Standing Against Evil

Welcome to our women's Bible study on the book of Ephesians, which is called Finding Purpose. And today we're going to finish the book, finish our Bible study as we cover Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 to 24. This is our final lesson on the second half of the book, which we said was how we should then behave. The first half of the book is what we believe. And so I made a little chart last week, I want to put it up there again. What the second half of the book looked like, how a Christian should behave toward God in chapters four and five. We are to imitate God, how a Christian should behave toward people. We are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, walk in humility. And now we have the final lap is how we are to behave towards Satan. We are to stand against neither imitate evil nor submit to evil, but stand against it. So in last week's study, we realized that behaving properly towards other people can be a challenge. Sometimes people tend to stir up emotions in us like anger or frustration or annoyance. Have you ever felt that way? But God always provides a way out in times of temptation. And I ran across a story that provides a little bit of a case study for how God always provides a way out. So I want to share that with you this morning. It's about a man and a woman who had been married for more than 60 years and they shared everything. They talked about everything. They kept no secrets except that the little woman had a shoe box on the top shelf of her closet that she had told her husband never to look in and never to ask her about. And so for all these years, he never really thought very much about that shoe box in the closet until one day the woman got quite ill. They'd been married 60 years, so she's an old woman and the doctor said that she would probably not recover. And so they decided it was time to set their affairs in order and it was time for him to know about the shoe box up in the closet. And so they brought the shoe box down. He opened it. He found two crocheted dolls and a stack of bills totaling $95,000. And he was shocked. So he asked her about the contents. He said, what, what is this? And the woman said, you know, when we were about to get married, my grandmother gave me some advice. She told me that the secret to a happy marriage was never to argue. And if I was ever angry with him, I should just go and crochet a doll. That's what I've been doing. And he was just so moved he had to hold back tears. He said, do you mean that in 60 years you've only been angry with me two times? That just blesses me so much. But what about the $95,000? Where did that come from? And she said, oh, well, that's just the money that I earned from selling dolls. You see, God always provides a way out in our temptation and sometimes it is profitable. We'll have crochet lessons at one o'clock. But our theme for this week is this, how we behave towards Satan. We are to stand against. This is a spiritual warfare lesson, but I want to make this extremely practical. I think Paul intended for it to be practical. I think one of the most practical phrases that we are going to face here is we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. And it's a reminder, although sometimes it seems that way, it seems that our children are the enemy or our husband is the enemy or our boss is the enemy, they truly are not. The real enemy is the rulers of this present darkness that we live in. So today's lesson is going to teach us about the reality of this present darkness and the resistance that we need to push back against this present darkness in order to stand against. You're going to find, maybe you found when you did your study, that the word stand is mentioned three times, against is mentioned five times. That is the theme. And so this final lap teaches us to think biblically about this situation because it's tempting for us to be on one end or on the other. Some people just put an inordinate focus on Satan and his abilities, and some people are just ignorant or in denial of the presence of evil in their lives. We want a biblical balance on that. Paul did not want the Christians in Ephesus to be unprepared for the battles that they would face. And God does not want us to be unprepared for the battles that we face. He does not want us to inadvertently submit ourselves to evil, nor to imitate evil, but to stand against evil. So verse 10 starts this way. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. That is our theme statement. That is our goal to find strength. Be strong in our thinking, strong in our spirit, strong in the Lord, because it is by strength that we will stand against. So verse 11 begins with a phrase that might be familiar to us, especially if you've taught Sunday school, but it was completely unfamiliar to the first readers of this letter. And that phrase is the armor of God. This was brand new information to them. And first, the explanation of what this is won't happen until verse 14. But first, Paul wants to lay out some critical information about the battles that Christians face and why the armor is required in the first place. So let's read in verse 11. He says,

verse 12

. And he repeats the main instruction, therefore take up, excuse me, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the day of evil and having done all to stand firm. So I want to make three observations about those verses before we move on to the pieces of the armor of God. Observation number one is that we are living in a present darkness, but you know what? The Ephesians were living in a present darkness too. And you know what? Everyone in the world since Genesis chapter three has been living in a present darkness. Every generation of God fears or of Christians has been, has had to battle the evil age that they live in. Sometimes we think ours is particularly more evil than any other evil age that has ever existed in the history of mankind. And I don't believe that. I think that every age has had its brand of hard. We just have our own brand of hard, but you know what? God intended for you and me to be born into this time and he has given us, will give us what we need for this brand of hard, but we do live in an evil age. The second observation is the existence of the spiritual forces of evil is real. Evil calls them rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers. Satan is their prince. Do you remember back to Ephesians two, to the prince of the power of the air. Okay. He is a real entity. Unlike Diana and the cult that was created, she was a myth. She was not real. Satan is not a myth. He is a real entity, not a human being, but he is, was a real angel, a fallen angel. Now in your study guide, you looked up seven other passages that declared names that are given to him in scripture like tempter, serpent, devil, deceiver, father of lies, roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Satan has organized troops under his command that Paul calls rulers and authorities. Sometimes we call them demons. They are not omniscient and that word means knowing everything. Satan does not know everything. His demons do not know everything. Only God knows everything. They are not omnipresent, meaning everywhere all the time. Satan is not everywhere all the time, neither are his demons. Only God is everywhere all the time. So don't make the error of attributing to the powers of evil those things that we should only attribute to God, but they are ancient and shrewd and scheming and they are always opposed to God's people and they are always lying and deceiving and tempting. And over the centuries, they have taken on the identity of God. and goddesses and reinvented themselves continually in new ideas and philosophies and cults. Whatever meets the fashion of the day, they will be there to take on something that will appeal to the fashion of the day. The Diana cult was clearly inspired by one of these rulers or authorities taking on the fashion of that day. Back in chapter 2, Paul reminded the Ephesians, many of whom had worshipped demons by worshipping the Diana cult. He said to them that in times past they had walked in agreement with the spirits that works in the children of disobedience but no longer now they were to stand against. So he's telling new-ish Christians, you used to walk in agreement with all this without even thinking about it but now you're gonna stand against it. So third observation is what I already mentioned. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. We may think that people in our lives create the battles but that is not where the real war lies. It's the same thing if you have a fever in your body. The fever is a symptom of the battle. Where is the real battle? You have an infection of some kind, a bacterial or a viral infection. That's the real war. Your fever is merely a symptom. It is alerting you to the fact that something is wrong. Now we probably want to do something about the fever but it's not gonna fix the problem, is it? It's only gonna relieve the symptom. And the same thing is true. People are not our problem. They are influenced behind the scenes by the forces of evil and that creates the battle. Even unbelievers are not our enemy. I want you to see what Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Look at 2nd Corinthians 4. He says, in their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Unbelievers are not our battleground. They are blinded by the God of this age. They're unable to see. So now after Paul educated them about the reality of their opposition, now he wants them to know how to resist the opposition, how to stand against. So he's gonna list some fundamentals here in the next four verses. We're on verse 14. Paul says, Now I'm gonna put these on the screen for you, not with the the points of the armor but just with the fundamentals themselves. And I called the six important fundamentals for spiritual strength. And we're gonna go through these. I called them fundamentals because I have a favorite quote from a 90s basketball player, Michael Jordan. I've shared this with you before. Michael Jordan said, And I think that that preaches for our spiritual life because if we get the fundamentals down, then our spiritual strength will rise. I think it translates to our spiritual life because what Paul listed as the armor of God is merely the fundamentals of our Christian faith ready to be put into regular practice. These are not unfamiliar to a Christian. These are not a secret list of casting and binding and warfare strategies that are known only to a few. These are the basic fundamentals of our Christian life that Paul encouraged his readers and the Lord encourages us to use to practice and so that we can stand against the schemes of the enemy. So we want to spend a little time looking at each one. Let's look at number one, truth. We can best stand against the enemy when we hold tight to the revealed truth about God and his relationship with us. Not a new super spiritual truth that needs to be discovered, just the plain old truth about God that you can find in just about every page of your Bible. This is what we want to hold on to. If you're a Christian, you've already embraced the truth of God and it creates a platform for you for everything else that you think and do to be built upon. And Paul called this a belt, I guess, maybe to tie everything together, to hold things together. So the fundamental practice of putting yourself in the way of truth, hearing the truth, meditating on the truth, dwelling in the truth, speaking the truth in love. This helps us stand against the evil forces in this present darkness. Okay, the next one is righteousness. We can best stand against the enemy when we know where we stand with God. Where do we stand with God? We are righteous before God. Because we're great? No, because Jesus is righteous and his righteousness has been imputed to us. So we know where we stand with God. If we begin to question our acceptability to God, then we become weak and we become vulnerable to the suggestions of the enemy that, oh, you're not righteous enough for God. I think you need to do some things. Clearly there are things left undone that you must do in order to be righteous. But if we hold fast to, if we practice the fundamental that this breastplate of righteousness shows us, which protects the vital organs, it protects the heart and what is in the heart, then we're able to stand against the forces that suggest that we haven't done enough. And it helps us remember that there is nothing that we ever did in the past or nothing that we do in the future that makes us righteous to God. It is the simple belief that Jesus paid it all and that righteousness covers us. The third one is the gospel of peace. We can stand against the enemy when we know the gospel of peace and when we know our personal story of peace and when we are prepared to share either or. And Paul talked about the readiness, the readiness of the gospel. So I grew up on the farm and one of four sisters, my farmer dad had zero brothers, our sons I mean, I had no brothers. And so occasionally my dad would come in, he's always outside doing something, you know, he would come in the back door and he would announce, I need some help. And we'd all kind of come running because that's what you did when dad said something, you kind of came running. And he would look at us and he'd look down at our feet and we're all barefoot. And he'd go, never mind. And he'd just walk out the door. Over time I learned that being barefoot was a great advantage. Had I had my boots on and the readiness to go out into the hog barn, I probably would have had to go out. But anyway, the point is we want to be, what Paul is saying here, is the feet prepared with the readiness of the gospel. And so how does this help us stand against? Oh, this is an easy one to remember. Preparation always puts a person in a positive position. There you go. Ready? Preparation always puts a person in a positive position. A lack of preparation puts us in a vulnerable position. So in terms of this, the gospel, a lack of preparation leaves us vulnerable. It's like, oh, I think I have an opportunity here to share with somebody, but I'm not really prepared. I don't know what to say. And we shrink back, right? And so this is a fundamental practice of our Christian faith, is to be ready to explain the gospel of peace and even how the gospel of peace has affected our lives. The next one is faith. We can stand against the enemy when we're prepared to deflect the flaming darts of the evil one. And this is, I called it faith in God's provision. And I'll explain why, because God always provides a way out. Even crocheting is a way out. There are two aspects of this fundamental that I want us to see, and one is the reality of the flaming darts themselves, and the second is how to extinguish them. So first let's talk about the reality of flaming darts from the enemy, because that's, Paul said they they're real, they exist. But what are the flaming darts from the evil one? They might not be what we think they are. So Paul and I became Christians in the 80s, and spiritual warfare was one of the hot topics in the 80s. And there was classes and there was all this stuff about spiritual warfare. And I can remember people talking a lot about, yeah, Satan is really attacking me. Like the transmission went out in my car. And I think to myself, I've seen your car. It has like 250,000 miles. Don't, transmissions just go, I mean, isn't that the end of a life of a transmission? Like was that Satan? Or they would say one time somebody said, yeah, Satan is really attacking me. Like my roommates just evicted me. But then upon further conversation, I would find out that person didn't pay rent for two months and roommates don't like that when you don't share in the rent and they do tend to kick you out. And so was it really, you know what I'm saying is that some people see everything that happens to them that goes against their comfort or their happiness as a flaming dart of the enemy. Now some may be, but the vast amount of the fiery darts that come our way, I believe are temptations to sin. Those are the flaming darts of the enemy that come our way, that tempt us to sin. It is so much more efficient and effective for the powers of darkness to just get us entangled in sin, which then begins to tear apart our warm relationship with the Lord than it is. Some people just think Satan is up in his factory, his little workshop, just devising little fiery darts that are going to ruin my happiness. I think just get somebody to sin and that, that is going to go a long way. So the real fiery darts that we should be watching for, and this is what I really had to roll over this week because we all have temptations, right? What are some of the temptations to sin? Anger, lust, envy, impatience, self-pity, immorality, false guilt, flirting, imaginations, pride. So how do we extinguish these? Paul likened the strategy to a shield that we would put in front of us and tuck behind, called it the shield of faith. So I want to use a couple other scriptures that we can see when we see a fiery dart come our way, how the shield of faith helps us. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 10, 13. Paul wrote here,

. And then look at this one from James 4, 7.

. Satan really only needs a little bit of resistance from us and the temptation falls away. So the fundamental practice here of using the shield of faith, what that means for us in everyday practical life is that when we see a fiery dart come our way, a temptation to sin, we tuck behind that shield and we lean into the Lord and his ability in our life and we believe that God is for us. He's on our team. He wants me to succeed against a temptation. This is what he wants. We don't have to stand against temptations alone. God is a shield in front of us that we can take refuge behind. So shield of faith helps us to stand against the evil forces and find victory over sin. The fifth one is salvation. We can best stand against the enemy when we protect our thinking, particularly as it relates to salvation and relates to Christ, but also as it relates to emotions that want to sweep us away with discouragement or fear or worry. We stand when we can take every thought captive. Paul wrote a letter to another group of Christians, the Corinthians, and look what he said in 2nd Corinthians 11 3. He said,

. These were Christians and his concern was is what their thoughts were going to lead them away from Christ. And so that makes sense then that we need this helmet of salvation, this protection over our thinking to take our thoughts captive and to, because we know that Satan just wants to rob what we have. There's a strong link, I think, between this one, the helmet of salvation and the next one, which is the word of God. Because if we don't fill our mind with the word of God, the enemy will fill it with fear and anxiety and with worry. So let's move on to the word of God. We can best stand against the enemy when we feed on and when we practice using the word of God, which is the sword of the spirit. To me, this is the cherry on top. To me, this is the fireworks at the end. I love this. This fundamental is so critical that the Christian church for the last 2,000 years has centered its gatherings on the reading of and the teaching of the word of God. This is what good churches should do when they come together. They should feed the word of God. So it's both, as it relates to being the sword of the spirit, it's both an offensive weapon and a defensive weapon. In an army situation, it is the sword, offensively, that will kill the opponent or the threat of the sword that will cause them to retreat. Either way, it is a win. But we can stand against the forces of evil when we regularly apply this fundamental to our life. Why do I keep using the word fundamental over and over again? Because think again about a sport like basketball. What are the fundamentals? Get the dribbling down. Do it over and over. Get the shooting down. Do it over and over. Have you ever watched a seventh grade team? It's not super fun to watch. They don't have the fundamentals down. And some guy's gonna try a trick play and it just didn't work. It just didn't look very good. But when your fundamentals are down, then you are ready to do whatever, whatever is necessary. This is just what I see Paul telling them here. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. Keep feeding the word of God. Keep dwelling in the word of God. And so now Paul goes on to talk about another fundamental. I'll call it a seventh strategy here, even if he doesn't associate it with the piece of armor. Verse 18, he ends up with praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. And to that end, keep alert with all perseverance and make supplication for all the saints. And also for me that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I'm an ambassador and change that I may declare boldly as I ought to speak. So prayer is another fundamental of our Christian faith that is very important. And what I want to do is just look at these four iterations of the word all. He used it four times and see what we can glean that might inspire us in our prayer life. Because who doesn't need inspiration in their prayer life? Always. So first he said, pray at all times. And it reminds us that there is never a time when God does not hear our prayers. We don't have to wait to go to a certain building or a certain prayer group or a certain, you know, call to prayer. At any moment, 308 a.m., God is ready to hear our prayers. And we can lay in bed waiting to fall asleep again and have a great prayer time. And he's okay with that. It says, with all prayer and supplication. And that reminds me that there's no prayer that isn't a legitimate prayer. Even in the Bible, we see that Nehemiah, we see him just shooting up a quick SOS in his mind under his breath when he was standing before the king. And then we also see him fasting and praying for his country. Those are two polar opposites of prayer. All prayer is legitimate. So any type of prayer. We don't need to feel guilty about those SOS prayers. Lord, what am I going to do? What should I say right now to this person in front of me? That's a legitimate prayer. All perseverance. And to me, this means applying the full measure of perseverance that God has given me in this moment. And not to feel guilty about the perseverance that I don't yet possess. It will come. The more we pray, the more we want to pray. The more you eat vegetables, the more you crave vegetables. And so just don't get stressed about when we talk about persevering in prayer. Yes, that is the goal. Let's keep working on it. But I just have a measure of perseverance in this moment in my life. And I'm not going to give up because I feel like my perseverance isn't all that it possibly could be. It will come. will be someday. And then finally, the last one is supplication for all the saints. The context here is praying for others. We can't pray for all the saints in the whole world. That's not what this is talking about. But Paul wasn't bashful in asking them to pray for him. He wanted prayer that he would have the right works, that he would be bold to proclaim the mystery, that he would be an effective soldier, even in chains. So if you were to ask someone to pray for you today, what would you ask them to pray for? We see what Paul asked them to pray for. Would our prayer requests be centered on our comforts or on our calling? And when I say that, I don't want to throw a blanket of guilt. Look, if you're sitting there with a migraine, absolutely ask your friends to pray for your comfort, that it would be relieved. That is totally legitimate. But I think we always need to be reminded about the spiritual things, also the calling. This is what Paul asked them to pray for was his calling. Our whole Bible study has been wrapped up in finding purpose. What is your purpose in the moment? What is your calling? What has God given you to do? And so to be asking others to pray for you in that regard and to pray for others in that regard is what we see here. So the last four verses remind us that these were real people with real relationships in a real world. Verse 21, so that you also may know how I am and what I'm doing. Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will tell you everything. I've sent him to you for this very purpose. I like that. That you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And finally, verse 23, Paul says, peace be to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. So I hope this whole Bible study has been encouragement to you. It has been an encouragement to me. I love spending time in this Word. I could take another 30 minutes to share with you all of my personal thoughts, what, you know, God has shown me in there. I hope that you found time to finish writing out the whole book of Ephesians. I hope you treasure that. If you're not done, there's more days to come. You can still finish it even though our Bible study is over. And I hope the Lord has really shown you some new truths here, some new platforms to help you find purpose in your own life. So let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your goodness, your grace. Lord, I just want to thank you for your servant, the Apostle Paul, who wrote to those that he loved and those that he wanted to encourage. And Lord, even in today's lesson, we are reminded that he did not want them to be unprepared. And Lord, sometimes we go about our day so busily that we are unprepared. We're unprepared to see the battle for where it really, truly is. So Lord, would you help each one of us to put into place every day these fundamentals of the Christian faith that help us to grow stronger, help us to react faster, help us to be able to stand against in those areas that are maybe even unique to us, unique to our situation in life. But certainly, Lord, those areas where the enemy brings in a false narrative, a false gospel, who wants to deconstruct the truth that we already possess. Lord, help us to stand against. This is what we need. And we know that we can lean into you to help us do this. Thank you, Lord, for this whole time. And we just pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.