Part of our asking God to protect us, delivering us from the evil one is tied to some choices. Choices to flee, choices to stay vigilant, and choices to put on the armor God has prepared, described, and commanded us to wear.
We Must Wear the Armor of God
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) who wrote the 18th Century, six-volume classic entitled, The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, traces one of the causes of the military decline of Rome’s nearly invincible legions came with a gradual decline in the discipline of wearing and using the uncomfortable, bulky, heavy, and challenging armor.
Today we could trace the weaknesses of the 21st-century church to a gradual decline in the discipline of wearing and using the uncomfortable, bulky, heavy, and challenging armor of God.
• How well do you know the armor of God?
• How often do you think about wearing it?
• How practiced are you in understanding how it works?
• How good are you at standing against all that Satan can throw at you?
That is what we need to ponder today! Start with me back in the first explanation of the armor of God in the seventh century BC. The prophet Isaiah tells us how God readied Himself to defend Israel. If this is what God pictures Himself wearing, how much more should we want to always wear the armor of God!
Isaiah 59:17 (NKJV) For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, And was clad with zeal as a cloak.
Now turn onward to Romans, where Paul was laying the groundwork for the church at Rome to be able to thrive right in the center of the Roman world filled with glittering distractions, numbing materialism, paralyzing temptations, blinding false teachings, and laced with simmering hostilities.
How does a church survive when so surrounded by the Evil one?
Romans 13:11-14 (NKJV) And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.
To the most troubled New Testament assembly, the Corinthians, Paul says the same:
2 Cor. 6:7 (NKJV) by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.
In his very first Epistle to one of the first churches he had founded, Paul writes these words to the Thessalonian believers:
1 Th. 5:8 (NKJV) But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.
Finally, we all need to turn back to the most complete armor of God passage in Ephesians chapter 6.
The Complete List of the Believer’s Armor of God
Starting at verse 10, please stand with me for our time of all together as Christ's body, listening to the voice of God through His Word:
(SWS-13; 160221AM)
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