Ephesians 6:10-17 | Christians Stand Against

Spiritual Warfare and the Church’s Wartime Footing

Absolutely. Father, we come to you this afternoon with words of power and strength. Father, we profess that there are evil powers at work with God, and that these powers actually are seeking to take us down.

It's not because of who we are, it's because of your Gospel truth. We are encouraged by these words of strength, and we pray, Lord, that being strong in your might, taking on the armor of God, are things that you encourage for us and that you bless us with.

We pray for these lessons this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. What can man do to us? All they can do is harm the body, they cannot harm the soul.

All right, thank you all for coming. Has anybody ever heard this expression, tell us what you're for, not what you're against. Tell us what you're for, not what you're against. There's a ring of truth to that, because we are preaching Christ and Him crucified, and we are for freedom, and we're for truth, and we're for the scriptures, and for prayer, and for holiness, the things of God.

But if you genuinely love those things, you have to stand against some things as well. And sometimes when you stand against, let's say, a Joseph Smith, who's preaching that Jesus is a spirit brother of Lucifer, in order to stand for the true Christ, you have to demolish the argument of a liar.

You have to stand against that which opposes God. So the posture of a Christian is, first of all, loving and charitable. They will know us by our love, right? But there is a hard edge to the Christian faith that we can't deny.

We are in a war. When I was a missionary in the city, there came a time where the mission team that I was a part of at the first church had grown so large that we felt like we needed to branch out and help another church, because there were something like eight missionary families all working together on one church.

So I had a friend who was Vietnamese, and his desire was to see a second generation of Vietnamese young people come up and form their own church, instead of being a youth group as they came into their own.

They spoke English, not Vietnamese. And so our desire then was to partner with this man. We made a plan, and I branched out with this guy to work on a church. It was second generation Vietnamese people.

They all spoke English. They were all born here and just as American as anybody else. Within the first year of the church plan, it had more than doubled. These 40 or so young people had grown to 80. And then we actually passed over a hundred people.

I was the preacher on Sunday mornings, and John was the administrative pastor and discipleship pastor, things of that nature. And everything seemed like it was going swimmingly. Nothing could go wrong.

All we had seen was victory upon victory. Well, what we celebrated, both John and I, as great victory, this person coming to faith, baptisms happening, the church growing, coming into its own and becoming a church, was behind the scenes a source of strife to some who owned the building.

You see, here's where the enemy cut in. It wasn't just Vietnamese people getting saved and coming to the church. Of the 60 or so who had joined, many of those were white and black and Puerto Rican. There was a Hispanic church that had joined up with us to form an alliance, and they were using part of the space.

And the growth was from the neighborhood. And it reflected that. Well, the demonic ideology, racist ideology behind what is called social justice was really to blame for what was ultimately the implosion of this church plant.

The ownership of that building did not want to see a multi-ethnic church there. They wanted to see a Vietnamese church. And as long as the growth was amongst the Vietnamese, they were happy with it. But when it got out of hand and began to grow and grow and no longer remain a Vietnamese church, they pulled the plug.

They fired Pastor John. They asked me to stay and be part of this Vietnamese, essentially, church. But I said, no, I couldn't be a part of that. That was the end of it. And we ended up going on to the next, which was a Calvary Chapel and working with Calvary Chapel Kings Highway, which was wonderful.

That was France church. Yeah. That was a devastating blow for me because as a missionary, this was my first chance to be the main preacher. And I was seeing the fruit of God's work and so excited. And I was shocked when everything blew up in a matter of a week.

It just happened like that. But what I learned were many lessons from that. One is to expect spiritual warfare when you're advancing in the kingdom of God, when the kingdom of God is advancing and you are part of it, there will be opposition.

The devil will hatch schemes against the people of God. And we have to be on guard against this present darkness. We at Cornerstone now are also in a season of growth, right? Many baptisms, people being saved, the church has grown each year more and again.

We would be naive to think that the enemy is not plotting and scheming the destruction of this church. I think that at the particular place where I was at that time, I was probably not ready for where the Lord was, was taking us.

And I learned a lot of lessons from that with regard to spiritual warfare. And I'm not saying that I'm ready now, but I'm more aware and more prayerful and more watchful for the enemy's schemes. Turn with me to Ephesians 6.

And John, I'm going to ask you to read it first. The point being that Christians stand against the evil forces of this present darkness. We have to be on guard because there are real spiritual forces at war with the church.

We're in a war, brothers and sisters, and we have to have a wartime footing if we're going to do the work of the Lord. So, John, would you read it for us?

The finally, verses 10 through 17 today. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil and heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And next week, we pick up with.

Prayer. That will be a lesson in and of itself, as well as evangelism, because Paul prays that he would open his mouth boldly to speak the gospel clearly. And we'll close the book of Ephesians next week.

I'll take that lesson, and John, you're preparing Daniel, aren't you? Yes, we are. To begin, you'll do the opening lesson on that, so we're going there next. Great. We'll pray for you, John. Thank you.

Yeah. John will do the introduction. So, we have two lessons left, this being number one, and next week, finishing it. Both of them are about this wartime footing, the spiritual war that we're in. You realize that we see one another, and we see the things that our eyes and ears can perceive, but there is an unseen realm of angels and demons.

And these angels and these demons, as the book of Daniel describes, are at war. There are princes and powers of authority behind the earthly rulers. You see the ruler of Persia with a demon behind him, and the archangel Michael is sent to bring help to Gabriel in that spiritual warfare.

We'll learn about that in the book of Daniel. But these things are going on even now. Lower-level demons are probably assigned to take out Cornerstone Church, but greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.

The power that is at work in us is greater. The reason that the church that we were a part of crumbled was that structurally it was built on sand. Foundationally, those who were in power above the leadership of that church plant were not rock solid.

These particular deacons had authority over, so the organizational structure of the church that we were planting was faulty from the beginning. But the polity of this particular church is rock solid. Bob, yeah.

Because, say that sentence again about the structure was faulty. We were planting a church,.

But the elders and deacons were not actually the ones in power, the ones who were running the church. Who was in power? There was another church, a Vietnamese church, a Vietnamese alliance church called the Mother Church, and they actually pulled all the strings.

They could fire John just like that. It would be as if, okay, we're in a battle right now, aren't we, with the Evangelical Free Church of America because of some woke doctrine that's been brought in. We're standing against that because we love truth.

We love the freedom of colorblindness, where I look at you and nobody on the screen can tell the color of your skin, Bob. Nobody knows, and it doesn't matter. We're not going to regard your opinion higher or lower based on the color of your skin.

It's based on merit. It's meritocracy. It is colorblindness, right? So, we stand against those doctrines because truth matters, and we need to stand for truth. Now, the great thing about the structure of the free church, every church is independent.

We are not under the authority of the free church that they could fire Pastor John or fire Pastor Jeff. It's an association. It's not the Episcopal model of bishops over top of churches. It's flat. It's bottom up.

It's congregational rule. That's very important. The danger that you have in this Episcopal model, where you have a mother church that's over top this church plant, is if the who are running that don't regard the Lord and don't understand colorblindness, you know, they want in a Vietnamese church, they can pull the strings and they can fire a pastor.

They can cut it off, take the building. It's over. So, that's my point. It's why the Cherry Hill Alliance went under. Yeah. It's why the Presbyterian Church USA is going under because the structure of Presbytery and then the Synod over that, when these people go liberal, they push that down on everybody else and there's nothing that you can do.

You can lose your building, which some of them are unwilling to do. Same thing with United Methodist, Episcopalian. One of the reasons that we fight so hard for the free church is because it's good. The policy is actually good.

It's a free church and it's worth fighting for because we believe in freedom. So, little aside there, but very important because it was a spiritual war. We were structured wrong in the city and therefore it crumbled.

This church will not crumble. It's structured right to endure. It's built on the word of God and even in terms of the polity of the church organization, we're structured right. Thank guys like Rick and the early members of the church for building on the right foundation of the word of God.

Strength in the Lord, Not in Human Power

So, how do we fight these battles? First of all, you have to be in Christ, but look carefully at that first verse. Can I interject real quick? Yes.

Because I think it's totally amazing. You go through the first three chapters to find out who you are in Christ and then you go through the next two and a half chapters to say that now that you know who you are in Christ, this is how you should walk.

Yes. And now we get to the fact that beyond what you're doing here now, there are greater battles to be fought.

Yeah. Okay, so in verse 10, finally be strong in the Lord. Now you can stop there. That's a complete sentence, but what follows is not redundancy. It's adding another dimension. You are in Christ already.

As soon as you were purchased by his blood, as soon as you were brought and grafted in to that olive shoot, right? You became a part of the church. You were in and you can't be out. You belong to him, right?

Right. So, why does he not stop there with union with Christ, strength in Christ? He goes on to offer a second expression and in the strength of his might. There's a way of battling. Go ahead, John. Yeah.

There's a way of battling that is in your own strength. If you think that the weapons of our warfare are carnal, then the battle that you wage is done in your own strength. If you think you're battling flesh and blood and not spiritual forces, you will tend to rely on your own intellect, your own rhetoric, your own ability to carry an argument.

There are wonderful debaters who could outperform me on a debate stage, right? Even if they were arguing a lie and I was arguing the truth, they might have better skill, but that's not the kind of weapons in view here.

These are weapons of supernatural power. It's his might, not by our might or strength, but the battle belongs to the Lord in his strength. John. That's exactly where I was.

Going to go. The first thing I thought of is not by might or power, but by his spirit. Amen.

Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of Hosts. So, I think that's why there's a double expression here. Yes, you're in the Lord and you have to be strong in him as a born-again Christian, but you have to learn to fight with spiritual weapons in your right hand and in your left.

And what are those? Well, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Put on, verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. Now, I've heard this passage taught innumerable times, especially in youth group and children's church.

And it's fun to make armor and put it on a kid and call this the shield of faith and this the sword of the spirit. This is the helmet of salvation. And to itemize it that way helps you to remember, and it's certainly good, but what I've never really captured, and I think I have now, is a sense of the flow of the text as to why Paul would say this here at the end.

How does what he said so far relate to what he's saying now in toto, not itemized, but as a whole? Why does he bring up the armor of God? I think it's this. He is given, as John taught, a theological treatise in three chapters.

But then he transitioned in chapter four to the practical section and gave these exhortations that you are to do X, Y, and Z. This is what you're to perform. Now, the final exhortation in 610 to the end is not to add another thing that you're to do, but it's to tell you how to do it.

It is to do it with strength, with intensity, with vigor, and realize that as you try to do this, you're going to be attacked through many different schemes of the enemy. So what are the schemes that we have in view here?

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. What are those schemes? What Paul will be saying here is, listen, I've told you what to do, right? You've got to be strong.

You've got to realize that this is going to be war. I'm not sending you in to walk among the daisies and enjoy the garden. I'm sending you into a battle. Now, ready your mind for war, because at every point of what I've just taught you, you're going to face opposition.

So what I did then is go back and look at the commands that we were given beginning in chapter four. As that book transitions right there into these things that we're to do. So let's go kind of around the room.

We'll kind of move in this order right here and read what's written in the notes. And I'll kind of call on you and then we'll pause. So everybody grab your notes. Nancy, would you go first? Lisa? Oh, sorry, Lisa.

I don't know what I'm doing. Read that first one. Stand against... Prideful and harsh and impatient? Yes. The exhortation, first of all, is to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. That's where we begin in chapter four.

Unity in the church. And the thing that would be a threat to that, the scheme of the devil against that would be that people would take on a harsh or impatient or prideful posture towards one another in the church.

That's a scheme of the enemy. We must be aware of that and be vigilant to stand against those kind of attitudes creeping into our own hearts. That's what it means to stand against the devil. Number two, Rich?

Number two, stand against false doctrine. Yes. In verse 14, we're not to be tossed to and fro like children by the winds and waves of doctrine. You will have false doctrines coming into the church at large.

And these are schemes of the devil. These are the kind of things that we stand against. Can you give me some examples of false doctrines that have been injected into the church? Blabbing and grabbing?

Yeah, blabbing and grabbing. Also known as word of faith or name it and claim it. Yeah. What else? Recently, yeah. Homosexuality being taught in churches. You talked about Andy Stanley's preaching. Yeah.

Andy Stanley now departing from the authority of the text for a different epistemology. Very sad. Yeah. Women pastors. Women pastors has become a major push. In fact, just last year, Rick Warren. Yes.

Ordained women pastors, and now he's trying to defend that. Any others? Abortion. Abortion. Yes. Taught is a woman's right to choose some kind of liberating thing when it's the opposite. What's that? Divorce.

Divorce. Yeah. Totally accepted. Acceptance of divorce in churches. That's false doctrine. Right. A lot of them that don't believe Jesus was God. Right. So many oneness Pentecostals that deny or Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses denying.

Right. So these. Yes. If you want to stand for the truth, you're going to have to stand against these lies that come into. That's what he's saying. Number three, Candy. Stand against sensuality. Sensuality.

Verse 19, they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality. Greedy to practice every kind of impurity. John, number four.

Yes. Same thing. Lasciviousness. It's a stronger word. Lascivious. Yeah.

Hmm. John, take us to verse 28. Stand against stealing. Right. We're told, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor. By the way, that would include standing against socialism. What is socialism but theft?

Really? It really is. It's to confiscate the wealth of the rightfully earned wealth of others in order to redistribute by the whims of a powerful command economy, by the commander of an authoritarian government.

Redistribution never happens in equal percentage or amounts of what's taken from them. Right. Can you name one social structure that has survived, that succeeded?

Do you have a question? I have a question though. Are you saying that we're supposed to be like taking picket signs and going to the street? Well, it requires wisdom to know how to do it. And in each person, I think every Christian will have a unique call.

The church as such needs to stay focused on the mission of feeding the sheep. Yeah. Of preaching the gospel to the world. The great commission is paramount. Individual Christians will have special calls to certain kinds of political action.

And that might be a senator. That might be someone, a Christian who runs for the Senate or does something like that.

Yeah. I see it in the church as encouraging our brothers and sisters and building them up.

Yes. Good. Another place this shows up, and we have a significant number of young men and women on, I call it the mission field, university. Yeah. And thinking you're sending your son or daughter to a Christian school and they end up in classrooms where the professors are brainwashing them into verse 14, false doctrines.

Right. And they come out completely different people. Absolutely demonic ideology. So being able to be prepared to stand strong.

In that context. And that's hard when you're that age. Yes. Think back when you were that age,.

I'd be falling into everything. All right. Which is why this starts out was walk in the strength of the Lord. Right. You cannot prepare your child to do it by themselves.

I'm going to review just the rest of them instead of reading them one by one, just because we need to keep going to get through the whole passage. So other schemes that the devil will throw at us as we seek to obey, corrupting talk, that's coarse joking and things like that.

Bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice, all listed in 431. These are schemes of the enemy, sexual immorality. How many pastors, how many leaders have fallen to sexual immorality over the years?

Well, it's a scheme of the enemy for every Christian. We all must be on guard against temptation. Usually begins with pornography that when people make an opening for that, it leads into that. And then a habit forms and then it could even progress to an adultery.

But even pornography itself is disqualifying for pastors and ministry. And yet how many pastors are falling? How many leaders into that? We are in a spiritual war. We have to remain vigilant and keep a wartime footing against the schemes of the enemy.

It says verse 11 to 14, demonic ideology, as just mentioned. 516 mentions laziness. How many churches have failed and closed their doors because the pastor or the people became lazy? Stopped taking the effort to go out and do the work of the ministry.

Foolishness, 517. Drunkenness. We've heard of pastors getting addicted to much wine and falling into disrepute that way. And that just recently happened again here in New Jersey. That was a source of division in church that ended up crumbling.

You can also destroy homes. How many Christian homes have crumbled because of alcoholism in the home? It's all the work of the enemy. These are the kind of schemes that the book of Ephesians has in view.

He's already talked to us about it. Disrespect and lovelessness in marriage. If the pastor's marriage falls apart, can he stand and minister in the pulpit? His ministry crumbles with his marriage, right?

And the same with elders and deacons in Christian homes. So much depends on that. That's chapter 5, 22 to 33. And then disobedience of children. Children can be wrecking balls in a church. You use the word ball?

If not, what's that? You use the word wrecking ball. Right, like they throw the football and it takes out the projector. Or like Brian Ball or Bob Ball. Oh, it was not targeted towards you, Bob. Good one, though.

But you see the point here. Provocation in parenting. So that harsh parenting that causes the child eventually to rebel because he's provoking his child. Or insubordination at work, as John spoke about last week.

Point being, Paul has been warning of these things. Now at the end, he's showing that there are spiritual forces at play behind our lives and our life as a church. The devil himself sending angels, demonic angels, to attack at any one of these fault lines.

We have to be vigilant to guard the health of the church. Any questions.

Real quick? Yeah. To go to the contrary, I have a long note. Not very long, but it's at the bottom. The will of God, starting at 517. Yes. Filled with the Spirit, submit to one another. Speak in songs.

Songs make music in the heart. Give thanks in Jesus' name. Love spouses. Obey parents. Train children in the Lord. Obey masters. Serve wholeheartedly. Put on God's armor. Pray and be holy. Amen. With Philippians and Thessalonians as well.

Well, you pretty much have summed up the.

Book of Ephesians and Philippians and Thessalonians. I can't hold that right now. That's good. There are evil powers at war with God that seek to take us down. You guys know the story in both Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

Wicked kings are addressed, king of tire, and behind that king was a spiritual force. In both of those instances, it was the devil himself. We're talking about a human king, and then all of a sudden, the prophet is seen behind the scenes.

You were in Eden. You were a guardian cherub. In Ezekiel 28, 17, your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.

The prophet was talking to a human king. Next minute, he's talking to a demon behind that king. He's talking to Satan himself, Lucifer, behind that human king. You're in a situation at church where somebody's rubbed you the wrong way, and you begin to get angry with flesh and blood.

Somebody said something wrong or offended me. What you're not seeing is that some demon behind him or her nudged them to say that harsh word, that corrupting talk, that slander or that gossip or that maliciousness, and the next thing that you do depends whether you are fighting in the Lord's strength or in your human strength.

You can come back at them in the flesh, and you're causing strife and stirring things up, or you can, in that moment, think about what this is saying. You're not fighting flesh and blood. Let's look at verses 12.

Let's emphasize this first of all. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. This is so important. Because we live in the natural, we experience the world through our senses, it is so easy for us to take on a materialistic mindset here in the West.

Because we have scientific explanations for everything, cause and effect, Newton's laws of physics. There's no mystery here. We get it. Yes, in terms of cause and effect at the natural realm, but what we need to be aware of is that there is more to the story that eye cannot see and ear cannot hear.

We're not battling flesh and blood. This war for truth in the EFCA is not against our brothers and sisters. We love them. If they've been deceived by something, we're there to help them. We're not fighting them.

We're fighting the devil for truth, right? It's against, now look at this, there are tiers of authority, but all of these stand as demonic powers. Rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness.

Spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. This is who we're fighting. Now notice how many times Paul says against, even in that one verse, I can count one, two, three, four, five times. Are Christians against things?

Yes, they should be. Yeah. If you want to stand for something, that means you stand against everything that comes against it. For truth, you're against it. If you're for your family, you're against the intruder breaking through the window, right?

If you're for the church of Jesus Christ, you are against the gay agenda. You are against abortion. You are against racism, which is all that D-E-I is. Diversity, equity, inclusion. It's a racist kind of push to judge people based on the color of their skin, rather than look at every person individually by merit.

So you must be against these things if you're going to stand for truth. How many times have we heard or seen teenagers.

That say, but we're in love. Right. And there's the emotion and the physical external side that.

Is approaching you as opposed to indifference. Let's look at the armor of God in closing. Today I thought we'd look more at a whole, rather than itemize each piece, because I want to see, I don't want us to think like, oh, you're missing a piece of armor because you forgot to pray in the morning.

Lord, I'm putting a helmet of salvation on my head. I don't think that's the thrust of the text here. The thrust is to say, you're in a war. You need to be strong and aware and focus on these particular things.

Here's how you do it. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand firm. Notice again, the reiteration of the word stand. That's the issue.

The devil is coming against you and he's trying to knock you down. He's trying to take out that church. He's trying to discredit that pastor.

Or attack that family. Yeah. You can't go backward. There's no back armor. Ah, good. Yeah. If you go.

Back. Sure. The big idea here is that you need to be able to stand in the evil debt. This present darkness will bring opposition against the church. You'll have neighbors who oppose you. You've got to be willing to stand.

You'll have ideologies that oppose what you preach, and you have to be willing to stand against all of those things. Everything listed above are forms of schemes of the devil's attacks. We have to be willing to stand.

So let's look at each itemized piece of equipment, but look at it in the larger whole. It says, having fastened on the belt of truth, the belt is what holds the rest together. If you abandon truth, you've lost everything.

Christianity is a message of truth. It is a true proposition. Do you think postmodernism began in our generation? Postmodernism is that there is no absolute truth. There's no certainty because everything is just relative.

It's just your own subjective privatized opinion is your truth. What did Pontius Pilate say to Jesus when on trial? When Jesus claimed to be the truth, he said, what is truth? The pagans of Rome were essentially postmodern.

Paganism is essentially postmodern. Everybody has their own God, which is good for them. Just don't tell us that Jesus Christ is the God and all others are idols. That's what was so offensive. There's nothing really new about the new age.

That's hermeticism that goes all the way back to the tower of Babel. New age mysticism has been around since the beginning. The truth, you nailed it, John. This is the point. It's all a battle for truth.

So you start there realizing that there is truth. It can be known and it's through two forms of revelation. Sometimes we underestimate the first and that is general revelation. Rick gave me a very good book that talks about how reason triumphed in the West.

Reason is actually part of general revelation. Being made in the image of God means you have rational faculties. The ability to judge and esteem things as true or false based on taking in information and the ability of the human mind made in the image of God to judge truth from error.

The role of conscience. All these things are part of general revelation, but we have a more specific revelation than that and that is, of course, God's word. Psalm 19 talks about both general and then specific revelation.

This is like honey to our lips. Everything here is true. You begin with truth. The second piece of equipment, the breastplate of righteousness. The idea here is imputed righteousness. As righteousness is taught in the book of Romans and in the book of Galatians, it is not something that you earn.

It's something that's imputed, which means credited, accounted to you. It's a foreign alien righteousness that was not yours. You put on a breastplate of righteousness. That is the righteousness of Christ.

His merit. It means to be justified, to be saved, to be counted righteous by God. If you're saved, you are protected and your heart can never be, your life can never be snuffed out. There's no arrow from the front or from behind.

No arrow can pierce this and take this life from us. It's an imputed righteousness. That's the idea. We must focus on the truth of God's word and the truth of reason, rationality in general revelation.

We must focus on imputed righteousness. You must be saved. That's the breastplate and realizing that Christ has died for you. The third piece of equipment. It's a pair of shoes. Gospel readiness. Why do you suppose Paul would list having fastened on the belt of truth, put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

Yeah. Readiness is the idea there. Go ahead, John. Joseph. Joseph fled temptation. He didn't stay and hang around and try to negotiate with this Potiphar's wife. He was out of there because he saw the way this was going.

You have to be ready with the gospel. And when it says the readiness of the gospel of peace, I put here in the notes, flee dangers to our soul. Flee dangers to our soul. Run away from Potiphar's wife.

That's how I never got that from that. I always thought it meant to be prepared to share the gospel during warfare. Yes, it does. I think there is that application of it. Your feet are ready because your feet are beautiful, but here your feet are fast.

And I think the preaching of the gospel is the preaching of the gospel to yourself. You have to preach the gospel first of all to yourself and be ready to share that with others, of course. But the gospel is what constantly brings us back to where we first believed, to look to the cross, to preach the gospel to yourself.

Let's say that the condemnation of the enemy comes over you and you begin to feel anxious about your salvation. You begin to fret that maybe you've lost it. Preach the gospel to yourself. Flee from the enemy.

Run to Christ. Run back to the cross. The gospel refers to where Christ died for us and rose from the dead. Keep your mind stayed there. We're going to go quickly through the remainder. Like a shield, faith trusts in the person of Christ even when questions assail.

Faith is a shield. Faith is in a person of Christ, in the person of Christ, not just information. And the word of Christ. And his word. The word is our defense. Yes, faith essentially is taking God at his word.

That's what faith is. It's trusting Christ for salvation and taking him in every word that he's spoken, what God has given us in his word. Next, the helmet, the helmet of salvation. Salvation is finished and can never be lost no matter what.

This is important because many of the schemes of the enemy are an attack on your hope. It's an attack on you because you're seeing your loved ones suffer and die. And you wonder, is my gospel true? Is this Bible true?

If I'm seeing in this kind of suffering or if I myself am enduring the sufferings of Job. But there's one thing that you could always go back to, to remind yourself that God is good and to find hope in God.