Why the Christian Life is so Hard

Let me ask you to bow your head this morning. guys, I I marvel at the timeliness of this passage. I, I think of Easter Sunday coming up and our goal to reach out to people, inviting unsafeed family and friends on that day to sit under the sound of the gospel. The devil knows that God intends to do some great things on that day, and we can fully anticipate to be attacked.

I've already experienced that in my own life. To a greater degree than usual. I know that the devil is worried. The devil, Is I'm going to be sending flaming arrows, Coming up with scheme To distract us, to deflate us, to discourage us, and to defeat us.

So it's perfect. It is perfect in God's providence that we are at this passage to where we are not going to be ignorant of his devices. And we can triumph over these next few weeks leading up to a day of destiny, we believe for many people. Let's pray and ask God to just open our hearts to what he has for us in this text.

We would apply what we're learning. And experience victory. For the glory of God. Our Father, we are a weak people, weaker than we know.

We have some idea of our weakness, Lord, but we, even the most mature person in this room, we, We're not as frightened as we should be by these spiritual realities that we must reckon with. We're not as frightened as we should be by our own weakness apart from you. But may you sober us, Lord, by, The truths that we find in this text. May we be sobered by them, challenged by them, rallied to action.

May we respond by allowing ourselves to be made strong. Through your enabling that we would put our armor on, as we'll learn about next week, that we would stand firm, Against the evil one. And that we would pray at all times as we're commanded to do in this text, praying for the ministry of the gospel to go forward in our own lives and in the lives of others. Teach us, Lord, guide us as we process these things together in our care groups tonight and tomorrow night, and in the weeks to come.

We commit ourselves to You, Lord, in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Let's stand together. Yeah. You're not the right man. tra, Right If you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be some hard facts and what to do about them.

Some hard facts. We're going to look this morning at some unsettling, sobering facts that we do need to be mindful of, every day and, And we're going to begin to see what we can do about those, those unsettling facts. Let me start off though by reading to you a testimony from a Christian who has known the Lord for 20 years. He says, when I became a Christian, all my struggles disappeared immediately.

The sun came out, beautiful flowers started growing outside my home. My relationships became perfect, and I instantly started getting straight A's in school. During the past 20 years since being saved without committing a single sin. It has been truly wonderful.

But even more wonderful is the fact that I don't even have to struggle to be righteous. By the grace of God, I always feel like doing the righteous thing in every situation. Seeing my wife and children get saved and also cease from sin has been a great blessing also. Indeed, living the Christian life is so gloriously easy.

I can't imagine why everyone doesn't become a Christian. And all God's people said. Eh. Not.

Good, you're listening. I made that testimony up. Because it is so opposite of what our testimony would be. And by the way, if you ever meet anyone that gives a testimony like this, you rush them to the nearest hospital facility because they are in need of medical attention.

the Christian life is not easy. In fact, it is hard, perhaps the hardest thing that you have ever done in your life, and anyone who has known the Lord for any longer than 20 minutes knows that this is true. Were we to give our testimony, even since coming to know the Lord, our testimony, were we to be detailed about it would include the telling of stories of just thousands of sins and failures, and hopefully, it would include telling of victory. But, and when we chose to do right, but even in the telling of that, it required exertion and energy and a fight for every inch of progress that we make in our Christian life.

And then sometimes we battle it out, we take a few steps forward, and then we get knocked several steps back, and then we have to regain that ground. And truly, we've all discovered that the Christian life is hard, and it is a fierce battle. And we come In Ephesians chapter 6 verse 10 and following where Paul is going to educate us about this reality, letting us know, just just laying down the facts as they stand that we need to be aware of, and then he's going to give us specific instruction on how we can fight this battle and be the people that God wants us to be.

There's no way to avoid spiritual warfare.

There's nowhere, a way to avoid conflict. And the fighting that is necessarily involved in the Christian life, but Paul is going to teach us how to fight and how to fight to experience the victory that Christ has achieved for us on, the cross. Now, before we begin, what I'm going to do this morning is show you 4 hard facts that we can, infer from this passage in Ephesians 6:10 through 20. Before we do that, I do want to just set the stage.

This will take 2 or 3 minutes, so it's not a lengthy review, and you'll understand why we do this. but Paul in Ephesians 12, and 3 has given us a number of glorious truths about our Christian life, right? just wonderful facts that causes our hearts to leap as we hear them. And Ephesians 1:3, he's told us that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

and then he goes into telling us that God has predestined us. He has elected us before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless. In his presence in love, God has adopted us as his sons and daughters. He has brought us into his embrace, into intimacy with him.

He has lavished the exceeding riches of His grace upon us. That is not just forgiving grace, but empowering, enabling grace. He has redeemed us through the blood of Jesus, we learned in chapter one. which means that through the blood of Christ, we've been delivered from the guilt of sin, but also from the power of every single sin.

We never, ever have to sin again, because sin's power over us has been broken. We learned in chapter one that he's given us the Spirit of God who now resides within us, giving us God's power and God's wisdom. And God's love, and then also we learned later in chapter one that the power of God is constantly streaming into us. who are believing in Jesus and this power is not just the power of God, but it is a surpassingly great power that we possess.

Going into chapter two, very quickly, we learned some other things. We learned that not only did God raise Jesus from the dead and ascend Jesus to his own right hand, far above all demonic evil powers, and the devil himself, but we learn in Ephesians 2 that God raised us and feed us. With Jesus in the heavenly places in Christ. We learned that through the blood of Jesus being shed on the cross, that all enmity between us and God has been obliterated.

And also that the enmity between Jew and Gentile and between all of the races has been obliterated through the cross, making us now one body in Christ. And so one truth after another, we learned about in chapters 12, and 3. We would call these gospel facts, gospel truths that we absolutely must know to experience the fullness of the salvation that God wants for us. In fact, chapter 3 ends by saying now unto him, Who has done exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, and our hearts respond by saying amen to that.

God has done so much for us. And there's so much for us to just review and rehearse and preach to ourselves every day, so many glorious realities. If all you did, let's say you got saved right now, and then I handed you Ephesians 12 and three and you read it, and that's all you read, you would probably walk away with the impression, That all you got to do in the Christian life is spread your wings and soar. And that it's actually fairly simple and easy.

But we know from our experience that that is not true. And if we read Ephesians 45, and especially Ephesians 6:10 to 20, we come to see that there's some other realities, some other facts about the Christian life that we must know. As I give you these facts, it's not going to make you feel warm and fuzzy all over. your heart is not going to leap at these realities, but you must know them or you're going to get burned.

You're going to get chewed up and spit out before you even know what has happened to you. And so, let's look at scripture. What I want to do, we're not going to do a verse by verse exposition starting today, but what we're going to do is look at certain statements that Paul makes in this text, And we're going to infer 4 hard facts that Paul wants us as believers to know if we're going to succeed in being the men and women that God wants us to be. Hard fact number 1, That Paul wants us to be aware of is that there is a devil who seeks to defeat you through schemes.

There is a devil who seeks to defeat you through schemes. He says in verse 10, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. All right. So what we learned This is that there is a devil.

There is an intelligent spiritual being who is called in Scripture the devil. There are many people in our culture today who do not believe in a personality called Satan or that there is such a thing as a devil. Surprisingly, there are professing Christians who do not believe that there is such a thing as a devil, but Bible believing Christians agree with the Bible. And it's teaching that there is a devil that even Christians have to reckon with.

There is a devil, and this devil schemes against us, and he seeks to defeat us through evil schemes. Now, let me clarify this. when Paul says the schemes of the devil, and he speaks of the devil and the evil one in this passage, I don't want you to take that to mean that the devil himself. is attacking you today, but he's using the name devil to represent the devil and all of his demonic hosts who act as representatives of him carrying out his will against you and against the cause of Christ.

So understand that even when I say devil from this point on in the message, I Not be necessarily speaking exactly of him as much as of the demonic spiritual powers and entities who do his bidding and carry out his schemes, but there is a devil who seeks to defeat us through schemes. The word that is translated schemes here is the Greek word metia. that is the word we get our English word method from. And in English the word method could be positive or negative.

There's good methods, there's bad methods, but in the New Testament, Medeia is always a negative word and it means, it speaks of deceitful methods, deceitful strategies. It's strategies that are developed that are designed to deceive before the person even knows that they have been. deceived. And notice also in this passage that he says stand firm against the schemes plural of the devil, not scheme.

The devil doesn't just have one trick in his bag, one scheme, and you figure out how to deal with that, and then the rest of your Christian life is easy. You're saying, I've been there, done that, seen that before, and I know exactly what to do. No, he keeps coming at us with different schemes. The fact that Paul uses the plural here.

indicates that he's speaking of many instances in which we encounter the schemes of the devil and that these schemes are almost of an infinite variety. He comes at us with different schemes. One day he's coming at us with one scheme, and another day he is attacking us, seeking to deceive us with yet another scheme. We learn in Ephesians, Paul actually Uses the word schemes earlier in Ephesians in Ephesians 4:14 that often the devil uses human beings to deceive his people and even those who are not his people.

In Ephesians 4:14, Paul says, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and the schemes of error. Again, you see the notion of deceptiveness here. The schemes are the methods of error. The devil works through the people of this world to accomplish his schemes and to deceive us.

This word that is translated error in Ephesians 4:14 is the word we get our English word planet from. And understand that the Greek word for planet literally means wandering because the ancients looked at the stars at night and they saw the stars as being generally fixed in their position, but the planets seemed to wander from night to night through and among the stars. They seemed to wander around and so they called the planets wanderers. And so this means by craftiness in the schemes of wandering, the devil is seeking to get us to wander off through his schemes, to lure us off of the path of righteousness, to lure us away from the truth, and to seduce us into falsehood, into false doctrine, or into sinful, unrighteous behavior, and he does it through deception.

Now, folks, understand that when we think of the devil scheming, that ought to be something that sobers us because I don't know who the oldest Christian in this room is, and I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, but the oldest believer in this room, let's say has been maybe going at this Christian battle thing for 60 years, 70 years at the most, perhaps, and you've got a lot of experience under your belt. But the devil who schemes against us has been going at this for thousands of years.

And he's very good at what he does. In fact, he's so good at his schemes.

He came to Adam and Eve in a perfect world, who got, who were freshly created from the creative hand of God, who got to walk with God in the cool of day, who looked around at a perfect garden full of lush trees that God said you may freely eat. And he is so shrewd in his schemes that he ruined even that, and he persuaded two people freshly created by God to do the unthinkable through his deceptive ways. And if he could do that to Adam and Eve in a perfect world. What does he do to us in an imperfect world where we have so much sin that still lingers in us.

He's been going at this ever since that day in the garden, and he's very good at what he does. When we think of the devil scheming against us, we, we need to think also beyond just incidental schemes like the devil's not, here, here's what I like to think of. When I'm sleeping at night, I wake up in the morning, sometimes I like to think of this fact that while I slept, the devil was sitting in a boardroom with his demonic host scheming about me. And how to lure me off of the path of truth and righteousness and seduce me into sin.

Very good at what he does and he's been very active in setting about to putting these schemes in motion. And when he schemes, he's not just scheming to get me to commit one sin, and then once I've committed that sin, he's like, OK. That scheme was effective and so that's all I want to do today. No, the devil has schemes that are months and even years in duration.

Don't underestimate the shrewdness of the devil in this. In fact, I honestly believe that the devil, and again, I'm speaking of demonic hosts and those who do his bidding when I say the devil, That the devil has marked on his calendar like 2 years from now, 2 years from now, my goal is that Milton's soul will be in such a place that on that date, he will do what right now he thinks is unthinkable. What he would not dare do today, two years from now on that date, my scheme is to get him to where he will do that.

And sometimes when I'm facing a battle, I don't always handle this the way that I should, but sometimes when I'm facing a very private battle in my heart, I think of that.

It's like, what, I can give into this, but this isn't going to stop here. This is all a part of a larger scheme to set me up to do something that right now I would say that I, that is unthinkable for me to do. As a pastor, there have been a number of times that someone has sat in my office. Sobbing over their sin, broken over their sin because they did the unthinkable.

They did something that a year earlier they would have thought, I would never be capable of this. 5 years earlier they would have thought, I, I would never do this. They never set out to do this. But one battle after another was lost and the scheme began to unfold until their soul was shaped by those losses and defeats in such a way.

That the day came, that the moment of that ultimate temptation came, and they did the unthinkable because they had already been defeated by tens of thousands of smaller battles that led up to that. And so let's understand that the devil is very shrewd. He's very sophisticated at this, and these are schemes that are designed to deceive. The devil doesn't come to us and say, I'm going to lie to you right now, and I am the devil, and I'm about to lie to you, and here's the lie.

It doesn't do that. The schemes are that we believe the lie because we think that the lies are true. in that moment, and then we stumble into or we wander away from the truth and righteousness into sin, and we have a devil that schemes. You want to know why the Christian life is hard?

It's because the devil schemes against us and we encounter those schemes all the time. You want to know why bringing up your children is hard? It's because the devil schemes against your children. As much as he schemes against you.

You want to know why marriage is hard? It's because the devil schemes against you and he also schemes against your spouse. why pastoring a church and shepherding God's people is hard because the devil not only schemes against those who are elders, but also everyone that the elders are seeking to shepherd. And this is why the Christian life and Christian ministry in the church, the body of Christ, can be extremely difficult because there is a devil who schemes against us, and we encounter his schemes every day.

There's a second hard fact that we can infer from this passage. And that is that there are powerful evil forces who wrestle against you. There are powerful evil forces who wrestle against us. Look at verse 12.

Paul says, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Now he's rattling. Off a list of things, rulers, powers, and so forth. Some writers would like to suggest that these are very distinct echelons of spiritual beings, but I think the best way to handle this is that Paul is just flinging out some terms here to speak in different ways of demonic intelligences, demonic beings who are under Satan.

And who do his bidding and carry out his schemes. And Paul is saying, our struggle is not so much against flesh and blood, but against these spiritual beings. As you fight the fight of faith and struggle to be righteous and to say no to sin, you are struggling with these beings that are seeking to seduce you away from the truth. And by the way, the word that is translated struggle in the new American standard is the Greek word for wrestle.

We, we wrestle. Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood. This is the Greek word that was used in Bible times to speak of wrestling, which is very close contact, very close combat between two individuals. Listen to what one writer says.

About the word that is translated struggle. He says this word is commonly used for the sport of wrestling in the first century. It is intended to heighten the closeness of the struggle with the powers of evil. It is hand to hand combat is in view, not the firing of computer guided missiles from a distance.

Paul does not use the word for battle, though he could have, where armies are shooting arrows at one another. He doesn't use that word. He uses the word for wrestling. The picture is not of two beings that are throwing rocks at each other from 50 yards apart.

Modern day warfare, often soldiers are killing people that they don't even see. They're miles away. They're firing from tanks and dropping bombs from airplanes. Firing missiles from 50 miles or even further away or from aircraft carriers or what have you, and there's not the close combat, hand to hand combat.

It's from a distance. Paul doesn't use that idea. He uses the word for wrestling. Where two people are engaged in very close contact as they wrestle with one another.

And I don't know about you guys, but the more I think about this, the more this gives me the willies. To think of the close proximity. That we have with the powers of evil as we wrestle against them. I was reminded as I was studying this of something that happened when I was about 10 years of age.

I had left a convenience store and I was riding my bike through a wooded area on my way back to our house. And I didn't like snakes back then. I still don't. And as I was riding through this wooded area, I looked down to my right and there's a snake right there off the trail.

And I When I saw the snake, I don't know why I did this, because I could go faster on a bike. My bike continued to go forward. I jump off of my bike, leave my bike behind me, and I run a quarter of a mile at a full sprint home and did not stop until I got inside the door. And the whole way running home, I just had a visual of the snake behind me just coming after me, right on my heels.

and how when you're grossed out by something, you just, you, you, you get the chills or whatever and you just, just imagining that thing on you, that's what I was feeling like the whole way home and even after I got in the house. Can you guys identify with that feeling? OK, imagine. That I'm on my bike riding through the woods and the snake falls off of a branch on me.

And I have to wrestle that snake off of me and I have that close contact as I'm wrestling that snake off of me, that would have just utterly freaked me out. and I don't know if snakes do the same for you, maybe just think of whatever it is that you just cannot imagine ever touching you, whether it's roaches, spiders, whatever it might be. imagine that you having to wrestle that thing and deal with that thing in close contact to where you're actually making contact with that. In our home, if my wife sees a spider, for example, just the normal protocol is she screams, And I, as her hero, come to her rescue, and she points out the spider from across the room.

That right there, get that. Brave man that I am, I know that spiders can actually bite through like an inch of toilet paper, so I like take a whole roll of toilet paper. And get a big wad of it, so that it cannot penetrate through it and then I grab the spider bravely and then I throw it away. But why do I take a roll of toilet paper and do that?

It's because I don't want it to touch. me, I just, I can't stand the thought of it touching me. I remember about a decade ago, my wife and I were watching television one night and the freakiest thing, watching television and I see out of the corner of my eye, a mouse or rat or something scurry across the floor and go behind the TV cabinet. I so wish I had not seen that.

I just, in fact, I so wished I had not seen that, that I just acted like I didn't see it and I just thought maybe I can just wish this away and it's not a problem, but then my wife said, Did you see that? And I said, yeah, I saw it. She says, we'll take care of it, get it. So I had no shoes on at the time and our TV cabinet was low and I, I go to the front of the TV cabinet and I try, I'm trying to look over it and I have my feet as far away from the front of it as possible in case that wild animal came out and nibbled at my toes.

So like I'm, I'm standing over trying to look behind the cabinet. My wife, Had a load of laundry right beside her, and one of the items of laundry was a pair of socks that were like rolled up in a ball. She was behind me while I'm bravely trying to deal with this wild creature. My wife from behind takes that black sock and she throws it at my feet.

I saw out of the corner of my eye something black. Go right by my feet. My wife said that I went from one side of the room to the other side in 1 2nd. I don't even remember how I ended up dealing with that creature.

We got it out of the house, but I never had to touch it. I never had to touch it, and it makes it all the harder when you don't want to touch something and deal with it directly in that way. but you guys all, I think, can identify with that. Here's the deal.

If the scales could be removed from our eyes and we can see the dark, dastardly, evil principalities and powers that we have to reckon with, It would have a far worse effect upon us. Than seeing any of these other creatures. And Paul says, hey, You're not going to like this. But if you're going to move forward today for the Lord, You have to wrestle.

With those beings. You have to fight And you have to wrestle. Close proximity warfare. With these beings.

That are utterly despicable. When we wake up tomorrow morning, we ought to remind ourselves of gospel truths, but also remind ourselves of the fact that there is a devil that schemes against me. I will encounter his schemes many times today, and there are powerful, wicked, despicable, disgusting, evil forces that I'm going to have to wrestle with today. And very close, difficult warfare.

There's another hard fact that Paul gives to us that we can infer from this passage. And that is that we live in an evil day. We live in an evil day. Look what Paul says in verse 13.

He says, therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day. This means two things. The best that I can tell from the different people that I've read, certainly it means that we live in evil days, right? None of us need any convincing that we live in evil days.

but it also, the evil day can also speak of very intense seasons of spiritual assault against us. You see, not every day is equally intense. Isn't that true in your experience? In fact, the devil makes sure that not every day is equally intense.

Sometimes he falls back and retreats a little bit. And you go a few days where it just seems like this really isn't that difficult and you're not depending on the Lord like you should, walking with him as closely, and then comes a day of extremely powerful satanic attack. That's the evil day. I look back over my life as a Christian, And there are several seasons that I would call the evil day where evil seem to be attacking in ferocious intensity.

Not every day is like that necessarily, but there are the evil days within the larger scope of the evil days in which we live. you, like me, probably can look back over your Christian experience and see seasons of great victory and walking with the Lord, and then you look back and with, with shame and even with regret, you see the evil days when attack came and you did what was beforehand unthinkable and even now is unthinkable to you. Those are the evil days when the devil just pulls out all of the stops and unleashes an assault against you.

And so we live in evil days.

if you look at Ephesians chapter 5 verse 16, Paul speaks more broadly, not just of evil seasons where attack is especially severe, but look at chapter 5, verse 15. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. We live in exceptionally evil days. We live in days where in our culture pornography actually around the world is a multi, multi-billion dollar industry.

We live in a day where pornography is just, just the click of a button away. Solomon speaks of feet that run rapidly to evil. How that's an abomination to the Lord. Nowadays you don't even need feet to run rapidly to evil.

All you need is a finger and you, you press a button or two and you have unspeakable evil right in front of your eyes. It's a multibillion dollar industry. We live in a society today to where since the Iraq war started, Here's a number you probably haven't seen. Since the war in Iraq started.

There have been over 5 million unborn babies killed in the womb. Over 5 million. the media is careful to keep us apprised of what the death toll is in Iraq, and I think they rightly are entitled to do that. War really is horrible, and all of these fatalities are really indeed tragic, but No one's showing the number that since that war started, over 5 million babies.

Have been killed in the womb, and it's, it's condoned by the law of our land. These unborn or unprotected. We live in a day where through the entertainment industry, the devil is just unleashing scheme after scheme after scheme, using the brightest and the most talented and the most beautiful, to scheme his way into the hearts of people to get them to do the unthinkable. We live in a day where the love of money is fed and nurtured and it's leading souls off of the path of righteousness and leaving them pierced through with many a pang.

As Paul speaks about in First Timothy, we live in a day where we're always seeing the schemes of the evil one prevalent in our culture. And let me just throw this at you guys. I know that you're going to be hearing more about this. Talk about schemes.

James Cameron, who produced the movie Titanic about a decade ago, which by the way, featured a final closing scene. It was an afterlife scene. The brazenness of that afterlife scene is utterly appalling. In that final afterlife scene, it shows two unrepentant fornicators entering into a blissful afterlife.

The goal of a man to do something like that really reveals a lot about his heart. Hence, we should not be surprised to read, as I read yesterday, the James Cameron, is going to have a press conference according to Time magazine tomorrow in which he claims to have found the body of Jesus. And other relatives in a cavern in a cave in Israel just outside of Jerusalem. There was a discovery 27 years ago where they came upon a 2000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets.

As Israeli archaeologists looked at it, in fact, Israel's most prominent archaeologist examined it, and he in no way associated it with Jesus in any way, shape, or form. But some of the names that they've been able to decipher of the 10, coffins or caskets that are in this, this cave are the names Jesus, and it says son of Joseph, and then Mary, Mary, Matthew, Jaffa, and Judah. Son of Jesus or Yeshua and James Cameron is inferring from that, that, and he says he has scientists and DNA experts.

In fact, he's coming out with a documentary on this that surely will be out before Easter to enrich our Easter season as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but he infers from this that Jesus' body is in this cave or was in this cave, and that Jesus had a son.

And he gets all of that from just these names, which by the way, were extremely common, extremely common back in this day. And, when I read this, I just thought the timing of this, here comes Easter, and here comes James Cameron. it seems like every year the devil has Easter on his calendar and he's working a few months in advance. It's like, what, let's get the Jesus seminar working again.

Let's put some other harebrained idea inside their heads and get them going and making some public pronouncements, about how the resurrection never happened and this and that, that the Bible says happened actually never happened and how Jesus never said what the Bible says that he said. but now the devil is, producing yet another scheme that is designed to shake the faith of Christians and also to lead those who are weak in faith away from the truth and into falsehood and into destruction.

These are schemes. They're schemes of the evil one, and we just need to be aware of it.

When we see schemes like this, we should And say, oh my goodness, there's a scheme. No, we're told that these things will happen. These are things that we have to reckon with and deal with in our Christian life. There is a devil who schemes against us.

There are powerful evil forces that wrestle against us, and we live in an evil day where the schemes of Satan are prevalent and so Many have fallen into those schemes and are experiencing the ruin and the heartache and the wreck of their lives that ensue from buying into his schemes. There's one more hard fact that we can infer from this passage, and that is that flaming arrows from Satan are assaulting you. Flaming arrows from Satan are coming our way and assaulting us. If you look in Ephesians.

Chapter 6, verse 16, Paul says, in addition to all taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And so what he's telling us is that in the spiritual realm, there is the equivalent of arrows coming from the evil one who is the devil or Satan, and these arrows are on fire and they're coming your way. And back in this day, the Roman armies would take arrows, they would dip them in pitch, they would set them on fire, and they're flying through the air on fire, and they would hit the enemy soldiers, hit their catapults and their equipment, and even their Shields and set those on fire, even burning the shields of the enemy soldiers.

Consequently, what the Romans would do to protect themselves is they would take their shields and soak them, drench them in water so that they would not be flammable, so that if a fiery arrow came into their shield, which was a full-bodied shield, it would extinguish that flaming arrow rather than that shield being burned up.

And what Paul is telling us is that when we go into a new day, we need to expect that arrows are going to be coming our way. Those arrows are on fire. They're designed to pierce. They're designed to injure.

They're designed to scar. They're designed to bring pain. They're designed to bring confusion, division, and chaos. When an army is being assaulted by these fiery arrows that are landing everywhere and setting things on fire and soldiers are screaming because they're on fire, their clothes.

On fire that breeds chaos and confusion rather than orderliness and understand that the devil is shooting those spiritual equivalents at you every day. He is shooting them at your children every day. He is shooting them at your spouse every day, and understand that you are a part of a body of believers. Every day the devil is shooting his fiery arrows at us.

You wonder why the Christian life is hard. It's hard because there is a devil that schemes against us. It's hard because as we seek to move forward for the Lord, there are powerful, disgusting, evil forces that we must wrestle against. It is hard because we live in an evil day.

We are not in heaven yet, and it is hard because there are flaming arrows from the enemy that are assaulting us and those that we love and those that we seek to minister to in the home and in the church. I know, folks, that these four hard facts do not put your heart to rejoicing. But they do appropriately sober us. If you go into your day and not be aware of these things, then you're going to get chewed up and spit out before you even know what happened.

And so how do we respond to these realities? All we're going to do today, guys, is look at verse 10. We're just going to look at the first thing that Paul tells us to do by way of living our life. What do we do given these gospel realities that we see in Ephesians 12, and 3 and in light of these hard, disturbing, unsettling facts that are also involved in our Christian life?

What should we do? Instruction number 1 is in verse 10, and that is be strong. Be strong. He says in verse 10.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Just take the expression, the command, be strong. There's a lot that's there. First of all, the tenses of the command, he's telling us to be continuously strong.

Guys, it is not enough to be strong 6 days out of 7. what'll happen if you're strong 6 days out of 7, when is the devil going to really attack? He's going to attack on the day that you are at your weakest. For me, the hardest day that I have found for me to be spiritually strong is Mondays.

That's, if you ever pray for me, pray for me every day of the week, but pray for me on Mondays. That's my hardest day. where I seem to be most vulnerable to spiritual attack. And if the normal course of things ensues, I tend to start picking up strength, physically and spiritually Tuesday and on.

But what I've learned, the longer I've served as a pastor is that I've got to get up early on Monday and I've got to be immersing myself in the gospel and being strong because, what, the devil is especially active in my life on Mondays because he knows. He knows that that's normally a day that I am at my weakest. And so it's not enough to be strong 23 hours out of 4 on a given day. It's not enough to be strong.

6 days out of 7, we need to be continuously strong and also understand that this command is a passive voice, which may not mean a lot to some of you, but basically what it means is he's not telling us to make ourselves strong. He's literally telling us to let ourselves be made strong. We're not the ones who make ourselves strong. He's saying be strengthened.

allow yourself to be strengthened. Someone else is what strengthens you. You need to allow that other person to make you strong. Also, think of the implications of this command for Paul to command us to be strong, given these harsh realities that we've reviewed today, teaches us that we must not be automatically strong.

We're not automatically strong in the Lord, folks. We have to make the decision to let ourselves be made strong. And a lot of times we can be so naive about this. I know I can be just getting up in the morning, picking up the newspaper, reading the newspaper, going to the next thing, and then the next thing, thinking I'm strong enough to deal with, whatever comes my way, and it's usually not long before I realize that I'm not as strong as I think I am.

And I'm especially not as strong as I should be because I didn't make the decision to let myself be strengthened by the Lord. Another implication of this command is that if we do not let ourselves be made strong, we're going to get hurt. We're going to get injured, we're going to be defeated. And so, given these harsh realities, Paul would say you need to be strong.

You need to allow yourself, literally, you need to, be strengthened by the Lord, and by the strength of his might, not summoning your strength, but letting yourself become strong by the Lord who makes you strong, and what he makes you strong with is the strength of his might, not your might, not your strength, but his strength. Now one of the things you guys are going to notice as we go through this passage is that the Paul. really, there's themes in this text, such as the power of God, truth, righteousness, the gospel, salvation, faith, the word of God, all of those things he's been talking about up to this point of the book, but now he brings it all to bear on the spiritual warfare that we are engaged in.

and what we then realize as we look back on the book is that Paul has been developing in us a knowledge.

And an expertise in our arsenal that we now use in the spiritual warfare. Guys, real quickly, just as we try to wrap this up, let me just show you three slides, just some things we've already learned about the power of God that we need to be made strong with. First of all, it's surpassingly great. God's power is surpassingly great.

Paul prays in Ephesians 1:19. that we would know what is the surpassing greatness of his power. Here's the great news, guys, as powerful as the devil is, as powerful as his demons are, that we must wrestle with and fight against every day, God's power is surpassingly greater. His power is greater than the power of Satan, and we need to not just compare Satan's power to our own and say, wow, I can never win against him, but we need to compare his power to God's power that God has given to us.

You think of David against Goliath, the Israelites looked at Goliath and sized him up and compared Goliath to themselves and said, I'm not going to fight him. David sized up Goliath and compared Goliath to God's size and said, man, he's small and we can take him in the name of God. And that's what we need to do. Yes, the devil is strong, but God is stronger.

His power is surpassingly great, and this is what God wants to empower us with. Also, we learned that in Ephesians 1, that God's power came into us when we believed. Paul says, I want you to know what is the surpassing greatness of his power literally into us who believe. God's power is not something outside of ourselves that we need.

To go get God's power has come into us, and it is streaming into us as we are believing. It is our faith that activates the power of God inside of us so that we might bring that to bear on the life we live and the warfare that we engage in. We also learned that the power of God wants to strengthen us with is the power that God used to raise Jesus from the dead and ascend him above all other powers. Think about 2000 years ago, God raised Jesus from the dead, and then God ascended Jesus above all of the principalities and powers that fight against us, enormous power.

That's the power that God now directs your way and has continuously streaming into you. Just very quickly going to the last slide, I want to show you, One final truth about the power of God that we've already learned from Ephesians is that with this power, God can do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think. Paul says to him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works where? With us.

All of this amazing power is inside of you. And Paul is saying, hey, if you're going to win in this spiritual war, You need to let yourself be made strong by the Lord, and in order to do that, You have to be a humble person. To obey this command. You have to get up in the morning and acknowledge and confess that your strength is not good enough and that you need another strength, and you go to God for that strength and you believe that he's given you that strength, and then you fight in the strength of the Lord rather than in your own strength.

There's so much more that we are going to be learning from this passage, and next week we're going to pick up here and we're going to look at what amounts to 4 instructions that Paul gives to us to teach us what we must do if we're going to be successful in engaging in spiritual warfare and experiencing victory to the glory of God.