The Choice is Yours                     

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason  -- Sunday, May 9, 2004

Ephesians 6:

      10A final word: Be strong with the Lord’s mighty power. 11Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil. 12For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms.
      13Use every piece of God’s armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil, so that after the battle you will still be standing firm. 14Stand your ground, putting on the sturdy belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. 15For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News, so that you will be fully prepared.? 16In every battle you will need faith as your shield to stop the fiery arrows aimed at you by Satan.? 17Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18Pray at all times and on every occasion in the power of the Holy Spirit. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all Christians everywhere.
   
    The story is told that Ronald Reagan, Hollywood Actor in the 1930’s and 40’s, Governor of California and President of the United States, grew up in Dixon, Illinois in a family that was not very well off financially. In fact, there were times when they literally had no money for even the necessities of life.
    There was a time when Ronald Reagan needed shoes and his parents did not have the money to buy them. Fortunately, for Reagan there was an aunt who had enough money to help out. She went to the local shoe maker and made arrangements for him to make a pair of shoes for Reagan. She told him to go to the shoe store and the shoe maker would make him a pair of shoes.
    When Reagan got to the shoe store and his feet had been measured for the shoes, the shoe maker asked him if he wanted round toed shoes or square toes. Well, Reagan couldn’t decide which he wanted. He asked the shoe maker to give him a couple of days to think it over and decide.
    A week went by and the shoe maker saw Reagan out on the street one day. He asked him what he had decided  about the toes of the shoes…square or round. Reagan still couldn’t make up his mind. The shoe maker told him to come by later in the week to pick up his shoes. They would be ready for him.
    When he stopped by the shoe store to pick up his shoes, he saw that the shoe maker had made one shoe round toed and the other one had a square toe.
    In telling the story over the years, Ronald Reagan had this to say:  “Every time I wore those shoes I was reminded of this fact…If you don’t make a decision there is always someone who will make it for you.”

As we come to our text for today, we should understand that the Apostle Paul is telling us here that there is a decision for us to make…”Put on the full, complete, whole armor of God, so that we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” If we fail to make this decision, then we will fail in the struggle we have with the enemy of our soul.
If we go out in public naked…without our armor…without putting our armor on…the devil will defeat us. To fail to decide is to decide to fail!
11Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil.
Most of us have heard the saying, “To fail to plan is to plan to fail.”  As believers in Jesus Christ, we have decisions we must make if we are to successfully live for Christ in this world, to successfully make disciples and to successfully stand firm against the attacks of the enemies of our soul.

The devil has strategies to defeat you.
The devil has a plan to bring you down to destroy you and your witness and testimony for Jesus.

To accomplish his plan of destruction, he has strategies that he employs against us to accomplish his goal of our destruction.

Remember when the devil in the guise of the serpent confronted Eve in the Garden of Eden? Genesis 3:1 says, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the field.” He was scheming. He was subtle. What he was doing was camouflaged so that Eve could not see what he was up to. This is  the very first example of the wiles of the devil, of his stratagems and strategies that are designed to trip us up.

Paul’s message is that the devil is at work.  Be aware of it. Be alert. Be ready for the battle on the day it comes to you.

In 2 Corinthians 11:3, the Apostle Paul tells us this:  “We are not ignorant of his devices ( i.e., his planning, scheming)
He will do anything to get an advantage over us, to get us down, to make us look ridiculous, to bring God’s name into disgrace.

In writing to Timothy Paul tells him not to elevate a novice to a position of an elder in the church...”lest he fall into reproach and into the snare of the devil.”

Have you ever tried to snare any animals? The idea is to set a trap, bait it and allow the animal you are trying to snare to enter the trap before the trap is sprung. The real art of making a trap is to conceal it. You have to camouflage it or the animal will never take the bait and become ensnared in your trap.

So it is that the devil plans his attacks. Do you think for one moment that any one would bite on his temptations if they actually saw what the snare is like? Would anyone fall for his enticements if they actually saw the trap laid for them? Of course not! And yet the truth is that people are trapped and ensnared by the devil every day.

Why is that? Well, it is because the devil is laying traps and setting snares to entrap us every day. He is always doing that. And time and again, Christians fall into the traps and are ensnared.

And it is because of this…the laying of the traps to ensnare us that the Apostle Paul writes what he does in these few verses. He says that we are to put on the full armor of God, so that we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

There is the secret to living an overcoming life….No Public Nudity!  Get the armor and put it on.

Notice if you will, that the armor is the armor of God.  It is His armor. He designed it. He has given it to us, made it available to us. All we have to do is put it on…and then keep it in good repair.  The tense of this expression “put on the armor” is one that speaks of a once and for all putting on of the armor. You put it on and then have to keep it on and keep it in good shape as you live your life for Christ.

Once we have put on the armor, we need to be alert and watch out for the schemes of the devil that he plans to use to entrap us.

* Remember, the devil according to 2 Corinthians 11:13 transforms himself into an angel of light. This is something he does to himself. He masquerades as an angel of light. The idea here is that the devil wears the mask of an actor who appears in various characters. In this case, one of those characters is an angel of light.
* The devil can quote scripture when it suits him.
* He is bold…he even took on the very Son of God without any hesitation to challenge Him and to ensnare Him if possible. I am sure, as I suggested last week, that everyone else had always given in to the temptations, and had fallen into the traps set for them. Why not Jesus?
* Scripture tells us that the devil comes to us “…as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” The “roaring lion” was the older lion who could not hunt as he once had and he goes about making a lot of noise to distract and to cause the prey to run into an ambush set for them by the other members of the pride.
* We have already seen that the devil “beguiled” Eve. He enticed her to sin. But a roaring lion never entices anyone. To Eve he appeared in a pleasing and plausible manner, as her friend ready to tell her something that she really needed to know about God. God wants t keep you down. He doesn’t want you to reach your potential. The way to that potential is for you to know both good and evil.
* There are times when he just insinuates something. To Jesus, he came and said, “if you are the Son of God…” And of course, his insinuation was that there was actually some doubt about His being the Son of God. To us he might insinuate that if we follow his leading (usually through someone else) he will lead us into the deeper truths about God and His Word, the deeper truths of our faith that no one else will show us. Those deeper truths are the doctrines of demons! And not the Word of God.
o Who usually falls prey to that insinuation?  It is usually the person who is not really satisfied with their Christian life and who wants to go deeper in their faith and into the Word of God. Usually what happens is that the person is led deeper by that teacher and right into heresy. The bait is:  “Let’s avoid the simple stuff; and get right down to the deeper stuff.”
* And then, his greatest ploy, is to hide the fact that he actually exists and then ridicule the very notion that there really is a devil or demons. The Red suit, horns, tail and pitchfork usually do the trick. Remember…concealment is the key here.
o The fisherman knows all about that:  one of the first rules of fishing is to keep yourself out of sight. You have to camouflage yourself, your line and your bait if you want to catch anything. You have to throw out your line…one the fish can’t see…far enough away from you that they will not know you are there if you want to catch them.
* The devil hides himself.
* He blinds the hearts of men.
* He raises doubts about our salvation, about our faithfulness to Christ, etc.
* He tries to overcome us with a spirit of fear.
* He instigates false teachings.
* He attacks us with evil thoughts.
* He attacks us with a spirit of discouragement and depression. He causes us to doubt that are forgiven or that God could ever forgive us.  1 John 1:9 takes care of that, or at least it should…”If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  God is holy love. God is love. He loves us and He will forgive us…and when He does, it is just as if we had never sinned. Because of this…we have no right to stay depressed or discouraged. Our God is the God of the Prodigal. We have no right to look back or to perpetually look within at our failures and be depressed.
* The choice is ours. We can be forgiven. We can be restored. We don’t have to let the devil do this to us…over and over again. The devil is just like a master pianist…he knows just where to press the key and exactly when to do it to disrupt and destroy our lives. He will do it until we stop him.

The Apostle Paul gives us the means of overcoming the devil.

We saw over the past several weeks that we are to be strong in the Lord. It is His strength not ours that matters. It is in His strength that we will overcome and prevail against the enemy of our soul.
We have to choose to be strong in the Lord.
We have to choose to put on the armor of God.

* Paul tells us that we are to actively put it on as we would clothes.
* Paul tells us that it is the complete, the whole armor of God.
* Paul tells us to do this so that we can successfully resist in the evil day, when the attack comes and to be standing firm when the battle is over. Victory is possible.
* Again, the choice is ours. Put on the armor of God:
o Having girded your loins with truth…this is the foundation garment for the Roman soldier. Everything he wears will tie into the belt in order that it might fulfill its responsibility of protecting the soldier.
o The breastplate of righteousness.  David’s breastplate of righteousness had some missing links when he saw Bathsheba. And guess where the fiery darts the devil hurled at David struck…right where the links were missing.
o The shield of faith. The shield in view here is the large “door” shield the Roman soldiers carried. They were about 4 feet tall and between 2 and a half to three feet wide. They could protect the Roman Soldier from the bridge of his nose to the grieves on his feet and shins. Faith is a shield for our protection.

This is the defensive armor of God…designed to protect us.

The key to overcoming the enemy is to put it on so that we are ready when the day of battle comes.  The devil will try out his wiles, schemes on us. He intends to trap us and to destroy us. Why? Because he hates God and anything good that God has ever made or done.

And like anything else in the Christian life…we have to choose to do it God’s way. We have to put it on. The choice is ours.

Let me close with this thought from Oswald Chambers.

The Faith to Persevere
  “Because you have kept My command to persevere …” (Revelation 3:10).
  Perseverance means more than endurance—more than simply holding on until the end. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but our Lord continues to stretch and strain, and every once in a while the saint says, “I can’t take any more.” Yet God pays no attention; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, and then He lets the arrow fly. Entrust yourself to God’s hands. Is there something in your life for which you need perseverance right now? Maintain your intimate relationship with Jesus Christ through the perseverance of faith. Proclaim as Job did, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
  Faith is not some weak and pitiful emotion, but is strong and vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. And even though you cannot see Him right now and cannot understand what He is doing, you know Him. Disaster occurs in your life when you lack the mental composure that comes from establishing yourself on the eternal truth that God is holy love. Faith is the supreme effort of your life—throwing yourself with abandon and total confidence upon God.
  God ventured His all in Jesus Christ to save us, and now He wants us to venture our all with total abandoned confidence in Him. There are areas in our lives where that faith has not worked in us as yet—places still untouched by the life of God. There were none of those places in Jesus Christ’s life, and there are to be none in ours. Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You …” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance—a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.

-- Dennis Gleason