Fathers Preparing for Spiritual Battles (06/18/2023)

Well, that was wonderful. I'm glad it worked out that way where Maddie could do the special this morning for Father's Day.

And it was great. And so our song leading was tremendous. Very good job.

Thanks for helping out. Abby, where'd she go? There she is. Good job. All right.

Well, today, let's see, Ben, is that too loud or is it okay? Turn it down just a hair.

Today, we're going to start a new series, and it's pretty appropriate because we're going to start a series on marriage and family.

So naturally, I'm going to start out talking about the fathers. And so we will do that.

Let's have a word of prayer. We'll get started. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We can't thank you enough for it.

We can think about what this dark world would be like without it. And it's something that hurts to think about that.

So thank you that you brought this from eternity into time and gave it to us and protected it and watched over it through all these millennia so that we would still have it today.

And you promised we'd have it to the last generation. So teach us from it, and we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. So these will be some topical studies we'll do until I choose the next book.

We're going to go through verse by verse. I said word by word. That's pretty much how we do it, isn't it? So I think by the time we finish this series on marriage and family, we will announce a new book and start there.

Now this, so this, when we do topical, it's kind of going to jump around. So you got to have your fingers ready on your phone or you're ready to flip pages in your

Bible because I like you to see the verses and read them along with me. So let's start off in Ephesians chapter six, verse 10 is where we will be.

But I'm going to read you, I'm going to read you another verse while you're turning to it. And this verse is in first John chapter two.

And I'm going to start with verse 12. Well, why don't you turn to that one first?

Keep your finger there in Ephesians six, but turn to first John chapter two, verse 12, because this kind of sets the stage for the whole message this morning.

First John, way at the back next to the book of revelation, practically chapter two, verse 12.

I write unto you little children because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake, for Jesus name's sake.

Boy, you could preach a whole sermon on that. I write unto you fathers because you have known him that is from the beginning.

I write unto you young men because you have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you little children because you have known the father.

I have written unto you fathers because you have known him that is from the beginning. I've written unto you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one.

So verse 14 gives the detail on how that little passage, that little thought works is it has to do with the word of God.

So the fathers in the room who are the strong ones and the ones who wish to be the strong ones will rely heavily upon this book right here and be in it and study it, meditate upon it, and it will bring life to your family.

So that's a good starting place, but let's go to Ephesians chapter 6 verse 10 and the first point

I want to cover this morning is that the father must understand and pursue spiritual armor because to raise a family he's going to be involved in spiritual warfare and he is the primary, he has the primary responsibility to deal with that in the family and to teach others in the family to deal with it.

So look at Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 10. Finally my brethren be strong in the

Lord and in the power of his might. So that kind of fits with our passage in 1

John. The thing that made these young men and these fathers strong in the book of 1

John is that they were in the word of God and this one says be strong in the Lord.

Well the way to be strong in the Lord is to be in the word of God, but also to be walking filled with the spirit.

Filled with the spirit is an interesting concept. My thinking on it is that it's very different than the indwelling of the spirit which happens at the moment of salvation and he is sealed within you until you meet the

Lord face to face. That's why you cannot lose your salvation. A seal that God places can't be broken.

So that's the indwelling, but the fact that the Holy Spirit indwells you doesn't mean that you're spirit filled.

Spirit filled is more than just God kind of uses the idea of a husband and a wife to picture how it works.

It's more than just being in the house together with each other, maybe one in the kitchen and one back in the study.

That's a wonderful thing. I don't like it when Charlotte leaves and goes to do stuff. Even if I'm back in the study, studying or working,

I like to know she's in the kitchen or in the den or somewhere or out doing something in the garden or on the ranch.

I just like her to be there. So that picture is the indwelling. We're in the house together and then the spirit filled state.

God describes it like this. Your spirit lives, I think, in your brain. You have to figure out your body's the temple of living

God. Where in your body does he live? We don't know. So I'm going to surmise that it's in your brain, but his spirit lives in there too.

So there's your spirit and his spirit. And when the two become one, it says it's one spirit.

I actually think that's what the new man is. I don't think the new man is just you.

I think the old man is just you. You get what I'm saying? The old man is just us and our flesh.

And we can dwell there if we choose to. The new man is our spirit, one with the

Holy Spirit. One. It says it becomes one spirit. Isn't that an interesting language? Your spirit and his spirit unite and become one spirit.

And when you walk like that, you cannot sin and you will not sin. And that's the new man. And that's the real you, by the way.

That is the you that God created you to be and that you will always be. And so this is what it means by being in the

Lord, strong in the Lord. So you have two components. You have the word of God and you have that oneness with the

Holy Spirit, which is the spirit of Christ. And he connects you to Jesus, even though Jesus is at the right hand of the

Father right now. He's not on the earth, but he's there. But his spirit is in you and becomes one with you.

And you're now connected with Jesus and with the Father and obviously the Holy Spirit. So finally, brethren, be strong that way.

In other words, make choices to be that way. More moments of every day and more days of every week and more weeks of every month and more months of every year.

And you will be known as a man of God if you make those choices. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the

Lord and in the power of his might, not our own might, his might. So when you walk connected with him, you are not only in his revealed will, which the

Bible teaches us that his will is for you to be spirit filled. Right. So you're in you're within his revealed will and you're guaranteed to step into his secret will with every step that you take.

And your entire family will benefit from that. And I want to expand this a little bit by looking at a parallel passage.

So let's turn to Second Timothy, chapter two, verse one. And let's talk a little bit about what it means to be strong in the

Lord for maybe another passage, just to support this one. Second Timothy 2, 1.

Now, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. So this adds not really another component to the in the

Lord component. We talked about two components being in the word and being in the Lord. Right.

This adds more detail to what it means to be in the Lord. So one of the things it means is to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

So when you're walking in Christ, you don't need a bunch of rules to go by because he's not going to lead you into the wrong place.

He's not going to lead you to do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing or listen to the wrong music or watch the wrong thing.

So when you're walking in Christ, you are being strong in grace.

Grace means undeserved favor. It means you're not trying to earn anything. You cannot earn anything. It means you're just walking hand in hand with Jesus wherever he goes that day.

That's where you go is where he goes that day. And so it obviously means to be strong in grace, not legalism.

So one of the things you have to fight your whole life in your home and in the church you attend is legalism.

Anytime someone who wants to bring that in must be endured not more than one hour.

The apostle Paul said one hour. So you don't let them hang around long. Now sometimes it takes longer than one hour for them to reveal themselves, but sometimes it doesn't.

So keep that in mind. Right now, it's my job to preach them out of here. But if I'm not here, it's your job to get rid of them and you need to do it.

Even if there are family members that come into your home, remember that it's your home.

And if they say something incorrect in front of your children or other people, then you need to correct them in front of those same people.

If they don't do it in front of them, then you can talk to them privately or let it go. But if they start talking, kind of like you said

Myron did in the meeting, Dave, where some Christians got up and said some things that were not biblically correct, and he very graciously corrected it without embarrassing them in front of the whole crowd, which is very difficult to do, but Myron is very wise.

So I can picture it. But we have to do that in our own homes. Verse 2 says, and the things that thou hast heard of me, me being the apostle

Paul, among many witnesses, the same commit unto faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.

Now this is a really important concept. This will be a good one to add to our business things,

Dave and Ben, we and Dave Sr.

As we talk to people in Tradeway, we always bring out biblical principles for business, right?

Think about this one. The things that you've heard of me, now

I know this is speaking of doctrine, doctrinal things and Bible methods that they heard the apostle Paul teach.

It's Paul teaching the young preacher Timothy how to pastor a church. But what he tells

Timothy is the same things that I taught you, you need to find faithful men and teach it to them.

And by faithful men, I mean a man that will then take it and teach it to others also. So it's a huge, huge business principle that's found in every business textbook in every business school in the world, but the

Bible is never footnoted anymore, although it came from scripture through Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, all the schools on the

East Coast were preacher schools when they started. They also taught medicine, they taught business and they taught economics, they taught management and the management concepts came straight from the

Bible, but they don't footnote that anymore. If you go to school now, it's just like, here's how you do management, right?

But one of the key principles is to learn to duplicate yourself in others and then delegate to them and let them do it.

You don't do it for them, you let them do it. Now, that's hard. It's one of the hardest lessons any manager learns or any person learns and most people don't like to do it and truly most people never achieve this, but the ones who do build big things, you can't build anything big if you can't duplicate yourself in others and delegate to them so that you move to the next thing and then teach that to someone else and delegate it to them and then you move to the next thing and teach that to someone else and delegate it to them and then you trust them to do it.

Now, if they really mess up, if it's business, you fire them, right? If it's family, you correct them, but that's how you build things and it's a huge principle found there right there in the scripture, the principle of duplicating and delegating so that, and this is talking about the church and it's how the church grows.

I was telling Charlotte on the way over, I said, you know, if something happened to me right this minute, we'd be just fine in our church.

We've got so many people that could step right up and keep the church going along the same line that's going right this minute.

No doubt in my mind about that. Almost every man, well, every man in this room could preach a message right now that would be better than 95 % of all the messages preached in the country today because you have a grounding in scripture and you understand the way the pieces fit together and Ben was talking about it in his

Sunday school lesson this morning from the Old Testament, talking about things such as eternal security and all these doctrinal things which are shadowed there as well and everybody here has that and certainly the women could teach other women and children and the church would go just fine.

Well, that's how it's supposed to be done and in our families, let me tell you what that translates to, is that rather than taking the new

American plan, which I don't like, we should go with the old plan in America when we first started.

90 % of the people owned their own business and 10 % worked for a boss. Now, 10 % own their own business and 90 % work for a boss and the reason that that happened is because we began to delegate the training of our children to public schools and then colleges and universities.

So, we would send our children off to school to learn something no one in the family has ever done before.

The old system was you teach the children as apprentices, you teach them to do your skill set and how every detail of the business that you do works and then you expect them to teach it to their kids and you help and then you teach it to their kids and then each generation adds their own wise findings to it so that that volume of skill sets grows every generation and biblically what this does is it creates generational wealth and that is

God's will for every family. The problem is some of us started where the people before us didn't do that and didn't know it and didn't do it at all because they followed what?

The new American plan. It never leads to wealth and wealth is even a dirty word.

It's a dirty word now, like most people believe you have to be poor to be spiritual. That's totally wrong. God is the

God of blessings and to the Old Testament saint that mean I got more camels than you got, got more goats, more cattle than you have because God has blessed me and they all acknowledge it came from the hand of God, not from their own utility, not from their own brains, but from God and so we need to get back to that and if you're the first generation then teach it to your children, teach it to your grandchildren.

If your children are grown and set in their ways and won't listen, teach it to your grandchildren because they can start it there.

It doesn't take but three generations of that to create something that can change the world. The reason

Christians need to be wealthy is because money is the tool that God uses to change the world more often than not.

You say, well he'd just part the Red Sea. Well yeah, about every 600 years in human history he does something like that, but during the other 599 years he works through you and through me and the way he works is when we accumulate wealth so that we can change who gets elected, we can pay for the marketing for the right man so that more people hear about him and he gets elected and it changes the whole world because as America goes, the world goes.

So that's kind of God's plan. Now when you look at the family, how do you do it? Well what you do is you take the things that you have learned and you teach them to faithful children in your family and then you teach them to teach their kids that.

So that's how you apply it to the family, but it also applies in business and it also applies in the church. So you find that in 2

Timothy 2, verse 2, learn to duplicate and delegate.

Verse 3, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

Be diligent, gentlemen, never quit, never be weak.

Be diligent in battle, never quit, never be weak, never give up.

If the fathers can exhibit that in the families, the families grow strong. Another great thing to duplicate and delegate in the young men.

Number 4, verse 4, no man that wareth entangle himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who has chosen him to be a soldier.

You think about that. If you're in war, you're not thinking about going bowling next Tuesday night or playing golf on Saturday morning or anything.

You're thinking about how to help your brothers stay alive because they're depending on you to do your job in the battle.

And that's how Jesus pictures our Christian walk. So when it comes to our families and watching over them in spiritual warfare, then we cannot entangle ourselves, gentlemen, into the affairs of this worldly living as much as other men do.

We have to pay more attention to Bible, to Bible study, to Bible meditation, to prayer, to church attendance, to serving

God, which keeps us out of trouble. You know, Otis told me the best way to not do bad things is to fill your day with good things.

Think about that. Don't think about the bad things. I love golf. You know what the worst thing you can do when you're playing golf?

You're supposed to hit it on that green and there's a big thing of water right to the right of it. And the worst thing you can do is say, don't hit it in that water.

Whack, splash. Let's try another one. Don't hit it in water. Whack, splash.

Two bucks each ball, right? You just lost $4. So you don't think about that.

You think about how close to that pin can I hit this, right? But maybe that's a silly example.

But in life, it's better to plan the day to have good things that we're going to do together as family.

All right. So that's a great principle. Now, verse 11,

I'm going to skip down to verse 11. Well, let me just say that on that principle of not entangling ourselves with the affairs of this life,

I just put this thought, prioritize your time because your time is your life, right?

And you want to get to a place someday, gentlemen, if you're not already there where your wife and kids praise you, but you have put time into them.

You have, you know, not just unselfish thing, but you put a lot of time into invest into those young people, kids, grandkids and so forth and your spouse.

So now verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Now this word wiles in English, the Greek behind it means strategies. Did I miss something?

Oh, I'm back in Ephesians, right? Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I should have marked that. Ephesians chapter six, verse 11.

Didn't type it in. I usually do. I did put a little line there that meant

I'm switching to something, but I wasn't thinking about it. So thank you for that. Ephesians 6, 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Well, we started at verse 10, talking about being strong in the Lord. So now it is going to talk a little bit about the negative side of spiritual warfare, the attacks that come from Satan.

But this word wiles means his strategies. You must be able to understand his strategies.

The apostle Paul said, I'm not ignorant of Satan's strategies and we have to know what they are and we need to be able to stand against them.

We're told to stand against them by putting on the whole armor of God. Now, fortunately, God tells us what the armor is.

So gentlemen, to be a good father, let's talk about it a little bit. The reason that we have to do this, and this is so easy to forget, easy for all of us.

Verse 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood. So we don't battle other humans.

Now it is true that other humans, even Christians, can be used by Satan to attack us.

And the old phrase that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

There's never been a more untrue statement than that ever said by anyone. Because words hurt us more than being hit in the face.

You get over that, somebody can say a word to you that you never forget, or they can treat you in a certain way that you will never forget it.

And you may never trust them again, unless they come and get right. And then it may take several years for you to sincere they actually meant that, right?

So we have to be so careful in our relationships with people as to what we say.

Because once you say it, you cannot take it back. I made a rule to myself years ago, don't put anything in writing to anyone ever.

I'll write it for me to make me feel, so I can outline my here, because here's, you said this about me, here's what the truth is.

Point one, you said this, here's what I actually said. Point two, you said, I said this, here's what

I actually said. That's good to do that. You need to decide, did I really do the bad thing they're accusing, or are they just imagining?

So write the letter, but don't send it to them. Because anything you put in writing, they will have it forever and will use it against you.

Trust me, they will use it against you. So you don't put it in writing. Secondly, you don't even say it without a lot of thought and prayer.

Because once you say it, you cannot take it back. And what you say will affect that person more than if you smacked them right across the face.

Same backwards, same way to you, what they say to you, it hurts. And you know what we need to do when someone hurts us?

Is we need to read this verse right here, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Flesh and blood means the human that just hurt you is not really who hurt you.

You just think it is because that's who you can see. But let me show you where it really came from.

But here's who we wrestle against in verse 12. Principalities, powers against rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickedness in high places.

Satan has a hierarchy. He's at the top. And then he has lieutenants.

And then he has sergeants. And then he has privates, little impy demons that aren't very strong.

And then there's some that are very strong. And they are all around us.

And they have the charge from Satan to watch us find our weaknesses and try to destroy us with those weaknesses and our children and our wives and husbands.

And so sometimes these powers of spiritual darkness, these demons will enter a

Christian person and hurt you through them are certainly a non -Christian. And there's been big debate in my lifetime over a demon can actually even enter a

Christian. And even my dear brother Otis didn't believe. We had maybe 40, 50,

I don't know how many things we had that we disagreed on, but we only had two when he went to heaven. But one of them, when we first met was he didn't think demons could indwell

Christians. And I prayed about that for about a week because back then we had coffee once a week.

Then it became twice a week, then three times a week. But back then it was once a week. I prayed all week about that.

And so we had coffee and I said, brother,

Otis, I want to ask you a question. What's that brother David? He loved it. If I could think of a question for him,

I said, so just go with me and let's hypothesize for a moment.

If a person would be indwelt by a demon, would he indwell his spiritual man or his flesh?

And brother Otis said, okay, you're right. That was the end of the discussion.

He then knew that a demon could indwell a Christian because he can indwell your flesh. If you go into your flesh and stay there because you want to, you open yourself to demonism, even as a

Christian. But I will have to be quick to say this, no Christian ever has to have demon problems because if you walk in the spirit, all you have to do is pray one prayer.

And children, if you'll memorize this and use it the rest of your life, I use it all the time. I used it today already once, is this.

Maybe a couple of prayers. Here's the first one. Lord Jesus, give me your mind. Let me think like you would think right now.

And the second one is Jesus, don't ever try to rebuke a demon like the charismatics and the

Pentecostals do. There's nothing more foolish than that. There's even examples in the Bible where someone tried that and the demon just tore into pieces.

You don't have, you're not an apostle, okay? So you don't get to do that. You don't have the authority, but Jesus does.

So you pray and you ask Jesus to do it. So you say, dear Jesus, please bind.

That means tie their hands, bind them and rebuke them and send them away from me and my family and put a hurt on them when they try to come back.

I added the last part. I got the first part from Rocky Freeman. He had a little book on spiritual warfare and that's where I learned that, but that's how we deal with it.

It's not the person that you think hurt you. Let's read it together.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, that's a person, but against principalities and powers and against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual weakness in high places.

It's always spiritual warfare and that will keep us from doing things and saying things to that person that hurt us, that makes us be just like them.

We go down to their level. If we understand this and then also maybe remember this verse, vengeance is mine, saith the

Lord. Just put them in the Lord's hands. Say, Lord, do what you want to with them. I'm your anointed and they just attacked me and I know what you say about that,

Lord. Don't touch God's anointed, God said. I know what you said about that, so Lord, they're yours.

I'm not going to punch them back. I'm not going to hit them back. And boy, it's hard to live this, but this is such a great thing, especially for fathers because families, as they grow, you have problems within the family, don't you?

It's not the person, it's this. So spiritual warfare is really important and I would say this to the fathers in the room.

If you see it going on in your family, you need to deal with it. You need to get in the middle of it and stop it.

All right? Especially if it's women doing it, stop it. It's our job.

Dr. Freeman, my mentor, had the largest family counseling practice in Fort Worth, Texas for well over 20 years.

He and his wife, Pat, did. And he told me a lot of times that a lot of the problems are that men won't take the leadership role.

And he said, David, I've learned this, not only myself through his dealing with demonic people in his counseling ministry, but also from Dr.

Rotstad or Brother Rotstad, I don't think he was a PhD, but he was a man who taught spiritual warfare, who lived in Oklahoma somewhere and learned it from missionaries.

And so all the knowledge he gained from this man and all the knowledge he gained in his own practice, he said,

I will tell you this, women are more susceptible to demonic influence, just as Eve was, and children are more acceptable.

And therefore the man has to be the one who fends this off and make sure that they have no foothold in the family.

So gentlemen, that's from an expert, Dr. Rocky Freeman, and from the man who taught him and from the scriptures, we see it to be true.

So that's part of our job as fathers is to be on the forefront of the spiritual warfare battle, come to the aid of other people, whether they be women or children who need the help and just get right there and you just stop it and make sure everybody knows, look, we battle not against flesh and blood, let's back off, you know, because how many times does it happen in families?

Another thing is, I think it's very important. Well, I'll tell you what, let me put it the way

Otis taught me this. Otis Fisher taught me this, and I think it's really wise. He said, Brother David, if someone says something to you or does something to you that hurts you, you need to pray about it, go to the

Lord, and if you can handle it and deal with it without ever saying anything to them, do that.

But if it's turning into bitterness in your heart and you can't stop thinking about it, then you need to go to the brother in person, not texting or email, go to the brother and let them know what they said or what they did and how that hurt you and why, and deal with it and communicate in Christian love.

And you know what Satan cannot handle? That. Two Christians, if they'll deal with it quickly enough, if they don't, then it can create division that lasts forever.

But if they deal with it quickly enough in Christian love and communicate, they will tend to each apologize to the other, get right with each other, and then they can move on.

But if it goes and it builds into imaginations, the Bible says Satan will then bring imaginations and they're beginning to think things about that person that aren't even there on top of the stuff that really did happen.

And it gets so big and you're so convinced by Satan that it's true that you just can't walk with that person anymore.

That happens. Okay, it just happens. So the best way to stop that, especially in families, is to do it quick, communicate quickly.

Don't let three weeks go by knowing about it and you're just scared to talk to them and you don't want to mess with it. Don't do that.

Immediately go and talk, get out in the open. Now, if it is one of those things where it was just something done to you and you can just get over it with the

Lord's help and not ever say anything, just do that. Because a lot of times the other person didn't even mean that much by it and they'll just forget about it and you can deal with it that way.

So you have to be walking with the Holy Spirit to know which way to go with that, correct? All right, so don't battle humans is my thought there.

Don't fight humans. Fight spiritual warfare.

Verse 13 says, wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand.

And my first thought here is there will be an evil day. There's more than one evil days in our family life.

You guys had one, Sharon had one in Raymond this week where she thought she was going to have to go on dialysis and the doctors, three of them said, yeah,

I think you are. And she just prayed and said, Lord, I don't want to, you know, if it's your will, take that away.

And the Lord took it away for the umpteenth time in her life. But anyway, you're going to have to write a book about Raymond and Sharon someday, or y 'all could write the book.

That would even be better. I'll edit it. I'll add stuff to it. I'll make it preach.

All right. But you know, there is an evil day coming in every family and there are degrees of it, right?

But it's coming. And so we have to already have the armor on. You can't wait till it hits. It's too late.

If you don't have it on when it hits, you'll be destroyed. You got to already have it on. And thankfully the

Lord lists it. So look at verse 14, stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth and having on the breastplate of righteousness.

So it talks about your loins at your hips. And you can picture the old warriors, 2000 years ago, sword fighting and the kind of garb that they wore, but they always had this little thing almost looked like a skirt, but it was armor around their hips.

And that's what it means by gird means to wear. So to wear this armor around your hips.

Now, what's interesting around your loins, which is your hips, you say, okay, what's that picturing? Well, I don't think

I would have ever known exactly what that meant because I'm thinking, well, what are my hips picture in like the spiritual realm?

And I don't think I would have ever known until I found the answer in first Peter one 13, because the best thing you can do is let the scripture interpret the scripture.

So listen to this. This will add some light to this. First Peter one 13, wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I mean, it's the second coming. Be hopeful of the grace that you're going to see when he meets you face to face, you'll see his grace because he didn't cast you into hell.

He says, hopefully well done. And my servant, but the loins of your mind.

So the loins, the armor around your loins pictures, your brain protecting your brain.

And it's interesting. It says, stand there for having your loins girt about with truth.

So let me ask you, what is the best way to protect your brain right here? If you have mental problems, get in the

Psalms, read the book of James, find the wisdom books in the

Bible and start reading them. And it will fix your mental problems.

If you have depression, get into the Psalms and just read them. You don't,

I don't care which one you pick. If you don't know which one to pick, just open it to the book of Psalms, just start reading and don't stop reading until it goes away.

And you know, that truth from the word of God, it's the only truth that we really have in the world that we know is truth.

That truth is what puts the armor around your brain. Thinking on things that are lovely, things that are of good report, things that are of virtue is another way to have a healthy brain is stop thinking about the negative stuff.

Don't listen to the news much. I mean, you need to know what's going on in the world, but boy, don't sit there and read it all the time.

Think on good thing. And then when you read it, don't think about it. Think about good things. That's what the

Lord says to do to protect our brain. So it's talking about here, the armor that we need for good, healthy mental health in our lives.

So hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you when

Jesus appears. So when you're going through the evil day here, or even if it's a normal day, it has potential evil everywhere in this world that we live in, this cursed world, be thinking about the hope that you have.

And that is sort of a word formula in the New Testament. The word hope normally referred more often than anything else to the second coming of Jesus Christ, the rapture, where we're changed in the air and we're with him forever.

Focus on that when you're having a hard day. Focus on where you're headed, not on the day, not the evil day.

Don't focus on that. Focus on the future, where we're headed, the purpose of everything that we are and why we're here.

We were listening to Dr. MacArthur in the car yesterday, Charlotte and I were, and he was talking about the book of Genesis and how you either believe

God created everything or you believe he didn't. That's the only two beliefs there are. And he said, the reason it's important to believe that God did is because once you understand that, the book of Genesis is actually the thing that gives you everything about the origins of the world, but also everything about your purpose in this life, why

God put you here and what your job is to do, which is to walk with the Lord. That's your job.

And so when the evil day comes, we have to have, first of all, our brain protected with this armor, which is the word of God.

And I like the corollary where it talks about girding up your mind with truth, but I like the corollary where it says, think about the second coming.

Think about the rapture. Think about how it all ends, how we win in the end. We have the victory.

We might lose the battle. We're not going to lose the war. We're going to win. And think about that when you're going through a tough time.

So then it says, let's see, I'm back to the key passage now,

Ephesians verse 15, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

You know, I left off one thing though. Hold on. Let me go back up to verse 14. Sorry about that. The loins gird about, but then it says having on the breastplate of righteousness.

I want you to think about that. What does the breastplate in the armor guard? Your heart, right?

Vital organs and your heart specifically. So if you're supposed to be protecting that, and it tells us here, we didn't have to go out to first Peter to figure out what this meant because it tells us it's called the breastplate of righteousness.

So let me tell you what protects your heart, and this is so great to teach your children, fathers, is that the thing that protects our heart, two things, one is called positional righteousness, and the other is called experiential righteousness.

Both are taught in the Bible. Depends on the context to know which it is, but positional means that the

Lord took Jesus's righteousness and imputed that to you, and he took your sins and imputed that to Jesus.

He took your sins out of your bank account, out of your life, and put them in Jesus's life, and he died for them, and he took

Jesus's righteousness and perfection and goodness out of his account, put it in you, and the father sees you that way all the time.

When you sin, God the father does not see it, nor think about it, nor know about it. Jesus does, and he can give you a whipping for it, but God the father who's outside of time does not because he sees you as righteousness and glorified already, so you have that.

You can always fall back on the fact that even if you just sin and you're feeling all dirty and bad about it, you have positional righteousness.

It can protect your heart and say, well, I'm not doomed. He is not going to cast me out of the family.

The father is not going to send me to hell because I just backslid and sinned. He doesn't even see the sin.

I'm sinless to him. I am not a sinner anymore to the father. I'm a saved person. That's positional righteousness, and it can protect your heart when you need it the most, but the other is experiential righteousness, and that means trying to live right, trying to do good and to not do the bad things, and we spend a lifetime teaching that to our children when they're little, when they're growing up, all the way till their teenage years, even till they get to college age, we're still teaching it, and that experiential, and by that, it means some theologians call it experimental, but it just means it's in your life.

It's why you're living, trying to live right according to what the Bible says is right and wrong. That protects your heart, so little ones, if you're listening to me, if you go out with a friend that wants you to do something wrong, just remember if you do it, it will damage your heart because you don't have the breastplate on.

You do have the positional, but you've removed a little bit of your armor, and you let fiery darts come in when you sin, when you do wrong that you know is wrong.

So protect your heart by not doing that much. Try to never do it. Try not to sin.

Do that which is right. Do that which you know your parents would want you to do, and that they would be proud of you if you did it, and don't do anything that you know would hurt your parents if they found out about it.

I used to live that way. The worst thing I ever wanted to do was disappoint my dad. I did not ever want to disappoint him, certainly not my mother, and so it made it easier though, guys, because I was an only child.

There wasn't anybody to get me in trouble, so I had it easier. I mean, I just go play with my toys.

What am I going to do wrong, right? So it's harder for some of you guys, but you can do it, and you have to remember that when you do right, it's like armor that protects your heart, and the more you do wrong, the more it damages.

It's like the arrows get through the armor and hit your heart. It can damage.

I don't mean, I don't really mean your organ, the heart. I mean your mind, that part of you that can love people, that can have good relationships with people.

It can damage that, and so remember that. So we protect our heart with righteousness.

Verse 15, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

I love that. We must always be a witness everywhere we go.

We are a witness whether we choose to be or not as Christians. Everything we say, everything we do is a testimony of Jesus Christ, either for good or bad.

It makes people think God is good, and God is strong, or it makes people think God is not there, because why would his children live this way and act this way, you see?

So part of our armor is pictured as our shoes, because we walk in our shoes, and our walk, our everyday walk, as we walk around this world, we're around other human beings.

Most of them are lost people. The huge vast majority of everyone around you is a lost person, and he cannot see

God, but he can see Jesus in you if you live right in front of him, and if you've been living right in secret, and then when you walk in their presence, they can see a difference.

When they look in your eyes, they can see a difference, and when they need help, they'll come to you, and then you can share with them how

Jesus Christ saves people, and get your parents to teach you a thing called the

Roman's Road. That's the first good thing to learn. It's about three verses that you can memorize, and you can show people how to be saved.

Romans 3 23, Romans 6 23, Romans 10 9 and 10, or Romans 10 13.

That's the simplest one. So if you know those verses, you walk right in front of them where that opens their mind, and they want to listen to you, because they admire you, and they see that you're different, then you might get a chance to share those scriptures with them.

No one can be saved without hearing the gospel, so it's our job to tell the gospel when the

Holy Spirit leads us to do it. So that's what this means. Your feet shod with the preparation of gospel peace. What does the word preparation mean with regard to this?

You got to spend time privately thinking, what would I say to a

Jewish person who doesn't believe in the New Testament, or doesn't believe in Jesus, if I got an opportunity to witness to them, what would

I do? You got to study to know that. Let me tell you what you would do. Take them to Isaiah 53, because they believe in the

Old Testament, and the whole gospel is in Isaiah 53. I call that the Isaiah road of salvation.

How would I talk to a person that just really got a sinful life?

I mean, I know where they go on Saturday night. I know what they're doing, and they just act like they just think God's not even there.

They don't fear God, and how would I talk to that person? You need to put some preparation into knowing how to talk to different people.

How would I talk to a Church Christ person that thinks you can lose your salvation, or that thinks you're saved by works, or that you have to get in their baptistry to be saved, that you've got to get water baptized to be saved?

How would I talk to that person? It takes a lot of preparation, and one of the best ways to do it is not only studying your

Bible, but to talk to people like that. You don't have to argue with them. Listen to their side. That's how you learn their sorry arguments, right?

That's how you learn their false doctrine. Let them talk. Ask them questions so that they do the talking.

I'll tell you who's one of the best I've seen at that is Matt Mitchell, because he listens, and he stays meek.

He listens to the other side and even admires it and says, you know, I really think that's an interesting thought, but I've learned this, and then he just has a good way.

By listening to the other person, we can learn their points of their side, and then we can go study the scripture and find the scriptures that refute that and prove it wrong, and that's a lifetime of study, and there's nothing much more fun than that if you're a

Christian is learning how to use this Bible, because we're going to get to what the Bible is in the armor here in a minute, so keep that in mind.

So here, where was I? The gospel of, yeah, the preparation of the gospel of peace.

That takes a lot of study. Study to show ourselves approved unto God, it says, and to answer every man for why you believe what you believe.

It takes a lot of study. You don't want the cult members to know more Bible than you know, so you really have to study.

Verse 16, above all, taking the shield of faith.

Now, there's a breastplate that protects your heart, but what can a shield do? It can protect any part of you, because you can move it around, and when the arrow is coming, if you can move it in front of the arrow, it just hits the shield, and you can keep fighting.

Could have hit you in the head and killed you, could hit you in the heart and killed you, could hit you in the leg and made you lame, where they can come cut you up with a sword because you can't move, but that shield can take any of those arrows.

So the shield is really, really important, and the Bible tells us it's faith that is the shield, faith.

Wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. So when other people, even if it's

Christians, are saying words that are just hurting your heart, that's a dart. It's a fiery dart. You can feel the heat.

It's not just an arrow. It's an arrow set on fire and then pierced through your body. That's how it feels.

That's how words can feel, and when you're being attacked by Satan, not by that person, but by Satan that's in that person, and directing them to do that because they're not walking with the

Lord at that moment for whatever reason. They're in the flesh. When that happens, it's really good to have a shield that you can put in front of that and have it hit the shield rather than have it hit your heart, and that shield is faith, and you're able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked with faith.

Romans 10 17 says this, so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

So now we come right back to this book once again. The more you are in this book, the stronger your faith will grow.

I know there is scripture that says that God deals to every man a certain amount of faith, but that's just where you start.

It doesn't mean you stay there. The more you study and grow in the word, the more your faith grows, and those who have strong faith is directly proportional to the amount of time they're in this book compared to you, or vice versa.

So if you want to have a shield that protects you when you're attacked, be in the word more because your faith grows, and that's on a daily basis by the way.

You cannot rest on something you read in scripture five years ago and learned a doctrine.

You have to be reading it today. It's like manna. It gets old. If you don't read it today, it gets old.

You got to get more manna tomorrow. It's a picture of the Bible, so we need to stay in the Bible, and that's our shield.

It builds faith, and the faith is our shield. Faith is the shield which catches and repels the fiery darts of Satan.

Verse 17, and take the helmet of salvation, and I'm going to stop there.

Take the helmet of salvation. Now a helmet is something that you put on every day like you don't sleep in it, right?

But when you get ready to go out to the battle before you leave the house, you put, or before you go into the battle, you put that helmet on, and then that night you take it back off.

So I had a problem with that picturing salvation. Does that bother you a little bit that that would be a picture of salvation, that you take it off and put it on, you take it off and put it on?

So I had to do further research on this years ago, and it's one of my favorite things I ever discovered when

I found this, and I found it in 1 Thessalonians 5 .8. It says, but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love.

Notice it added love to faith as part of the breastplate there. Isn't that interesting? And putting on for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Now that makes way more sense. So now the scripture has interpreted scripture for us.

The helmet is not salvation. The helmet is the hope of salvation, and what is that?

The rapture, the second coming, the fact that it ends with us winning, and I'll promise you in a physical fight,

Dave, you're black belt. So would it be true that if you're prepared already, and you go into that fight knowing you can beat that person, it would help?

Rather than being scared to death, it would help if you know, even if he's bigger, but you know some tricks that you can use his weight against him, for example, and what you know how to do.

Get him off balance, use his weight against him, and then finish him off. But think about this.

If you're prepared, then you're ready for battle.

Now the helmet of the hope of salvation is that you already know you're going to win.

You already know we win as a team. We win. The church wins, and knowing that, we go into battle.

So you put that helmet on every day. Every day when you get up and you go out that door, you got to think about what the whole big picture is, not just the little, what if it's the evil day, just bad stuff happens all day.

You can't focus on that. You focus on the hope of how it ends, and by the way, always remember the

Bible word hope doesn't mean what it does today. It doesn't mean we might win, but we probably won't.

It doesn't mean that. It means joyful expectation of a certain event. That's what it means in the

Greek, and it used to mean in old 1611 English. So it's not really the hope of salvation.

It's the fact of salvation. That right there is the helmet. You put that on every day before you leave the house.

The fact that you are saved, the fact that you know how it ends, the fact that you know we win, that's what keeps you safe, keeps your mind safe, the helmet of salvation.

All right, so take the helmet of the hope of salvation, and then the next thing it says, and take the sword of the spirit, and it tells us exactly what that is.

It is the word of God. So you put on the helmet of salvation right before you leave the house, or if you're having a family reunion, put it on before everybody gets there, and then take that sword, put it in your hand.

You got the word of God. Keep it there. Use it as you need it. It's the only offensive weapon mentioned, and you got to be good with it.

The worst thing you can do is get in a sword fight, and the other guy's been studying how to do it and practicing, and you haven't.

That's a sure way to get killed. So you need to have been taught how to use it, the proper way to use the sword, and be ready and strong, and then pick it up and take it, and this tells us what our armor is.

The sword of the spirit is the word of God, and then it says, the last thing it mentions is prayer.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit. It can't be just praying for rote because you're supposed to be having a prayer time.

It's got to be spirit -filled. It's real. You're doing it because you want to. You sense the presence of God, and you're praying in the spirit and watching therein, too.

That's the spiritual warfare. As you pray, you're saying, Lord, reveal to me any attacks that are happening or that may be coming.

Make them come to light. It won't be pleasant, but I need to know it because we can deal with it together. Always pray that for your children, your spouse, your church, your pastor, like this thing that just happened.

If we'd have known about it a month sooner, it might not have ended like it did, but that's just, you know, it ended like God wanted it to, but humanly speaking, you need to be always watching.

While you pray, you're watching the enemy to see what he's doing and be prepared.

Watching therein, too, with all perseverance. You're like the person, the soldier that's put on the wall to watch and let everyone know if you see the enemy coming.

It's everyone's job, by the way, to let the pastor know if you see the enemy coming. It is not gossip when you tell the pastor stuff that you know.

It's gossip when you tell other people stuff behind their back, not when you tell the pastor or an elder or a deacon.

Scripture bears that out. There's an exception to the gossip rule. You can always gossip to me, and it's almost like an attorney.

You can tell an attorney stuff, and he's not allowed to tell anyone else. Pastors are that way. Elders and deacons are that way, so always remember that.

If you can head things off, you know, at the very beginning, it always works better, and that's what it means to be watchful in perseverance and supplication for all saints.

Listen, you sense somebody's down in this room, get them aside privately, say, how you doing?

Get them talking and find out what's going on. See if they need help. Might be physical help.

It might be spiritual help just to pray with them. Who knows, but find out what it is, and then the last thing it mentions,

Paul as an apostle says, here's one thing I want you to pray when you're praying. Pray for me that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, so we're supposed to pray for each other that when we have an opportunity to witness, we're bold and correct in what we say, and so that's really our duty as a church, isn't it?

All right, so that talks about the power of prayer and witnessing and the power of prayer in general.

So that's all we'll cover today. Our first point was the fathers need to be involved with spiritual warfare and know how to use it and put on spiritual armor.

Next week, we'll take point number two, which is the father must understand the financial responsibilities under God, and no one talks about that in church.

No one. Not hardly anyone. There's probably somebody somewhere, but most pastors don't talk about, they don't see the financial stuff in the

Bible because they weren't businessmen before they got saved, but it's all through there, and there are even some responsibilities particularly given to fathers in the

Bible that are commands that have to do with our finances. I think you'll find that interesting. Some of you heard me allude to it, but we're going to cover it next

Sunday, and what we'll find out is it is not some kind of general...

Well, let me just ask you this, make you think about it before next Sunday. If God did command us as fathers to create wealth so that we can lay it aside for our children and grandchildren, if we found that that is a command in the

New Testament for fathers and in the Old Testament, would it then be logical to say, but when

God promises wealth to a family and shows the father how to get it, that that's some general promise that's not really specific for any person, so you can't rely on it because God never intended to say that he wants everyone to be wealthy.

So why would he say you need to create wealth, but his promise is not for you? I had someone tell me that recently, not tell me, but tell someone who told me.

So I thought, well, that's a very illogical thing to say that God's promise of wealth is not specific to anyone.

It's just kind of a general thing. That has no meaning whatsoever. It's totally illogical, has no meaning.

There's no use for it. If I promise Jeannie to give you something, and then you come and say, you know, you forgot to give me that.

So, well, it was just kind of general, just kind of, you know, something I wanted to do, and maybe it wasn't for you after all.

But you said you were giving it to me. No, it's just general. You see, yeah, let's try.

All right, here, you need a good pocket knife. All right, so I've thought about that statement for some weeks, and as I looked at what

I'd be preaching next Sunday, I realized, wow, think about the logic of this. If you're commanded to create wealth, why would he not have a promise to show you how to do it?

Would he ever expect you to do something that he doesn't teach you to do? So therefore, if the teachings of how to do that are not specific, but only general, and you probably never get it, that makes no sense.

He can't command you to do something and not equip you to do it. So the equipping is specific and personal to every

Christian, especially the fathers. And we will demonstrate that next Sunday, so I hope you will be here.

Let's stand and have prayer together. I will say it's a generational thing.

In case you're not here next Sunday, it doesn't mean you can do it all by yourself. If you're the first in your family to start, it doesn't mean you can do it all by yourself in your lifetime, though the technology today is so amazing.

You have a far better chance of doing it quickly or more quickly than your great -grandfather could.

So it could be a couple of generations or three for this to develop, but it is a promise.

It's for every family, and it's also a command. We'll see it next time. Lord, thank you for your word.

Lord, thank you for every father in this room, and Lord, that you've worked in them to help raise the next generation.

And thank you for the love that you put in their hearts for their children and grandchildren. It is an example of your love, and it comes from you.

And Lord, we thank you for the love that you've given us for each other. Thank you for the wonderful truths of your word that are so empowering.

And thank you for the meal we're about to have, and we ask you to bless it in Jesus' name. Amen. You are dismissed.