Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program today. I'm glad you could join us. I
have two messages that I'm going to be preaching today and the
next week. It's from Ephesians chapter 6.
If you'd like to follow along in your Bibles, in the New Testament,
the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul's letter to the church at
Ephesus, chapter six, beginning at verse 10. And the title of
these messages is The Armor of God. The Armor of God. This will be part one, and then
next week, part two. And I wanna begin reading here
at verse 10 of Ephesians chapter six, where the apostle writes,
and this is his final words in this letter to the church at
Ephesus, you'll remember, In the book of Acts, the apostle
had met with the Ephesian elders, the elders of the church. And
Paul was on his way to Rome and he knew he wouldn't see them
again. And he tried to encourage them to continue in the Christian
faith, fighting the battle. He told them that he had not
failed to preach the whole counsel of God to them, the gospel with
all of its particulars and all of its implications, the life
of faith, the life of living in the grace of God through Christ
Jesus. He told them that false preachers
would come in and try to deceive people because they themselves
were deceived. But he said that Christ would
care for his church and protect his church and preserve his church
because he had bought his church, the people of God, the elect
of God, the redeemed of the Lord. He had bought them with his own
precious blood. And so he told them to be careful
and to take care of the church. And here, in Ephesians chapter
six, he says, finally my brethren, this is verse 10, finally my
brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might,
verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to
withstand against the wiles of the devil. the wiles, the sly,
subtle deceptions of the devil, of Satan. And he says, for we
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness
of this world, against spiritual wickedness, or some translations
say wicked spirits, in high or in high places. Now, often in
the scripture, the Christian life, the life of the child of
God in this wilderness world, the life of the church, the true
church where the gospel is preached, the church which is the pillar
and ground of truth, is often compared to a battle. And it's a warfare. And it's
a serious battle. It's a serious warfare that that
the outcome of this warfare is already marked out and sure because
the Lord Jesus Christ has already won the victory. There's no possibility
that the church can fail and lose these battles, and that
refers to each individual member of the church, true believers,
sinners saved by grace, we are saved by grace, we are kept by
grace, we are empowered by grace, and our weapons are weapons of
grace, and we will be finally glorified because Christ has
already won the victory. He won that victory on the cross
of Calvary when he put away the sins of his people. by the sacrifice
of Himself, He did battle for His people on that cross, and
that's what He was doing. And in paying our sin debt that
was imputed to Him, charged to Him, He wiped the law books clean. There's no sin charged to God's
elect. No matter what Satan says, no
matter what anyone who is a follower of Satan says, you know, I'm
a sinner, but my sins are not charged to me. Because God will
not charge his elect with sin, he charged our sins to Christ.
And Christ took those sins in his own body on the tree, and
he satisfied the justice of God by his death. as our surety,
our substitute, and our Redeemer. And having done that, He was
the victor. He arose from the dead. That
means His death on the cross defeated Satan, defeated sin,
defeated the world. And so He arose from the dead
and He ascended on high, seated at the right hand of the Father,
ever living to make intercession for His people. So the outcome
of this battle is sure and certain because it's all conditioned
on Christ and he's the victor. And just like when he told his
disciples in the book of John, I believe it's chapter 16, he
told them, he says, in the world, you shall have trouble. You're
gonna have trouble, tribulation in the world. It's not gonna
be a bed of roses. It's not gonna be an easy life.
It's not gonna be, as one false preacher says, your best life
now. No, sir. You're gonna have trouble, he
said. You're gonna have tribulation. You're gonna have persecution.
You're in a battle while you're in this world. But be of good
cheer, he said, I have overcome the world. So we have to look
at our victory in Christ. Christ conquered death and hell
and the grave. He conquered sin, he conquered
Satan. But while we're in this world, it is a battle and it's
a battle that we wage every day of our lives until we die and
go to be with the Lord. A warfare. And we have three
great enemies. We have a warfare with Satan,
and that's what he says here when he talks about being strong
in the power of God's mind, that you may withstand the wiles of
the devil. Satan will persecute God's church. He will persecute. He will seek
to, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11, he will seek to get the minds
of believers off of Christ and onto other things for their assurance. And that's called the deception
of Satan, the subtle deception of Satan that corrupts the simplicity. that believers have in Christ.
And what is that simplicity? It's that single, solitary message
that all of my hope, all of my assurance, all of my salvation
is in this one person, the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and based
upon the accomplishment of his finished work on the cross to
bring forth an everlasting righteousness of infinite value that enables
God to justify me but not only to justify me, but to give me
life from the dead. Satan does not want people's
minds focused on the Christ of the Bible. He wants your mind
focused on yourself, to find your assurance and your hope.
He wants your mind focused on false Christ, false messiahs,
and because they won't do you any good, anywhere or in anyone
but the true Christ of the Bible who defeats him. And he knows
his day is coming. But in between that now and the
time of his day of being cast totally out and defeated finally,
never to rise again, he's gonna trouble and attack and war against
the church. So we have a warfare with Satan.
We also have a warfare with the world. Christ told his disciples
in John chapter 15, marvel not, if the world hate you, it hated
me before it hated you. He went on to say that they will
throw you out of their worship services, their false idolatrous
worship services. He called it the synagogue. And
he said they'll do it because the time will come when they'll
seek to kill you. And true believers in the past,
Christians in the past, have gone through the threatenings
of death, and some were martyred for the cause of Christ, for
the glory of God. And he'll do that, and he said,
they'll do this because they neither know me nor my father.
They don't know God. They don't know the true Christ.
In John chapter three, he talked about how the light comes into
the world, but men love darkness and hate the light because their
deeds are evil. So we have the enemy that we're
in battle with, the world, the unbelieving, idolatrous, sinful
world. And here we are in this world,
but not of this world, that is believers. We're sinners saved
by grace if you're a true Christian. And then one of the greatest
battles that we have to fight in this world is ourselves. And that's called the warfare
of the flesh against the spirit. You see, true believers, if you're
a true believer, you've been born again by the spirit. He's
given you life from Christ. the resurrection life of Christ,
you've been given eyes to see and ears to hear what the world
doesn't see and hear, and you have faith in Christ, you've
repented of dead works and idolatry, and you're walking in the light
of the Spirit, and the Spirit indwells you. See, Christ indwells
you, you could say it that way, by His Spirit and by His work,
but the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against
the flesh. And Paul wrote in Galatians 5,
he said that's such a battle that you can't do what you wanna
do. We wanna serve God perfectly, we wanna love God perfectly,
love our neighbors, ourselves, but we can't because the flesh
wars against the Spirit. But thank God that the Spirit
wars against the flesh. And so that we can't do what
we want to do according to the flesh in sin. And so there's
a way, a warfare within us in the flesh and the spirit. The
apostle described that in Romans 7 verses 14 through 25. And he
come to this conclusion. Who shall deliver me from this
body of death? And he said, I thank my God through
Jesus Christ my Lord. So when he says that you may
withstand the wiles of the devil, this is a warfare, this is a
battle. And it's an everyday battle for the true believer.
It never lets up. I've had people ask me, he says,
when does this get easier? It doesn't. But the glory of
it, and the preciousness of it. This warfare of the flesh and
the spirit, this warfare with the world, this warfare with
Satan, is an evidence of our salvation and the battles are
already won because Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
And so Paul writes, this is what he's talking about. Finally,
my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His
might. Now, the one thing we see about
this battle is this. We don't fight this battle in
our own strength, in our own might. We fight it in the strength
and the might of the Lord God as we look to Christ. And it's
like everything else in the walk of faith, this warfare. How do
we as true believers, sinners saved by the grace of God? washed
in His blood, clothed in His righteousness. How do we fight
this war? Where's the power come from?
Not from me, not from you, not from any of us, comes from Christ. And so it's like everything else
in the walk of faith, in the warfare, looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of our faith. Realizing that our hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
Dare not trust the sweetest frame. You get up one day, you say,
well, I feel good today. I prayed a good prayer and that's
my wep. No, look unto Christ. He's the
only righteousness I have. It's his righteousness imputed
to me. I'm washed in his blood. I'm clothed in his righteousness.
And as long as that's the case, Satan cannot touch me as far
as causing me to leave Christ and fall away unto perdition. So we fight in the power of His
might, in the strength of the Lord. And where do we find that?
We find that in Christ. Where do we find Christ? We find
it in His word. His Word, preaching and teaching
and believing and becoming skillful in the Word of God. And I'll
show you a passage over here in Revelation chapter 12 that
I quote read quite often because this is speaking of believers,
the churches made up of individual believers. It speaks of the warfare
that we have with Satan and how it's to be fought. and it's talking
about how Christ has defeated Satan, and the church has fled
into the wilderness, that's the world, that's where we are until
we go to be with the Lord, and Satan is persecuting the church,
and it says in verse nine, this is Revelation 12, it says, the
great dragon was cast out, now when was he cast, that great
dragon is Satan, that old serpent called the devil, and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world, Now when was he cast out? Christ
said it, at the cross. When Christ died on that cross,
Satan was cast out. But in the New Testament times,
as we near the second coming of Christ, Satan has been loosed. He was bound up, but then he's
been loosed to deceive the whole world. And how does he deceive
the whole world? He deceives the whole world by
false religion. especially false Christianity. And we need to understand that.
And he says here that, this is Revelation 12 and verse nine,
talking about the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent
called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. You
see, the reason that God's true children are not deceived is
because Christ has given them the light. He's brought them
from darkness into the light by the power of the Spirit through
the preaching of the gospel. That gospel light which shows
us the absolute holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the
justice of God. That gospel light that shows
us the mercy of God based upon justice satisfied, which is a
propitiation through Christ. that gospel light that exposes
our sin and depravity and shows us that we have nothing in and
of ourselves and can do nothing to recommend ourselves unto God,
that if God were to judge us based upon our best efforts to
obey Him, we would be damned forever. We're sinners. We need
mercy. We need grace. We need a righteousness
we cannot produce. And so that gospel light shows
us the way of salvation by Christ, who came as my surety, substitute,
redeemer, took my place, my sins charged to Him, died on that
cross, was buried, and arose again the third day because He
satisfied the law, He satisfied justice, He paid my debt, and
He's seated at the right hand of the Father. Sin cannot be
charged to me. I have His righteousness charged
to me. and therefore I see him as the Lord my righteousness.
He saves me, he keeps me. But look back at Revelation 12,
nine. It says, Satan was cast out into
the earth and his angels were cast out with him. And verse
10 says, and I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now has come
salvation and strength. Now this is talking about Christ.
He is our salvation. No other. And it says, he's my
strength and the kingdom of our God. He established God's kingdom
and the power of his Christ. Now you see what is happening
here? Satan's attacking. He's deceiving the whole world,
but he's attacking the church. And where are we to go to fight
Satan? Not to our works, and not to
our own strength and power, but the power of His Christ, God's
Christ. Listen to this now. For the accuser
of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our
God day and night. Now that's what Satan does. He
accuses. He points the finger, you might
say. He points the finger at me. He
says, Lord, this man is a sinner, and I am a sinner. So how am
I going to fight Satan? How am I going to come against
him and win this battle? Well, look at verse 11 of Revelation
12. And they overcame him, listen to it, by the blood of the land. That's how. They don't overcome
him by saying, well, boy, I prayed a great prayer today. or I preached
a great message today, or I gave some money to charity today,
or I had a good day, and everything seemed to be going well, and
I'm a positive thinker. No, you want positive thinking? Here it is, the blood of the
lamb. Satan accuses me of being a sinner,
which I am, but the blood of the lamb has washed away my sins. And it says here, and by the
word of their testimony, Now this refers to the gospel, the
sword of the spirit. We're gonna be talking about
that in the whole armor of God. The word of God. We preach, we
teach, we feed upon, we battle with the word of God, and it
says the word of their testament, and they love not their lives
unto death. In other words, they're giving
their life in the cause of Christ. And so this is, The beginning
place of the armor of God, but now go back to our text in Ephesians
chapter 6 Now we know we've this battle is waged not in our own
power not in our own might but in the power and might of the
Lord Looking to Christ Pleading him in verse 11 It says put on
the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the
wiles of the devil so we're going to be talking next week about
the armor of God and And look at verse 12, for we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
the spiritual wickedness in high places. And so he says in verse
13, wherefore, for this reason, take unto you the whole armor
of God, that you may be able to withstand the evil day, and
I believe that's any day when evil comes and confronts us,
and having done all, having thereof all to stand. Now what's he telling
us? He's telling us this battle is
not a physical battle. This battle is a spiritual battle.
Look with me at 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And look at verse
three, the apostle speaking to the church at Corinth here. And
he writes, verse three of 2 Corinthians 10, for though we walk after
the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. Now walking after
the flesh there is not the same as he spoke of walking after
the flesh in Romans eight. Walking after the flesh in Romans
eight means in unbelief, means walking in sin. Walking in the
flesh here means in this physical body, in this physical world,
just physical things. So though we walk in the flesh,
we do not war after the flesh. We're physical, we are in a physical
world, but our warfare is not physical. Our warfare is spiritual,
verse four, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're
not fleshly, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. That's the word of God, the armor
of God we're gonna talk about. And then verse five, here's the
battlefield. Casting down imaginations, thoughts
and reasonings. and every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ. That's the battle. It's not physical. False Christianity,
in the history of man, false Christianity has taken up physical
arms and done battle with what they call the heathen. But that
was not biblical. It was not Christian at all.
The crusade, that was a sham. False religion. The Spanish Inquisition
trying to take physical torture to get a confession out of people.
That's not biblical. Never was. Even in the Old Testament. When you talk about Israel under
the Old Covenant and the battles they fought, that was physical,
but that was not Christianity. You see, and I don't have time
to explain all that, but I'm just telling you. Christ never
gave his church a mandate to take up physical arms in order
to try to promote the gospel or the kingdom of God. We can
take up physical arms to defend ourselves, but not in a way to
say we're going to conquer the world physically and bring them
to Christianity, no. Our battle is a spiritual battle.
And so look back at Ephesians chapter 6. Let me just read through
some of this in Ephesians chapter 6, talking about the whole armor
of God. He says, verse 14, stand therefore
having your loins girt about with truth. having on the breastplate
of righteousness, your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace, above all taking the shield of faith, wherewith you
shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, take
the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is
the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication
in the spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication
for all saints. Now there's the armor of God,
and I'm gonna go through each one of these next week. But you
understand how in this warfare, that we do not fight in our own
power, our own mind, we look to Christ. We lean up on Him. We plead His blood and His righteousness. We come forth with a gospel that
reveals His glory, His power, His might. Satan cannot overcome
Him. Satan can do us, Satan could
chew us up and spit us out, but not our Lord, and we're in Him
if you're a believer. Again, my hope is built on nothing
less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. And so, this is a spiritual battle,
not in our own power, not in our own might, it's already won,
but God, for His glory, has left us here to fight this battle
in His name, by His power, through Christ, and it won't end until
we go to be with Him. We fight against Satan, we fight
against the world, we fight against ourselves, the flesh. And this
battle is spiritual. It is not physical at all. We
have no mandate, no reason, no justification for taking up physical
arms to try to convert people. Our weapons, the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal. They're not fleshly, but they're
spiritual. and mainly the word of God, but
each piece of this armor that he's talking about, do you know
what? It's a gift from God. There's nothing listed here that
we have naturally. There's nothing listed here that
we're born with. We're born in sin. We fell in
Adam and we're born in sin, spiritually dead. And if we have any of these
blessings of God's grace, any of this armor, any of these weapons,
it's the product of the grace of God in the salvation of sinners
based upon the righteousness of Christ. Whereby grace are
you saved through faith, not of works, that not of yourselves,
not of works, lest any man should boast. Well, I hope you'll join
us next week for another message from God's word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.