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Monday, November 27, 2017

The Fortified Church (Ephesians 6:10-20)







Sunday, November 26, 2017

            I hope your Thanksgiving included time spent with family, laughter, and good food.  But, I am under no illusion.  I know that some spent Thanksgiving away from family.  The holiday can magnify loneliness.  I’ll bet some spent time with family, but it wasn’t so happy.  The forced togetherness of the holiday has the potential to amplify already existing tensions.  If the family argument gets too heated, the happiest time of Thanksgiving is when you get to leave.  The pain we feel is one more thing the devil uses to tempt us to turn away from God.
            I really do hope your Thanksgiving was full of joy and full of life.  I do, though, ask you to have a sympathetic heart.  If you are basking in a happy Thanksgiving afterglow, I pray that, somehow, God will show you how to share those good feelings, that happiness and that love that you have.  There might be someone sitting near you who is as miserable as you are happy.  We share one another’s pain.  I pray that we can also share one another’s joy. 
We’ve referred to Ephesians 4:2 the last two weeks and it is appropriate for us look there once again.  As people called together in the household of God, called by the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, we “bear with one another in love.”  Or as Paul says it in Galatians 6:2, we “bear one another’s burdens.”  The pain some of us carry can bring all of us down a little bit.  But what if, instead, the joy others have lifts everyone’s spirits? 
Paul has something to say about it – those times when we are gathered with family and it’s a rehashing of fights that have gone on for years.  Paul sees that young adult who longs for his parents’ approval only to have it made abundantly clear how disappointed they are.  Paul understands that persons who is alone, whose only relationships are failed ones.  “Our struggle,” he writes, “is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places” (6:12). 
Few of us envision our family Thanksgiving table as the battlefield where God’s angels and Hell’s demons collide in combat, but that is one of the places this fight happens.  That’s how the teaching in Ephesians ties together.  Chapter 4 – bear with each other in love.  Our passage from last week, 5:21, “Submit to one another for fear of Christ.”  And today, chapter 6, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.  Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the [treachery] of the devil” (v.10, 11b).
Last fall, during the election and in the aftermath, we witnessed American politics divide people in God’s church.  The various issues in our country – the immigration & refugee crisis, violence suffered repeatedly by African-Americans, marriage equity, and what may be the most damaging but least addressed, the growing divide between a few rich people and a burgeoning working poor class – these issues have set people against each other.  As Christians in the United States, we are in the midst of all these struggles and they affect us. 
Your family’s Thanksgiving table is one battlefield where demons and angels fight.  The political and contemporary culture scene is another.  The challenges that come before us a church, and in the last 12-15 months there have been many, is another arena in which God does combat with evil. 
Ephesians describes preparation for battle.  How do we play our part?  We bear with one another in Christ.  We live in reverent “fear” of Christ; this fear leads us to love our Lord with all our hearts and to receive the grace, love and mercy he has for us.  Bear with each other.  Fear and love the Lord.  And then we see what’s here in 6:10 – “Be strong in the Lord.”
 I’ve titled the message “The Fortified Church.” We read this that we are “strong in the strength of [the Lord’s] power.”  We “stand against the devil’s wiles.”  We are to “put on the armor of God.”  It sound militant until we go deeper in the passage and see what is meant by this military metaphor.  How do we participate in this fight?
Look at the words: truth, righteousness, proclamation (or the telling of), faith, salvation, Spirit, word of God.  Those don’t sound like fighting words to me.  And they shouldn’t.  Remember Jesus on the cross – that’s where Satan was finally defeated.  The spiritual battles all over the world today – in North Korea, in Syria, in the United Nations, in the Whitehouse, in our church, at your kitchen table – those spiritual battles are the last vestiges of a war that was won at Calvary when Jesus took on himself the death sin brings.  The skirmishes around the world now are Satan’s last gasps. 
To us, it feels like war.  In the heat of the moment when temptations reaches for us, drawing us to lash out in rage, or give in to ungodly lusts & carnal desires, or minimize the place of God in our lives, or become blind to generosity and love, blinded by greed; when these and other temptations visit us, the battle is real and so intense, we are overwhelmed.  From our perspective, the lure to live apart from God and to follow after our cravings is almost insatiable.  And so, Paul casts it as such, by way of military imagery. The armor of God is a belt keeping us girded and breast plate protecting us.  It is shoes in which we are ready to run and fight, and it is a shield with which we deflect flaming arrows.  It is a helmet and a sword.  Yes, this feels like war. 
However look again at the equipment.  Too many Christians have become enamored with the war-mentality to the point that this idea of spiritual warfare itself is distorted into an idol that distracts us to the point that we are defeated before we even start to live the life Christ has for us.  This is because all this equipment is not actually intended to help us win a fight but rather to help us live a life as God’s children and God’s witnesses in a dying world.
Look again at the equipment.  The belt is a belt of truth.  Do you know the Gospel truth?  I reject the idea that truth is relative. What’s true of God is true for all people.  So if we are to live in the household of God and be his witnesses and enjoy the abundant life Jesus promised, we need to know the truth.  Our knowledge of truth begins with love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Growing from that base we mature in our knowledge of truth throughout our lives.  This is living, not fighting. 
The breastplate is righteousness; right-living, right-thinking, right-speaking, and most importantly loving rightly.  We can’t be righteous on our own.  We’re sinners.  Jesus’ death on the cross did not just defeat sin.  In his act, he also gave and continues to give his righteousness to us.  If we want to be in the right, we stay connected to Jesus.  This happens through worship, through prayer and Bible reading, and mostly through keeping our thoughts on him in every part of our lives.
The shoes are shoes of readiness.  We are to be ready to proclaim the Gospel of peace.  Right in the middle of his military metaphor Paul reminds us our fight is actually to help people come to peace – peace with God through forgiveness of sins.  No one is actually our enemy.  The enemy is sin, Satan, and death.  Satan’s great deception is to convince us that other people are our enemies.  There are people with whom we have animosity.  But we are called to love them and to pray for the people who persecute us. 
The shied is faith and the helmet is salvation.  Both are gifts given by God.  The sword, the most attack-oriented of the armor Paul describes, is the “sword of the Spirit,” which verse 17 says is the word of God.  Many Christians have taken this passage as a license to bash people over the head in condemnation, using Bible passages to judge others.  Such an approach to scripture is gross proof-texting and irresponsible abuse of God’s word.  Using the Bible to wear people down is wrong.  Judging and condemning are God’s jobs, not ours.  When we share the word we must be gentle about it.  Our witness to scripture must be given in love.  Note that when Paul mentions the sword, he speaks of the Spirit before the word.  Our relationship with God’s word, the Bible, has to be guided by and forever tied to our relationship with the Holy Spirit. 

Yes, demons and the devil are real.  Yes, they have some power – the power to tempt us and use our own temptations to draw us away from God.  Yes, a spiritual battle is happening in the world and we see it in the bad news that comes across our TV and Computer screens, and in the struggles in our church and in our own personal lives.  Yes, Paul speaks in military metaphor to describe this battle.

For us to play our part, we remember the ideas described in the word-pictures: truth, righteousness, the sharing of the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, Spirit, word of God.  In these words we see that the Fortified Church is one where people will be welcomed.  The fortified church keeps its eyes on Christ and so will not fall when temptations come or controversies threaten the unity within. In the fortified church, people are safe to come as they and lay themselves before God.  They stand as new creations, a people in Christ. 
I pray that these past 9 weeks we’ve spent in Ephesians, learning what it means for us to be the household of God has been fruitful.  I pray that we have come to see that the church matters because the world is falling part.  Sin has run rampant, but we are here to love people and help them come to new life in Christ.  Hospitality, grace, and the willingness to bear with each other are the values and our relationship with God in Christ is the foundation. 
Next week, Advent begins. In our worship services, we will focus on the traditional Advent themes – Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. We will read the familiar Christmastime stories from Luke’s gospel in worship, but the sermons will take an Advent look at a Gospel not usually read this time of year: the Gospel of John. 
We are now in the throes of the holiday season.  May our church be the household of God, a place of rest, joy, and equipping to each of you, and we pray that the Lord will lead unsaved persons into our community so we can love them and introduce them to Christ.

AMEN

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