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
