my car and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit brings something to my brain and it’s usually the word of God. How can He bring something that you never memorized or read? Six things that are so important: truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the word of God.

I want to close with this. I want to show—I saw this video about three weeks ago. It’s short, but just watch.

It’s just there’s all this pressure, you know, and sometimes it feels like it’s right up on me and I can just feel it. Like literally feel it in my head and it’s relentless and I don’t know if it’s going to stop. I mean, that’s the thing that scares me the most is that I don’t know if it’s ever going to stop.

Yeah. Well, you do have a nail in your head.

It is not about the nail.

Are you sure? Because I mean, I’ll bet if we got that out of there.

Stop trying to fix it.

No, I’m not trying to fix it. I’m just pointing out that maybe the nail is causing—

You always do this. You always try to fix things when what I really need is for you to just listen.

See, I don’t think that is what you need. I think what you need is to get the nail. See, you’re not even listening now.

Okay, fine. I will listen. Fine. It’s just sometimes it’s like there’s this achy—I don’t know what it is. And I’m not sleeping very well at all. And all my sweaters are snagged. I mean, all of them.

That sounds really hard.

It is. Thank you. Ow.

Come on. If you would just—

don’t there.

And I know for Jeremy to be married and you guys be married as long and me to be married almost 48 years. How many times have we heard from our wives, “I don’t want you to what?” Fix it. I just want you to listen. Here’s the point of all that. How many times do we look at God and say, “God, I don’t just want You to fix it. I want You to listen.” Now, that may work in our marriages. Let me tell you where it don’t work. It don’t work with Him. God’s about God, you know, because men are fixers. The reason I get frustrated is if Beth is talking to me and I can’t fix it, then I get frustrated, which makes her more frustrated. God is the ultimate fixer. And so what God wants to do is He looks into our lives and He says, “I want to fix that.” Let me tell you what you need to do. You need to go down to my armory down here. You need to check out some things. See, you you need to check out the belt of truth. You need to check out the breastplate of righteousness. You need to take check out the gospel, the sandals of peace, and and the helmet of of salvation. And and you need to check check out the faith. And you need to check out the sword. That’s the that’s the word of God. Just this just head. Lord, I don’t want all that. I just want you to listen.

And we want to stay in our sin and we want to do what we want to do and we just want to keep on going the same way we’re going and we never want to change and God’s sitting there going let’s head down to the armory and check out the stuff now here’s the problem if you don’t know the Lord you’re not in His army and you’re not going to be near the armory so before you can ever head down to the armory and get these things and get fixed you got to come to know Him remember the peace Peace with God starts before the peace of God. We’ve got to give it to Him. He wants us to go in battle. The Bible, you know what Jeremy said last week was put on the full armor of God. You don’t just put on shoes. You don’t just pick up the shield and that’s all and walk out. You don’t just stick on your helmet. You take it all. And then He leads you out there. Remember, He’s the warrior God.

This morning, I don’t know where you’re at. I don’t know what you’re dealing with, but I know there’s probably some armor on you that you’re not wearing. Or maybe you’re at a place where you’re sitting there going, Al, I’m not even in the army. I don’t even have access to the armory. I can’t even get in the building. And you need to say that this morning. Others of you just need to sit there and say, “I am so tired of being defenseless and I just need to turn over to God.” Remember, He’s writing to Christians. He’s writing to Christians who need the belt of truth. He’s writing to Christians who still still need the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation. They need to understand those things. He’s still writing the people that have all that. Now, my question is, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to turn over to it? When are you going to get out of the way and let Him work? When are you going to get out of the way and let Him fix it?

Even preachers need that sometimes. I’ll never forget when I was a pastor and I was going through a particular difficult time at a church. I remember I walked in one morning. I’ll never forget as long as I live, I walked in, looked at my secretary and I said this. I said, “I’m going in the sanctuary and unless it’s Beth or April, I don’t want to be disturbed.” And I got in the pew and for about six hours I just sat in there. All I did was read hymns and pull out my Bible and pray. Here’s what I told the Lord. Well, this is above my pay grade. Okay. I preach about You. I teach about You. I’ve been doing it for a long time. But sometimes I just don’t see You anywhere. It’s like I’m in a fog. I know You’re there. I I just I know it’s not but I’m struggling. But You’re going to have to take this. And there are some of you here with stuff in your life where you need to see eternal God and said, “God, it’s Yours. I don’t want it. It’s Yours. It’s all Yours.” And once I did that, you know what God said to me? Al, I’m glad you’re tired. I’m glad you’re tired of beating your head up against the wall and getting bloody because I’m not going to fight with you. I’m just not going to do it. You want to do it, knock yourself out. When you’re tired, come back, get with Me, and then watch Me do it. And what I saw after that, within the next even few weeks, was things that I couldn’t do, God just did all over the place. That’s what experience of God is going to be all about, folks. Guys. And I just stepped aside and once I Let God take over. I saw some amazing things happen, and some of you need to do all that stuff. He does to me on occasion. Yeah. He still gets with me and says, “Get out of my way, Al. Ready to handle it.” My question is, are you willing to step aside and let God handle some things that you need to handle?

Let’s pray. Father, thank You for opening up an armory to us. Thanks for opening up truth, Your Word, righteousness, faith, salvation, peace. Gosh, we can’t get that anywhere else. Help us to do that. Help us just get out of the way. Put on Your stuff. Walk with You. Follow You. We never get lost following You. Some of us here have some decisions they need to make today. Help us to get ourselves out of the way and let You take charge. In Your Son’s name we pray. Amen.