I cautioned us, I admonished
us, which includes a warning that as we begin to purpose to
unify as the people of God, and then as we were submitting ourselves
to the learning of that word. And as we came to the place in
our history where we began to be actively impressed by the
spirit of God to covenant from that which we've learned, then
therefore would come a war. A full frontal attack to the
people of God by the enemy of God, Satan and the demons. And
then, lo and behold, as Paul then says, wow, this will happen
for you as well, Christians in Ephesus, I will show you that
the power belongs to God. And so, as I told you clearly
just several weeks ago and throughout the last year as we journeyed
through this letter, this war is ongoing. But we are victorious in Christ
Jesus. And then I warned us that there
would be then an oppressive attack in many ways and in many forms,
because now not only were we ending up our time in learning
what it meant to be the people of God, which is the knowledge
of the mind, but then all of a sudden through the power of
the Holy Spirit, that wisdom or that knowledge becomes wisdom.
And then we live out that which we've learned because facts and
truth are powerless if it has no effect on how we live. It's
garbage, just as faith with acknowledgement of who Christ is without the
power to walk before him righteously in worship and covenant. It's useless faith, faith without
works is the dead faith, non-saving faith. We must be careful not
to suppose that just because we followed some precepts or
because we followed the protocol, because we can pass a test that
we are indeed in Christ. But we must surely forever and
ever, every single day, see if we are indeed the people of God.
And if we are recognized, it is not a lone ranger that we
are, but a lone body. Who is not alone, but a single
body who is The body of the head who is Jesus Christ, the savior,
creator, sustainer of the church. There is no powerless Christian
except the one who professes falsely he is in Christ or the
one who purposely rebels for a season against Christ. The war has forever been and
will forever be until the day when Christ comes. in glory. And the Son of Man comes. And
the King of Kings comes. And He sets right then everything. Ephesians 1.10, under the feet
of Christ who is the King of it all. And as Paul has told us now in
this 6th chapter, verse 10, I will read through verse 13 and we
will talk there from. Finally, be strong in the Lord
and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God
that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers and against the authorities and against the cosmic powers
over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil
in the heavenly places. Take up the whole armor of God
that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done
all to stand firm. Now, there's a theme here, and
today we will embark on that which is ours to do, which is
to stand, to withstand, to put on. Today, I want to focus on
that. Look what Paul says. Be strong. Verse 11, put on. Second part,
that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
all these cosmic powers that rule over the present darkness
in which we live in this world that we do not see, for it is
cosmically, supernaturally at work against us. I made clear
to you, church, last week That there is no battle against God,
but it is a war against the people of God, for there is no enemy
of God that even has a stake in a fight against Him. But then the therefore is this.
Take up the whole armor that you may be able to withstand
in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. And so what I want to do is I
want to I want to focus in on a few things that few people
would even preach in this, not that it's not there, but I don't
want to assume that you are tracking with what I'm thinking, what
I think Paul's thinking and not only thinking, but say. And then
also, I want to be self-serving. I want to be honest with you.
I want to be self-serving in taking the entire letter to the
Ephesians as we journey together with all of the things that we
know that we are, all of the things that we know that God
has done, and all the things that we've been commanded to
follow in the will of God, and then show us as a people what
that means for two weeks from now as we journey in the war
together as a church. This is not a joke. It's not
a game. God did not call us here that
we might just have fellowship on Sundays and do Christian things. God called us here that we might
embark against the powers of darkness for the sake of the
name of God and stand firm in the power of the Spirit of God
and proclaim the gospel to ourselves and to the world. This is not
a joke. It is not a game. It is war and
it is life and death. This is not a television show.
It is not a song. It is not a poem. It is not a
story. It is indeed a war. And we are in it. And we are
a player in it. But we play under the firm power
of God and therefore we stand. And so I want to look at this.
And I want you to see it and I want you to think about what
you think when you see the word stand firm or withstand. Most of us in the room, all of
us in the room, I would say of any age. have encountered war. We know what it's like. Not just
spiritual warfare, but I mean physical warfare. We've been
alive long enough, even if we were children, to know what it
looks like to see war. We've seen it on the news. We've
seen it in the newspapers. We've seen it in our history
books. We understand what it looks like. We understand that
the devil is not the so-called demon in the toaster that burns
our toast on Sunday mornings, but he's the unseen power of
the horrors of Auschwitz. and the SS and the German Nazi
regime. He's the unseen power of Saddam
Hussein, who murders hundreds of thousands of children to keep
men in line so that they would not rebel against him. He's the
unseen power of Herod. He's the unseen power of Nebuchadnezzar.
He's the unseen power of Egypt's Pharaoh who murdered millions
of children so that Jesus would be killed, so that Moses would
be killed, so that the Jews would stay in their place. That's the
devil. The devil is the unseen leader
of such governed authority. But the good news is that the
devil is already done. He is at work in the world as
a lost cause, but he is not to be ignored. And when you think
of war and when you see war, you think not of standing still. You think not of standing at
all, but you think of covert operations. You think of guerrilla
tactics. You think of oppressive or marching
on the enemy and pursuing that ability that you've been trained
to have that you might go after the enemy. You don't think of
standing at all. As a matter of fact, you think
of standing as you see those that stand beside the road on
a shovel. And you wonder why nine men holding shovels look
into the hole while one man digs with it. And you think to yourself,
how lazy are the men who stand. And how awful is it that that
one has to dig so hard. Friends, be very careful not
to suppose that which we do in the flesh with that which we
are called to do in the Spirit. I'm not supposing we make much
of the verbs in this. I'm not supposing that we are
to take a literal, simplistic view of, oh, we should withstand.
So we stand. We do nothing. We stand. That's
not the point. As you'll see, as we've taken
the armor of God on, there's an action there as we are supposed
to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, with the
hope that God has worked in us all good deeds and righteousness,
including faith through grace. We understand that God is at
work, but that we are also trusting fully standing in the promises
of God, not in our own efforts, not on our own devices. I heard
a quote from a pastor and I don't even know who he was. It was
a recording of an old sermon. And he says that there is no
pastor that has ever preached Christ while thinking himself
clever. And I want you to say, I want you to understand that's
what Paul says in 2 Corinthians, chapter four, that there is no
clever devices of men. that will indeed persuade the
darkness to move back. There is no clever way of presenting
the gospel that will persuade some differently than the bold
statement of the truth. There is no device or inclination
or desire that we can throw toward groups of individuals in the
name of evangelism or missions and expect that that be effective
in their lives as seeing or hearing or responding to the gospel.
And friends, I would tell you this, that there is no cleverness
or ability that you hold within your flesh that could stand against
the schemes of the devil. You cannot be a Christian in
your own power. You cannot stay a Christian in
your own power. You cannot stand against the
devil in your own power. You cannot be the body of Christ
in unity in your own power. So I'm not supposing we make
much of these little verbs, but I want to acknowledge the action
of solidity as Paul is showing us in the idea of standing firm. And so let me give you some thought.
I'm going to paint a lot of pictures today with words. What does it
mean in your mind to stand firm? That means that in your heart
and your mind and in your resolve, you are unwavering. You are unwavering. You are not tossed to and fro
like children in the waves of doctrine. You are firm in your
foundation. As a matter of fact, you have
a foundational. You are foundational in your
faith. You are foundational in the gospel of the power of God.
You are foundational. Therefore, you are solid through
and through. You are bold. You stand boldly before the throne
of grace. You stand boldly against the
enemy. You stand boldly and proclaim the gospel. You stand boldly
in righteousness. You stand boldly, not as a sinner
running from God, but as a saint saved by grace. And you stand
strongly in the power of God's strength. And when you are standing
firmly in the power of the gospel, listen to me, church, you are
useful to the cause of Christ and to the glory of his name
as the church. And you are useful to the church. That's what I believe standing
should paint in your mind. So what about not standing? What
is the antithesis of standing? Where is the conflict then with
God's Kingdom and the kingdom of darkness when we as God's
children don't stand firm in the power of the gospel. Well,
I'd like to say, well, we're sitting now, maybe, but let's
take it for what it is in the context of warfare. In the spiritual
sense, when we're not standing, we are failing. We are failing. We are failing because we're
moving. We're running to this place, and running to that place,
and running to this church, and running to that church, and listening
to this sermon, and listening to that sermon, and running after
the next new thing, and trying to find the next new way, and
looking at this which is really important, and that author, and
this author, and we're running, and we're just soaking it all
up in such a way that we've just got to find the next new thing
that's going to make us feel the way we did yesterday. We're
moving around. This circumstance is not going
to work for me. I'm moving to this one. And this one's not
going to work. And I'm moving. And friends, it's moved in the
church. It moves in our culture. It moves in our jobs. And it
moves in our marriages. And there's no telling. There's
no other reason why marriage no longer has honor in the body
of Christ. For it has no honor because the
gospel has no honor in the body of Christ. The covenant of God
with His people has no honor because we've moved. We've moved
out of Sola Scriptura into whatever. We've moved from the foundations
of the faith, from the apostles teaching to the cultural ideals. Not only are we moving, but we're
running. We're running from that which we are being told to face.
We are running from that which God has promised to deliver us
from because we cannot believe that God will actually take us
through it. And so we run from that and we
run to the prize which our heart desires. And according to John,
when we run to that which we desire and it's not Christ, we
aren't in God and the love of God is not in us. So we love
the things of the world. And friends, the things of the
world are peace and harmony and comfort. If you want comfort
in this world and you want an easy life so you can cut your
grass on Saturday and work and get off every day and enjoy the
seasons of the world and you want to have your children grow
up and stay close and never worry and never fret, then give your
life to Satan and live your best life now. Because it's the only
way you're going to have it. And the Joel Osteen of the world
can write books about it and people can flock to it. It's
not the gospel of Jesus. Jesus Christ promises that if
you're in Him, you will suffer just as He did. And that if there's
a battle against you, do you think the devil fights unbelievers?
No, he gives them everything they want. Just as Satan took
Jesus Christ, the God-man, the creator of everything, and took
Him out and said, look, right here, you've not eaten in 40
days, and you're hungry, and your body needs food, and you
are powerful. Take this stone and make it into
bread. I tempt you, Jesus, with that
which you need and must have, and you can make it of your own
time." And Jesus says, Oh no. For man does not live on bread
alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
And in John 6, Jesus preaches that same sermon to those who
followed Him across the ocean, six and a half, seven miles to
Capernaum. And He says, they said, Teacher. Oh, isn't that awfully ironic? Teacher. Rabbi, the highest honor
in first century Palestine. There was no greater honor than
to be called Rabbi. Teacher. God alone had the honor
above Teacher. And they said, oh, teacher, where
did you come over here? We didn't see you come. And Jesus
turns and He knows all men. He knows your heart, too, by
the way, brethren, sister. And He says, you do not come
after Me because of My glory and My power and My might and
the essence of My being, but you come after Me because I filled
your stomachs. And you want your stomachs full. Friends, when we're running from
the war, we're trying to fill our bellies full of the world.
And the world has been given to the devil. And it's his. As he told Jesus, he says, look,
if you just bow down and worship me, I'll give you all that. All the kingdoms of this world
are mine to govern. And you can have them all. And Jesus, using the Word of
God, says no. I worship the Lord God alone, not you. He tempts them and says, you've
got angels at your beck and call, and it is written, if you just
call, that your foot would not even strike the ground. If you
jump off of this temple onto the dirt, you will not die. What
a glorious example and display of your power, Jesus. The power,
the pride of power. The pride of possessions and
the lust of the flesh. 1 John 2, 15-17. And Jesus says, it is also written,
you should not put your Lord God to the test. Friends, when
we run away from the fight, when we don't stand firm, we test
God. We say, God, You're not enough. And if You don't want
me in this, then You stop me from running and I'm leaving
to see You. That's a blasphemous, satanic prayer. Because the Scripture
tells us what the will of God is for our lives. And so we're
failing, we're moving, we're running. But you know what else
not standing firm is? We're losing. We're losing the
battle even. And as we lose the battle against
Satan, guess what it does in our lives? Our lives get easier.
Our lives get better. Our lives get more gloriously
simple, and we're able to enjoy it, and we're looking, and we
don't need Christ. We don't need prayer. We don't
desire the fellowship of the saints. You don't think I'm kidding? You think I'm kidding? Just devoid
yourself of spiritual things for about two weeks. You'll have no more conflict
inside. Except when the Spirit of God
says, You're Mine. Love Me. Quit retreating. You're running. You're retreating. You're advancing
the enemy when you're not standing still in your own power. I know
we'll flank the devil. I'll flank. I'll do this. You
know what flanking is in the world today? Let's do the supernatural
jig and just dance a little jig for Jesus and that'll get the
devil out of here. I'm not trying to talk about
people who like to dance jigs. I'm talking about people who
think by doing things and saying things that they have some kind
of authority over Satan's activity. Well, the opposite of standing
is avoidance, the opposite of standing is fickleness, the opposite
of standing is worry, the opposite of standing is being whimsical,
just whoo. Well, let me close the opposite
of standing with the antithesis of what I close the standing.
I said, if you're standing firm in the power of the gospel, you
are useful to the body of Christ. Therefore, if you are not standing
firm, you are useless. And I would like to say worthless. So what do we do? Well, the scripture
teaches us here we are to stand firm. How do we stand firm? How are we able to stand firm? Well, it's not as simple as it
sounds, but it's simply stated for us by taking up, what does
he say, the whole armor of God and putting it on. Next week
we'll look at several of those elements of the armor. Panocleia. There's your word
for the day. I'll take 10 cents after the
sermon. Panocleia is the Greek word for whole armor. And what
it conveys in its meaning is a complete equipping, fully adorned
and ready for all battle. It is not halfway done. It is
not with this piece and not this piece. It is a full equipped
adornment for battle. Paul is most definitely alluding
to Old Testament times and most certainly regarding the present
culture there where Roman soldiers were continually adorned and
ready for battle, walking the streets of the day. It was not
foreign to their ears, whether they be Jew or Greek, to understand
what it meant to be panopleia, fully prepared, completely equipped. Well, there's some things I want
you to understand about the armor of God. Just in the statement,
put on the full armor of God. First, it is not our armor. It's God's armor. It is God's
equipping. It is God's working in us. It is God's preparation for us
to walk in before the foundations of the world. Sound familiar? Ephesians 2.10. For we are Christ's
workmanship created to do good works in which God created beforehand
for us to walk in. So in that, number two, we are
able to take up the armor of God because God has granted it. Paul has commanded it. Therefore,
God has granted it. It is ours to adorn. It's God's armor, but we put
it on. And the reason we put it on is
because we are standing in formation as the people of God together
with one another because we are in the fight. Just a review from
last week. The fourth thing you need to
understand about the armor of God is that standing fully armored
is faithfulness. It's faithfulness. First and
foremost, trusting fully in the person of Jesus Christ as the
victor over this war, as the one who has saved us already,
as the one who has so certainly in Romans 8 glorified us in future,
that the grace for the future is sufficient today to sustain
us to then. So standing is faithfulness.
What is it faithfulness to? To the commands of God. Friends,
don't misinterpret what spiritual warfare is. It's not an alternative
to the Christian life. It is the Christian life. Spiritual
warfare and battles, standing firm in the full armor of God,
is not a secondary thing that some Christians should be doing,
but it's the primary thing that all Christians are to do. It
is the body of Christ standing firm in faithfulness to the commands
of God as the people of God. God's people collectively stand
firmly in obedience to Him. That is what it means to stand.
That's why this is on the tail end of an incredible treatise
of how the body of Christ came to be, who we are in Christ,
what we were, now how we are, and what we're supposed to do. Now let me tell you this. I believe, finally, in the understanding
of the whole armor of God, and this is just sort of an overview,
we'll get more deeply into the pictures of it starting next
week, that the armor of God protects us as Christians faithfully. But it faithfully protects us
as we live out our Christian life as the church. The armor
of God doesn't protect us when we rebel against God. Because
we're not wearing it. The armor of God doesn't protect
us when we skip church because we're not wearing it. The armor
of God doesn't protect us when we hate our neighbor because
we're not wearing it. How can you wear truth and righteousness
and the gospel of salvation when you're disobeying it? How dare we claim the faithfulness
of God's protection when we walk in disobedience to him? We're
not wearing the armor of God. So guess what? Everything that
flies at us hits us. Now, sometimes and you might
say, well, wow, that's a that's a hard prescription there. That
must be what's wrong with my life. There's a difference of
being hit by the enemy's arrows and being shot at. I would say
to you that being shot at is just as unnerving. But as we're protected by the
faithfulness of God, what we're doing as the church, think about
this. This is the big picture of the
end. We're faithfully living out, awaiting the final call
of victory in Christ Jesus. Luke 21, 27. And then they will
see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great
glory. Do you believe that? Yeah, I
believe it's true. That's not what belief is. The
devil knows that's true. Do you believe that to stay on? Have you trusted fully? Is that
your call? Is that when all hell has broken
loose in front of you and you smile and you go, wow, Christ
is coming in glory and power. This isn't touching me. I'm Jesus. I belong to Him. I'm His, not
yours. That's power. So then it comes to this place
in this text where it says this standing firm in what? Verse
13, take up the whole longer of God that you may be able to
withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.
So what is the evil day? Sometimes people like to play
games with this. Sometimes people like to say,
oh, you know, the evil day is the day of the son of perdition
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you'll hear and you
multiply this and you see the wind blow and you pass gas that way
and it comes this way. Then we're all see. Look at the
smoke. Now, how about look at the text?
What evil days? We'll look at the New Testament
alone. Everything that was happening there were evil days. How about
today? There are evil days. What are
the days of evil? The days of evil is every day
we wake up and the enemy is still in control of the earth. Now,
what do I mean by the control of the earth? God's given him
authority over it. God has made him the prince of
the power of the air, and he's given them the sons of disobedience,
that he might wreak havoc on the earth, that he might be God's
instrument, partly, for judgment. And he will be God's object of
wrath along with all who do not believe the gospel of Jesus.
So let me paint some pictures. Twenty things that came to my
mind about the day of evil relative to us. First, we know these are
the days of evil because of persecution. We know that we're in the evil
days because the church is highly persecuted, not in America, though
we are pressed and pinched. We're not persecuted, per se,
even in the most weirdest of circumstances, even in the incarceration
of very good friends of mine for proclaiming the gospel on
the streets of America as Realistically, that is in our head. That's still
not persecution to the scale of what persecution is going
to be and is for some people today as we're enjoying our somewhat
cool opportunity to worship and to hear the word of God. Our
sisters and our brothers and their children are being dismembered. One after the other in front
of each other. Because they were found grouped
together in prayer. hiding in the woods or under
logs or in bridges or in sewer pipes. It took them sometimes
a day to get there because they had to covertly gather in different
parts of different towns so that they wouldn't look like they
were all going to the same place. Some of our brothers and sisters
in Christ, before we finish this service and hug necks and go
home to eat some dinner, will have no tongue to swallow their
food with because they won't stop preaching the gospel. That's
persecution. And it's real. And it's evil. We know that we live in evil
days because of the calamity that takes place in the world.
We see the horrors of Mass shootings. We see the horrors of rape every
day. There's someone dying in Chatham
County. Every day, someone is being murdered in the major cities
of America. Over nothing. Over a look, a
stare, a domestic dispute. Over $5. Over drugs and alcohol. Over farm equipment and dogs. People are dying. We know we
live in an evil day because there's doubt, there's hopelessness,
there's despair. We know we live in an evil day
because there's false doctrine and there's people that teach
a false Jesus and a false gospel and a false ecclesiology, which
is the church. We know that we live in an evil
day because there's a false witness. There are people who proclaim,
I'm a Christian, but there's no fruit in their life. There's
no love in their life. There's no obedience in their
life. There's no growth in their life. There's no desire for any
of that in their life. It's a false witness. We know
we live in evil days because there's a false covenant. People
say that we're in the gospel of Jesus and we're covenanted
together as a church. But yet there's no concern in
their hearts toward growing, toward accountability, toward
obedience. We know we live in evil days
because legalism reigns in the body of Christ in some circles
because people think it's more important to obey every precept
of the covenant law of ceremonies rather than obey the New Testament
law and the New Testament covenant of grace in Jesus Christ by his
grace. People think the length of your
hair and the amount of makeup on your face have more to do
than loving your brother and growing in the knowledge of the
gospel. Well, I would suggest to you,
as I quote an unnamed theologian from years ago, if your God's
no bigger than the length of the hair of your eyeliner, get
a new one. We know we live in evil days
because of pride, because of prejudice, and because all things
righteous seem to point to politics in some way in America. God have
mercy on us. Thankfully, as the church he
has. See how silly it is. God have mercy on America. God
has promised to destroy America. God has promised to destroy Europe.
God has promised to destroy the governments of all nations. He
Christ alone will be the ruler of all people. As their judge
and destroyer or as their head of his own body. Should we pray
for our country? Yes. Should we be active in politics
and exercise our rights? Absolutely. But not in lieu of
the gospel. Not in lieu of the proclamation
thereof. We share television and shoes
and the beach more than we share Christ. I know that we're in evil days
because of the acts of wickedness that we see across the world.
The flippant apathy toward murder. The flippant apathy toward the
abuse of elderly. They're not important anymore.
Just put them away. Euthanize them if you could.
The apathy toward children who get two to three meals a day
in this very county. It's wicked. Don't even have
food to eat. The apathy toward abortion. And things of that nature. We
know we're in the evil days because, number 10, the world glories
in wickedness. The world creates TV shows for
us to look into a private home to see wickedness play out, and
we say it's entertainment. The world glories in drunkenness
by having movies called Hangover and Drunk Party and all these
different things. We glory in wickedness and debauchery. We glory in sexual immorality. We glory in slavery. We glory
in murder and incest. We glory as a culture. We're in a wicked world. And
the days are evil. And just on the opposite end
of that, we're in evil days because of the apathy towards such things.
Oh, that's the end. Don't worry about that. Don't
worry about that. God will take care of that. It's
ok. I know we're in the evil days
because of wrongly placed faith. People put their faith in government.
People put their faith in the church. People put their faith
in all sorts of things. Into a man-made God and a man-made
religion and a man-made culture. People put their faith in all
sorts of places. That's a wicked thing. We're in an evil day. We're in evil days because people
long for peace apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we
could just do this, then we could have peace. If we could just
see this, then we could have peace, not only in our personal
lives, but in the world at large. If we could just make education
a top priority, there could be peace. If we could just go and
clothe those people, there'd be peace. No, if we go clothe
those people, they won't be naked, but there still will be no peace
without Christ. If we feed those people, there'd
still be war, and there's never going to be peace without Christ. In the same way, we're in the
days of evil because people think there'll be harmony on earth
if the church just does its job. There will never be harmony because
until Satan is put under the feet of Jesus and cast into the
lake of fire and all the demons and all the reprobate with him,
there will never be harmony. But where is there harmony? In
the body of Christ that shines like a light in the city on a
hill. And the world looks at it and
it goes, there's peace there and there's harmony there. Let's
kill them. Let's take that city down because
they hate Christ. That's why they devise new ways
of coming up with peace and harmony. We live in an evil day because
no one wants accountability to obey the Word of God. Governments
don't want it. Courts don't want it. Judges,
for the grace of God, don't want it. Nobody wants accountability
to the Word of God. Even people who call themselves
Christians in the Word They come to church and they say, oh, yes,
I love you and I worship. And then when a brother or an
elder say or a sister say, hey, you, the word says this, what's
up? It's none of your business. It
is your business. If your finger turned black and
starts to ooze, you're going to go see about it. If your brother
or your sister turned black and start to ooze, you're going to
see about them. And I'll list some of these in
closing. The last five on this particular
issue is I believe we're in the days of evil because everybody's
faith is now personal. This is my faith. Next one is
everybody's church is now personal. This is my church. And they're
not even talking about the people. They're talking about the place.
We know we're in a day of evil because nobody who was in the
church has to a large degree or even committed to the word,
much less to the body. So there's a failure to commit. And then there's a change of
the call of God every day. Well, believe God's calling me
here. Believe God's calling me here. Believe God's calling me here.
You know what? The Bible's clear. God calls us to obey His Word,
to love one another, to live as a people unified for the cause
of the grace of God, to praise His glory. And finally, I know we're in
the dark days. Because so many people are in
the battle and they've lost the fight because there's a lack
of gospel power to maintain the covenant of grace in one's own
life. And they're not able to consider how they're going to
be active in Christ for the church because they're too busy trying
to be active in Christ for themselves. And so then I think the question
that came to me that should hopefully be in your mind. So, OK, we are
in the dark days. Good. Yeehaw. I'm feeling pretty
bad. And we've got to put on the arm
of God. We've got to stand firm. So what
do we do while we stand? Well, we've learned that over
the last year. That's what we do. That's the spiritual battle.
That's the march to Zion. That's the onward Christian soldiers.
That's what we do. We're not out there slicing up
the world and poking at the wicked going, oh yeah, you bleed sin.
I see you. It doesn't work that way. As
a matter of fact, it's commanded for us not to do that in the
world, but that we should look carefully at each other, first
by looking at the log in our own eyes, then looking at the
speck in each other's eyes, and then someone will help you get
that log out of yours, and you'll help them get the speck out of
theirs, and we'll all be one happy family, powerfully, as
we have discord and disagreement and then unity in the power of
Christ. So what do we do while we wait?
And it's going to be a lot here and it's not going to go as smoothly
as you want it to. But I promise you, I will deal
with a lot of this on the 14th in detail. What do we do while
we wait? Well, number one, we celebrate
the covenant of Jesus Christ with us. We celebrate the covenant
of Christ, not me. Yes, God delights in you. Christ died for you, to save
you, so you can be part of us. You see that? We're not destroying
a personal faith. We're not making little of it.
We're just putting it where it needs to be. We don't need a
bag of fingernails. We need the fingernails to be
on the fingers, on the hand, on the wrist, on the arm, and
so forth. A bag of fingernails is creepy.
It's creepy. A bag of eyeballs, even worse. and a bag of eyeballs with a
few fingers and some fingernails, really messed up. And so in the
church, we celebrate the covenant of Christ with us. We are saved
by grace. Paul doesn't write these letters
to you and he writes them to we. So that covenant, because of
God's covenant, we need to remember that God and man are diametrically
opposed at ends, opposite of the spectrum. It's in being and in worth. But God, being holy, man owes
God obedience. It's not an option. It's owed
to him. And man has willingly rebelled
against God, willingly sinned and fallen from the glory of
God. And I swear, if I spend too much
time on this, it doesn't matter. It'll be enough. Romans 3, 23
says, For there is no distinction, verse 22, for all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God. Now think about it for
a minute. In order for man to be worthy
of life, he must perfectly glorify God in all that he is. We must
look at him and say, wow, God! I see God. That's not God, but
I see God. In every aspect of who that is,
there's God. And so I would suppose to you
that when Adam was created and then Eve was created, that if
there were any other creatures on the world, and there was demons
and angels, and the angels looked into the things of redemption.
That's a whole other story. This is so, so, so important. And the demons looked into the
things that God created. And the devil saw the visible
image of God in man. The theological term there is
Imagio Dei, image of God. Let us make man in our image. The plurality of the Godhead
making man in the image of the Godhead. And so the fullness
of the glory of God was showing and shining in Adam. In his heart,
in his purity, in his holiness, in his desire. And then they
were tempted and they fell from the perfection of God's own image. All have sinned and have fallen
short of the glory of God. You and I are short. How far
short? There's no way to measure it.
That's how far short. That's how long, rather, that
we've fallen. So what do we do? How does God
redeem man, kind, who used to display the impeccable
nature of his majesty. He became a man. Do you see the covenant? I want you to see the covenant
of the gospel. Jesus Christ is the perfect,
holy, righteous image of God in the flesh. And He is the standard
by which we will all be judged. So if you are not equal to in
worth and being and desire and obedience to Jesus, you fall
short of the glory of God and are thus justly condemned. So what had to happen? What do
we do? What's this about again? This
is how we stand firm as we wait for Christ to come. Doing that
which God's commanded us to do. We celebrate the covenant of
Christ with us. And that's why the covenant had
to be. And it was in place before God
created anything. God's love for you never began. And God's salvation for you in
Christ never had a beginning, but it had a time. And that's
why Jesus could say to the Pharisees, Abraham longed to see my day
and rejoiced in it. Oh, my gosh. So what has God done? has joyfully
and certainly expressed and given an eternal covenant so that man
could attain that which was impossible for us to achieve in Christ Jesus. So you also, Jesus says, when
you have done all that you were commanded, you will say, we are
unworthy servants. We have only done what was our
beauty. Friends, the point there is that
all the righteousness you could muster will count for nothing
in your salvation, but all the righteousness that you can perform
will prove every second and every ounce of your salvation. Do you
see that? In Galatians 3, 10, for all who
rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is
written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things
written in the book of the law and do them. In Romans 3, verse
24, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his
sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But
now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from
the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to
it. So what we see there is that the gospel covenant or that the
covenant of God and that we celebrate, that we live under, that we live
for, is expressed in and through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's
revealed from Adam to Jesus. I am not a dispensationalist. I believe in God's covenant of
grace alone. Yes, God commanded works to Adam
with the covenant of grace undergirding it. It's Adam to Jesus, not Adam
to Abraham, to the prophets, to Jesus. Let's not be honest with you. I think it's
Jesus to Jesus. Paul says there through the seed
of the woman Man would be redeemed. Genesis 3.15. The covenant of
grace. And I believe in covenant theology. I believe that God's plan of
redemption has never changed. It has always been that. Grace. Grace. Grace. It is Pelagius
who believed that man could fulfill the law through obedience. And
that there comes a man born out of a mother who is righteous
until he chooses to sin. That is heresy. It was then.
It is now. The mystery that was hidden, this text that I'm about
to read you in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 4, is a text
that God used to blow my mind in one of the darkest seasons
of my life. The reality of the covenant of the gospel of Jesus
Christ was held and was hidden until Christ, until the New Testament. Long ago and many times and in
many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. Verse 1 of Hebrews
1, But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,
whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom He also
created the world. He is, listen, He is the radiance
of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He
upholds the universe by the word of His power. This is Jesus who
fulfilled the requirements of humanity in Himself. We've fallen
from the glory of God, friends. And God, in His great love and
mercy toward us, saved us in Christ. So what is a covenant? If we're to celebrate this covenant,
what is a covenant? Well, covenant, for some people
would say, if you heard the term and we could swing back a little
bit into marriage, why did Paul just talk about marriage? Because
it perfectly portrays the gospel. That's why it was created. And here is the amazing thing
about covenant. Husbands love your wives. Paul
did not say, if they submit. He says, love your wives. Wives,
submit to your own husbands. Not if they love you, but submit
to them either way. And in that, then, the covenant
that God made with the Son was that the Son would become human
and would obey unto death. And that through that, He would
redeem a people for Himself. And it was not conditional on
what the man did or what the world did or what anybody did. Marriage is, nor has it ever
been, a 50-50 proposition. Ever. Marriage is not, I do what
I do and you do what we do and we become partners. Marriage
isn't a partnership. It's a unified, glorious, gospel
picture. Man and woman are not two people
coming together to do one thing that two people can do better
than one. They're two people coming fully together to become
one person. God came together with humanity
to make them one person with Him. To make His church one body. Another reason why I'm not a
dispensationist. A contract is a contract. A covenant
is a covenant. A contract is conditional. If this, then this. If this,
then this. If this, then this. Jesus says,
you'll hate Me. You'll run. You're My enemy.
And while you're an enemy, I'll die for you and restore you to
grace and restore you to the glory of My Father as I will
then be restored. The church then, because God has
covenanted with us in Christ despite our interaction with
it, In the same way the church covenants with each other. We
love each other. We live for each other. We disciple
each other. We rebuke each other. We hold
fast to one another. And we do it as unto the Lord.
And we serve as unto the Lord. And we do it in covenant community,
obeying the Word of God through the elders of the church in total
accountability to one another. Because that's what God has worked
in us. See, believe it or not, we're
not guilty of the sin we've committed. Yes, we're guilty in the judicial
sense that we have indeed done it. Therefore, it is ours. But
it's been atoned for. So the guilt is gone. We don't owe God atonement. He bought it with Jesus. So therefore, we stand innocent.
We stand free from what? The law. One of my favorite hymns.
It's just sort of difficult to sing and play and do, but it's
free from the law of happy condition. And it's got a 6'8 meter and
it bounces and you can juggle to it. So we don't play it much. I've never really played it,
but I love it. I love the words. Because it talks about the fact
that because of Jesus' obedience and fulfillment of the law, perfectly
holy and righteous, He gave Himself to pay for all of the glorious
shortcomings and sinful and wicked sinful things that I've done
or ever will do, or that you've ever done or ever will do, beloved.
And I will tell you now, we stand innocent and guilt-free before
God in Christ Jesus. Stop losing the battle and being
guilty of something that has been paid for. And don't you
dare slap justification in the face by saying, well, God will
understand. I'm forgiven. Well, if the Spirit
of God resides in you and you sin willfully against the commands
of Christ, you have invited and partaken in that sin with Jesus.
Don't do that. That's spurning the Son of God.
Don't do that. So because we stand innocent
and free in Jesus Christ, we are to do several things. And
here we go. We obey the Word of God. Everything
we've learned in Ephesians, we obey it. And we can and we want
to. We don't get up every day and
say, I've got to do that. That's not obedience. I don't know what
that is. That's a compulsory obedience. It's not obedience. If you want
to speed, speed. If you want to obey the law,
don't speed. We've been given the freedom
to obey the Word. We've been given the power to have faith and repentance
in Christ. We've been given the power to
have liberty from the law of ceremony. We don't have to follow
those things anymore. They're neat to learn, but they're
all dead, gone, workless now. They pointed to Jesus. And Jesus
is the perfect. Do you see what that means now?
The perfect comes. We've been given access to one
Father in Christ Jesus to go before the throne of grace to
call Him Daddy. I'm the Father. We've been given the power to
be a people of His own possession. We belong to God. We are His
inheritance. We've been given the power to
have covenant with one another. Friends, don't take lightly what
it means to be a member of a local church. It is not someone to
put you in the dirt or to marry your daughters or to hold a birthday
party. It is a powerful, supernatural
bond that should not be taken lightly. We can answer questions on that,
but we will not debate it as to the fact that it might not
be biblical. It is biblical. How can we not
be in covenant if we're to obey our elders and we're to submit
to one another and we're to disciple one another? Are we just supposed
to, if we had a billion dollars, are we supposed to give a penny
to a billion people or invest something of value with some
people? How worthless have we become when we spread ourselves
around? Why do you think the marriage covenant is husband
and wife forever together till death? Do you part? Because you
don't spread that everywhere. You don't share that with everybody. You don't share physical intimacy. You don't share spiritual intimacy. You don't share covenant with
every single person. There's a reason that there's
a uniqueness in congregational policy and a uniqueness in covenant
membership in the church. Who are your family? Well, everybody's my family.
I love him. Well, what's his name? I've never
met him before. What's his needs? I don't know. Well, you're not
ministering to him then. I don't know about you, but the
way relationships work, it takes a little bit to get to know somebody
for real, for the mask to come off and the superficial things
to fall down, for the weather and shoes and horses to not be
the conversation. Or better yet, like we do when
we plant churches, we all talk about what we hate. We're not
going to be in a church like that anymore, are we? No, let's
preach that. We're not like this, but what are we like? What are
we going to be? That's the nature of it, though.
We're all been there. And so then finally, we stand
innocent, free in Christ, and we're able to walk with a clean
conscience away from the ways of man and the traditions of
culture. And Peter asks, and John answered them, he says,
whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather
than to God, you must be the judge. Acts 4, 19. And we see
in Matthew 15, the first 20 verses there that the Pharisees, they're
trying to say, well, why do your disciples break the traditions
of the elders? They don't wash their hands. And what does Jesus say? Jesus says, why do you break
the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For the
commandment of God says, honor your father and mother. And whoever
reviles father and mother must surely be put to death. But you
say, if anyone tells his father and mother, what would you have
gained from me as given to God? He need not honor his father.
So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the Word of
God, you hypocrites. And he says, Isaiah said very,
very well when he prophesied of you. How would you like for
God to say, Isaiah prophesied of you? And then to quote these
words. This people honors me with their
lips, but their hearts is far from me. In vain do they worship
me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men. Friends,
we're free from that. Many people have come in and
out of these doors and they go, well, y'all aren't really Baptists.
Y'all don't do X, Y, Z. They're in bondage. Y'all aren't
Reformed because Y'all don't say this or do that. They're
in bondage. So that we're standing, awaiting
the Lord Jesus as His bride, together in covenant, obedience
to the apostles' teaching, submission together to the Word of God through
the leadership of the elders of the church, worshipping together
as one body to the praise of His glorious grace, not as parts
worshipping, but as one body worshipping We do this together
for an eternal reality that will one day be as pure as we now
practice and fight for such purity. So, friends, we thankful that
God has given a covenant that's not 50 percent him and 50 percent
of us, but fully him. And when Paul says to the Philippians
that the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell in Christ. The exact in front of his nature,
Hebrews 1, the radiance of his glory, and Jesus has embraced
us and pulled us into the domain of light, out of the domain of
darkness, and made an everlasting covenant. So, friends, as we
stand firm, we stand in the power of the covenant of God with us,
and we stand in the practice of that covenant with each other.
And that's where I want you to stay for the next few weeks. And I want you to see that there
may be some among us who have journeyed with us who have gone,
eh, it's not for me, because it will not be taken lightly. I am called to shepherd a people,
not be a buffet chef. Here's a taste. Here's a taste.
Here's a taste. I'm not concerned with the free
samples. I think I used that illustration
Tuesday. And so as we are fully in Christ,
let's fully rejoice in that as a body. and pray diligently as
we petition for covenant together in two weeks. Because then, we
make known to the communities, grassroots churches here. And we seek to grow deep. And
we reach up. And we reach in. And we reach
out. And we worship. And we learn. And we celebrate life in Jesus
Christ as a people. We don't spread cultural Christianity
over our backs and walk around like everybody else. So if you find yourself here
today in that boat, then praise God. If you find yourself in
a boat today that you're not quite sure where you're headed,
it's just sort of swirling into the oblivious edges of the rapids,
I pray you stand up and find faith in Jesus Christ by His
grace today. Fully trusting in the fullness of that which He
has accomplished to fully save you permanently and forever. And I pray that our children,
though they may not understand fully what we have said today,
that God would plant this stuff in their hearts, that they would
become lovers of Christ and not lovers of the world. And so with
that, let's go to the Lord in prayer, and then we fellowship
together. Lord, I don't know why, but I
feel a great burden for so many. So many that I believe may very
well be lost. So many that I believe who are
Yours, who are even in this room today, God, who are just so defeated
in their spirit, and they want to take and try to do that which
they think is best. Try to do that which they consider
to be the best route. But Father, help them to see
that the way that seems right to us leads to death. And Lord,
that we should do that which seems unnatural because it is
supernatural, and that is standing firm. that we who are in the
war, and the war has gotten a little heavy on our end of the battle,
Lord, help us to realize that it is the body of Christ that
you have foreordained to walk together in these things, that
we are not to be alone. Father, I pray for us as we move
to that day where in just a few weeks we will petition to be
a people together in covenant as you've commanded us in Scripture.
We're not doing anything apart from Scripture. And we've tested
that for some time and we've seen it and we know that we're
just laying out that which was already laid out for us by the
apostles so that it would be clear that we all know what is
expected of us and that we understand where our accountability lies
and we understand the commands of your will toward us in Christ. Father, we know that we are to
pray for one another and that we are to seek worship together
and that we are to know that the power of Jesus Christ and
the gospel of Christ is the power that comes from you that empowers
us to love with an everlasting supernatural love because you
love us first. Lord, I pray that we would be
a people who would have a fire that could not be put out. And
Lord, that sickness would put it out, and renovations would
put it out, and frustrations would put it out, and marriage
problems would put it out, and children difficulties would not
put it out. Father, that plans and vacations
would put it out. But Lord, that You would enable
us to fan into flame the good deposit put in us by Your hand,
through Your Son, the Spirit that resides within us. That
the fullness of Your power is in us. And Lord, would You fill
us with all Your fullness today and forever. That we would be
Your people, powerfully raised in Christ Jesus. to walk in newness. Help us to
walk free from the guilt of sin, free from the temptation of sin,
free from the power of sin, for we are indeed victorious in Christ
Jesus. Lord, this week, let it be a
week of amazing glory, glorious worship. Bring us together Tuesday
as we answer more questions about your word and as we prepare,
Father, for the fall to possibly even doing more teaching around
the gospel. Lord, I pray for us as we celebrate
the freedom that you've given us in this country. Let us take
full advantage of this day where we have the freedom to live and
proclaim the gospel. And it's in Jesus' name we pray
and in the power of the cross we stand.