The armor & communications - Part 2, Eph, 6:14-18

Last Sunday, we were looking at verses 14 through 15, and today, 16 through 18. Last Sunday, we had these three pieces of armor, the Breastplate of Righteousness, Belt of Truth, and the Gospel of Peace, the Shoes. And this was one of the things we pointed out here, and that is that those pieces of armor are the very character of Jesus Christ, and they stand in opposition to the character of the enemy.

In truth, what makes the enemy flee? It is the character of Jesus Christ. It is not because we're really mad at him. It's not because we say very threatening and ferocious things. It is the character of Jesus Christ, lived out in the believer, that is ultimately threatening to Satan. That is frightening to him. Now, today we'll be looking at last three of the six pieces of armor that the believer is equipped with, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

So now, we'll be taking these verses one at a time as we proceed through the passage. As Gene began reading, he was actually reading, and appropriately so, kind of the middle of the sentence, because it's really continuing on the thought that Paul had already begun as we introduced last week. He's given us the first three pieces of armor, and that's what we looked at last week. He's going to give us the final three pieces here. I think one of the reasons why Paul listed them the way he did is that most Roman soldiers would typically wear the three pieces we looked at last week all the time. carry the other items, but those would be worn all the time.

It is in preparation for battle that they would put the helmet on, they'd pull up the shield, and they'd draw the sword out. So that's the distinction here, I think. And one of the reasons why he makes a break and says, in addition to all, or as the King James has it, above all. These are additional items to be taken on The others would be worn all the time. These would be taken on in preparation for battle.

Now, in Matthew 5.41, Jesus was speaking to the Jews, and this is what's typically called the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus said, whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too.

Well, that would be quite something to ask of somebody, or even to force them to do. Except in this case, we have our expression in English, go the extra mile. It's based on Roman law. According to Roman law, there were various things that Roman soldiers could require of civilians. One was, for example, you're going to feed me and put me up for as long as I determine. But one of the requirements that they were allowed to enforce was that if they asked you to carry some extra items, like the shield and the helmet, because frequently they wouldn't wear the helmet, really hot, If they asked you to carry those, you had to carry it for a mile.

So Jesus said, carry it the extra one. The mile was counted by a thousand double steps. In other words, each time you put the same foot down. So the left, right, left, right. Each left, right was counted as a double step. So a thousand of those, and you'd have completed the requirement. Jesus said, go the extra mile beyond that. Go beyond what was legally required. Now, in Ephesians 6, 16 and 17, what he does is he says, alright, these are no longer extra.

For you, the believer, there isn't something for somebody to carry because you're not in a casual situation. You're in a battle situation, so get them on! Okay? That's the point he's making here. These are not some extra items that you would have somebody casually carry for you. You need them because you're in a battle zone.

So he starts off taking up the shield of faith. The Roman shields were heavier. The Roman army had this determination, we want to do things differently and better. So what they would do is they had a shield that was about two and a half feet wide and four feet tall. And it was typically rectangular, not the rounded kind and the smaller kind like a lot of their opponents would use. They had to have a wooden base, oftentimes made of like oak or another heavy wood. On that, they would put a layer of heavy cloth and then cover it with leather. And the leather would not be light leather, but heavy leather.

So you'd have several layers to help make the shield a significant protection. So here's the shields in formation. One of the reasons why they had the rectangular shields, they could put them together. And by having this together formation called a tortoise formation, it was like the plates on the tortoise shell. they could have significant protection for the troops, better than the enemy had. And it was a major thing that they trained around in order to get this formation in place. The shield was called a scutum, and in Greek, and this is what you'll see in the New Testament there, a thoraos, and it's interesting, the word door is a thora, so they looked at it as, this is a bunch of doors. And what you wanted to do if you're a soldier is don't open the door for the enemy, right?

It was a significant shield. It was very large and frankly heavy. Oh, one other item. In training, the Roman soldiers used double-weighted shields, swords, helmets, everything was double-weighted. So that when they got in the battlefield and they had this really heavy shield, they'd say, oh, this is light. Training with double the weight, so that when you got out on the battlefield, it was a piece of cake. I mentioned they're two and a half feet wide, four feet high.

They went edge to edge, and they had this cloth and leather. And then they have a metal center bulge, and the idea with that is you'd have a horizontal bar across the inside of the shield, and this would give you a place for the handhold. And it was metal, so it would give you significant protection. Nobody was going to easily bash it in You'll ruin your fingers.

Now, most of our English translations don't bring across the idea here, but the Greek does. The shield of the faith. There's a definite article there. It's specific. The focus isn't just about believing. It isn't just the shield of faith like, boy, believe really hard. It's also a focus on what you believe. It's the content. In this case, what he's certainly talking about, he's not saying that we just have these things, but certainly that we do put our trust and confidence in the things that the Lord has revealed and told us.

Now, taking up the shield of faith, Paul specifically, and by the way, this is the only one of the six where he really brings out what the enemy is going to throw at you. All the rest of them, he just lists what they are. This one, he says, this is what the enemy is going to throw at you. And so he says specifically flaming arrows.

What the soldiers would do is they would take their canteen and douse the front side of their shield to get it all wet. That's heavy. They'd get it all wet so that when the flaming arrows came at them, they wouldn't torch the shields. And notice, Paul uses an absolute here that the Roman soldiers didn't have. What happened is their shields, as good as they were, and being fully wedded, were very helpful, but the shield was not absolute. He uses the shield, however, as a picture and makes an absolute statement that believers have, so that the analogy of the shield of the Roman soldier was to bring us partway to the truth, the reality is, as believers, the shield of faith is absolute. It will, not might, will extinguish how many of the flaming arrows? All. All of them. What the enemy would frequently start off with is they'd start shooting the flaming arrows right off at a distance. They could do it while the Roman soldiers were some distance away.

So the soldiers would want to be prepared with their shields up and wetted thoroughly in order to be able to extinguish all these arrows. The soldiers' shields would get struck with arrows. Some of them would just bounce off or deflect and notice that the curved shape gave particular advantage to some that would just kind of glance off to the side. But the other thing was that those that did stick, the hope of the enemy was to light the shields on fire. The hope of the enemy was to load your shield so full of arrows that it got so heavy that you'd just abandon it. That was the idea.

Get them to abandon their shield. Paul makes the absolute statement, the shield not just might, not just probably will, But the shield will, in absolute terms, be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows. The shield of faith that the believer has is an absolute resistance to Satan's attacks, the flaming arrows. It's not, boy, I sure hope this works. It's not, boy, it'd sure be nice if it did.

It is an absolute resistance to the Satanic attack, these flaming arrows. So, what are the flaming arrows? We need to answer that question. Spiritually speaking, what are the flaming arrows? Flaming arrows were intended to take the soldier out. Why? The first thing is, by either weight and or flame, the flaming arrows were intended to make the soldier drop it, drop the shield.

And what's going to happen next? The soldier is now open. The soldier is now exposed and has lost that significant protection. Furthermore, remember that formation that we saw? Now, I've got an entrance into that tortoise formation. The solidarity of protection that was once there has now been breached. That's what the enemy is trying to do. So, here we are at the believer. Our position in Christ is not at stake. Satan cannot touch it. He cannot do anything to touch or affect or impact our position. No way. The shield of faith will absolutely protect a believer.

However, since the flaming arrows were intended to make the soldier drop the shield, flaming arrows from the enemy is intended to make us drop our faith and confidence in who the Lord says we are and what He has done and who we are in Him. That's what they're for.

They're intended to make us panic. Drop this thing. It's too heavy. It's too much work. That's what they're designed to do. Anything that makes us lose our confidence, anything at all, that makes us lose our confidence in the Lord will suffice. It may be small. It may be large. It may be short term. It may be chronic. People try to get real specific about what the flaming arrows are. Satan really doesn't care, because his design is that we drop our confidence in the faith that the Lord has laid out before us.

Some of you may remember when we looked at Philippians 1.27 and 28, Paul's exhortation there was, conduct yourselves, and I would add to that the significant thing, it's conduct yourselves as citizens. the specific Greek word there, in a manner worthy of the gospel, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear that you are standing firm, here it is, the exact same thing as we see here in Ephesians, Ephesians 6, in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith, there's the definite article there, of the gospel, in no way alarmed, and this particular word that Paul used there for alarmed was a word that described running away from a battle in panic. In no way alarmed. What the believer is called to do is to hold that shield of faith, which is, spiritually speaking, putting our trust and confidence in who it has been revealed to us we are in Christ and what He has accomplished. Our trust and confidence in Him.

The design of the enemy is for you to panic. Run! Drop it! Ah! The shield's on fire! Ah! It's too heavy! Drop it! That's what puts us in the open, and he has the picture here pretty clearly. Stand firm, stand together, that's the message, in no way dropping the shield and running. In no way.

Stand your ground, stay where you are, The shields that we have as believers are absolute in effectiveness, better than anything the Romans could count upon. Better. So what's the shield of faith? It's trust, confidence, and dependence in the faith that is the content of the apostolic teaching. End result, our trust and confidence and dependence is in who the Lord Jesus Christ is and who we are in Him. That's the outcome. That's where our trust and confidence lies. That's the shield of faith. It's that simple. Now, here's this question here.

We have the evil one. The King James has the wicked. So the question is, is it wicked people or is it Satan himself? Well, I would submit to you that the battle isn't against flesh and blood. It's not against humans. And while human beings may, in fact, be the delivery agent for some of these things that are intended to attack us, that it's really pointing to Satan, the evil one. That's why the New King James has the wicked one, which is certainly equivalent. Now, the next item, the helmet of salvation. Think about this now.

The Mediterranean, what kind of weather do they have around there most of the year? Hot. Very hot. Very warm weather, so the helmet would be something that they would put on for a battlefield situation because they needed the protection, but would frequently leave it off. The metal helmet was typically lined with three to four layers of heavy leather inside.

So what would happen is that they would typically leave it off until the battlefield situation because it was so warm. That would be a situation like what Jesus talked about in Matthew 5. You know, they'd have somebody else carry this hot thing for a while. It would be an extra if they weren't in the battlefield situation. But once in the battlefield, it was absolutely essential that you have it on. Starting with the reign of Emperor Claudius, 41 AD is when he came into they started putting a sort of a back shield on the back of the helmets for additional protection around the neck. So, guess what? It's even heavier. More weight. So, we need to ask the question, what does Helmet of Salvation, spiritually speaking, what did Paul have in mind? Does this mean that Christians are supposed to be thick-headed?

Does it mean, see, Helmet of Salvation, I know We can have salvation helmets in the stores. You can go to the Christian bookstore and get some Christian helmets, right? Isn't that the way it works? Probably not. So, what did Paul have in mind? What was he thinking when he said, helmet of salvation? Now, it's clear that the helmet protects the head.

This is where we do our thinking, isn't it? And he's essentially looking at here, what is the spiritual perspective? What is the mindset? How do we think about things? His focus here is the helmet of salvation. It is our mindset, our understanding of the character of our salvation. That's what he's putting the focus on here. It is how we see things. It's how we view things. That's what he's putting the focus on in this phrase.

The believer is certainly to stand and to remain in that standing position, spiritually speaking. This is going to call for the believer to be mindful of the character of his or her salvation. What is the nature of my salvation? That's the mindset from which I'm going to operate as a believer. What is the nature of our salvation? It's one of the reasons why he's gone through for several chapters telling them the nature of their salvation.

Starting off in Ephesians 1.3, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. and then continuing on through subsequent chapters, letting them know this is the character of your salvation. Things like your citizenship is already in heaven, or you've already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, or as we've brought out in chapter 3, unfathomable riches. This is the character of our salvation. He wants us to have that understanding. Or, for example, you've been seated in the heavenlies, right? That's not right. Okay.

Now, the third item and the last piece of armor that he brings up is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The Roman soldier would certainly keep the sword in the sheath and that would be standard, but he would typically not separate that from him. He'd keep it on his side and then pull it out to be prepared for a battle situation. And so that's what he's making reference to here. He would have it on his belt, his baltheus, and then pull it out to prepare for battle. Now, we mentioned as we're going through the book of Revelation a few years back, that the barbarians would often use a large sword called a ramphaya. It was about a five foot long sword.

It was heavy. They would hold it with two hands and it was not done with skill. It was just swing this thing. And the idea is if you got hit by this ramphaya, it might well take parts off. Even if it didn't take parts off, the impact of this heavy thing is going to really knock you for a loop. That was the barbarian strategy. Swing this heavy, long thing hard. And that was their approach. The Romans didn't do that. Instead, what they did is they gave them about a two foot long sword, two inches wide, double edged, and they said, you need to aim this carefully.

You need to learn maneuvers and strategy and technique with this. You need to learn skill in the use of this. We're not doing as the barbarians do and relying on just swinging a heavy thing. We want you to do this skillfully. having practiced what you see in training.

Here would be, for example, a barbarian's long sword, this Rumphaya, and it's actually somewhat shrunk in order to just get it on the screen there. And then the Roman short sword next to it, the Mycira in the Greek, or the Gladius in the Latin. This is the one offensive weapon that's listed, isn't it? I mean, up till now, we've talked about, you know, helmets and breastplates and we got this belt and we got, you know, the feet shot and, you know, everything is defensive up until this one. But even this weapon has a defensive aspect.

If the orders are to stand firm, you're not going to use this sword, especially one that's just two feet long, unless the enemy's coming in close. Your orders are not to attack. Your orders are to stand firm. We said if you include the place where he says resist, which means stand against, four times prior to this he said stand firm.

So this is not an attack mode, this is a defensive mode. When the enemy comes at you, you have this one offensive weapon that is actually designed in that situation for defense, for defending yourself. So it's interesting, even that one has a defensive aspect to it. You're waiting for the enemy, given the command to stand, to come in, and then you're going to deal with them. The barbarians would swing their rumphia and go flailing it around, whereas the Romans said, no, we're going to give you a short sword and you're going to use it with skill.

It implies a skill for the believer in the use of God's Word. that that is valuable to the believer. If you don't know God's Word, you have a tough time using it, right? Just like some of the other aspects, we talked about the faith. Do we understand what the content of the faith is? We talked about the helmet of salvation. Do we know what it means for a believer to be saved? Those are things where we need to have some understanding. This is no less true. We can't just take a Bible and throw it It's not going to work.

We need to understand what God's Word is saying in order to use it skillfully. This little phrase, of the Spirit, points to the Holy Spirit as the source of the sword. It's the sword that has the Holy Spirit as its source. He's the one who leads into all truth. Scripture has revealed that. He directs His focus upon Christ. Christ Himself said that. and transforms us into the image of Christ as we behold him through his word.

2 Corinthians 3.18 and you could add to that Romans 8.28 and 29. The Holy Spirit is is multiply involved in bringing us the Word of God and making it effective in our lives. It's the sword which the Spirit originates because he has authority and responsibility in that area. He's the one who inspires scripture, and scripture itself says that it's spiritually profitable. It is useful.

Now, here's a question. By the sword of the Spirit, does he mean, because it says, which is the word of God, does he mean the printed Bible? Do you have either a copy with you or some in the pew racks there? Does he mean the printed Bible? Okay. All right.

Now, what we can look at, there are places here, Jesus Christ is called the Logos in Revelation 19.13, so he is called the Word. And so you can find that. A couple places we list here, and there are actually a few others.

Acts 6.12 and Hebrews 4.12 are both references where the written Word of God is called the Logos. But, this is different.

This word is Rema, which is pointing to the spoken word of God. Now, we saw previously this word twice in the book of Ephesians, in chapter 1 and chapter 5. And in each case, it referred to the spoken word of God. One of the examples that we saw fairly recently was the one where the husband, in the four kinds of love that the husband is to have for the wife, the second kind of love is sanctifying love, and that gets carried out by the spoken word of God. Okay? The spoken word of God. That's this same word here.

Now, one of the places where we see a very distinct and clear example of that use of the spoken word of God as defense against Satan is where Christ encounters Satan and he counters him with scripture. Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And you have this passage here, and I think we have it in large size on your handout so you can track it there.

Even in the context here, he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word, Rema, same word as we're talking about here in Ephesians 6. Every word, spoken word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So here we have references and you can make the notation. I didn't do the lines on your paper so that you can do that if you'd like.

Man shall not live by bread alone, connecting from Deuteronomy 8.3.

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, Deuteronomy 6.16.

And then you shall worship the Lord your God 6.13 and 14 and 10.20. All of the responses that Jesus gave to Satan, one, came out of Scripture, and interestingly, came out of Deuteronomy. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself used the Word of God to counter Satan. The spoken Word of God was authoritative, and Satan fled. at the third mention of the Word of God.

Okay, back in our passage here, we're going to include in this section here verse 18. Now, some folks would cut it off because they'll say, well, he quits listing the armor in verse 17, so we'll stop there. I'll submit to you that we need to continue on and include verse 18, and here's why.

It says, be on the alert with all perseverance. That sounds like a kind of a military defensive type mode. And indeed, it was one of the things that the Roman officers would tell the soldiers, be on the alert. It tells them, be ready. Get prepared. Get ready for the battlefield.

The other thing, and we find it there in your handout as well, Peter wrote, and he used some similar terminology and similar pictures. 1 Peter 5, 8 and 9, be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist, remember we said that, stand against, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.

And notice that while the reference is not identical, he finishes it off, as Paul does here in verse 18, with a reference to the other saints. So I think we have just some parallel backup, if you will, for the idea that verse 18 does belong in our understanding of spiritual warfare.

One of the things that jumps out, and as I looked at this, I said, boy, does he mean all or what? He put in all four times here, and as I looked through various places where Paul wrote all, He never exceeds the number four in any verse that I found, and only a few other places did he match it.

So he's getting extreme here. He's laying out maximums. And so that's really important for us to take a look at. Now, one of the things as we kind of step through the phrase is, with all prayer and petition, he's looking for maximum prayer. Now I'm not laying that out in legalistic terms, I'm not saying, okay, now get out your checklist and get out your stopwatch, okay? But the point being that there are all kinds of things to pray about.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you're going along and realizing, you know, we've got some kind of spiritual circumstance here, or maybe even something I'm concerned about, and you know, I haven't prayed about this. You ever been through that? You know, oh man, you know, I could have been praying. It's better than I could have had a V8, okay? I could have been praying all this time.

And so one of the things he's looking at with all prayer and all kinds, I could have been praying. And then the next one is he's talking about, and this whole subject is bringing up the idea of kind of military communications. He's talking to the officer about what's happening. And that's really what this is conveying here to us. Pray at all times. This is maximum opportunity.

Is there any time when you're going to be praying and the Lord is going to say, wait a minute, not the right time. Is that going to happen? Not too likely. The Lord is not going to be giving us certain time windows. Okay, now it's my prayer time. I can pray now. Time's up. The Lord doesn't do it that way, does He? Pray at all times. All kinds of times. All kinds of situations. If you look at that first line, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times, it implies not just all hours are open, but all sorts of things.

I can remember years ago, we had a situation where our cow got sick, and so we had some people pray for our cow. And one of the ladies who was in the study was really stunned. Can you pray for a cow? Yeah, certainly. You can pray for all kinds of things. I think often it's easy for us as believers to sort of set prayer off as a kind of a segment and to kind of sometimes exclude it.

He's widening the door here and saying, pray about all kinds of things all the time. Don't worry, God isn't holding a stopwatch. He isn't saying time's up. This isn't like one of the game shows where they have this clock ticking or the music playing until this buzzer goes off. The Lord says all times, all kinds of situations.

Now, in the spirit, this is one verse that is frequently used to support the idea of private tongues, personal tongues, like some sort of prayer language to God. I would submit to you that as we look at the place where he's used the phrase in the spirit before, it's always been something that's been understood, conveyed clearly and rationally. It's expressed intelligibly.

And one of the reasons I bring this up, it may or may not be something that's an issue with you. In my own situation, my extended family had some Pentecostal-type backgrounds. Nancy and I were noticing in various churches we've been, some of them with no Pentecostal or charismatic background even, there were people who expressed an involvement with this private tongues idea. Right after this verse, Paul requests specific prayer for himself. So notice there's a known content to the prayer that he is turning to right after this.

The idea is also that it would be expressed intelligibly. He's giving you a known content so that you can convey that known content to the Lord intelligibly. Also point out that every reference for which we have detail indicates that it was a known humanly spoken language, not something that was unknown and ecstatic utterance. Finally here, the only biblical explanation we have of the use of tongues among those in the church is an expectation to clear understanding. That's the general context of 1 Corinthians 14. The main thing for us to look at now, though, is it is praying consistent with what the Holy Spirit has revealed. Praying consistent with the Lord's character.

Those are the things that he's pointing to. Now, he says, with this in view, look where this is headed. With all prayer and petition and pray at all times. Okay, now that I've told you this, now what? Excuse me. Okay, he says, be on the alert. Now, this Greek word behind alert is ahupnos, and this is actually the verb form.

So this beyond the alert just means not asleep. The word hypnotism comes from the same root here. It's about not being asleep, not falling asleep. And in fact, Roman soldiers, the standard treatment if they caught a Roman soldier sleeping while he was on guard duty, light his clothes on fire.

I'm not suggesting we do that to one another. The point being, though, we talked about in prayer that there's this maximum opportunity. There's also maximum awareness. We can be aware of lots of different things and evaluate them spiritually, biblically, and see where things are. And he's saying, be on the alert, be aware.

And I would submit to you that part of that spiritual awareness is comparing everything to the Word of God. You know, I'm in this situation, in that one. Maybe you've experienced it personally. You have talked to somebody who has experienced something that is so intense that it ends up impacting how they think and how they see things. And what he would exhort here is be on the alert.

In order for us to be aware, it's not simply a matter of being aware of things and, okay, now I'm aware of it, but having a spiritual alertness A spiritual awakeness that compares everything to the Word of God. That experience is not the ultimate measure, but the Word of God is.

And then all perseverance and petition. Maximum continuity. That it continue. That we continue bringing things to the Lord. That we keep on bringing things to the Lord. That that fits very well with our continuing to stand. And all petition is, indeed, bring things to the Lord.

Ask Him for this and that. Tell the Lord about this and that situation. Prayer is not here exhorted to be a checklist. Okay, now I've got to go pray and let me do my prayer checklist. Yeah, that may be somewhat of a helpful tool. But notice what he's looking at here. This is maximum. This is total availability of prayer and a continuity in the prayer. Continue to pray about things. I bring up this example here, personal experience. Nancy and I lived in this house on Pinto Court in Carson City, and about two blocks away was the high school.

And as I started looking forward to my kids going to that high school and becoming aware of some of the things that were going on at the high school, I just thought, oh heavens, you know, there's some awful stuff that they're going to be exposed to there. And I kept thinking, you know, I can't be there all the time to keep them from it. What am I going to do? I felt like here were these spiritual and moral threats and there was nothing reasonable that I could do. They were going to go off to this place and it was close by physically, but spiritually and morally it was way far away. So what am I going to do?

And what I found is I was drawn to prayer. Drawn to spend lots of time with the Lord. Because there I could fight face down, kneeling down, it didn't matter. I could bring things to the Lord and battle in a place where I couldn't be. I could bring things before the Lord and communicate with Him. Make specific requests for protection. Talk to the Lord about things where I needed wisdom.

To me, this was a real example of how we can oftentimes get in a position, and maybe you've done this too, you pray for all the saints, and a lot of times we'll get to a place where we say, well, all you can do is pray. And we talk about that like that's sort of a minimal thing. You've got all these options, but you can't do this and this and this, so all you can do is pray, and so it's the last option left. I guess we'll actually have to do this. Okay? It's the last resort, but they've just got no other choice.

He says, for all the saints, there is for all the believers, for all the believers, reason to pray. Every single one of them, God intends to stand. Every single believer in this, okay, call it a tortoise formation, if you will. Every single believer needs to stand. And there's communication with the commanding officer. Okay? And that needs to continue on. So he makes the broad appeal here. Maximum church body involvement. All of the saints.

Prayer isn't one of the pieces of armor. No. But I would suggest we not drop it off the context of spiritual warfare. There are times when we're tempted to think that, you know, prayer is sort of a last resort. Boy, man, I could do this and that. No, I can't do that. I guess all we got left is to pray. It isn't this minimal action and one remaining option. Instead, it's an option of maximums.

You see that? All, all, all, all. It is a maximum option, even if it's your only one. And that's wonderful. That's tremendous. It's the ideal, the optimal complement to the pieces of armor that we've been given. Because we don't stand alone. We don't stand there by our own doing. We stand there by the Lord's doing. And it is God's intent that every believer stand.

Notice he had just gotten through writing to some of these believers and saying things like, stop stealing! Quit using foul language with each other. That rotten speech. And then he turns around and he speaks to every single one of them and he says, therefore stand. Stand. Every single believer is to stand. This standing is not something just for those extra special holy ones. It's not for some specific group of believers. It's everyone.

If you're a believer here this morning, it's you. And while we're talking about prayer, let's do it. Lord, we look at these pieces of armor with which, by your power and by your grace, we've been equipped, and they are rooted in the very character of our Lord and Savior. They are rooted in the life that we have in Him and the position that we have in Him. Thank you for that marvelous protection. Thank you for the absoluteness in it that we can count upon. And we thank you, Lord, for the maximum opportunity, the maximum privilege, the maximum option that we have to talk with you about everything and every single believer. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.