6. The Armor of God: Shield of Faith Shield

So, as you can see, we're still going through the armor of God series. Today, we're up to the shield of faith. And who could tell me where the armor of God is found in the Bible? Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 to 20.

Good. Excellent. We're going to ingrain this into your memory. Let me read it again. Finally, And having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

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 take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly as I ought.

Okay. So, quick review. We've gone through the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, and the shoes of peace. Today, we're going to take up the shield of faith. So, the belt of truth, is that an offensive weapon or a defensive weapon?

Defensive weapon. Good. And what does the belt of truth tell us? It tells us the truth of the cross. In other words, your sins are paid for covering your sin and shame. Your sins have been paid in full.

When Adam and Eve went hiding in the garden, they covered themselves, their loins, with leaves. When Jesus hung on the cross, most people don't know it, He hung naked. He was fully in view of all people.

It was the most shameful way to die. So, His death on the cross covers our shame and pays for our sins. But that's not enough. The breastplate of righteousness, offensive or defensive weapon? Defensive weapon.

You've received the righteousness of Christ. The righteousness you need to stand before God innocent, and are in right relationship with Him because of Jesus. So, the good works that would prove your righteousness, Jesus accomplished on the cross.

So, not only does He take away your sin, He gives you the righteousness you need. And these two things are covering vital organs. Organs that you can't, that would severely injure you, and in the case of the breastplate of righteousness, you die.

Without a heart, lungs, stomach, you would die. Cut your esophagus, you die. Shoes of peace, offensive or defensive? Defensive. Okay. You've been enabled to stand. You stand on the truth to fight and carry the message of hope that will change the world.

You carry the message that has changed you to a lost and dying world in hopes that God is going to save them as well. So, we stand on those shoes the way a Roman soldier would in order to fight. You can't fight without good shoes.

Imagine you're barefoot and your opponent has, you know, like cleats and is fighting against you. You're going to lose your ground. We are standing on good ground. Today, just do it, remember? Go out, just share the gospel.

Today, we're going to go through the shield of faith. Offensive or defensive? Defensive.

Okay.

Listen to what has to happen in order for you to put the defensive weapon on. Stand there for having. Stand there for having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

And as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Those things need to be on. The belt, the breastplate, and shoes need to be on first. Then you can use your shield.

Without putting those on first, you're going in without a defense.

Okay.

The shield alone is not going to cut it. You have to put those on first. So, can anybody tell me, and we talked about this in the second lesson, what is the difference between the first three pieces of armor and the last three pieces of armor?

Any guesses?

Okay.

No.

The only one that's offensive is the sword of the spirit.

Okay.

The first three are strapped on and don't come off.

Right?

You strap those on. It's not like that could fall off. The last three are things that you pick up and can come on and off real easily.

Okay.

And that represents your security, your salvation in Jesus. Once those are on, they're on. Now you have to fight. You have to hold up the shield of faith. You have to guard your head and use the word as an offensive weapon.

So, the first three are fastened to the body. The last three are easily picked up or put down. Remember, we have to pick these up on a regular basis as we go out into the world. Any questions? Does that make sense?

Good.

Okay.

Now we can proceed. The shield of faith. In biblical terms, faith must always have a firm foundation if it is to be meaningful or it is simply a glorious falsehood. Faith is not, as the skeptic Ambrose Bierce once defined it, belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.

This is why Paul told the Corinthians, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. In other words, if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, we're still in our sins and our faith is useless.

But we're not placing faith in something that is bogus. It's not faith without evidence. We have evidence, right, and we have the scriptures that bear witness to it. True biblical faith derives its power not from any power inherent in faith itself, but rather from the object of that faith.

Faith is merely the instrument that connects us to the entirely trustworthy and all-powerful God who created the heavens and the earth and who made us for a relationship with him. Remember in past lessons I said, I talked about that song, Don't Stop Believing?

Just believe, right, as if just believing has any effect in it whatsoever. It's not your faith that counts. It's the object of your faith. What are you placing your faith in? Faith is not a power that you wield.

It's the object of your faith that matters. And we're going to talk about what the Word of Faith movement does with faith. Faith is the confident dependence on the one who can deliver you from whatever situation it is.

So it's faith in God. It's the object of your faith that makes all the difference. This is the faith of which Paul is speaking of when he says, in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.

So when fear, when doubt creeps in, you hold up the shield of faith. He's not saying that faith has some remarkable defensive power against Satan in and of itself. Rather he's saying that faith protects us from Satan's attacks because of what faith enables us to take hold of, namely the power and protection of God himself.

It's not faith is your shield. It's the object of your faith that's your shield. Now I saw this meme on social media and I want to read it for you. Faith doesn't always take you out of the problem. Faith takes you through the problem.

Faith doesn't always take away the pain. Faith gives you the ability to handle the pain. Faith doesn't always take you out of the storm. Faith calms you in the midst of the storm.

Amen.

How many people would say amen to that? Gosh, no.

I tricked you.

That was intentional. Okay, watch. Faith doesn't take you through the problem. God takes you through the problem. Faith doesn't give you the ability. God gives you the ability. Faith doesn't calm you.

God is the one that calms you. Otherwise you're just having faith in faith. Faith is not a power. Faith is not a nebulous thing that we wield. Okay, so amen? No, no. Now these things that we see on social media get into our heads and we're like, oh yeah, faith.

Without thinking about them. We need to think about these things, line them up to the Word of God and say, wait a second. Let me show you in a minute why this is important.

Okay.

The Word of Faith movement teaches that words are spiritual containers that have power to create through the force of faith. They think faith is a power. That accounts for the belief that you can have what you say.

And like our brother says in the back, name it and claim it, blab it and grab it. You say it and then it happens. The concept of words containing power originates from the biblical idea that words have the ability to shape reality and influence our lives.

In this context, faith is believed to be the catalyst that energizes the words to take effect. So in other words, when I speak, my words have power to change the environment. Utter nonsense, right? This concept is rooted in the biblical verses and you know these.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits. James 3. No human being contain the tongue and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

See?

We can cause blessing just by speaking it into existence. In this view, words can be used for good or ill depending on the intention and the faith behind them. They have things called positive confession and negative confession.

There was a person I knew who was sick going through illness at another church. She would not say, I am sick because that would actually create sickness in her. She rejected the idea that she was sick because when you admit that, well, that's a positive confession in the wrong way.

She would give the negative confession. I'm not sick. This is denial of reality. And this is where, you've seen this before, the secret. The secret has traveled through centuries to reach you. Yeah, because it's a pagan idea.

You're speaking these things thinking, oh, this is what's going to attract goodness to me. And you're going to shape reality with your words.

Again, nonsense.

Now, your words, your tongue can hurt somebody. A husband and a wife know this. Your wife says something to you that cuts you to the heart, that hurts. Or you say something to your wife that cuts you to the heart, that hurts.

But you're not creating something. It's very, very important. Ken Copeland, who is the big proponent of this, he believes that God created the universe by using his faith. In other words, God had faith, and the faith is the power by which he created the universe.

That is a foundational doctrine to word of faith theology. He teaches people to view faith as a force that can be wielded to create the life they desire. Not true at all. This is why we need to understand what faith is in order to hold up the shield of faith.

Any questions?

Okay.

Words you won't hear out of the word of faith movement. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Patient in tribulation?

No, no, no.

We rebuke that in the name of Jesus. You can keep rebuking it. It's not going to change until you actually submit to God, resist the devil, and then he'll flee. You're going to go through tribulation like Job.

Job didn't rebuke it. He says, though he slay me, yet I will praise him. There's a process that happens in tribulation. Another thing you won't hear, for we have brought nothing into this world and cannot take anything out.

If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. How many of us can say that? If I had food and clothing, I'm good with that. My sins are paid for. I have the breastplate of right. I've got righteousness before God.

I'm content with that.

I have food and clothing. For me, it's just food.

I don't even need clothing. But that's a different story.

All right.

Bad image, right?

Okay.

I will have to cut that out.

Okay.

Anyway.

Next, Ezekiel 7 -9. I will punish you according to your ways while your abominations in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord who strikes you. Jehovah-Makkah. Now, coming out of the place that I was at, they used to say Jehovah-Jireh.

God provides.

It's his name.

Jehovah-Rapha. It's the God who heals.

It's his name.

That's who he is. And at that time, I didn't know about Ezekiel 7 -9. It's the Lord who strikes you. Jehovah-Makkah.

It's his name. It's his name.

He will strike you for your good. No one likes discipline, but discipline produces endurance. It's what shapes us and molds us. God disciplines those he loves. If your God isn't willing to discipline you, your God doesn't love you.

Our God loves us and disciplines us at times. Think about this one.

Daniel.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They answered the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. I love the sarcasm that I'm throwing in there, right? If this be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace.

And he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. Word of faith would never say, but if not.

They would say, no, no. God's always going to deliver you. You have to have faith that he will. If he doesn't deliver you, it's not him that has the problem. You didn't have enough faith. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would disagree.

If God doesn't deliver us, he's in charge. He's in control. I'm not going to stop having faith in God just because he doesn't deliver me the way I think he should. He has a plan. That might be part of the plan.

Was it part of the plan to put Jesus on the cross?

Yes.

The only innocent man who ever walked the face of the earth gets put on a cross. And now we're to believe that we should not have affliction in this world? We suffer with Christ. This is why faith is important.

Throughout the Old Testament, it is not faith, but God who is repeatedly described as our shield. This becomes clearer when you look at the usage of shield imagery in the Old Testament. Genesis 15 .1, the Lord tells Abraham, I am your shield.

Your reward shall be very great. I am your shield. Proverbs 30 and 5, God is a shield to those who take refuge in him. God is the shield. Psalm 3, you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head.

Psalm 28, we read, the Lord is my strength and my shield. It's not faith. God is your shield. Psalm 119, the psalmist says to the Lord, you are my hiding place and my shield. The shield is not a what, it's a who.

When you have faith, you have faith in the who, not the what. You need to have faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You need to have faith in the person of God the Father and the Spirit. Let's look at Psalm 91.

He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. He will deliver you. Not your faith, he will.

He will cover you with his pinions.

All right?

It's his faithfulness is a shield and a buckler. Remember, this is Christ-centered. This is pointing us to Christ and his victory, the fact that he has worn the armor of God previously on our behalf.

Okay?

And what is the result of he will deliver you, he will cover you in his faithfulness? You will not fear. God himself is our shield and you will not fear.

Somewhere, there it is.

You will not fear. How many of us turn on the TV, watch the internet, all this other kind of stuff, and we get fear coming on us? What's going to happen politically? What's going to happen in our school districts?

What's going to happen here? What's going to happen in Israel? What's going to happen in the Middle East? Fear, fear, fear.

All right?

God did not give you a spirit of fear, right, but of power, love, and a sound mind. It's also translated, he did not give you a spirit of timidity. Don't be timid.

Why?

Because you're in Christ. You're adopted. Remember Henry Ford adopting the little kid and owning the whole mansion? You're a child of God. Everything God has, you have. You have access to the God who's sovereign over all things, who has power over all things, to Jesus, to whom all power has been given.

We do not fear. We do not shrink back.

All right?

God himself is our shield. He is our refuge. He is our hiding place in the day of difficulty. His faithfulness will keep us safe when we're being shot at by arrows, flaming or otherwise. So when the devil throws arrows of darts of fear and doubt, what do you do?

You hold up the shield of faith. I'm going to trust in the God who created me for this time, who put me in this position to bear witness of him. My God can. My God will. But even if he doesn't, I'm not bowing down to some idol.

Not doing it. But if the Old Testament tells us that God is our shield, why does Paul say that faith is our shield? Because faith is the means by which we flee to God for refuge. It is how we cling to God and find in him comfort and protection in times of difficulty and distress.

When you take up or hold up the shield of faith in a trial, you are placing God between you and the trial. You're saying, Lord, I need you to fight for me. I need you to change me and change the situation.

Maybe you're conforming me into the image of Jesus and allowing me to suffer at this moment. Or you're actually going to push me through it and I'll gain victory in that way. But you're gaining victory either way.

One way or another, you're being conformed to the image of Jesus. So you're relying on his power and his truth to deal with the issue, not your own power. So faith is the means by which we flee to God for refuge.

It's how we cling to, rely on, and trust in God and find in him comfort and protection in times of difficulty and distress. But faith is not simply saying, I believe in God. I just believe in God. Such a generic belief in a supreme being is not what Paul means.

He's talking about faith in the specific God, the triune God, the God of the scriptures who loved the world so much that he gave his only son that we should not perish but have everlasting life. There's only one God.

His son's name is Jesus. That is God in the flesh come to die on the cross for your sins in your place. No other God does that. None. This is the only God, I say it over and over, this is the only God willing to love you to death for real.

You ever use that term as a husband? Oh, I love you to death. God did. He demonstrated it on a cross. It's not enough to believe that there is a God somewhere out there. You have to know that he has the power to deliver you, to pull you in, to pull you close, if you like.

For faith to be your shield, you need to believe that God is sovereign over every detail of the universe. He is in complete control of every single thing that happens and he has a purpose and an intent in every scenario.

You must know that your God directs not only the affairs of men and nations but ordains the car crash. He ordains the layoff, the job layoff. He ordains the health challenges and the relational difficulties.

Each of these things come into our life because God, the supreme commander of the universe, has ordained it to be so. Do you find that a distress or a comfort? Which? That's a real question.

Both? Right, why?

No, that's honest. If God didn't ordain this, then who did? The devil has control. The demonic forces in the heavenly places are actually controlling this and God can't do anything about it. But if you know that God truly is control and he allows it to go just so far and not past what he's ordained, you recognize even in the midst of your trials, in the midst of your pain, in the midst of your distress, fear, doubt, whatever it is, he's the one bringing history forward and bringing you with him.

Why? Because you're in Christ. Once you become a Christian, it's not like you're promised this wonderful life. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. How about not God's wonderful plan for my life but my life for God's wonderful plan?

We're called to lay down our lives, not feed our desires, feed our flesh. We're called to die to those things. We would never do that voluntarily outside of him pulling us through these trials. That's sometimes why we've got to go through the trial, so that we die to our flesh and trust in him more.

Anybody who's gone through a trial says, you know what, I grew deeper and closer to God in the midst of that trial than if I didn't go through it. So the trials actually have a benefit to them. So I'm going to say embrace the trial.

Be patient in affliction, knowing that God is sovereign over all things. And though my God slays me, yet I will praise him. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. My God can, my God will, but even if he doesn't, he's still the true God and I'm not bowing down to any false God, including myself.

This is where our functional unbelief is so often a problem. We may confess in the theory of the doctrine of God's sovereignty, but we have a hard time holding on to that truth in the desperately difficult challenges of life in a fallen world, where the powers of evil around us often seem very strong and our world seems totally out of control.

The world doesn't seem totally out of control right now. It is totally out of control right now. And we have to face that reality. So we're either going to fear and shrink back into cowardice or we're going to trust and be bold.

The righteous are as bold as a lion. The wicked flee, though no one pursue. We just go out, we boldly proclaim the gospel, because that's the only thing that's going to change the hearts and minds of the people that are in this chaos, that are causing the chaos.

And we're going to use our greatest weapon, which is prayer. What is the opposite of faith? Two words, what are the opposite of faith? Fear and doubt.

Those are the two things.

Now, a prominent pastor just recently said this, the angels are not scurrying around in heaven yelling, Plan B, Plan B, this isn't working. We got to change things up. This is the plan. God has a reason and a purpose for allowing the world to plunge itself into darkness.

God's giving them over to a depraved mind. God's giving them over to the lust of their flesh to give them what they want. Know this, in the end, you will get what you want. Ultimately, you will get what you want.

Do you want Jesus? You'll get him. If you don't want Jesus, you'll get the ramification. You'll get everything else. To experience faith as a shield, you need to know not only that God is powerful, but that this God is your father and your friend.

God's sovereignty is not the least comforting, unless you know that this sovereign God is on your side. And when I say God is your friend, I'm not saying he's your equal. I'm using it in this, in a second I'll explain.

Here, too, we often struggle. In the midst of the intense pain of life, we find it hard to believe that God is really on our side. Perhaps you have prayed to God desperately and nothing has happened. Doubt easily creeps in.

What did James say about Abraham? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. In other words, he was in right relationship with God. When you're in right relationship with God, he's your friend.

He is for you, not against you. And if God be for you, who could be against you?

Right?

We look at the world and we start fearing, we start doubting, we start absorbing those things and we forget. We don't walk by sight, we walk by faith. Faith in God, faith in the God who put me here for this purpose.

Your belief in God won't shield you if you don't believe that God is for you. So not only do you have to put on the armor, you have to recognize that this God is for you. You are his friend. He is your father.

He's adopted you and seated you in heavenly places. You have everything you need in Christ. We become conflicted by our own unbelief and lack of faith. God never suffers from this problem. He's never like, oh, no, we got to change course.

He never says, hmm, do I really love this person? Never, never. Do we sometimes say, does God really love me? I'm going through this. Is this really love? It is. God disciplines those he loves. If your faith and trust is in Jesus and your heart's been changed, you are a Christian, you are a child of God, and everything that happens to you, it's because he ordained it.

Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. He was called a friend of God. If your faith and trust is in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, you've been born of God's Holy Spirit, you are a friend of God.

Back in the old days, I used to say, hey, you know who I know? You know who my friend is? You drop a name, oh, he knows him. We know God. God. You get that? We're a friend of God, the God who breathed the universe into existence, who can do anything.

That has to sink into our heads. So this faith is built on truth. This is why it is so important we build our faith on truth, God's word. We need to be in God's word. Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every, every word out of the mouth of God.

Our feelings about whether God exists and who he is will rise and fall like the tides, but God's truth in the Bible endures forever. Truth doesn't have an expiration date. Truth doesn't move up and down, backwards and forwards.

It's stable. You can build your life on it because it doesn't change. You cannot build your life on the changing whims of society. Whatever is in now is going to be passe in a year from now. You can't build your life on that.

In chapter 2, Paul told the Ephesians about their natural state before they became Christians. He said to them, in essence, you were dead in your transgressions and your sins. You were by nature objects of God's wrath.

God wasn't on your side because you were his enemy and he was yours. You were drowning and you had no claim on God. There was no reason for him to throw you the rope because you spent all your time rebelling against him and the things he told you to do.

This is true not just of the Ephesians, but of every single person in humanity. We are all by nature objects of wrath, utterly lost. We need to be found. But God did. That is the amazing message of Christianity.

God was our enemy and there wasn't a single thing that we could do about it. We couldn't reconcile that relationship. We were the offender in this party. He didn't even want, we didn't even want to do anything about it.

We thought we were good without God. I can live my life like this, it doesn't matter. God was the one who pursued us. But God, right, the two greatest words in the New Testament, but God, who is rich in mercy, he made us alive even while we were dead.

In other words, you were separated. And when you were separated from God, unable to do anything good, he made you alive. He gave you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to believe. He didn't wait for us to start swimming to him in the right direction.

In Christ, God himself swam out to us in order to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is on our side. He came to us. He pursued us. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Why? Because there is none who seek after God.

None of us were looking for Jesus Christ. None of us were looking to bless our enemies. None of us were looking to die to self. He had to come, grab us, turn us around, and change us so that we would be like him.

He pursued us. What counts is not the strength of your faith, let alone the strength of your faithfulness. Your security lies in the fact that Jesus has been faithful for you. His strength, as the one in whom our faith rests, is our sure and certain hope.

We thank God that he was perfectly faithful, perfectly obedient to the Father, and he's the one who gives us that as a gift. Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. The moment you start thinking, oh, look, I'm doing good.

Hey, I had a good day. I didn't sin. Great. God's like, hmm, okay, you're lacking faith in me for this. I'm going to just let you go down a little. Oh, yeah, reminder, you don't have enough strength to withstand the wicked forces of evil, but he does.

Faith points to God's promises. When the flaming darts of the evil one are flying, how can faith guard and strengthen you in your spiritual war against Satan? First, faith points our eyes towards the promises of God.

Faith, says the writer to the Hebrews, is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Faith reminds us that this war is not all there is. God has promised us a wonderful future in his presence.

We have a glorious inheritance stored up for us in Christ to which our present difficulties will seem light and momentary afflictions. Everything that we go through here, although it may seem very difficult now, when you divide it by infinity, what's the answer?

Zero. I love this verse. Memorize this verse. 2 Corinthians 4 .16. Therefore, we do not lose heart. Whatever trial, whatever difficulty you're going through, first, don't lose heart. Why? Though our outer self is wasting away, our flesh, our inner self, our spirit, is being renewed day by day.

I like how Paul says this. For this light, momentary affliction. Shipwrecked three times, stoned twice, whipped, beaten with rods. Light, momentary affliction. We don't see the right TV. We don't have the right TV station.

We're like, oh, how am I going to get through the day?

Oh, we skipped a meal. Oh my goodness, how am I going to get through? It's like he's talking about real affliction. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, the invisible realm. For the things that are seen are transient. In other words, they're coming to an end. But the things that are unseen are eternal.

Those will never end. We're building our lives on eternal truths. We're building our life on the word of God, which is eternal, not temporal. When the evil one throws his flaming darts at you that say God doesn't really care about you, or this bad thing wouldn't be happening, it's faith in God that puts out the fire.

You trust in God. He's bringing me through this for a reason. It's light, momentary affliction. And it is going to prepare us for an eternal weight of glory beyond our comparison. You don't seem happy.

It's a glorious truth.

By faith, I lay hold of that truth by reminding myself of the promises of God. God has promised to be with me when I walk through deep and desperate trials. He has assured me that all things must work together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

I know these things because God has promised them to me in His word. He's proved Himself faithful so that even though I don't know how the future will work out, I know that He holds it in His hands. That's a quote from Ian Dugan.

He has a relationship with God. He knows that the future is in God's hands. God knows what He's doing. Faith lays hold of God's power. So not only His promises, His power. When the evil one tempts you by saying you can't help yourself, you know you are going to give in to this temptation eventually because I'm stronger than you.

Faith puts out that fire. Faith recalls what God's word says. He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. We know we can't take on Satan. God can. He's already beaten Satan. He's neutered and defanged him at the cross.

So what do we do?