Morning. Take your Bibles and
turn with me to Ephesians chapter six. Ephesians chapter six, and
we'll be looking at verses 10 through 13. So Paul here, he
begins, in closing the epistle to the
Ephesians. And he's giving them an exhortation
to be strong in the Lord. And when we're looking at this,
it's important to remember that Paul is speaking to regenerated
persons. He calls them brethren in verse
10. He calls them brethren. And the reason why He speaks
to them in this manner is that they're the only ones that can
hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. And so he qualifies
it. This is to brethren that he's
writing this epistle to. It's not to everyone in the world.
It's to the church at Ephesus and to the church at large. where we're blessed and benefited
by this word. And so, he speaks to brethren,
telling them, be strong in the Lord, because we're the ones
who are able to hear that. We're able to hear that in the
Spirit. We walk by faith. We walk by
faith. And so when we hear this word,
we're to hear it by faith. We're to hear it by the Spirit.
And that means that we're looking to the Lord to help us to hear
this word and to believe what the Lord is saying to his people. I've titled this message, Finally,
My Brethren. Finally, My Brethren. And the
first part, I want to look at this exhortation in verse 10. And then we'll move on to verses
11 through 13. So here in this closing exhortation,
Paul says, finally, my brethren. Be strong in the Lord and in
the power of His might. And I was looking at that and
reading that earlier this week and thinking, what does it mean
to be strong in the Lord? What is Paul saying? What does
that mean to be strong in the Lord? Well, it means that we're
weak in the flesh. To be strong in the Lord is to
be weak in the flesh. Now that doesn't necessarily
mean that we're frail and sickly in the flesh, but it might. It
might include that. Sometimes brethren are weak in
the flesh and are going through trials and infirmities in their
flesh. But what Paul is speaking about,
or what we're talking about in in being strong in the Lord as
opposed to being strong in the flesh is we're not looking to
the tactics. We're not leaning on the strength
of our flesh. We're not looking to operate
in the way that the flesh operates, the way we scheme and try to
work things in our favor when things aren't going well for
us in the flesh. And so the strength of each one,
the strength of the flesh, the strength of the Spirit, only
one can be true. We call that mutually exclusive. Only one can be true. And so
we're either walking in the light of Christ, or we're walking by
the Spirit, and we're led by the Spirit of God. And so we're
either walking by the spirit or we're walking in the flesh,
and that means we're walking in darkness. We're walking as
in the former conversation. And Paul speaks of this in Ephesians
4.22. And he describes this walk as
in our old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. Let me just repeat that again,
since I know we're a bit distracted. We're either walking in the light
of Christ, being led of the Spirit, or we're walking by the flesh.
And we're walking according to that corrupt nature. And so both
can't be true. One is strong and the other weak.
And one is weak when the other is strong. And so Paul's saying,
don't walk in the flesh, walk in the Lord, brethren. When we're thinking of being
strong in the Lord, we're not leaning on our fleshly wisdom
and our fleshly strength and being turned to our own devices. We're looking to the things of
the Lord. The Lord's not going to have
his people being puffed up arrogant and proud of the things that
they pulled off and the things that we were able to accomplish
going back to the old man to to get somebody who's done something
to us. So how are we to be strong in
the Lord and in the power of his might? Well first of all
We're going to see that this is a continual looking to Jesus
Christ. We're going to be made to continually
look to Him and to see the need for us to continually look to
Him. The Lord's going to teach us that. He's going to make us
to know our need of the Lord Jesus Christ. That we'll come
to learn and understand He's all my stay. He's my strength. He's my anchor. He's exactly
what I need. And we're gonna cry out for that.
We're gonna see our need of him. And so the believer, being taught
and led by the Spirit, is gonna grow in our knowledge and understanding
of the Lord. Now what is that, what do I mean
by growing in our knowledge and understanding of the Lord? The
simplest way to understand that, that we do grow in knowledge,
But the way that we grow knowledge is we see more and more that
Jesus Christ is all. That's what we're learning in
everything. And all the nuances and all the
little variations that we experience in growing in knowledge, it's
all bringing us to see that Jesus Christ is all. And as you grow
in your understanding of doctrine, it's leading you to see that
Jesus Christ is all, and to behold his glory and his majesty and
wisdom in working all things together for our good, to the
praise, honor, and glory of God. His name and so we're learning
that we don't keep ourselves But that Christ is the great
shepherd and we're seeing how he Leads or stops and prevents
or brings us another way It's all by his wisdom as the great
shepherd leading his sheep and bringing us Along and he's the
one keeping us and we find that It's not by my strength. I ruined
it or I would have ruined it but the Lord is kept the work. The Lord makes me strong. I'm strong in the Lord. I'm strong
in his might, in his power, and not this flesh. And then second,
we see what our Lord tells us is that He's going to teach us
these things through afflictions and tribulations and persecutions. It doesn't matter. All these
things that come against the flesh, that weaken us in the
flesh, they're all under the hand of our Good Shepherd. They're all in the hand of the
Lord. Listen to a few of these things that Paul says. in Romans
5.3. He says, We glory in tribulations,
knowing that tribulation worketh patience. Then, when writing
to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.12, all that will live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution. And then to the Thessalonians,
1 Thessalonians 3, 3, he said, no man should be moved by these
afflictions. For yourselves know that we are
appointed there too. And so with all these tribulations
and persecutions and afflictions, we're coming to know and understand
that we don't war against these things and we don't endure these
things by our own strength and our own devices, but rather by
the goodness and the mercy and the grace of our God. stripping
us of strength in the flesh, bringing us to our knees, bringing
us to see our need of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see how
the Lord dealt with Paul. We see Paul and how he was used
of the Lord to affect great things in the kingdom of God, by the
power of God, not by his own strength, not by his own abilities. And so in 2 Corinthians 12, There
in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9 and 10, this is where Paul is speaking
of his infirmity in the flesh, the weakness, the thorn in his
flesh that the Lord gave him. And Paul sought the Lord three
times to remove that thorn in the flesh, to heal him or to
take it away. And the Lord said to Paul in
verse 9, 2 Corinthians 12, 9, My grace is sufficient for thee,
for my strength is made perfect in weakness. And Paul says most
gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that
the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure
in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I
strong. And so we see that through all
these infirmities and the reproaches, the necessities, the persecutions,
the distresses that we come into, they're all given to make us
look to Christ for help. They're, they're, they're, they're,
We see our weaknesses and we see that Christ is all the more
necessary for us. We need him. We're brought to
behold our need of the Lord more and more. And so this is the
fruit of the Spirit in his child. It's the fruit of the Spirit
in his child so that the child of God as the bride of Christ
is made to look to her husband. She's looking to him to guide
her, to lead her, to teach her, to bring her through all the
difficulties that his church goes through. Her husband is
bringing her through these things and he's providing for her and
watching out for her and caring for her and giving her things
needful. He does that as the husband of
His Bride, the Church. This is walking in the Spirit. This is not trusting to our own
strength. This is being led by the Spirit. Paul says it this way over in
Romans 8 verses 14 and 15. For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You're the children of
God that are being led by the Spirit. For ye have not received
the spirit of bondage again to fear. Our God isn't turning us
to our flesh to work godliness and to work righteousness, just
the opposite. He's showing us that our flesh
is weak and that Christ is all. He's all our strength. He hasn't
turned us back to the flesh where we'll be laboring in a spirit
of bondage and fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption
whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And what the Lord's saying to
us there is that By faith, we're breathing out to the Spirit,
Lord, help me. Lord, keep me from turning to
my flesh. Lord, keep me from responding
in the flesh and getting angry and striking back when I'm struck
by another. Lord, keep me ever looking to
Christ. I need your grace. I need your
strength. Lord, help me. And that's breathing
out and crying out in the spirit, Abba, Father, save me, keep me,
forgive me. Lord, I need you. I don't have
it in myself. The psalmist said it this way
in Psalm 121, verses one and two. I will lift up my eyes unto
the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from
the Lord. which made heaven and earth. And so the Lord's causing us,
he's turning us to look away from self. He's causing us to
look for his salvation, which he abundantly and freely, graciously
provides in his son. And so Paul sees through all
these infirmities and reproaches, necessities, persecutions, and
distresses, that these things result in what? He said it there
in 1 Corinthians 12, nine, I believe it was. He says that the power
of Christ rests upon me. It's that the power of Jesus
Christ would rest upon me. And so, our God's teaching us
to look to Him, to look to Him, to stop looking to self, and
to look to our Lord and Savior. Now, from this exhortation, before
I move on to the next verses, we gain these three things here
in the Lord teaching us to be strong in Him. So first, every
exhortation that's led up to this point and every exhortation
that follows here from Paul in this epistle, these things are
impossible for us in the flesh. We learn that these things are
impossible for us to do. We don't have the ability of
this flesh to be strong in the Lord. That's something the spirit
has to give to us. And second, we see that by His
power and grace, that's what's overcoming our enemies. The enemies
of this flesh, the enemy of our flesh, literally, the enemy of
sin and Satan and the grave and death and all the warfare that
we go through, it's Christ's power and grace that puts that
down. It's Christ that does that. And
third, though we're weak and insufficient in ourselves, the
blessing is that we see the sufficiency that our God has given to us
in his Son, Jesus Christ. These are all the things that
the Lord is teaching us as he's leading us by the Spirit. He gives us these things to know.
All right, now let's move on. 2 verses 11-13 where Paul is
building off this exhortation to be strong in the Lord and
in the power of His might. Now in Ephesians 6.11 he says
put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil. What is the whole armor of God? That's what the Lord is always
teaching us. The whole armor of God is Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ is the armor of God. This is a metaphor that we're
being given here, looking at this armor, but it's speaking
of Christ and all his benefits that he's obtained by his righteousness
in which he gives and pours out abundantly upon his people. Jesus Christ is the armor of
God. And so, What we're saying is
Christ is my protection. Christ is my defense. Christ
is the one who fights for me. He's the one who fights for the
brethren. And all the attacks and the assaults
of the evil one, Paul describes them here as the wiles of the
devil. It means he's a cunning one.
He's crafty. He's deceitful. He's artful in
his ways and he's a tricky one and he's not to be messed with
by us. We don't challenge Him. We look
to the Lord to rebuke the devil. We don't have any strength of
ourselves. We look to Christ, and Christ
is the one who rebukes our enemy, and He's the one who drives him
off. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2.11,
here again where he's speaking of the church forgiving a brother
for a grievous sin, and he's encouraging them, receive that
brother, receive that brother who's committed that gross sin,
lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we're not ignorant
of his devices. We're not ignorant of his purpose,
and his thought, and his mind, and what he's up to. We get it,
we know what he does. So if a brother will be reconciled
to you, be reconciled to them. Don't put them off because that
just gives an opportunity for the evil one to come in there
and just cause more trouble, more trouble. That was from 2
Corinthians 2.11, by the way. Now for this cause, Paul says
back in Ephesians 4, verse 26 and 27, he said, be ye angry
and sin not. Don't let the sun go down upon
your wrath, neither give place to the devil, because these things
always crop up. There's always an occasion to
be angry with your brother. to be angry with your spouse,
to be angry with a friend, to be angry about something. But
he says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Be reconciled
to your brother. Be reconciled to your fellow.
Be reconciled to one another. Be watchful in prayer because
that's how the enemy operates. And he gets in there and he finds
that root of bitterness and he starts tapping on it and getting
it all hot and bothered. And so Paul says, don't let the
sun go down on your anger. Why? Because you're giving more
and more time for him to operate and to affect his craft in our
hearts and minds. But our God here in our text,
we see he's given us armor and he's given us weapons for the
purpose of our protection, to keep us, to keep our hearts.
And it's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's his gospel. It's the doctrine
of Christ, the testimony of Jesus Christ. It's the good news that
we're his. And all this world is not our
kingdom. It's not his kingdom. It's all
passing away. And we have the eternal inheritance
of our God in Jesus Christ. And so, let all things be put
in that perspective. That these things that we fight
over and get upset about, they're all passing away. They're all
fading away. They're all worthless things
in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, This armor, these
pieces of armor, they're pictures of what our Lord has obtained
for us. It's a picture of what He's obtained
for us. Our Lord came as the Lamb of
God. He came in the flesh, in the
likeness of this sinful flesh, yet without sin, and is the perfect,
spotless Lamb of God, and He goes to the cross. for his people,
and he laid down his life, answering for our sins to the Father. The sins of his people, he answered
for them. He paid the price for them to
satisfy the wrath of God against you, that you and I who believe
on him go free. We go free from that wrath and
that punishment. And he died on the cross, he
was buried, he rose again, and he ascended to the right hand
of the throne of God, and these are his ascension gifts. These are the gifts which God
has given to him to divide these spoils with the strong, with
his people, whom he's made strong in himself. And so these are
all given to us for our comfort and our protection. And we'll
look at them more another time. We don't have time to get into
all of them now, but we're looking at, they're all pictures of Christ,
of Christ our Savior. All right, now, Paul, he's making
sure here that it's clear to us why we're given this armory
of our God. Look at verse 12, Ephesians 6.12. He says, for we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places. These, what Paul is saying here
is these are the kingdom of darkness coming against, trying to come
against the purpose of God. And they're coming against you
that are the Lord's people that are walking in the light and
being led by the spirit. And he's saying, we experience
these things for the gospel's sake. And these struggles, they
come upon us and these difficulties, they're much deeper than the
surface the first surface appearance of why these things come. A lot
of times when, well all the time, when we walk in the flesh, when
we're just doing our thing, and we're just looking out for ourselves,
and our mind is not on the Lord, we see difficulties from another
person as, look at this guy, he's just trying to make trouble
for me. They're just being a pain to me, and they're just trying
to give me a hard time, or we get upset with the system, or
the way things are, and we let these things bother us. But Paul
is saying, understand that this darkness which is coming to try
you is coming against the light of the gospel and they're troubling
you for your faith in Christ. Remember Christ, look to Christ,
don't let these things trouble you and move you out of your
rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says we don't wrestle against
flesh and blood. That's not what we're doing.
We're not wrestling against that person in front of you who's
giving you a hard time. That's just flesh and blood. But that's really not what's
going on. There's more to it that's coming to try you. Turn
over to 2 Corinthians 10. 2 Corinthians 10 and look at
verses 3-5 with me. Paul writes, For though we walk
in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of
our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling
down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,
and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." When your mind is set upon the
Lord, it's much easier to deal and process why someone's giving
you such a hard time. And when your mind is on Christ,
you're not going to respond to them in the flesh in the same
way and just keep escalating it and making it worse and worse.
Set your mind on the Lord Jesus Christ. Be mindful of Him, praying
for His strength and His grace that He keep that He keep our
hearts, that He keep us knowledgeable, that these things are just that,
they're just things that are passing away. And so, our Lord
says, show them kindness, be kind to them, be gentle with
them that war against you. In Romans 12, verses 17 through
19, Romans 12, 17 through 19, Paul, he says, Recompense or don't pay back
any man evil for evil. Don't do that. Even if you think
they deserve it, don't pay back evil for evil. Provide things
honest in the sight of all men. And if it be possible, as much
as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. And that doesn't
mean that you can't talk to one another if they're offending
you or giving you a hard time. talk to them in kindness, and
try to seek peace with them, and to reconcile with them. Dearly
beloved, he says, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place
unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay,
saith the Lord. And I remember that when we were
going through that, one of the things that the Lord showed us
in those verses there is, they may be a child of God, And if
they're the Lord's, they may not know Him yet, but if they're
the Lord's, Christ bore that wrath. Whatever sin they're committing
against you, Christ bore that for them also, just as He bore
the wrath that was our due. So give place, don't take out
on them that which Perhaps Christ already took out took for them
in their place. So don't fight evil with evil
Be kind because the Lord may use that your faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ and staying upon him He may use that to instruct
them and they see your steadfastness in the faith of Christ and so
with this understanding Paul says now back in our text Ephesians
6 13 and Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that
ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
all, to stand. You see how he's putting us in
the mind of Christ, and that we're bringing that understanding
with us, that it's all, we're the Lord's, we're the Lord's
servants, we're his people, and we have this wonderful mystery
of God's grace and mercy in Christ revealed to us. And the best
thing we can do for anyone is to shine that light, to bear
witness to Christ, our Lord and Savior, and what he's done for
us. And after you've already lashed out at somebody, it's
really hard to then suddenly bear testimony to the Lord Jesus
Christ. So the best thing we can do is
be thinking and mindful of our Savior to begin with. And so
we stay upon our Lord and they may see your continued hope. It can have an effect on people
when they see that this person just keeps going back to Christ
and they love the Lord and all they talk about is the Lord and
they keep leaning upon Him and that may be the thing that the
Lord uses to conquer their rebellious heart and to recover them by
His grace just as we've been delivered from eternal death
by His grace. Paul, he repeats this in verse
13, he says, take unto you the whole armor of God. Well, back
in verse 11, he said basically the same thing when he said,
put on the whole armor of God. Now, why do you repeat a thing?
Why do any of us repeat something? A lot of times we repeat something
when it's important, right? You'll say something because
of the importance of it. you may say something to someone
when you feel like they're not really considering the weight
and the importance of what you're saying. I would imagine as a
teacher, you say something to the kids, you tell the class
something that's important, and then you repeat a thing once
the context is known better. So you'll tell them something
important, You'll then give them the context of why it's important,
and then you'll go back and you can repeat it again, because
now they have the context and understand, oh, this is why they
said that. Most of the time, you and I learn
that by experiencing it the hard way, right? Then we go, oh, that's
why my parents said that. That's why this person told me
that. And I didn't understand what
they meant, but now I get it because I've experienced it.
I understand the context. it and so Paul tells the brethren
to put on the whole armor of God and then what did he do in
between right in verse 11 he says put on the whole armor of
God then in verse 12 he says because this is the enemy that
we face this is what's going on this is the context that we're
in we're in this warfare the spiritual warfare all the time
all the time now having explain the context, he repeats it again
to them, take unto you the whole armor of God. And so I just want
to highlight that because again when we go out of here you take
that with you, that context. There's the spiritual warfare.
Lord, help me. Lord, help me. All right, now,
to that end, as we're closing up, I already said we'll look
more at the armor at another time, the pieces. They're all
blessings in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's all of what he's obtained
and given to us in himself. But I do want to call your attention
to verse 18. beginning of verse 18 Paul says
praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit
so in conclusion Paul says praying always now go back to the beginning
in verse 10 when Paul said be strong in the Lord and in the
power of his might that's a prayerful thing that's a prayerful thing
We don't have the ability in this flesh to be strong in the
Lord or to be strong in the power of His might. The flesh doesn't
have the capacity to do such a thing. That tells us it's a
prayerful thing. We're praying, Lord, keep me
strong in you. Lord, keep me looking to you.
Lord, keep me from getting puffed up and proud and arrogant and
vain in this flesh, because that's what I'm going to do. Lord, except
you keep me by your grace. And I want to glorify you. I
want to walk in the light of your truth in Christ. And so
that's a breathing out. Abba, Father, keep me, Lord. Keep my heart. Because I'm not
always looking at those things in my flesh. In fact, I'm never
looking at those things in my flesh. I only look at them when
my heart's set upon you, Lord. So keep my heart. Keep me looking. All right? We begin in prayer, and as Paul
says, we close in prayer. Always praying throughout because
there's always something that knocks that off and turns our
hearts back to fleshly things. So I pray the Lord bless that
to your hearts, brethren. Amen. Let's close in prayer. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your mercy. Lord, help us, we're so easily
distracted, I'm so easily distracted, and I pray that you take these
words and that you do bless them to the hearts of your people,
that our hearts and minds would be praying always, be crying
out, Abba, Father, walking in the Spirit, asking you and looking just to walk in you and to keep
looking to Christ and be a testimony of the grace of our God in us
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray for our brethren,
those that are sick and not feeling well. We ask that you would comfort
them and help them and that you would strengthen this body. It's
in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we pray, amen.