The Sword of the Spirit

SERMON: 2017-01-29--e0608--the-sword-of-the-spirit-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:48:30.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 25 ('Amen.') concludes the prayer/benediction segment of the sermon. Candidate 26 is explicitly labeled as [Music], marking the clear transition from sermon content to non-sermon material. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- - Want to pick up this morning, then, where we left off last week, Ephesians 6, 17, the latter part of the verse, the sword of the spirit, part two. The verse reads, "Take the sword of the spirit which is the word of God." It's item number six in the armor that God has provided for us in Christ and critical if we're going to not only stand against the forces of evil, but actually push them back to see the coming of God's kingdom. Before we get into that, let's pray together. "Father, as we turn again to your word, we are keenly aware as your people that we contend not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil. Sometimes we experience that opposition physically, whether in illness or trouble. Sometimes we experience it emotionally, as in discouragement and in depression and just the heaviness that weighs us down. And other times, Lord, we experience that opposition in our walk with you where you seem to be far gone and our hearts grow cold and we wonder is walking with you even worth it. We're so grateful for Jesus. We're so grateful that he humbled himself even to the point of death and that by his obedience to the point of death he overcame, that he sits at your right hand and that he shares his victory with us today, and that he equips us with the full armor of God. And so Lord, help us to put on each piece faithfully and prayerfully. And as we look again at what it is to use the word of God as the sword of the spirit, may it be more than just talk. May it be more than just information. May it give us hope and encouragement in the deep places of our lives that in the name of Jesus we can resist the evil one. We can remain standing and we can walk faithfully before your face. Lord, forgive us for the many places where we fail you. Help us to receive your grace day by day to get back up and may we run with perseverance the race that is set before us. So bless us, Lord, in these moments together. Pray your blessing on my voice so that I can give clear articulation to that which you have laid on my heart. And I pray, Lord, for each of our ears and hearts and minds that your word may find fertile soil, bear much fruit for your glory so that together we can be the kind of church that is the salt of the earth and the light of the world and will give you the glory through Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen. Well I pointed out last week that when the Lord Jesus was confronted by Satan's lies when he began his public ministry, he didn't debate or he didn't confront or he didn't argue with Satan. Instead what he did is he stood his ground by quoting scripture. Three times he responded to Satan's temptation with the words, "It is written. It is written man shall not live by bread alone. It is written do not put the Lord your God to the test. It is written worship the Lord your God and serve him only." And I pointed out that we have here is a marvelous example of using the word of God as the sword of the Spirit. Because the word of God embodies the very truth and the very authority of God, it has power to lay bare all the lies of hell wherever they might be found. I love the way the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account." And it's using the word of God as the sword of the Spirit that enables us to expose then Satan's lies wherever they are found and to force his retreat. James as you know puts it this way, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Now I want to note in passing this morning that it takes three tries for Jesus to get Satan to flee. Sometimes you and I, we stomp our feet, nothing happens, we get discouraged and we give up and we say, "Well, it doesn't really work." Three in scripture is together with the numbers 7 and 10, a number that signifies a certain kind of perfection or completion. It occurs 467 times in the Bible and so Paul when confronted by the thorn in the flesh, prays three times for God to remove it. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prays three times for the cup to be removed. Israel in the wilderness was going to go into the wilderness for three days and Jesus of course was raised on the third day. So the number three seems to imply some kind of completed process, some kind of endurance that says, "I'm going to show my determination and walk by faith." And so when at first you stomp your feet and not much happens, don't be discouraged. Keep on stomping yet. Stand on scripture, stand on the promises of God until all heaven and hell know that you mean business. This is not a half-hearted attempt. This is a determined faith that says in Christ, "I am more than conqueror." Now as I pointed out last week, all of this has practical implications for your life and my life. And last week we dealt with the first of three practical implications that I want to talk about in this little mini series of messages and that is that we must know the scriptures. Psalm 119 verse 11 and 97, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." Verse 97, "How I love your law, I meditate on it day and night." The word meditate means to chew your cud. It's to regurgitate it. It's to not only read it, but it's to dwell on it and it's to expand on it and it's to try to understand the fullness of its meaning. I pointed out last week, it's not enough just to know the general Bible stories, but we need to know the specific texts that apply to a given situation so that Satan's lies can be exposed. And so when we may be tempted to sleep around or we have a friend who is tempted to be sleeping around, we can confront him with a verse like this from Hebrews 13 verse 4, "Marriage should be honored by all, the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all these sexually immoral." That's the sword of the spirit, the word of God. And when greed lays hold of your heart and you want to get rich quick and you're tempted to go visit the casino down the road and make all your dreams come true and all your problems go away, this would be a good time to remember Ephesians 5, 5. You can be sure of this. "No immoral, impure or greedy person, such a man is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of God." Or Luke 12, 15, the words of Jesus, he says, "Watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." It takes discipline, takes work, but it pays rich dividends because it equips us to stand against the lies of evil. And that's why, as I mentioned, I encourage in our homes and in our children's programs for kids to memorize and learn scripture at an early age so that later on the Holy Spirit can bring it back to mind and you can wield it as a sword, both defensively against Satan's lies and offensively to make him back off. Brings us then this morning to a second principle that practical implication that I think flows out of all of this, and that is that we must trust, we must trust the authority of scripture. I've mentioned before scripture claims to be the inspired word of God. Paul writing to Timothy says, "God breathe into his word." And Peter says, "Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Doesn't mean God literally dictated every word to the writers of scripture. No, it means that he came upon them and enveloped them in his presence and guided the writing of the scriptures as we have it today. The scriptures embody the authority and the truth of God. Jesus speaking to his disciples in John 17, 17, his high priestly prayer says, "Your word is truth." Now Satan knows that as long as we submit to the truth of God's word, his lies don't have much of a chance. And so for that reason, from the very beginning of history, he is always trying to undermine the authority of what God has said to his people. And a primary example of that, of course, is the temptation in the garden back in Genesis chapter 3. Genesis 1 and 2 deal with a creation story. Things are good. Adam and Eve are together. But in the garden, there is a serpent who represents Satan. And Satan's attempt begins at undermining the integrity of God's word to his people. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" I ask you, is that what God said? What did God say? God said, "You can eat from all of the trees in the garden, but this one tree you cannot eat from because it's going to kill you." So Satan turns around God's provision for their safety, and he makes it sound as if God is not good, is not interested in their well-being, and therefore is not to be trusted. Let me take a moment here and talk about how authority functions in the kingdom of God, because that is a critical issue that every human being struggles with all the time. In the Western world, we think of authority primarily in a negative fashion. I don't want my parents telling me what to do, particularly if I'm a teenager and I think I know everything there is to be known. I don't want my husband to tell me what to do because he will restrain my freedom, and we certainly don't want the government to tell us what to do because who do they think they are anyway? And that's understandable in a world where authority has often proven to be selfish, and they take from us rather than give to us. But that's not how it's intended to operate. Authority in Scripture is intended as a means of protecting us from an environment and from situations that we ourselves have not yet learned to be safe in. That's why the Bible says honor your father and your mother so that you can live long in the land, which the Lord your God gives you. Why? Because your parents, contrary to what you may think when you're 16, have lived a lot longer than you have, and they know what's good for you, even though they may not be perfect. So authority is for protection, and when God says to Adam and Eve, "Don't eat from this tree because it's going to kill you," he is not withholding from them. He's like a good parent saying to his teenager, "I don't want you to drive the car. The roads are too slippery. You're going to get hurt. This is for your own good." Or the parent who spanks his kid, and he says to the kid, "I know this hurts you, but it hurts me more because it's for your good." Think of it this way, and I'm elaborating on this because authority is such a major issue in our culture today. Imagine that by some stroke of fortune luck or providence, you end up being put in, let's say, one of the nuclear reactors down the road, Darlington or Pickering, and you're given responsibility for running this whole thing. Pretty heavy duty because if you don't manage it properly, the thing is going to blow up, and not only will that destroy you, but it will destroy all kinds of other people. So how are you going to learn how to run this place? Are you going to learn it by trial and error? Oh, let's crank this knob up a little bit, see what it does. Ooh, the water is getting really hot here, and the nuclear fires are burning out of control. So better turn that back down. You'll be dead by the time you got it figured out. Isn't that true? So hopefully there's a manual that says, "Do not touch," and somebody will take you under their wing, somebody who knows how this place runs. They'll walk you through the paces. They will tell you what knob does what and what to do and what not to do until you are trained to operate this thing safely. Is that untrue? That's the way authority functions, and that's why God says to Adam, "Don't eat from the tree," and Adam says to Eve, very critical, "Don't eat from that tree," because God told Adam this before Eve was around. So Eve is under two levels of authority. She's under God's authority, she has to listen to him, and she's under her husband's authority. So guess what the devil's strategy is. If I can create suspicion in her that God is good and that he is not holding out on her, then I can persuade her to ignore what God has said. She will ignore the rule book, she'll turn the knobs, and she'll blow the whole universe to smithereens, which of course is precisely what happened, because how does that story end? Well, you know it well, I'm sure, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, always fascinated by that little praise. He was with her, and he ate it. Preach whole sermons about that, I will resist that temptation today. But understand what's happening here. Here is a tree, God says that thing's going to kill you. It is like really, really bad. Trust me. The woman looks at it, and what does it look like? Good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom. And there, folks, you have the heart of every temptation you and I will ever face. The devil will never come to you with his lies full out, saying, "Well, come eat from this so that I can chew you up and spit you out and take you down to hell." He's too smart. Remember, he is more subtle than any other creature that God had made. And so he appeals to whatever it is in you and me that doesn't want to submit to somebody higher than me. He appeals to our pride that somehow or another, we can trust our senses better than the authority that is placed in our lives. And if you learn nothing else at all today, would you please learn this, that when you make the decision in the natural to trust what your eyes see, what your ears hear, and what your heart desires, you are this far away from being deceived and led into temptation. Because we're all the offspring of Adam and Eve by nature. And so we tend to overestimate our own wisdom and insight and opinion. And we refuse to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. The antidote to that? Not only must we know the scriptures, but we must accept the authority of scripture. We must accept scripture as having been inspired by God. We must accept it as being filled with God's wisdom, God's rule for faith and life, so that even if all the rest of the world tells me it is not true, I will choose what God has said over what Satan tries to tell us. Now, you've heard this talk earlier about the story between Charles Templeton and Billy Graham, both profoundly converted after World War II, both actively involved in Youth for Christ. Charles Templeton founded one of the significant churches in Toronto, went to Princeton University and could never quite get his head around submitting to the authority of God's word. And so came to a place where he just could not accept the authority of scripture as being normative for his life, gave up the faith, walked away from it, tried to persuade Billy Graham not to be so simplistic. And in the battle of faith, Billy Graham fought it out with God and he made a decision to say, "I'm going to believe what the Bible says no matter what the rest of the world tells me." And if you have ever heard him preach, then you will know the phrase the Bible says has always been one of the dominant phrases of Billy Graham's preaching. He's still alive by the way. I think he's 98 or something now. And if you read one of his more recent books, he always said he never thought he'd get old and he just keeps on living and keeps on living. And I find that kind of fascinating because as you may or may not know, in the early years of my life, he was a role model for me. And a lot of my, well, how will I put it? He was my preaching model in my youth because he just had that much influence in my life and in the lives of many other people. And I've always kind of wished that I could meet him and never had the opportunity, but come the days of glory, I'm going to shake his hand and say, "Oh, by the way, I want you to know how God used you in my life." You might not want to wait till the day of eternity before you tell people that. They might want to hear it. Now it will be a great encouragement, but you know what I'm talking about. So Satan's strategy, hear me well, Satan's strategy is to undermine the authority of God's word. He's been doing that since the garden has God said. Now he does that in many different ways and I want to take a few moments to try to walk you through some of the ways in which he does that because you and I are going to be up against it. If not in our own lives, you're going to be up against it in the lives of your kids or your grandkids, you're certainly going to be up against it in terms of our culture. One of the ways in which Satan tries to undermine the authority of God's word is in undermining the integrity of scripture. The integrity of scripture. How many times haven't you heard somebody say, "You can't trust the Bible. It's full of contradictions and it's historically inaccurate." Ever hear anybody talk that way? Usually it's people who haven't read the Bible, but who have heard it from somebody somewhere and over the last couple hundred years, very, very smart people have done their level best to undermine the authority of scripture. Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code, just one example. Many other examples can be drawn upon. What makes it so complicated is that a casual reading of scripture does seem to indicate that there are inherent contradictions, not all of the stories in the four gospels line up with each other. If you read them side by side, you say, "Who's adding or who's omitting?" What are the clearest examples of what appears to be a contradiction? Let me just give you an example here out of the Old Testament is when David numbers the soldiers under his command. You remember that story? It's recorded for us in two places of the Bible, and in one place, Second Samuel 24.1, God is said to be responsible for David. Again, the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he, that is the Lord, incited David against him, saying, "Go and take a census of Israel and Judah." Pretty straightforward, isn't it? Now listen to 1 Chronicles 21. Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. Now a lot of people look at that and they say, "See, the Bible contradicts itself." Here it says, "God told him." Over here it says, "Satan told him." Bible doesn't know what it's talking about, which of course is a very superficial and shallow understanding of how the universe works because the reality is that God has ultimately got everything under his control. Nothing happens without his permissive will, but God does not lead anybody into temptation, the Bible tells us. We're tempted because of stuff inside our own lives. David was incited by a lust in him to secure and find out how many soldiers that he had so that he could put his trust in soldiers and not in God. And so God, as in the story of Job, allows Satan to come along and be the agent of that temptation. It's not a contradiction, it's only an apparent contradiction. And that's true for virtually every apparent contradiction in the Bible. And there isn't much that you're going to run into or that your friends are going to bring up that hasn't already been tested and demythologized because scripture is amazingly coherent and consistent in its biblical truth. One of my favorite stories that illustrates this whole principle, by the way, is the story of a young man who was in a traffic accident and got taken to the hospital with serious injuries. And when his friends were asking what had happened, they discovered there were two stories going around as to how he happened to get injured. One story said he was riding his bike and he got hit by a car and got taken to the hospital. Other stories said no, he wasn't riding a bicycle, he was in a motor vehicle that got t-boned at an intersection. Which is it? Happens to be both. The guy was unlucky enough to be riding his bike, got hit, got put in an ambulance, and the ambulance got t-boned at an intersection. Both are right. It's more complicated than simplistic people make it sound like. Now, I have to tell you that in this day and age, of course, one of the greatest attacks on the integrity of scripture comes from the field of science, particularly the science of origins of the universe. Until, you know, late 1700s and mid 1800s, most of the western world sort of believed the biblical story of creation, read it fairly literally, God created heaven and earth in six days and we're here and the universe is here because God made it happen and the universe is maybe 6,000, maybe 10,000 years old, right? That's sort of what most of us would have learned in Sunday school. Well, of course, 1700s, mid 1800s, along comes Charles Darwin and a number of geologists and they began looking at the rocks and they began looking at how life has developed and out of that comes Darwin's origin of species and today most of the scientific community is committed to the fact that the universe is 13 and a half billion years old. The solar system that we're a part of is four and a half billion years old and life on earth began about three and a half billion years old and over those years has evolved into the superior beings that you and I are today. Sarcasm, in case you didn't catch it. Ken Ham, who runs Creation Museum and is the dude who just built that life-size model of Noah's Ark down in Kentucky in his book Already Gone, Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do About It, argues that one of the reasons so many kids, six out of 10 as a matter of fact, who have been raised in church by the time they get to college and university will turn their back on church never to return. He argues that one of the reasons is because they have been inundated with scientific notions of how the world has come to be, can't square it with scripture and have chosen therefore what science is telling them as opposed to what traditionally we have believed the scriptures to be telling us. The easy answers to that and I don't have the time or the inclination this morning to fully expand on this particular subject except to say that however one chooses to read Genesis chapter one, scripture is categorical. That life is not the result of natural forces that are mindless or clueless. The universe has been created by God Almighty for the purposes of a human race that can share his love and his goodness and at the end of time truth is truth and true science and true scriptures will always line up together. And if you and I have to choose between what science says or thinks it says or what the Bible says it's always safest to trust the scriptures because God's word is truth. I could say a lot about it but I'll just say this, that there are very smart people on a biblical creationist point of view, scientists and from an evolutionary point of view and the difference between them is that they study the same data. They study the same rocks, they study the same development of biology and all of the rest of this sort of stuff, they study the same fossils but how they interpret what they see is determined by their world and life view and if you have an evolutionary world and life view then you make everything fit into that. If you have a creationist point of view you make things fit into that. Let me give you a quick example. You've all heard of the Grand Canyon, Dave and family have been there, it's a long ways to the bottom and the current prevailing scientific theory is that it must have taken this many years for this rock to wash away, right? And so we know this canyon is this old because when we study the forces of nature today it takes this long for rock to be worn down. That's standard philosophy in the scientific community but now a number of years ago remember you had Mount St. Helens blew up and it carved a canyon not as big as the Grand Canyon but a huge canyon in a matter of days by the flow of water and your creation scientists will tell you when the world was covered with a flood the flood caused changes to take place all over the world in an unprecedented quick fashion and therefore they have alternate explanations because they have an alternate beginning point. One thing that is really, I don't want to go on about this, but one thing that has really helped me personally because you know that I'm very interested in science and I follow all of that stuff with pretty keen interest. One of the things that has really helped me understand is that the present study of geology and the present study of biology and the whole science of origins is rooted in what science calls the theory of uniformitarianism and the theory of uniformitarianism tells you that the forces that are operative in the world today are the forces that have been operative throughout the course of history and so if the Grand Canyon if it takes you know this many years to carve this much out of a rock today then it would have taken that much time back then and then we ought to add it all up and that's how we make it fit together. But let me turn the theory of uniformitarianism on its head and ask you the you know the age-old question did Adam and Eve have a belly button? Right? That's a profound question by the way for obvious reasons but if Adam and Eve were created in the Genesis story as an adult man and adult woman and you came along and you looked at Adam and Eve with what you know today then you would say it must have taken 30 years or 35 years for them to get there right? Or the trees that God created did they have rings? If they did and you cut it down and you counted the rings then how old was the tree? See people don't like to think that way because they say then God is trying to fool us. I don't have a problem with that at all. I don't know how God could create somebody full-grown in an instant if that's what he chose to do and I'm not saying that he did or didn't. I mean it's very complex. I'm just saying there's all kinds of ways of understanding things that don't necessarily fit the normal flaw and all I can tell you is this if one day science comes up with aliens from outer space to come to visit us because that's not inconceivable in my opinion then the question will be will you trust that or will you trust scripture? Those decisions are not made when the big moment's here. Those decisions are made now and you've heard me tell the story about Billy Graham holding up his Bible saying I accept this to be your authoritative word. My own life I went through a similar experience. Some of you know the story. Last year of college, year of going into seminary, went through a series of doubts that just about destroyed my faith. I studied comparative religion because I had run into a cultish group that had a lot of the things that my friends and I were looking for in terms of spiritual life and spiritual experience but they were a branch of the Mormons who embraced the Book of Mormon and a book called Doctrine and Covenants or something like that and I remember saying Lord there's got to be a distinction between the Bible as your word and what they profess. So I began studying all of that and the more I studied it the more confused I got. To the point where I discovered myself arguing with Satan all the time because I wanted to believe, I wanted to hold on to truth and I would just about have myself convinced that another thought would come to my mind and it was it always reminds me of pulling the plug in the sink you know how all of a sudden the water goes spitting out and down the tube it goes. It was the closest thing to hell that I've ever experienced in my own life. It was not fun. And I remember coming to a place that I can see as clear as the day of yesterday and some of you have heard me tell this story but I finally came to a place where I stood under a tree by by the seminary pond at Calvin where I was enrolled at that point and I said Lord I opened my Bible and I said by faith I'm going to receive this as your inspired word and to the best of my knowledge and ability I want to live my life by what you tell me. And if I come to the end of my life and I will have been fooled then so be it. I'm willing to take the chance but I'm not going to be one of these Christians who says well I believe one thing but I'm going to do another. That's a lot of years ago by now. I have never had occasion to regret that choice because your word is truth. Your word has power. Your word has authority and it changes lives. Changes lives. So a lot more I want to say but I think I'm going to leave it at that. Last week we put these in your bulletin. If you weren't here last week or you didn't get a copy we have extra copies available at each of the two desks out there. Take it. Find out where your questions are. Find a scripture verse that addresses that issue and then stand on it. One of the verses that I had to stand on many years ago was John 15 verse 9 where Jesus says as the Father has loved me so have I loved you now remain in my love. And in a time where I didn't know if God was real or that he cared for me I clung to that verse and I said the Bible says that as you love Jesus so you love me. I don't feel it. It doesn't look like it to me. All my experience tells me the opposite. But I make a choice to believe what you have said and I will not engage the devil any longer in his lies. And every time he comes to me and he says God's not there, doesn't love you, you're a loser, going nowhere, I'm just going to say it is written as the Father has loved me so I have loved you. It took two years, two years of walking by raw faith before it finally broke through to the deep places of my heart that God's really real, that he really loves me and that because he loves me I can trust him. And that's my prayer for you and that's my prayer for myself because we live in a day and age when faith is not going to get easier. Satan's lies are not going to get simpler and the temptation will be to bow under the lies and to lose the hope and the encouragement and the faith that we've got. And God says use the sword of the spirit which is the word of God because if we resist the devil he will indeed flee from us. Amen? Stand with me as we pray. Thank you Father that you've given us your word and that that word is like gold refined by fire and that while there are many things that we may not understand and many things that you say that look to be at odds with our experience. Help us to submit our experience to your truth because your word is truth and nobody who hopes in you will ultimately be left standing empty handed. Thank you for Jesus who walked the road, sits at your right hand, grants us his Holy Spirit and helps us to stay in today in a world that is increasingly dark. And then Lord having come through those trials and temptations ourselves and having restored to us our faith and our confidence in you, help us to reach out to those who struggle on the sea of life. Grab their hands, pull them out of the miry clay, make their feet to be set on the solid rock knowing that in the Lord our faith will not be in vain. Thank you so much for who you are, how much you love us and how you have revealed yourself to us Lord. Help us to walk with you faithfully. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:48:23.600; remove through 00:48:30.000] [ [CUT]Music] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:48:30.000; resume after this marked segment]