The Wiles of the Devil

The Armor of God and the Reality of Spiritual Warfare

I found the microphone, I was wondering where this was. There we go. Amen. Help us put on the whole armor of Christ this morning as a church and to defend ourselves against the evil of the day, to defend ourselves against the wiles of the devil.

We pray that you would work for your glory, speak to your church from your word. And may we listen, may we be like Samuel, speak, Lord, for your servant here. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated.

We're going to now attack the second half of the tag. That's not a great word. We talk about the Bible. We're going to dissect, if you will, the second half of verse 11. So we've talked about so far we're in this text here, this great text from the Apostle Paul about the reality of spiritual warfare.

And if I may to just kind of whet your appetite for what's coming in the weeks ahead, you need to remind yourselves, look around today, the things that you touch, the things that you see, the things that you hear, the things that you smell, this material world that is around us today, the things that exist in the universe today are much bigger, much deeper than just the material world.

There is a supernatural world. We see that in the text. So Paul tells us that we're to put on the whole armor of God, and we said last week or a couple of weeks ago, this is the Lord Jesus Christ, ultimately, that we're to put on Christ, that we are to find our strength in Christ, our our rest in Jesus, our our defense in him.

He is the source of all of our defensive and offensive weapons. Now, why do we put him on? Verse 11, put on the whole armor of God. That the word there is an indicator of purpose. Why do we put on the armor of God so that because so that what you look at the text, put on the whole armor of God that you you is plural.

OK, I know it's a little bit cheesy to say it like this, but just to put it in Perry County vernacular, put on the whole armor of God that y 'all may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

That's what he's saying. He's saying you as a church, it's plural. It's not just individually. But corporately, the church is to be a well arrayed army of Christ. And then he says so that you may be able to stand or some translation, you might say withstand, may be able to stand.

And this is one lexicon notes, a military expression that refers to a posture of opposition toward an enemy. So listen very carefully here, church. We don't treat the devil like a cartoonish character.

We don't just we don't just laugh at the devil, nor do we cower at him as though he is stronger than God. Instead, the text says we stand against him. We don't laugh at him. We don't we don't cower to him, but we stand against him.

He's not stronger than God. We stand against his schemes. We stand against his craftiness. We oppose him against the schemes, the text says of the devil. Well, we'll break this down into two parts. First, the word devil.

The Devil as a Real Created Enemy

The word devil. The devil, I was talking to a man a few weeks ago in evangelism, and he was part of a cult at one time in his life that doesn't even believe in the existence of the devil. What they believe is that the devil is what's inside you or whatever.

But this text speaks of the devil as a real created being. We won't go into this too much, but just his background. He he was once a beautiful angel, probably a guardian cherub in the Garden of Eden. But instead of contentment in being a guardian cherub, the devil decides to tempt God's special creation, and perhaps that is the key to his fall, is that mankind is is given a special status of being God's image bearers.

The devil is not. Ezekiel 28, 17 says your heart was proud because of your beauty. So perhaps the devil doesn't like the fact that that Adam and Eve have a special status with God and his beauty makes him so proud and he decides that he's going to try to be like God.

And in this rebellion, the Bible teaches that that the devils, the many angels that is, join him and they fall. Jesus says in John 8, 44, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speak out, speaks out of his own character. For he is a liar and the father of lies.

So the devil is a murderer from the beginning. And I think the idea there is what Jesus is alluding to is in the Garden of Eden. He's literally trying to murder Adam and Eve. He's trying to get them to die, to to fall away from God.

And so the devil is a real created being. He is an enemy of God and he is an enemy of the church. He's a slanderer. That's the Greek word for, by the way, when you slander someone, you're being like Satan.

He's a slanderer. That's what the Greek word for devil means. The Hebrew word for Satan means adversary. So he's a real being. He's a spiritual being. He's a slanderer. He's an accuser. He's an adversary.

He's a liar.

He's a murderer. He's an influencer.

And the list goes on and on. Now, we must not overstate his power in the world today. But we must not understate it either, meaning you can't blame everything in the world today on the devil, right?

However.

You also must not pretend as though the church does not have a great enemy, one who is scheming. And that's the next part I said is going to break this down in two parts, the schemes of the devil. He's scheming against the church, the schemes, the word schemes in your text.

It's the King James that translates this as while. So that's the the title of the sermon, the wiles of the devil. But the word here means a deliberate planning or system. So I think of the cartoon, right?

You think about wiles of the devil, think about the cartoon. Who am I thinking of? The coyote, right? Wile E. Coyote. He's always doing this crazy stuff, right? He's buying the Agni products or whatever.

He's always he's always doing these crazy schemes, right? Roadrunner is coming. Sometimes he paints the the road on the wall. So so hopefully the roadrunner runs into it. Right. And then the roadrunner goes through it.

And he's like, what? What in the world? And then he runs into it and he smacks himself. Right. Or the anvil falls on his head or he's got the dynamite. He wants to blow up the the roadrunner. Instead, he blows himself up.

But the point is, I don't want you to think of the devil as cartoonish. I don't want you to think of him as silly. But I do want you to see a scheming. Wile E. Coyote is always coming up with these crazy schemes to capture the roadrunner.

Well, that's like the devil, except it's actually serious. And the difference is Wile E. Coyote sometimes or actually never catches the roadrunner, but the devil sometimes does catch his prey. Marriages are destroyed.

Nations are ruined. Churches are split apart. People are harmed. This is serious stuff. And so he's a serious adversary that Paul calls the church to stand against, to stand against, the text says, the schemes of the devil.

Satan's Schemes Against the Individual

What I want to do, probably in two sermons, it will be more than one, is I want to consider the schemes of the devil in three spheres. I want to consider the schemes of the devil in the individual. I want to consider the schemes of the devil in the world at large.

And I want to consider the schemes of the devil in the church. Now, listen, there's some overlap, of course, between the world, the individual and the church, there's some overlap. But I want us to consider Satan's schemes in these spheres so that we may be able to consider his ways and to stand in opposition to his evil.

I want you to consider that the world we live in is much bigger than the material things that are around you. And I want us to understand that the things going on behind the scenes, as it were, today are real and meaningful.

And the Bible commands us to put on the armor of God there. Verse 11, so that we can stand against Satan's influence. Now, many people that, you know, laugh at such a thought that there's real evil, that there's a real devil.

But friends, the Bible teaches that these things are true. And so we want to recognize their veracity so that we may be able to obey the command of our text to stand against evil. And to stand against Satan's scheme.

So let's let's get into the outline. So first, then, let us consider Satan's activity in the individual. This is as far as we're going to get today. Satan's activity in the individual. So I have a few things I want you to think about.

Satan's schemes when it comes to the individual. The first is this Satan's scheme, Satan's wiles when it comes to the individual. One of his wiles is that of deception. Number one, deception. Consider, for example, Revelation 12, nine, I'm just going to read it.

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan. The deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

Now, the important thing I want to draw out of that text for a moment is that Satan is called the deceiver. And in fact, the article is in front, meaning he's not just called a deceiver. And in Revelation 12, nine, the text doesn't call Satan a deceiver, one of many deceivers in the world.

Rather, the text refers to Satan as what? The article, the definite article, the deceiver. He is the deceiver of the whole world.

He is a liar.

The Greek word there is the idea of leading one off the path. So think about here's the wiles of the devil. He uses whole lies, half truths. He uses the promises of prosperity or irrational reasoning.

And the list goes on and on and on. But he uses these things to deceive, to lead people astray, to hold up a shiny lure. My boys like fishing and. They'll come up with these crazy lures, crazy ways to.

I know some of the other boys in here, young men like fishing, you come up with these crazy lures, crazy way to tie the lures and all these things. What are you trying to do? You're throwing the lure out in the water and you want the fish to see the lure and be what you little deceivers want to be to see.

So eat it and it'll be hooked. Friends, this is the work of Satan in the individual to hold up the shiny lure, to get them to bite, to have them hooked. Now, we're not absolving people here of culpability and sin.

We're not saying do not hear me saying this sermon this morning that humanity. We're just poor victims here. What we're simply saying is that there is a great enemy to God's image bearers who is the deceiver of the nations.

And listen to this church. This does not stop once you become a believer. So you think I'm a believer now. I'm not deceived. Right. I know the truth. Christ has set me free so I don't have to worry about the deceiver.

No, not the case, because Christians can still fall into the deceptions even for a time of the evil one. If this were not true, Paul wouldn't exhort the church here in verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

In other words, I want to tell you something this morning. There is an enemy that you have who is trying to deceive you. Even as a believer and you're called to stand against his lies. Deception, another one of his wilds.

I won't tell you how many that way you can just be on edge, right? Secondly, doubting it's similar, but it's enough difference that I want to talk about it. All of these, there'll be some overlap, we have deception and then secondly, doubt.

I want to take you back. We won't read the text, but just consider Satan's attack on Eve in the garden. He deceives her. The Bible explicitly says in First Timothy two fourteen that Eve was deceived. But his deception started.

With. Implanting doubt in her mind. And he continues this strategy today. Even against the church, especially maybe against the church, to have you doubt the goodness of God, to have you doubt the veracity, the truthfulness of God's promises, to have you doubt you ever done this, has someone ever done something nice for you in the church and you began to doubt their motivation or or or maybe someone did something.

It wasn't necessarily mean, but maybe it kind of came across kind of rude and you immediately thought the worst. About your brother.

Satan.

Loves to have you doubt the goodness of God. The motivations of your brothers and sisters to doubt the Bible. Can I really trust this book? So sometimes it's just takes a little bit of doubt to do a lot of bit of damage in the temptation in the wilderness.

Consider this for a moment. Satan goes to Jesus. Have you ever thought about this one? Satan goes to Jesus and says, if you are the son of God. Turn this stone into bread. Now, have you ever thought about that before?

You're like. Why is that a big deal?

Why can't Jesus just turn the stone in the bread? What I think one of the key to that temptation is just that two little word.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is thrown at our Lord in an attempt to have him doubt the father's goodness. And I'm telling you, church, these ifs are thrown at us constantly. If God loved you, why didn't you get the raise? Why did the other guy get a raise?

If God loves you, why did that happen?

If the church loves you, it's your birthday today and you didn't get a single text.

No one called you. If the church loves you, why don't they care about you? Why don't they reach out to you?

If the Bible is really true. Well, how come there's all these intelligent people in the world today that that doubt the Bible? If the Bible is true, how can all these smart people say it's not true? What I'm saying is Satan is a deceiver.

And he's an introducer of doubt, thirdly. So you have deception, doubt, we're considering the wiles of the devil, the schemes of the devil. Here's another scheme. And we're going to turn would turn to this passage.

Second Corinthians four. Second Corinthians four. Turn to second Corinthians four. The third scheme I'll mention this morning is that of darkening. So deception, doubt, scheme number three, wiles number three, the third while while I guess is darkening.

Second Corinthians chapter four, verse one. Therefore, having the ministry, sorry, this ministry, therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.

We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. But by the open statement of the truth, we'd commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled now, listen to this.

It is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world, that is, the devil has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Now, listen carefully again. People are responsible for their own unbelief. No one will ever be able to stand before God and say, Satan made me an unbeliever, an unbeliever. Unbelief is the state of our hearts from conception because we are.

Fallen in Adam. And yet Satan, according to this passage, second Corinthians four, has the power to blind. He has the power, in essence, to take a dark room and make it even darker, considered what Jesus says in the parable of the sower.

Remember when he talks about the parable of the sower? He says there's one seed, the birds of the air come down, they snatch away. He says that's like Satan, right? Satan is like a bird snatching the seed of the gospel away before it has the opportunity to be planted in the ground.

Think about this church, a dark cloud hangs over our nation today. We believe as a nation in many dark and foolish and wicked things. That is because decades of rebellion have only resulted in God giving individuals over to their own lust and the darkening influence of the evil one.

So I want to mention something in this point. One of Satan's schemes is darkness to blind. So I want to mention here that the game of unbelief is not a game. It's a dangerous game. Christ is our king.

Christ is our savior. Jesus is the one. This is the gospel that we preach. Jesus is the one who is the son of God, God who took on flesh, the second person of the trinity to be born of the Virgin Mary.

This is the gospel that he came to fulfill all righteousness on behalf of God's elect, to die on the cross, bearing God's wrath against our sins, to raise again in victory. This is the gospel we preach.

He is the only suitable and all sufficient savior of mankind. In Christ, you can have forgiveness of sins and peace with God, but you can only have it that one way in Christ. You must look to Jesus and be saved.

Listen to me. You must repent of your sins and believe the gospel. The reason I go through the gospel, the reason I say this, the reason I extend the offer of God's mercy to you is to remind you of this, that it is a dangerous game to not believe that message.

Every moment of unbelief. Every willful rejection, I see Jesus, God has taken my sins and put them in Christ. He's punished Jesus. Jesus is risen again from the dead. I hear this message. I turn my back on it.

Every time we do that, every time you have an opportunity to repent and believe the gospel and you turn, you reject, only primes our hearts. To be ever more ready for the darkening influence of the evil.

I want to tell you pointedly and soberingly, you can't you can't stand against the devil. On your own, there is no standing against the devil without the armor of Christ, put on the whole armor of God that so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

In other words, implying if you don't have the armor of God, you ain't standing. You can't fight against him on your own. So put on the armor of God. There's no resisting the devil and his darkening influence apart from faith.

Again, the point that I'm trying to make is you play a dangerous game not to believe the.

Gospel. Repent.

Believe it. If you are an unbeliever today, whether that's a teenager, a child, whether your name is on the church roll, whether you're a visitor, whatever the case may be, if you are an unbeliever, don't play this game.

Because Satan will darken your already darkened mind, you hear the gospel today, repent and believe it. So we've seen deception, doubting. Darkening, how many wiles are there? Well, we won't get to all of them, but fourthly.

Disobedience, we'll just sum it up, disobedience. Now, you remember back in Ephesians chapter two, Paul uses this word Ephesians chapter two, beginning in verse one, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is work at work now in the sons.

And here's the word of disobedience. Satan works in the individual toward disobedience to God's word. Now, disobedience is simply this, it's sin. Disobedience is not doing what God says to do or it's doing what God says not to do.

If I tell my children, children, clean your room and they don't clean the room, that's disobedience. They have not done what their father said for them to do. If I tell them, don't touch the last cookie.

All right. And they do touch it, eat it, leave crumbs there for their father to weep over. That's disobedience, they have done what I told them not to do.

So listen to this.

Let's apply that silly analogy now to life. Satan works in the individual to have that individual do what God says not to do, eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That hasn't changed, right? Do what God says not to do or don't do what God says to do.

And I want to say that's not just in lost person. That's even he doesn't give up that strategy. It's not like, oh, I got saved now. And so now I don't have to worry about the schemes of the devil. No, Paul's talking here in verse 11 to the church.

Right. Put sorry, I turn back to Ephesians 6, put on the whole armor of God. He's talking to the church. He wants the church to stand against the schemes of the devil. So this idea of the sons of disobedience.

Yes, that's speaking of lost people in Ephesians 2. But there is still the the evil schemes of Satan to have the church disobey God. Now, he cannot make an he cannot make a true believer an unbeliever.

Right. He can, though. In a mysterious way, it's hard to work out all the ways that this works in our mind, but he can in a mysterious way influence even believers toward disobedience. Now, you can't emphasize this again.

You can't disobey God and say to God, the devil made me do that when we disobey God. That's on us. Nevertheless, the point of this message is that you can't underestimate or dismiss or be unaware of the fact that Satan seeks to influence even the individual Christian toward disobeying God.

God says, go and preach the gospel. So when we don't evangelize, we disobey to have us not pray. We're to pray to not pray. That's disobedience to have us not gather with the church. Have you ever come up with like the craziest reason not to go to church?

Wonder where that came from or to have us not read God's word or to have us gossip or to have us slander a brother or sister, to have us lust or be prideful or be easily offended or whatever the case may be.

It is Satan's grand scheme to have the individual not do what God says to do or to do what God says not to do. So listen to this. Every time we disobey God. Not only do we dishonor God. Not only do we do damage to ourselves and to our brothers and sisters.

But in another sense, we also embolden Satan's fury because James tells us in the book of James, chapter four. Verse seven ish around there, sorry. To resist the devil. And he will flee. From you, too many people who say they're Christians do not resist the devil and his influence.

And by their disobedience, they just simply continue to invite his presence because he doesn't flee. Deception, doubting, darkening, disobedience, fifthly, devouring. Well, let's turn over to first Peter, chapter five for a moment.

First Peter, chapter five, deception. We're talking about the wiles of the devil. We're on to be on guard against the schemes of the devil. We're talking about how the devil works in the individual and he works in deception and doubting and darkening and disobedience and fifthly, devouring in first Peter, chapter five.

This is from the text. First Peter, chapter five, verse eight. First Peter, chapter five, verse eight. Peter says, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, your enemy, the devil. Prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to.

Devour. Satan is like a roaring lion ready to consume the individual and how many have been devoured, think about that word, have been devoured, swallowed up by the evil one, even in our day. How many today seem to be totally given over to the wiles of the devil, to his evil schemes, locked into immorality or false doctrine or depression or strung out dependent upon prescription medication or illegal drugs or enslaved to pornography or like pilgrim locked in doubting castle or the list goes on and on and on.

You look at our nation today and people proudly wearing tattoos of Satan on themselves or or seeking to put 666 on them themselves or or laughing about these things or pretending as though they worship Satan or actually worshiping Satan and all these strange things you look and you see Satan has devoured so many today.

When we are not on our guard. When we're not seeking to put on the whole armor of God, I'm talking now about individual Christians, when we are not seeking to actively pursue God in faith and trust the gospel, we are like the man leaning over the tiger home at the zoo.

Right, so so there's the tiger and you've got the man has been funny, leaned over the cage, he's throwing stuff at the tiger, he's not on his guard, he continues on consumed. By the time this is the state that we're in, when we ignore the reality that Satan roams around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, when we disobey God, when we ignore these things, when we don't care about putting on our armor.

We can be devoured, unbelievers are devoured by entering a state of what seems to be utter demonic influence, even demonic possession. I'll lay this down. I think it's undeniable that demonic possession is real.

Now, Christians cannot be demonically possessed because we're possessed by the Holy Spirit. But unbelievers can be demonically possessed. I'm just going to tell you something else, too. This is a little side note.

I've been around some people before that I think may either be very strongly demonically influenced or perhaps demonically possessed. And they've been really, really nice. You think, well, this could be weird, creepy, eyes will look weird.

Now, sometimes angel, Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. I believe these things are real. I believe the Bible teaches these things and I believe that Satan is ready to devour. But believers can be devoured in this sense.

They can get trapped into serious sin. They're not going to lose their salvation. But if we're not careful, we can bring great damage to ourselves. We can bring great damage to those around us and to the church and to our influence.

So many times I hear this excuse. Well, you know, David committed adultery and God said that he was a man after his own heart. That's listen, all true, all true. David did commit adultery. And the Bible does say David was a man after God's own heart.

And we're going to see David in heaven. But have you read the Bible? Have you read what happens to David? Have you read what happens to his family? Have you read what happens to to his son? One son forgive the language here is it's heavy language, but it's the language one son rapes a sister.

Another son kills that son. Then that son rebels against his father and he's ultimately killed by Joab. Read the Bible and understand that if we're not careful, sin will so entangle us and hysterically.

Yes, if we're a true believer, we're not going to lose our salvation, but.

We'll destroy.

The witness of the church, even our own families. Satan is at work with deception and doubting and darkening, disobedience, devouring, and here's the great word you want, finally. Number six. Distracting.

Now, here's what I want to say. We could use several passages, one passage that comes to mind is Hebrews chapter 12, where it says that we're to lay aside every weight and sin, which clings so closely and we're to.

Run the race set before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus. Now, that passage doesn't mention Satan, but I do think that it's biblically accurate to say Satan is a great distractor today for the unbeliever, I would say it works this way.

He he works his schemes by keeping the unbeliever distracted from eternal things. Right. So, for example, listen to me now. This may be you this morning. You know, you don't care about the weightiness of your soul.

You don't care about heaven. You don't care about the greatness of God. You don't care about the loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have no care about the gospel. Why? Because you're worried about the football game.

Or maybe you're you're thinking about what happened last night on the football game or you're thinking about today's football game or you're or you're thinking about your own football game. You're playing in high school sports or you're thinking about maybe your job or you're thinking about these all these other you're just distracted.

Right. You don't care about these eternal truths. They just seem so far away and you're so wrapped up in the things of the world that you're not thinking about the weightiness of your own soul. But for the believer, I think this distraction.

Involves being distracted from Christ, let me say it to you this way, even good things in your life. Can distract you from the greatest thing. Which is Christ, so listen, believers, sometimes I've seen it can get so caught up even in ministries that end up distracting them from the worship of our holy God.

I talked to some people even this week at the at the conference and they told me about their ministry and I said, oh, that's that's great. What church you go to? Oh, I don't I don't go to church because I have this ministry.

This ministry is distracted. Or or or there's all other things that can distract us from the worship of God or the actual mission of the church, which is making disciples from out of every nation. You know, I use fishing, are there one method of hunting is decoys and the idea of a decoy is kind of twofold, really.

In one sense, you want the decoy to be like a lure to attract the animal, but another way a decoy serves when you're hunting is a distraction, right? Let the hunter set like you don't sit down and put the decoy on, right?

You don't want the animal looking at the decoy and seeing you, right? You're here. You're in the stand. You're on the ground, wherever the case may be, depending if you're doing duck or turkey or deer.

You're here. The decoy is over here. Why? You don't want the animal to look at you. You want it to be distracted. You want it to look at the decoy. And we can be distracted by the lies and false promises of the evil one until all of a sudden, before we're ever ready for it, he shoots us in the heart with one of his deadly arrows.

I think there are many professing Christians today who are distracted and it's not necessarily outright sin. So listen to this. It may be with children. It may be with righteous concerns, like concern for our country.

Look at our country today. Does anyone in here look at our country today and say, well, praise God, I'm glad everything in our country is the way that it is. No, no, we should have concern for our nation.

We should have concern for our children. We should have concern with caring for others. But none of these things are evil. Our children, our nation, caring for people. These sorts of things, they're all good things, yet they can consume us.

They can consume us in such a way that we move away from the gospel, we're so worried about our children's education that we move away from the gospel or we're so worried about our children's athletic ability.

We move away from the gospel or we end up minimizing revealed truth like the priority of the local church, whatever the case may be. I'm just saying Satan is very crafty. He can take even good things.

And distract us, we must beware. Of his wiles, for we were sorry, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, deception, doubting, darkening, disobedience, devouring, distracting.

This seems to be some of his main work, there's other things we could have talked about, I'm sure this seems to be some of his main work in the lives of individuals.

So so let's.

Land the plane here, are you actively this morning. Standing against the influence of the evil, like when is the last time so some people in here, maybe you think about the devil too much, right, you need to scale back, but there's probably at least some of you in here who think about the devil too little.

You walk out your door in the morning without worrying about putting on your armor, you're not even thinking about the devil, right? Like if I told you, hey, if you walk out the door, they're fixing to shoot you.

What are you going to do? You're going to put on body armor. You're going to weapon up and you're going to go charging out the door. You're going to be ready.

Right.

But what if I say when you walk out the door in the morning, you don't even have to get out the door when you open the laptop, when you turn on the television, when you open your eyes and you look immediately, what is Satan done?

He's ready to pounce.

Right.

And you don't even think about that. And you just go throughout your day, not even actively thinking I've got to put on the.

Armor of God.

Why?

Because I have an enemy. I have one who hates me because he hates the one who made me and loves me and died for.

Me.

Are you standing against the influence of the evil? I remind you that you can't do this on your own. You are called by God this day from the text to put on the whole armor of God, every piece, every defensive portion, every offensive portion must be taken up.

And that first and foremost begins with Christ. It first and foremost begins with repenting of your sins and believing the gospel, with giving ourselves over to the influence of Christ and leaving the influence of the evil one, with turning away from the lies and deception and falsehood and turning to the truth, who is Christ.