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Reading Other People’s Mail: Part VII
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
August 23, 2009
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 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 against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 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 have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of
truth buckled 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 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
and 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. With this in mind, be
alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Pray also for me, that
whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make
known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray
that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. —
Ephesians 6:10-20, NIV
Today we come to the end of this sermon
series called “Reading Other People’s Mail.” We’ve been at it for six full
weeks now, but only last week did I suggest that the letter to the Ephesians may
have been written as a sermon, intended for a group of Gentile converts to
Christianity. I’ve read through the letter again with that thought in mind, and
it seems to fit. I can see those freshly baptized Christians sitting there on
the front pew of the church, wearing the white robes that were given to them as
symbols of their new life in Christ, listening as the preacher tells them all
that God has done to bring them into his family and all they ought to do in
response. In the last part of this sermon the preacher gets specific,
addressing the behavior of husbands and wives, parents and children, and even
some slaves who may have been sitting there on that front pew. And, then he
comes to the conclusion of his sermon.
“Finally,” he says, “be strong in the Lord,
and in his mighty power.” Why does he say it? Because he knows these new
Christians will not always be sitting in church in their new white robes, tender
in the faith and vulnerable as newborn babies. He knows that after they stand
to sing the closing hymn they will walk out into a world that is hostile to the
Christian mission, and it’s not just that the people they encounter will be
hostile: in many ways the world itself will be against them: the rulers and
authorities, the powers of darkness, the forces of evil. The preacher doesn’t
want them to go out there unprepared. And so, as a veteran of spiritual
warfare, he tells them to put on “the full armor of God,” knowing how much they
will need it.
I remember being in a Sunday school class
once where we were sharing prayer concerns, and someone brought up one of those
tragic situations that left us all shaking our heads and sighing until someone
else finally asked the question. “Why? Why would God let anything like this
happen?” It’s the oldest question in the book, theologically speaking, and the
hardest one to answer. I’ve been asked that question a thousand times, and it
usually goes like this: “If God is all-loving, and God is all-powerful, then why
do bad things happen to good people? Why doesn’t God keep them from
happening?” As I say, it’s a hard question to answer, but that day in that
Sunday school class someone had an answer. A young woman who was fairly new to
the church piped up and said, “Well, I always just thought that God did all the
good things and the Devil did all the bad things.”
There is a kind of Christianity that looks at
the world that way. I’ve heard some of those sermons on the radio, where the
preacher talks as if the Devil were hiding behind every bush and it’s our job,
as Christians, to keep our eyes open and be ready for his attacks. The language
of spiritual warfare is all through those sermons, and you begin to picture the
Christian life as a constant battle in which we are fighting off the Devil and
his angels as they seek to destroy us. And every once in a while they get one
of us—one of the good ones—and we sit around in Sunday school classes shaking
our heads and sighing. We don’t ask how God could let such a thing happen. We
just assume that there was a breach in our defenses somewhere, someone let down
his guard, and the Devil got through. “We’ll have to be more vigilant next
time,” we say. “We can’t let him do that do us again.”
There is a kind of Christianity that looks at
the world that way, as I said. It’s simple, but it’s a little too simple. If
God does all the good things and the Devil does all the bad things you end up
with two gods battling it out on the cosmic stage, with one winning some
of the time and the other winning the rest of the time. But we Christians don’t
believe in two gods, do we? We believe in one. And I’m only going to say this
once but I wouldn’t mind if somebody said “Amen”:
The Devil is no match for God.
The idea that God does all the good things
and the Devil does all the bad things was denounced as heresy way back in the
early centuries of the church. It started in a middle-eastern religion called
Manichaeism, which answered the question of why bad things happen to good people
by concluding that even if God is all-loving he must not be all-powerful. He’s
like that friend you had in elementary school who stood by wringing his hands
while the school bully kicked you all over the playground. He can do a lot of
good but he cannot prevent evil. Surely you can see why Christians, even in
those early centuries, would say that wasn’t true. God is not only all-loving,
God is also all-powerful, and if we’re going to find an answer to the question
of why Evil is still such a present part of our earthly experience we are going
to have to look somewhere besides the idea that “God does all the good things
and the Devil does all the bad things.”
But it would be nice, wouldn’t it, if there
were a simple answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?
My theology professor in seminary finally shrugged his shoulders and said, “God
is great, God is good, and Evil is real.” And that’s about the size of it.
Evil is real. You don’t have to go to seminary to figure that out. And
Evil is not limited to the Devil; Evil is everywhere; it has infected the entire
system. This is partly what the author of Ephesians is trying to tell us, that
if it were only a matter of looking for the Devil behind every bush we could
probably do that, and if it were only a matter of dealing with the nasty people
we encounter in the world we could probably do that, but our struggle is against
the “rulers and authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Believing that God will
ultimately put Evil in its place we still have to venture out into a world that
has a whole lot of scary stuff in it. It is not bigger than God but it is
bigger than us and for that reason we need all the help we can get. We need to
put on the full armor of God, beginning with:
- The belt of
truth. All last week I was
trying to think what it would mean to wrap the belt of truth around your
waist. Sometimes people talk about the truth as if it were a weapon, as if
they plan to use it to cut through all the lies in the world. But a belt is
not a sword; it is not a weapon of offense but a weapon of defense. I think
the writer of Ephesians may be saying that we need to wrap the truth around
our waists to protect us from the lies that Evil hits us with, lies like:
“Nobody loves you”; “You’re not very important”; “You don’t really matter.”
Those are lies, aren’t they? You are a precious child of God, and
the belt of truth will remind you of that even on the worst days. But we
also need to put on:
- The breastplate
of righteousness. It’s hard
to know what the writer means by this, hard to know if he’s talking about
God’s righteousness or ours. If it’s God’s righteousness then it is the
power that makes us right, that saves us from our sin, and that’s quite a
breastplate. If it’s our righteousness he has in mind it may be as simple
as doing the right things. When you are driving the speed limit you don’t
have to worry about the police car parked beside the road. When you are
doing what your boss asked you to do you don’t have to be nervous when she
pops in unannounced. The breastplate of righteousness may only mean that
when you are doing what God wants you to do—and you know it—then all those
complaints and criticisms and false accusations people hurl at you bounce
off and fall to the ground. You are morally invincible. But then the
writer of Ephesians tells us to put on:
- The shoes of the
Gospel, and if these are some
kind of “combat boots” they are the oddest ever made, because what kind of
combat do you do with the gospel? The best translation I can come up with
says something like “put on your feet whatever will make you ready to share
the gospel of peace.” It seems to be an echo of that passage from Isaiah
that says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings
good tidings, who publishes peace.” The writer of Ephesians is hoping that
along with truth and righteousness we will put on those shoes that help us
carry the gospel of peace to people who need to hear it, people who would
find that in Jesus they can have peace with God and others. Maybe this is a
reminder that our job is not only to protect ourselves from Evil, but also
to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I can see how, if you were under
attack, you might forget that. You might spend so much time dodging the
insults and accusations of the enemy that you would fail to share the good
news with someone who needed to hear it. So, lace up those shoes that help
you take the Gospel of peace wherever you go, and then take up:
- The shield of
faith. This could mean a lot
of things too, but I’m thinking especially about what it means when you find
yourself under spiritual attack. It means you can believe in God. The
opening verse of this passage tells us to be strong in the Lord and in his
mighty power—not ours. His is a power we can believe in, a power that will
help us stand even when the flaming arrows of the evil one are raining down
upon us. We are not going to win spiritual battles by our own strength, but
by his. It could mean even more than that, of course. It could mean that
you believe in what you are doing. If you are trying to carry the gospel of
peace over enemy lines you’re not going to let a few flaming arrows stop
you. You are going to stay true to the mission you were given, trusting God
to protect you as you go. But just to be on the safe side you might put on:
- The helmet of
salvation. When Martin Luther
felt himself most severely under spiritual attack he would sometimes say out
loud, “I have been baptized!” It was his way of reminding Evil that he was
wearing the helmet of salvation, that he had been saved by God’s grace
through his faith in Jesus Christ, and that even if Evil did its worst and
killed him it wouldn’t be the end. Don’t you think we live too much of our
lives crippled by fear? Don’t you wish you could stroll onto the
battlefield singing “Amazing Grace” and knowing that no matter what happened
to you, you would be all right? I think that’s what the helmet of salvation
can do for you: it can reassure you that your life is safe with God and you
don’t have to spend all your time worrying about it. You can focus your
attention on more important things and take up:
- The sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of
God. Have you noticed that most of these pieces of armor are intended to
protect us from the enemy? The belt of truth, the shield of faith, the
helmet of salvation. Those are weapons of defense, but a sword—by
definition—is a weapon of offense. It’s what you fight with. So, what do
Christians fight with? The sword of the Spirit, the word of God. I’d like
to think that doesn’t mean we use our Bibles to beat people over the head,
or that we spend all our time searching the Scriptures for the one or two
verses that will cut our enemies off at the knees, but instead that we
immerse ourselves in scripture so completely that when we speak this is what
comes out: words of grace, and truth, and love, because those are the kinds
of words that will ultimately conquer evil. If we stoop to the enemy’s
level we are no better than he is, but if we let the Scripture lift our
souls up to God’s level we shall overcome.
And so the letter of Ephesians comes to an
end, the preacher closes with prayer, the congregation sings a hymn, and those
freshly baptized Christians go out into a world that will be hostile to them.
But they won’t go into that world defenseless. They will go as we go—armed with
the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel,
the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. What
can mere mortals do to us? What can the forces of evil do to us? If God is for
us, who can be against us? So, lead on, O King Eternal, lead on!
—Jim Somerville © 2009
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