Daily Devotional – August 18, 2020

Personal Responsibility in Spiritual Warfare

Afternoon to you. I trust you're doing well today, have had a good morning, been productive in whatever God's called you to do. What that looks like for you, I'm sure, is a lot different from what it looks like for me, but nevertheless, we've each got our areas of responsibility and calling, and it's incumbent upon us to walk faithfully in that calling and to carry it out.

And I want to kind of touch on that aspect of responsibility a little bit today. Last week, in the latter part of the week, we talked about the spiritual warfare that we're engaged in, and the fact that there are spiritual threats all around us, that our enemy in this battle, this spiritual battle, is not primarily a physical enemy, but is a spiritual enemy.

And even though that spiritual enemy uses physical instruments, the instruments aren't our enemy. Other people aren't our enemy. It's the wicked one that's behind what people do and how they think and their ideology and so forth that ends up bringing about corruption and destruction to society and so on and so forth.

So we're in this battle, we're in this spiritual battle, and we're looking at Ephesians chapter 6, this closing section of Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. And the thing I want to highlight today is the personal responsibility that Paul puts on the shoulders of each individual believer in the church at Ephesus, and by extension, therefore, of each Christian.

So listen to how he writes this particular passage. He says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. So right off the bat, there's a sense in which I have a responsibility here.

He's telling me to be strong in the Lord. Well, how? What is my responsibility then? Well, he goes on. He says, put on the whole armor of God. You put this on. You can't, as a Christian, you can't take the passive approach to this spiritual warfare and think that, well, you know, now that I'm a Christian and God has saved me from damnation and saved me from my sin and its penalty and all the rest of that, then, you know, he's going to equip me.

He's going to help me to stand against this battle in this battle, in this warfare. All I have to do is just exist, and he will equip. Well, wait a minute. Paul very, very pointedly says, you put on the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

So you and I have a responsibility to put this armor on. And a couple of verses later, after he talks about the different regiments, if you will, in Satan's army, in the devil's army, those rulers and authorities and the cosmic powers over the present darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, he then goes on to say, therefore, because of the nature of this warfare, you take up the whole armor of God so that you may be able to withstand or to resist in the evil day and having done all to stand.

So Paul makes it very clear that you and I have a responsibility to put this armor on, to take it up. God has very graciously provided it for us. He doesn't leave us to our own devices and our own ingenuity to kind of figure out what kind of armor will work in this warfare, in this battle.

Will my musket do the job? I think about the fact that God has provided the armor in a comparable to warfare. The government provides our soldiers with the resources they need to fight the battle, but they have to take it up.

That's in contrast, for example, to the Revolutionary War, with the War of Independence, when the colonists in America had declared independence from Britain. And here is this ragtag group of colonists going up against the prepared, equipped soldiers of the British Empire, and what do they have?

What do the colonists have for armor? Well, whatever they had. The colonists had to rely upon their guns and their ammunition. It was a long time before the independent colonies were able to get together and muster up equipment.

Well, God has provided the armor for us. We don't have to rely upon our own ingenuity to try to cobble together armor or weaponry. He's given it to us, but he gives us the responsibility to put it on.

Fastening on the Belt of Truth

And then when he moves, when Paul moves from laying upon us that responsibility to put the armor on, he moves right away to the first step of that armor, of that panoply of God. He says in verse 14, stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth, having fastened on the belt of truth.

And Paul begins with the putting on of this armor by telling us that we need to fasten on the belt of truth. Now, a little explanation there. This is kind of a preparatory step, if you will, this fastening on the belt.

You have to kind of get an idea of what the Roman warrior, what his armor looked like and what his dress looked like. Their garments were more free-flowing and they weren't tight-fitting by any stretch of the imagination.

And they wore a belt around the waist. And one of the purposes of that belt was to, when they're getting ready to go into battle, they would prepare for that battle by tucking in their loose garments so that they wouldn't get in the way.

That belt also provided an anchor point for other things like their sword and shield and so forth. So this belt was more of a preparatory step before going into battle itself. And so Paul begins there.

He says, having fastened on the belt of truth. And I find this to be very instructive and illustrative of what's important as we prepare for battle against the wicked one. We have a responsibility to put this belt on, to prepare ourselves in this way.

You as an individual Christian have this responsibility. Do you realize that? I've been in pastoral ministry for about four decades now and every once in a while through those 40 years, hasn't happened often, just a handful of times, somebody's come to me and said, we're leaving the church because we're just not being fed.

Well, you understand the significance of that statement? What they're saying in that is, pastor, all of the responsibility for my spiritual nourishment is placed upon your shoulders. Well, that's one thing when a person's a baby.

You have a newborn baby in the house and when they get to the point where they can actually eat solid food and they've been weaned and they can do that, you sit them in a high chair and you have that little dish with its different compartments and you have the food prepared and crushed up and so forth so that they can actually eat it without teeth.

And mom or dad sits there with the spoon and spoons the stuff and puts it in the mouth of the child and the child takes it and so forth. Well, that's expected with a baby, but when it comes to the point where the child has teeth and can function by moving hand to mouth, the parent's not sitting there putting the food in the mouth anymore.

The food's provided, there it is, but the child is expected to pick up the fork or the spoon and dish the food onto this fork and put it in the mouth and eat. And the similar thing we could say here, you and I are responsible for this truth and for fastening on this belt of truth ourselves.

We can't expect to be treated like spiritual babies all of our lives and to have somebody constantly force-feeding us, if you will, in this regard. No, you have a responsibility. So, for example, you have a responsibility to get yourself to church and under the sound of the preaching and the teaching of God's Word.

You have a responsibility to open up the truth of God's Word on a regular basis, a consistent basis. You have a responsibility to digest what is fed to you, what is given to you. You have a responsibility to think those things through.

This is part of putting on that belt of truth. Now, tomorrow when we come back, we'll continue this line of thinking a little further, not so much the personal responsibility part, but why start here?

Of all of the kinds of armor that Paul's going to talk about in this passage, why does he start here with this belt of truth? I think it's very instructive that he begins here, and we'll see that tomorrow.

I hope you can make it back for our session at noon or six o 'clock or whenever you can pick this up in a recorded way. So, for today, let's pray and ask God to help us to take our responsibility, to give us the spiritual discipline to be personally responsible for putting on the armor.

And so, our Father, we realize that we can be spiritually lazy, even if we're very diligent in our work and everything else and our responsibilities, we can be spiritually lazy. I pray that you would challenge us this afternoon with these exhortations to put on the armor and to fasten on the belt of truth, to take that responsibility for ourselves.

This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well, have a good Tuesday and I trust the rest of your day will go well and that God will bless you richly in it. Have a good day.