Armor of God, Not Armor of Man

Deacon Michael Villalobos preaches from Ephesians 6:10-18. Discussion points: We are tempted to trust in our own strength to fight spiritual battles, prayer is how we get marching orders from God, we can put away the armor of man and trust in the armor of Christ.

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  Scripture reader: [Ephesians 6:10-18] 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, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, 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.

  Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and the shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: Good morning church. It's good to see you all this morning. As Mark said, my name is Michael. I'm very loud but that's ok. And I am a deacon and community group leader here and I, I'm very excited to be bringing the word of the Lord to you this morning. Yeah. I am, I'm blessed to be married to my wife, Alexa of over 10 years now. And the Lord has recently blessed us with a, a second child as well. So my, my cup is full and I am, I am overjoyed at what the Lord has given us and out of that joy.

  I am also humbled to be sharing the burden of preaching this morning and bringing the word of the Lord to you. We just wrapped up a series in our church called Life Reimagined, which is about looking at our lives and the literature of the, the Bible and understanding what our lives would look like the way that God intends us to live them.

  Today's passage is not the start of a new series, at least not that I know of. I, I think we're doing Daniel next. But it is a personal passage for me. something that the Lord laid on my heart some time ago and something that I've been chewing on for a while. and that I am excited to bring to you this morning. As we move into our, our time of unpacking this passage and what Paul has to say to us about the armor of God. I ask that you would pray with me. Father in heaven, we pray that you would open the eyes of our hearts that in hearing your word, we might see your truth to understand the identity of what we wrestle against and know our identity in you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

  So Paul opens this, this final exhortation to the church with finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his mighty power. But what does this mean? What does it mean to be strong in something? Is this just the good old buck up or is it something else? I'd like to say that it is. Let me ask you something. What are you good at? You know, if I asked you to beat me in a concert and I said, I'll give you a million dollars if you can beat me at something, what would you pick if lebron James were here? He would obviously choose basketball. If Magnus Carlsen chess fans. Yeah. Yeah. Chess, right? If Fletcher Lang, he would choose Radiohead trivia because he loves radiohead. and he would definitely beat me at that because I don't know anything. I don't even know what the lead singer's name is.

  So these are things that you are strong in internally, right? This is internally drive, strength things that you know, that you're good at and confident in and in your ability to execute on something based on your own experience. But what is it to be strong in another? Right? What is it to be strong in the Lord? You know, as a kid on the playground, you might have met a bully's advances with my daddy is bigger than you and thereby deriving strength from your father in Boston. in this area, we often derive strength from institutions. Well, she went to Harvard. So she's clearly a great candidate or Tony Stark here, went to MIT and studied there. So he's obviously a good hero for us. For some of you here. This may be a point of, you know, personal self, pep talk, you know, like come on, I can figure out how to miter the angles on this right triangle that I made out of two by six. Douglas fir, I went to U VA engineering like, you know, clearly this isn't going to take me four days to make a right triangle out of some wood. It did, it was horrible. I will tell anybody who wants to hear more about it as more than they would ever want to know.

  But yeah, that external strength wasn't good enough in that moment anyway. So we see two ideas here. Strength, one that is internal and one that is external and for this external strength, it is your ability to derive confidence from another's ability to operate on your behalf in some subject. I'll note that the operating on your behalf is, is relevant here because I may be confident in Jeff bezos' ability to run a company. But that is entirely relevant to me unless I work for that company. For us. We are in the flock of God and we can be very confident in our shepherd's ability to defend us from the wolves that Paul is warning us about.

  So Paul's command to be strong in the Lord is to have confidence in God's ability to stand against the schemes of the devil rather than in our own ability to do so. This is important because we need to understand what we are standing against because strength cannot really be demonstrated at rest. What I mean here is that if you look at any definition of strength, it's going to talk about the capacity for exertion or endurance or the ability to withstand great force or pressure, none of which can be demonstrated out of context, whether it's a heavyweight or, or large distances or cosmic forces in heavenly places, you need to understand what that strength is being exerted against for it to be meaningful.

  So, think of it this way. Have you heard of the sailfish? This is a, I found out that this is a topic of some debate amongst the marine biology world. But for the purposes of this analogy, we're going to assume that the sailfish is, in fact the fastest swimmer in the world. And some studies show that it can swim a staggering highway speed of 68 MPH through the water. Right. Yeah, it's crazy. can you imagine if you had that kind of strength? So if we do some quick maths here and we say that, you know, the fastest human swimmer in the world can swim six MPH.

  I'm not assuming that we're all elite swimmers, but let's just for fun. So 68 is more than 11 times that, so imagine if you could move through life at 11 times that pace, right? So I could walk 33 miles an hour without breaking a sweat. I could run 82 miles an hour, which means I could get all the way to Jamaica plane in eight minutes rather than the 45 it takes, I will never get over that in the Boston area. How long it takes to go like less like miles that I can count on my fingers. It's like, no, that's gonna take an hour like dang.

  Anyway. So this would definitely be all any of you would talk about if you could move this quickly and have this kind of strength. But if we come back to our friend whose strength we borrowed for this thought exercise and we take him out of the water where his strength is quite evident and we put him say on land. Now, suddenly out of context, his strength is meaningless, all the the muscle, the hydrodynamics. Everything else about the way that he was formed by his creator is meaningless to face oxygen. And he was not going to win any race anytime soon, let alone be able to survive for very long.

  Friends, I would submit to you today that that is our situation that regardless of your capabilities, your training, the technology you have available to you that none of that is meaningful in the face of the enemy that is against us. And so we need strength that we don't have, we need strength from the Lord. So I would then practically group us today into three different camps. Those who don't know the Lord and are in fact facing these powers that Paul describes under their own strength, those who do know the Lord but are not taking advantage of his strength. They're not asking their father for strength and are functionally in the same camp as the first and are basically going against the devil unarmed. And then those who know the Lord and are borrowing his strength and are wearing this armor that we're going to unpack together and are 10 ft tall and bulletproof are their daddy is bigger than the enemy that they face and they are walking with confidence and the Lord's strength against the powers that are against them.

  One other way that I like to think about this is, it's kind of like a game of rock paper scissors, where God is the rock and can't actually lose anything and made the scissor in papers and lets the paper borrow the rock strength. And if you don't borrow the rock strength, then the, because the paper can beat the scissors when it borrows the rock strength. But then the scissors, otherwise it's just going to cut the paper up and make it a subservient slate for the rest of eternity. Otherwise that that's the game of rock paper scissors anyway.

  So maybe I don't need to feed a fed horse here. but when I read this passage, I, I really think about, and I really think about how to be strong and why I need to be strong. It does take me a while to understand my enemy. Get past my own pride and think about why I need strength that I don't have. So now that we've understood this little bit about strength and why we need it. Let's move into understanding how we take advantage of the strength, what it is as we look at the, the armor of God, we did easily, we're not going to, but we could easily spend a whole series talking about the armor of God and some have, in fact, I wish I could say he was my good friend. It feels like I should, but it's not, I don't know him at all.

  But Tim Keller did a whole series on the Armor of God, including like a three part series just on the Belt of Truth. It's great. I would encourage you to listen to it. I've borrowed heavily from that material today. You know, of course, I'm just gonna put it out there. but we're going to use some of that information to summarize what the armor of God is so that we can understand how to utilize it. Firstly, we have the belt of truth. This is the basis upon which everything else is tied together. The truth is that our God is love that He created us to glorify himself and enjoy him forever and is through Christ's death on the cross alone that we can find eternal salvation.

  These truths of the gospel are foundational. They're the most foundational understanding that we could ever need. There are other truths that God reveals about himself, but all of it is pointing to these truths that tie together everything else that we are going to be unpacking. So this is the bedrock of our understanding of how we operate and how we employ the rest of God's strength. Next, we have the breastplate of righteousness, which is Christ purchase Christ's perfect righteousness transferred to us through our faith in Him, through his work on the cross and subsequent resurrection. With this righteousness guarding our lives, we have no fear.

  Of course, to bear this breastplate of Christ with the cross and place in the cross. It is not a trite thing. It is not as though we can then assume cheap grace by saying, well, I have Christ's righteousness, I can do whatever I want. The breastplate then acts upon you and encourages you not to practice hypocrisy as you walk in his righteousness continuing down. We're going to look at the shoes of the readiness of the gospel of peace since the war between God and man has been ended in what Christ did by making a way for us to be called a friend of God, which is wild. We can walk in that peace and be people of peace, carrying the good news of the gospel to our friends and neighbors.

  This freedom that this piece enables is incredible knowing that we don't have a scary enemy up in the sky who is just causing bad things to happen to us for no reason, but he loves us so much so that he sacrificed his own child, which by the way, once you have a kid, it, it just, it changes the way you think about instead of giving up your own kid to save someone else. That kind of love is something that I, I can't understand because I would never give up my kids for anything. Next. We have the helmet of salvation similar to the breastplate. Our confidence is in our salvation that is received by grace. Our mind is enrolled in this truth that the victory has been won for us already. No doubt or anxiety about our eternal destiny need have any home in our heads.

  On one hand, we hold the shield of faith. This act of defense, our faith in the gospel must be taken up in all circumstances. Paul tells us to continually take up this shield to every day, actively pick up our faith to use it as a shield against the flaming darts of the enemy. These darts are doubts, fears, temptations that God is not real, that we are not loved that nothing we do matters that we don't matter. Our faith is our assurance that we do have a good father who is love and that by glorifying him, we not only do what we were made for, but we also take part in pointing others into the kingdom.

  Friends. If you're ever worried about impact about whether or not you know what you're doing in life matters, consider the fact that if you take even a small part in helping move a non-believer one degree closer to the Lord, that is to have an infinite impact because that is an eternal soul whose trajectory you've been part of moving. So take joy in that, that the Lord lets us, you know, put our hands on his work as he moves through and and creates new believers.

  Finally, in the other hand, we have the sword of the spirit, the only weapon listed here. and one described throughout scripture in other places, says about itself in the book of Hebrews that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This is the same sword that Jesus used in the desert when the devil came to tempt him after he'd been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights and is the same that proceeds from his mouth in John's revelation. This is that same sword that is granted to us and is able to cut through the lies that are continually cast upon us and to pierce even the heart of stone to bring those who are dead in their trespasses and sins back to life.

  Not so finally, actually, we have also prayer. This one doesn't get a cool analogy the way that the rest of them do. But prayer is still an incredibly important component to our overall way of operating in the world. Our defense against the enemy prayer is how we get our marching orders from the Lord, an army without communication. Zab. And so we church are not a mob, we are the body of Christ and we are able to talk to our commander to understand where he would have to go, what he would have to do, what of his word he would bring to mind for any given situation. And we're able to tell him how we feel about the assignments that he's given us because it is a two way street.

  So each of these pieces describe how we put our strength in the Lord by believing that he is who he says he is and trusting in these aspects of the gospel. We're able to deal with these with the things that come to us in life. So we have this idea of this winning strategy that Paul presents in scripture.

  But I know and this is something that the Lord let on my heart that I don't always trust in this winning strategy. And I, in fact, trust in myself still, I still have this temptation. And I, I wanna ask you church this morning to consider what you are trusting in for your strength. When your boss gives you negative feedback or you miss a deadline or a loved one cuts you down. Or you're faced with a choice about how you're going to provide for yourself or for your family, or what you're going to do with your life. Are you taking up the armor of God to deal with those challenges? Or is your confidence found in armor of your own making?

  The Lord warns us of this inclination multiple times in scripture. I find the way that God spoke through his prophet Jeremiah particularly compelling where he says thus says the Lord cursed is the man who trusts in a man and makes flesh, his strength whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness in an uninhabited salt land. But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought. For does not cease to bear fruit.

  This is a beautiful image. This idea of not being afraid even when heat comes and when drought comes and when the thing that I need for existence is is taken from me. I'm still not afraid because I have the Lord. But it concludes, this passage goes on to conclude was something I think that is essential that we must confront because it, it is counter to the rhetoric that we often hear outside of these walls. Verse nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it.

  Church, it's worth spending a moment on this point. Your heart will not lead you to a victorious life, love of and from other creatures. Other created things will not satisfy. When Christ was being tempted by Satan, the offer presented to him was to have everything, all the kingdoms of the man given to him if he would only bow down and worship the adversary. Satan doesn't start there for most of us. It usually begins with momentary pleasures and can escalate to all the money you can buy and to everything that's offered Christ, but, but nothing that is created will satisfy the way that God's love us.

  I would submit to you that each of us is wearing armor of some kind, either the armor of God or armor of your own making. The Puritan author Thomas Brooks wrote a little book called Precious Remedies against Satan's devices. I actually kind of got really into Puritan literature during the course of writing the sermon. It's like amazing. So we definitely recommend but I would argue that these same devices that Brooks mentions, these devices from the enemy are, in fact the coverings that we manufacture for ourselves that we think are going to keep us safe in the world.

  I wanna take some time together with you to look in this dark mirror of devices that are not from the Lord. And as we look at these things, I, I pray that the spirit would reveal to you if any of these are devices that you are in fact trusting in for your strength rather than in the armor of God friends. If your life is girded with truth, that is not from God, then you wear the rags of folly, the rags of folly said another way, a lack of respect for God's truth that would consider man's ideas as equivalent or greater than what God has revealed to us as truth.

  To go further, some of these human ideas that misunderstand God go beyond just folly and into outright lies. I think most of these lies take the form of well, a loving God wouldn't fill in the blank. These are things that often come up when we don't understand God. When we don't submit to what he has said about who He is and what his character is. And that basis then becomes the seed that unravels our faith. I'll confess that I find the conjecture that we as created beings tell God that He's not loving is about as fair as my daughter telling me that I'm not loving when I fail to give her ice cream for every single meal.

  God has revealed his truth to us in his word. And it says in Second Peter 1 that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and Godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which He is granted to us, his precious and very great promises. So that through them, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in this world because of sinful desire. There is word God has granted to us all things that pertain to life and Godliness.

  Church, we need nothing more. If you aren't trusting in Christ's righteousness that's been imputed to you, then you may be wearing the right, the breastplate of self righteousness or how we might say it around here religion, right? You don't need Christ's righteousness because you've got your own and you don't really want or need grace from anyone because you're that good. You're confident in your own moral conduct to the degree that you don't really need grace. My friends, this breastplate is attached to your body with nails driven in from the outside, nails made of pride. And the more hits that it takes, the deeper they drive in, the more they wound you and the more it drives you further and further into depression because you will never live up to the standard that God has given to us on your own rather than the shield of faith.

  You hold up a lens of doubt that scrutinizes the flaming darts of the enemy as they come to you rather than shielding yourself from them. You're more interested in what they do as they fly through the air and what they do is they land in your body and look at them as they wreak havoc and as their poison seeps into your veins. If your feet are not equipped with the gospel of peace, you may find yourself stuck in the steel toed boots of self protection, unable to share the good news of the gospel for fear of man. This is a subtle one. But one that I even experienced this week, as I thought about the fact that we're recording this right future employers could come and be like, oh, look, here's Michael. It's a raving lunatic talking about. I know God, what is he doing? But as I think about that is my hope in those who are watching this recording or those who are evaluating me for any job prospects or is it in the one who created everything and who holds the world in his hands? I'm grateful to say that it's in the latter.

  Perhaps external sources aren't as much of a problem for you rather than the helmet of salvation. You may wear the crown of thorns of anxiety and condemnation. This is one that is so familiar to many that I love it first woos you with good test scores and strong performance helps you win at things and get into institutions and perform well. But it then begins to sing sweet shoots into your ear. You should do this, you should do that. You should do better all the while jabbing its thorns deeper into you and flooding you with bitter condemnation as you fail to live up to those SHS If this one is you, I'm so sorry. It is a horrible device, but there is hope from all these things. There is hope and it comes through the saving work of our savior who made good devices for us that do protect us from these evil things that the enemy would tempt us with.

  And finally, without the sword of the spirit in your hand, you instead hold a bouquet of surrender, courting the enemy and saying, come on, what else do you have for me? I've already taken on all the other devices that you have and I'm interested in seeing how far I can go in this world and how high it will take me. I surrender to you and your will give me all the kingdoms of man. I bow down to you friends. This will lead to destruction to court the enemy. He is not love. Our father in heaven is love. He has made a way for us.

  I want to share a, a dream as we, as we come out of this, this dark mirror of these terrible things. I want to share a dream that I had with you that I think is relevant for us this morning. The Lord used it to illustrate some powerful truth to me and I, I want to share it with you in, in hopes that you may find it helpful as well. In this dream. I was in sort of a a town square, not unlike Davis square, right? And as I was walking around it was in gray scale, I'll say kind of two dimensional maybe cell shaded if my, my video game fans out there know what I'm talking about. And there were these gaunt zombie like creatures lumbering about and there were also dead versions of these gray scale zombie like creatures that were laying on the ground strewn about in various places with birds and rodents, just sort of pecking at them.

  And I saw these, these zombies lumber over and kind of congregate in one place. And it was clear to me that this was a church and that they were there to feed and then they lumbered out and went around doing their thing, ambling about with the dead. This is all very depressing and weird. And then through the wall next to me, this guy burst through it and he was huge and jacked and electric blue and the three dimensional. And he just gave me kind of like the Uncle Sam Point and that was about it. But what, what this, what the Lord I think revealed to me through this is that there are those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. There are those who are alive in Christ, but you are not taking advantage of the strength that he offers. And there are those who are abundantly alive in Christ who wear the armor of God who take their strength from the Lord and walk about in his power, pursuing the building of the kingdom.

  Friends, I am, I am not a, you know, blue John Cena bursting through the wall, Kool aid man kind of person, right? I I am, I'm I'm not there. I don't stand up here to claim to be something that I'm not. But but that is what I want to be. I don't believe that Jesus was blue but I believe that that is the idea of pursuing him that spiritually we wanna be violently alive in the building of the kingdom as we do that, we need to love our neighbors and those around us, we need to do the work of investing, texting back being curious, not because we want to have a trophy or a medal on our stash for having helped bring someone along.

  But because God loves each and every one of those people that we encounter and we, if we love Him ought to love what he loves Christians, I pray that if the spirit convicts you, that you are not trusting in Him for your full protection, but are instead relying on any such armor of man that you will prayerfully seek to put away these tools that may seem effective in the short term, but our death in the long term and instead put on Christ.

  And if you're here today and you don't know what I'm talking about and I do sound new and wild to you. I do urge you to seriously evaluate the strength that I'm talking about. The power to not be afraid even when things are scary. The power to be able to trust in the one who loves you, who knows you, who sees you better than any other human ever could. And the one who is waiting to welcome you into eternity.

  I'm going to invite the band to come up now. And my brother Mark is going to come up as well and introduce communion for us. As they do, would you pray with me.

  Father, thank you for lending us your strength. We thank you for making a way for us to receive it through your son's work on the cross. Help us to see our devices as you see them, help us to take them off. And really, truly, maybe for the first time in our lives, trust in your strength. Teach us how to wear the armor you've provided to us and aid us in our fight against the enemy. Use us, we pray, in the work of building your kingdom of winning ground and reclaiming what has been lost. To the glory of your almighty name, your son's precious name, we pray, Amen.