Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] So today we get to wrap up the book in Ephesians, Chapter six.
[00:00:12] And I was reflecting and reading on both this chapter in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, but also considering the goal and the aim of scripture as a whole this week as Ben and I were talking about it. And if you read the Bible, especially the New Testament, for any length of time, what you'll find is that its primary aim is actually not to get us safely to heaven when we die.
[00:00:42] What happens after we die is in there. Paul himself writes in one of his letters that to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ, that no eye is seen and no ear has heard what Christ, God, has prepared for those who love him. And so it's not that what happens after we die isn't important, it's very important.
[00:01:04] But the aim of the Bible and how we are to apply it to our lives is not so much about what happens when we safely get through this life and on to the next, but instead it's a library of poems and letters and history and story.
[00:01:21] And all of it centers around this idea of bringing heaven to earth right now.
[00:01:28] In fact, when Jesus walked around and he taught and he healed and he moved from town to town, his message that he came back to again and again was, hey, turn around and look up, because the kingdom of the heavens has come to us now.
[00:01:46] This is the heart of Jesus, and this is the aim of God's word, the Bible.
[00:01:51] Not that we would hold on until we can escape from this place, but that we would every day pray as Jesus taught us to in the Lord's Prayer when he said, you pray this kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:02:06] So all of this, all that we've been talking about in the book of Ephesians for these last six weeks is this hope that our lives, so touched by the grace of God, displayed on the cross by Jesus, that it would welcome us into this posture and this disposition towards the world where we are praying. God, let your way, your goodness, your righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Let it come here. Let it invade the places where we work and play and live and have our normal lives.
[00:02:39] This is what we're hoping for. And if this is true, that God and his way and his goodness is coming to be among us, we know that we live in a hurting and oftentimes broken world. And so when it shows up through us. When the life and the way of Jesus comes into our real world, it comes with conflict.
[00:03:01] There are forces that oppose the goodness of God. There is evil in this world. And this is what we're going to read about in Ephesians chapter six, as we read about the armor of God. And even as I say the armor of God, maybe your brain clicks back into a Sunday school lesson. When you were a kid and you were singing I'm in the Lord's army, and then you would say, yes, sir, and stand at attention, right? So this comes with a little bit of baggage. I want to acknowledge that today that as we talk through this metaphor, we're going to try to peel back some of the layers of maybe what we grew up with to get at the heart of what Paul is going to teach us today. So Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10.
[00:03:43] Paul encourages us, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
[00:03:49] Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against rulers, against authorities, against powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
[00:04:05] Now, if this sounds darker than what we normally teach on Sundays, you're right.
[00:04:10] We don't spend a ton of time talking about the forces of evil in the dark world that we live in. We don't typically have that as our first starting point on a Sunday morning. Instead, oftentimes, what we are doing is we're focusing first and last on the way that Jesus makes things right.
[00:04:29] And I think this is appropriate and good, and yet we don't want to ignore that. Just like the spirit of God is alive and at work in our world, there are forces of evil that oppose that.
[00:04:41] And there's a way to approach this that is excessive. And maybe you've met folks that lean more this way where they try to find a demon under every rock.
[00:04:54] Everything is so spiritual to the point where I remember just yesterday. I remember. Of course I do. It was yesterday.
[00:05:01] Think back with me to yesterday.
[00:05:04] We were coming back from Seattle, so we took a quick trip to Seattle, saw a concert with our kids, and we were driving back yesterday, and we came the long way down by the gorge and Biggs Junction and across the desert.
[00:05:17] And just out of Biggs, on this side of Biggs, we're driving behind this little white Volkswagen Bug, and they're going so slow, like 15 miles under the speed limit and driving me crazy. And so we get to it. Passing. And I pass them. And then, I don't know, 10 miles later, we stop for a restroom break.
[00:05:41] You know where this is going, get back in the car and guess who's in front of us.
[00:05:46] This happens one more time after that. So three times we have to pass this Volkswagen. And this is how I know that the devil drives a white Volkswagen Bug.
[00:06:01] It's true. I saw him.
[00:06:03] We locked eyes.
[00:06:05] This is excessive. This is.
[00:06:08] I know this. I've talked with people who. This is kind of the lens by which they see the world, that everything is out to get them. There's threats everywhere. The devil is on the loose everywhere. Not today. Devil, you know, And I don't think this is helpful.
[00:06:23] I don't think this is healthy.
[00:06:26] I don't think the way of Jesus is to be on the lookout for a demon under every rock. This is where superstition comes into play. This is where religious conspiracy theories thrive, is when we have this approach and this view of how the spiritual world interacts. On the other end, though, we assume that nothing is spiritual, right? That all we have is the material world, what we can see and feel and test in a tube. And in this kind of approach to the world around us, where nothing is spiritual, everything is only material.
[00:07:05] We look at the brokenness of our world, whether it be the epidemic of mental illness or anxiety, the horrifying frequency of mass shootings that show up in our news feeds again and again each year, the horrors of war and the side effects that happen in the midst of wars, which is just so awful to even consider that humans are capable of this kind of evil. The genocide that happens around the globe on any given year, all these effects of evil in our world. There's an opinion out there that this is just rational, material world doing what it does, that there is no spiritual root causes to any of the evil that plays out in the world today.
[00:07:58] And if everything is rational and reasonable, and then we look for rational and reasonable solutions to the problems that ail the world, don't you think by now we should have figured it out?
[00:08:11] And so somewhere in between these extremes, where on one hand everything is overly spiritual, and on the other hand nothing is spiritual, somewhere in between those extremes, Paul would tell us that we live in a world that is infused with the spiritual.
[00:08:27] And yet we need the discernment to know when the spiritual is at play. And that's what this is about today. I want to talk us through how we cannot just toss out the reality that we live in a world that is both physical or material and spiritual.
[00:08:45] And, you know, before the enlightenment in the 18th century, we didn't used to separate out these worlds, the spiritual and the material, they were kind of all jumbled together.
[00:08:58] And pre Enlightenment, there. There was no separation. And this led to a lot of superstition. If you read through even religious writings in the Middle Ages, you'll find a lot of superstitious elements to that.
[00:09:13] And then the Enlightenment comes along and we start to lean on reason and rationale and the scientific method and all this is really good. I mean, it pushes the Western world forward in crazy ways, right?
[00:09:28] And in the Enlightenment, what comes out of that is not a doing away with religion or spiritual thought, but it is a compartmentalization between these two worlds where we say, okay, there are certain things that belong in the religious or the spiritual world, and we can have our churches and we can have our worship and our prayer, and we can ask for miracles, but that's all going to stay over here. And then over here in the real world, this is where we're going to figure everything out through philosophy and politics and reason.
[00:09:59] And at face value, there's nothing wrong with that, except when we realize that to follow after Jesus is to believe that these two worlds of what we see and touch and live in and this world where God is present and alive and at work, they actually are brought together in the person of Jesus. When he's walking around during his ministry, he is pulling from. From the way of heaven and he's bringing it into earth. And so blind eyes are opened and people are healed. And people hear the word of God and it changes something in their heart. And so we have this collision of heaven and earth that happens in the person of Jesus.
[00:10:35] And so the invitation for us is not to find a demon under every rock. And it's also not to assume that nothing is spiritual. It's to exist in this in between space between heaven and earth, where every day we pray God, let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:10:50] And so it creates a space spiritually where tension exists. And what we see in the life of Jesus is this masterful way that Jesus discerns what is natural and what is spiritual. In Matthew, chapter 8, 16 says, that evening they brought to Jesus many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and he healed all who were sick.
[00:11:17] So in this verse, we see that Jesus is discerning what is spiritual and what is natural.
[00:11:23] There are some things in our life that we will encounter that have a spiritual root cause and need a spiritual response, and others that are natural and oftentimes need a medical response.
[00:11:35] And discernment says, you know, this is maybe a medical issue, and we still pray for a miracle, but we understand what the root cause is.
[00:11:45] And this is why discernment is so important. Otherwise you'll get people saying, oh, everything's a spiritual attack, or nothing is. And in the way of Jesus, we discern what is spirit and what is natural.
[00:11:57] So we Continue reading Ephesians 6:13.
[00:12:00] It says, Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you've done everything to stand, stand firm then. So remember, Paul is writing from a prison cell. Likely there's a Roman guard in there with him, decked out in armor. I think this kind of points out that maybe Paul's a little lazy, to be honest.
[00:12:23] He's getting to the end of his letter, he's tired, he's wondering how he can wrap this up. You know, it's the final chapter. So he's like, what should we write on? Talking to his scribe, and he looks over, he's like, that'll do. And then he starts writing about the armor of God, right? Little lazy, but it'll work. Okay, the metaphor works. And remember, Paul doesn't know if he'll it out alive. And so when he talks about standing your ground and standing firm in truth on that evil day, likely he is. He is preparing that he may not make it out alive, that he might face death for his faith. So I would imagine that Paul, he's not only encouraging us to stand firm in our faith, he's reminding his own soul, you need to stand firm in what you know to be true about God, no matter what comes next.
[00:13:06] Stand firm then. Verse 14. With the belt of truth buckle around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests, and with this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all of the Lord's people.
[00:13:36] So after five chapters in this letter where Paul is lifting up the great grace of God that we are saved by, he talks about coming into unity in the community. He's talking about taking off the old and putting on the new nature in Christ. And he gets to the end of this and he's saying, you're going to be opposed in all this good stuff that God has done for you and is doing through you. You're going to find opposition to.
[00:14:05] And maybe you can relate to this, where no sooner have you surrendered something to Jesus, maybe in a time of worship or prayer, or in a service like this, or in a time where you're reading the scripture and you're saying, God, I want to give you everything. No sooner have you done that, that that old nature that you just took off really wants to come back on.
[00:14:23] You really, really struggle maybe to keep the new on and the old off. And Paul is acknowledging that without us taking on and clothing ourselves in these benefits that Christ offers, we're not going to stand a chance to stand against the opposition that we face spiritually.
[00:14:43] For this new life to win, you're going to need a faith that is fortified, and these are the tools that we're given. Truth, number one, truth.
[00:14:52] We reject lies as we follow Jesus, especially ones that tell us what we want to hear.
[00:14:59] It's easy to reject lies that don't align with what we think and feel and want for ourselves. But when lies come that are convenient and helpful and advantageous to us, those are the lies oftentimes that Christ calls us to reject.
[00:15:17] Next, righteousness.
[00:15:20] We guard our hearts from idols and passions that lead to trouble and destruction.
[00:15:26] Oftentimes we think of the term of righteousness as an invitation into religious obligation.
[00:15:35] Don't do this, do that. This is righteousness. But what Paul frames righteousness as is that thing that is good for you, that will save you from the trouble that leads to destruction.
[00:15:46] Guard your hearts with the breastplate of righteousness. Next, he says, the boots of the gospel of that we would be ready to move.
[00:15:55] This idea that Paul is presenting is that we always move towards people with the heart and the mindset of the Prince of Peace, that we walk into places that are filled with conflict and division and strife and war. And we bring peace because we are motivated by the gospel of peace. Moving quickly through these faith. We act on our trust in God. When we don't have the answers, not only for ourselves, but for those that we're trying to help, we always want to have the answers. We always want to know what advice to give next to get somebody out of the trouble that they're in. Oftentimes what we actually bring to those people into A hurting world is not certainty and answers. Oftentimes it is companionship in faith that we sit next to someone and say, I don't know what tomorrow holds right? I don't know what the answer is. I can't give you the advice to solve all your problems, but I have faith and trust in the God who knows and who will lead and guide you. And so we bring faith to extinguish what Paul calls the fiery darts of the evil one, the helmet of salvation.
[00:16:57] We know and remember what saved us, not our own works, but pure grace.
[00:17:02] And then we wield the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. I just recently got my son, he's 7 years old, got him his first pocket knife, which if you've ever met a seven year old boy, you'll know that is a risky thing to do to give a weapon to your 7 year old.
[00:17:18] And so some of you are worried this story's not gonna end well. It's not that he's fine. I gave him this knife and it's like a kid's first pocket knife, but it's sharp, it's like a real blade. And so I show it to him, I give it to him, he's all excited, he's like, I'm gonna go show all my friends in the neighborhood. All his friends in the neighborhood, they're mostly kindergarteners. So I told him to pause. I said, we're gonna learn how to use this first. And one of the first things I tell him is that the most dangerous blade is what kind of blade?
[00:17:50] You know it. A dull blade, right? A dull blade is a dangerous blade because you're gonna have to put so much effort into getting it to cut that you're gonna slip, it's gonna cut you because that blade is dull. You know what else is dangerous? A very sharp blade in the hand of a seven year old. Right?
[00:18:08] And here's what I wanna say about how we use scripture. Cause Paul is saying that this is something that is in how we are clothed and how we engage in the world around us.
[00:18:23] That a dull blade could be likened to those who use scripture, but they don't know it, they don't know it well. And so they throw around maybe cliched scriptures or scriptures out of context and they just toss it out there. You know, that is a very dangerous way to use scripture is when you haven't actually let it change you, you're taking off the top. Another dangerous way to use scripture is when you know it so well, but you take it out of context and you're not in alignment with the way and the heart of Jesus.
[00:18:55] And just like a dull blade, a person who knows scripture inside and out and misuses it is a dangerous thing that will leave a wake of destruction in their path.
[00:19:06] And so what we are called to do as we put on the armor of God and take up scripture as a tool, is to rightly be aligned with the way and the heart of Jesus. We know scripture, but we don't misuse scripture.
[00:19:19] And so instead of damage and hurt and wounds, what comes behind us is people who are more in love with Jesus because they found hope and redemption through what the scripture reveals about him.
[00:19:31] This is how we use the word of God, the sword of the spirit, and then finally, prayer. We know that it is through his power and intention only that we are able to stand when we are opposed. In our spiritual health, you know, armor is quite unnecessary in a bunker no one suits up to, then go hide out in a safe room.
[00:19:55] No one puts on armor to chill at home for the weekend. Right.
[00:20:00] The nature of putting on armor, of suiting up is because you're going to enter into a place where you will come against opposition.
[00:20:08] And sometimes this is misused to make us think like we're going to suit up in church and then we're going to go fight anybody who opposes our agenda or our ideology.
[00:20:18] But remember, Paul starts this whole chapter saying it's not against flesh and blood. It's not other people that disagree with you that are the enemy. It is something spiritual at work that is coming for your heart, not your positions.
[00:20:31] And so as we take on these things that Christ has given us as our inheritance. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the word of God and prayer. As we put these things on, what we are saying is God, we say yes to what you have provided so that what? So that when we enter into the culture that we live in, our spiritual health will be fortified.
[00:20:55] Our spiritual health will be fortified. And there's an impulse that says the only way to actually keep your spiritual life safe and healthy is to separate from the big bad culture that's out there.
[00:21:07] I grew up in the 90s in a very Christian subculture, right? Any 90s kids here with me today. I see you, I feel you. You're still here. Good job.
[00:21:17] I grew up in a very Christian world, and I'm grateful. And hear my heart. I'm grateful for my. My upbringing. My parents are here. I'm not gonna make eye contact, but my parents are here in the room.
[00:21:28] I Went to Christian school. I played in Christian bands.
[00:21:31] I literally was a Christian T shirt maker for a stint. Okay, so I'm coming at this conversation we're about to have as an insider. Okay?
[00:21:42] But growing up in the 90s kind of Christian subculture, there were some excesses and extremes of this idea that the best way to avoid losing your values was to create a Christian subculture that was almost like a nice try knockoff of the real thing, Right? And this was infused in all the different Christian things we had in our Christian subculture. And I remember, I'm not proud of this, but in our youth group in the early 2000s, we'd have kids come in and come to faith and really be all in and say, what do I do? And so I don't even think this was my youth pastor. This was just like, me and my buddies being like, here's what you gotta do. Do you have any secular CDs?
[00:22:32] As I've talked about this today, I get more feedback from the story I'm about to tell you than anything I've said in years.
[00:22:38] I said, do you have any non Christian CDs? And so these kids would bring their entire CD collections in, and we're talking binders of CDs. Do you remember the binders of CDs? And this represented thousands of dollars of investment in their music collections. And we would cheer them on as a youth group, not at this church, but other churches.
[00:22:57] We would cheer them on as they would one by one, break their CDs because they weren't appropriately Christian.
[00:23:04] And if you're thinking, like, oh, it was probably like, Marilyn Manson and, like, death metal. No, we're talking like, this is like Nora Jones, you know, not today, Nora. Not today. Right?
[00:23:18] And we celebrated this idea because, in our understanding was the further away from culture you can get, the safer your spirit will be.
[00:23:28] And it's this idea that separation is gonna be what protects your faith. And here's the thing. Now, as all of us millennials are in our.
[00:23:38] Or whatever, what we're realizing is those that walked away from the faith, they rarely walked away to become a jazz singer. You know, like, I play piano. I can't follow Jesus. That wasn't the. That wasn't what took them away. Right? It's something a lot more seductive to lose your faith. Oftentimes the devil's not out to, like, get to you through that smooth, smooth jazz. He's doing something more.
[00:24:07] And so what I don't want for our kids is that we set it up as These big obvious pop culture things are where the battle is only at. But instead there are issues of the heart and identity and how we are to surrender our whole lives to Christ, that that's where the battle oftentimes happens.
[00:24:32] And I think what Paul would tell us is that we're going to be ineffective both for ourselves, for our kids and new generations that come after us in standing with a strong faith through separation or avoidance of the culture.
[00:24:46] Now, I'm grateful for Christian schools. They're doing great work today in our town.
[00:24:53] I think you have to be very careful if you're a parent in the room today with what your children consume as far as content and media. Of course, I'm not saying it's a free for all by any means, but if our highest hope for our kids and our community is that we just hold on long enough to escape to heaven with our innocence intact, we miss Jesus main point. That as we pray for heaven to come here, we become agents and partners in the work of redemption that Jesus is pushing us into, into places of darkness to be the light even as he was. And does Jesus warn about the dangers of assimilating to culture and losing values to the popular values of the majority culture? Yes, he does. In Mark, chapter eight, he's sitting with his disciples in a boat and he says, beware of what he calls the Way or the way of Herod. To us that doesn't mean much, but to the disciples, they would have heard that as Herod, Herod is the one who kind of opens the door for the Roman Empire and its values to creep into their everyday life.
[00:25:59] This idea of assimilation and just embracing and even celebrating the popular culture and its values. Jesus said, beware of that. Watch out for that.
[00:26:10] Watch out when we start to think that our identity is rooted in whatever we say it is. Watch out when truth is determined by me.
[00:26:19] Watch out when my whole way is self curated and you can't tell me anything that I want to be or do. Watch out for that kind of assimilation. But he also says in that same verse in Mark chapter eight, before he gets to the way of Herod, he says, watch out for the way of the Pharisees.
[00:26:35] And the way of the Pharisees is separation.
[00:26:39] It's keeping a distance and an arm's length from the culture at large.
[00:26:46] And Jesus is concerned for the disciples and for us today. I believe by warning us for these dual threats to our spiritual life and our ability to follow the way of Jesus, because they both take us away from what Jesus modeled and intends for us. And so if it's not assimilation and it's not separation, what is the way of Jesus? Well, here's the way of Jesus. It's incarnation, what John the apostle talked about in John chapter one, where he said the word God was made flesh and he dwelt among us.
[00:27:20] And this light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. It's not overwhelmed it that the work of Christ comes to us as followers of the way of Jesus, not to help us escape from popular culture, not to help us stay at a safe distance and hole off in a safe room in our armor. No, instead, what he does is he sends us into culture. Not to assimilate into it, or to lose our values, or to lose our beliefs in it, but instead to be fortified enough in our spirit that when we walk into places, among real people, in real lives, in real broken places, we actually become what Jesus was, which is light in darkness.
[00:28:02] And this is really easy to preach, and it's fun to preach, and it's hard to live because the dual temptations of assimilation and separation are always present. And so we must pray for the Holy Spirit to come and do this work in us. And so what is this incarnation? What is this finding ourselves in the middle of the messiness of life with the spirit of God? What does it look like? Well, it means God's love motivates our redemptive movement towards culture, not away from it.
[00:28:34] Truth now is embodied in Christ, the person of Jesus, and it's expressed with grace. John 1 says that he came with truth and grace.
[00:28:44] They always go together in Christ.
[00:28:46] My identity now is found in Jesus, and it's shaped in the community.
[00:28:52] And I am clothed in the armor of God while still living in the real world, man, I hope we can become the kind of Jesus followers that everywhere we go, we bring the way of Jesus, the kingdom of God, the righteousness, peace and joy into real interactions that we don't have to create church services before we experience what God wants to do in this world, but instead we would be carriers of this light in darkness.
[00:29:28] I think Paul was very clear that if we try to do this on our own, if we just try to muscle our way through this, the opposition that is in the world all around us and the air we breathe, it's going to be too much for our faith and our spiritual life to survive. And so before we go into community day, I want to pray for us that this work of fortification that does not lead to separation would be a work that Christ does through his Holy Spirit today in us and for the generations that will follow. It is a hard time to be a kid.
[00:30:05] It's a tough time to be a parent of a kid when we think about just the widespread, even just little pieces of what challenges our kids face. I think about my daughter, 13, and she's not on social media, which is a good thing.
[00:30:22] She will be at some point. And the effect on the mental health of young women and girls on social media is devastating.
[00:30:33] It's devastating.
[00:30:35] And so we can say, well, this is a technological problem. You know, Zuckerberg will figure it out. Just give him some time.
[00:30:43] Or we say, well, it's a political problem if we just get the right legislation in place to help solve it. Can I say, maybe there's a spiritual element to this that Paul would tell us that there are principalities and powers in this evil day that stand opposed to the health of our kids and the generations that will follow. And so maybe as people who follow after the way of Jesus and are filled with the Holy Spirit, maybe we're called to pray.
[00:31:12] God, would you, by your Holy Spirit, break through these elements and these pockets of culture that are destroying the next generation?
[00:31:22] Do you hear me? That we're called to be in this?
[00:31:26] We don't wash our hands of it, and we don't make the mistake thinking it's gonna be solved by natural means.
[00:31:31] We go to prayer.
