Realm | Week 4

Good morning everybody. How are you guys doing?

And it's good to see you guys. You guys are always the best looking crowd but in fairness I say that to every service. So you don't really know if you are or not. Hey, if I have not had the chance to meet you, my name is Daniel. I'm the young adults pastor here at Rock Point, and I am just making the shameless

plug. If you are a young adult and you don't come on Thursday nights, you're not awesome, and you should come. We're having an epic Halloween party this week, and I have an incredible 80s and 90s style prom outfit that you just don't want to miss, so make sure you're there on Thursday. I

genuinely hope you came this morning with an expectation that God's going to speak. This weekend has been kind of wild and last weekend was too. We're in this series called realm looking at this

spiritual realm that says if we could pull back the layers between the physical world that we live in and the spiritual realm that the Bible paints as such a clear picture, if we could pull back the layer and see the battle that's happening over our lives, think it would freak us out a little bit. All we've been trying to do is to go, Hey, understanding this realm, what happens in it, who are the players in it, all of it matters and Pastor Bill, our senior pastor, covered the first two weeks and he did God and angels and gave me Satan spiritual warfare. Awesome man, thank you. He knew all of the stuff that was going to happen. We're having microphones that have worked forever, not worked, power supplies go out, sound boards break. It's genuinely

been unbelievable how much stuff has happened and now I fully understand why Bill made me deal with all of this and not him. He said that it was because I have tattoos so I'm more familiar with the dark realm but it's mostly

because I know that he just didn't want to deal with all the weird stuff that happens when you talk about spiritual warfare. Truthfully, as much as I say all that kind of jokingly, we have had a lot of bizarre stuff happen which proves to me one point.

It proves to me that the enemy does not want us to hear what we're going to talk about today and we're not talking about spiritual warfare so that you would be afraid. Even as we talk today, I want you to know that in this

spiritual battle, in this realm, we are the victors. We've been saying through this whole series that we don't fight for victory, we fight from victory, okay? Well, for today to make any sense, you had to have been here last week and if you didn't, I will briefly catch you up, okay? If you weren't here last week, I will give you the bullet points, you can always go online and watch the message

on our app or our website.

Last week we talked about who the enemy of this realm is, okay? Bill talked about angels and last week we said who's the enemy of the realm and we talked about this guy named Satan and most of us, even if we have zero church background, we have at least heard of Satan. He's just not the little devil guy that sits on your shoulder with the little tail and the horns.

He was a powerful, powerful angel who chose to believe that God was withholding something from him and he actually thrown out of heaven because of his rebellion. Essentially let pride come into his heart and the scary part is he took with him a third of all the angels and they are in this realm

the devil and the demons that exist. So the only thing that happens in the spiritual realm, only things that exist in this realm are angels, good and bad.

The big idea last week was pretty simple, all we were trying to do was identify who the enemy is. We said we can't defeat an enemy that we can't first identify, So we identified who he was, we put a face to him, we said, hey, he's not this little guy with the tail, he was a powerful angel, but he's not as powerful as God. He's not an equal adversary to God. In this battle, you have to know God is more powerful, God is going to win, God is victorious. There will be a day where he and all of his demons will be thrown into the lake of fire.

The war has been won in this realm but until that day, we still have to fight these battles, okay? So today what we're going to talk about is how we fight those battles. The Big Idea, if you're taking notes, is pretty simple all

we're trying to do today is to defend against the enemy. I said it this way in The Big Idea, you can't defeat an enemy that you aren't equipped to battle. The question this morning is how do we battle the enemy?

The Bible is abundantly clear that he has come like a thief in the night to kill, steal, and destroy, and you better be on alert and ready

to fight and so this morning what we're gonna do is talk about how we fight. But I want to set it up by talking to you about tic tac toe. Okay? Logical jump in the sermon, right? That if you've ever played tic tac toe, there's a point where you realize that it's a pretty stupid game. Okay? As long as you know what you're doing and have a little bit of strategy,

it's really a game that you should never lose. If you are continually losing a tic tac toe, come have a conversation with me after church and I will hook you up and show you a few things that you can do to make sure that you don't lose. My kids right now, I have a six year old and then I have a nine year old. K? My six year old sucks at tic tac toe. I beat him on the regular, okay. We play at restaurants, he flips the paper over and he tries to do it and I crush him every time and then every now and then just to boost his morale, I let him win but my nine year old, okay, my nine year old has figured out the basic strategy of tic tac toe, okay, it's really not complicated if you just go in the right spots tic tac toe should always end in a cat's game. You should not lose a tic tac toe as long as your eyes are open

and you're paying attention. What we're going to look at today, what I want you to understand is so many people refuse to talk about the enemy in spiritual warfare because they're so afraid of it. I need you to know spiritual warfare for us as believers who have this thing called the Holy Spirit in us,

it gives us an advantage that creates a game a bit like a tic tac toe as long as you don't fall asleep, as long as your eyes are open and you are engaged in the battle, you can't lose. So don't be afraid but be prepared. Amen? If you guys have a bible, open up to Ephesians chapter

six. Ephesians chapter six. As you turn there, I'm gonna pray for us father. We need you desperately. God, as bad as the cardinals need you because they are terrible. God, would you speak to us this morning? God, would you let us walk out of here not with just some information but with the transformative

word of God that it would penetrate our heart because it is sharper than any two edged sword. Father, we trust you, we need you, it's in your powerful name. Everybody said, amen and amen. Hey, before before we read Ephesians six, I gotta kinda set up what Ephesians is, okay? Ephesians

is a letter written by a guy named Paul, okay? Paul is a bad mamajama, okay? If you look in the New Testament,

outside of Jesus, Paul is pound for pound the most important person in the entire New Testament. He was a really bad dude that used to go around and literally kill Christians. His name was Saul. He was a really smart Jewish scholar, and he has this powerful encounter

with Jesus. And then he goes on to become one of the most influential people

that we see in the New Testament. He wrote what you and I read as the majority of the New Testament and man, some of the stuff that he has done is just absolutely incredible, but most theologians agree that of every piece of work that he did, of every letter that he wrote, the crowning jewel of all of it, the cherry on top of the cake was a letter that he wrote to his church in Ephesus.

He wrote a letter that we understand is the book of Ephesians that is the most theologically rich book in all of the bible and he spends the first three chapters talking to you and I about the incredible thing called grace

And how you and I were outsiders to God, that we were far from God, that we were We had no way to come back to God, but because of what Jesus did, he's now adopted us into the family. He spends the first half of this book going, you better know who you are. You are a son and you're a daughter and he says, I pray that the eyes of your heart would be open to the majesty

that grace really is. This is I hope you don't take for granted what Jesus has done for you because the second half of the book goes, you better live a life worthy of the calling that you've been given.

Because you've been grafted into the family of God because of not what you did but because of what Jesus did, you are now a part of God's family and what you do matters.

The way that you live is important because you better live a life that is worthy of the calling of God and at the very end of Ephesians chapter six, he's going to, for the first time,

try to articulate to a letter of first century Jews how they're to do that. How do you live a life worthy of the calling that you've been given and this is the first time we see in scripture where Paul is going to overtly talk about an enemy that exists that is trying to destroy you. It is referenced in other parts of the New Testament but this is the first time he just comes out and he says, look, if you are going to live a life, if you are going to win and live for the kingdom of God, you better realize there's an enemy that's trying to destroy you

and you better learn to fight with weapons that you aren't used to because if you keep fighting the way that you've been fighting, you will continue to get your butt kicked. And so this is what he's gonna say in Ephesians chapter six starting in verse 10. He says, finally,

be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. He says, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Everybody say schemes.

He says take your stand against the devil's schemes for our struggle, here's where he's gonna say it super plainly. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It's against rulers,

against authorities, and it's against the powers of the 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.

Here's the first thing that he's going to say about how you fight this battle in the spiritual realms. He says the first thing you have to understand if you're going to understand any of this before he gets into any of the practical details,

he goes, if you walk out of here believing that your battle is with your spouse, if you believe that your battle is with your boss, if you believe that your battle is with your in laws, if you believe your battle is with your neighbors, if you think the battle is here, you're going to lose every single day of the week

because that's not where the real battle is.

What he's saying is that underneath what you see, there's something that's controlling all of it and if you continue to fight up here, the one that's down here is going to continue to destroy you. K. I went to a harvest festival one time and if you've been around church long enough, maybe you've been to a harvest festival. Okay. Harvest festivals are the church's answer to Halloween because we're like scared of the devil. So we go, we're not gonna call it Halloween, we'll call it a harvest festival. We'll do the same stuff, just call it a harvest festival. They used to do these things called trunk or treats. Okay? The cars would show up in the parking lot and you would actually turn the back of your trunk into like some cheesy carnival game. Okay? Who knows what I'm talking about? Who knows what Thank you. Okay? We've got some people who've been in church for a while. Okay? So they would have the back of their trunks turned into these little cheesy carnival games and it didn't matter if the game was good. You kids would basically play it and then they would get loaded up with candy if they won or lost and they would go home high on sugar and all the parents would be super excited. There was one year that there was this game that I think is gonna illustrate perfectly what Paul was talking about. Okay, this guy had taken his truck bed and over the back of his truck bed, he put a piece of plywood and he put six holes in the back of it and they draped some piece of fabric or a sheet over it or something like that and what kids would do is they would get on this step up, they'd get into the back of his truck and they were given a Styrofoam hammer and little puppets would pop up and they would whack the puppet and then another one would pop up and they would whack the puppet and they would just keep doing that. Well, was this super long line because apparently everybody thought this was the jam and there was this little kid that was behind us, and he thought this was the dumbest thing ever. Okay? Because he had one goal. His goal was to get as much candy as he possibly could,

and he did not understand why standing in a long line that was going to give him the same amount of candy was worth it. And then he said, mom, this game is stupid. I'm watching everybody and nothing you don't ever win. They just keep coming up. Like, don't wanna do this. You stand in line here. I'm gonna go get some candy and I'll come back.

At some point, we're all kind of laughing. And at some point, this kid literally runs up and he just pulls the sheet off of the back of this truck. And all you see exposed underneath the piece of plywood laying in the back of the truck are three parents with puppets like this.

And we were like, holy man, that is my version of hell right there. Okay? Like, that was definitely a wife's idea that a husband got convinced of. Like, yeah. Sure. Yes. I would love to do that. That sounds amazing.

Here here here's what I need you to see. Okay? Here here's what I need you to see our goal is this morning. Our goal is kind of simple. We have to

kind of pull the sheet back on who the enemy is and understand that with everything that we see, there's something underneath it that we don't see that's really where our battle lies. What Paul says is if you're going to win the fight in spiritual warfare, you have to realize who you're fighting with

because he would love for you to walk out of here and still think that your spouse is your enemy,

that your boss is your enemy, that your fight is right here and I'm telling you the picture of what these kids were doing is exactly what I think most of us are doing today. We're standing in the back of the truck bed with a Styrofoam hammer, just hitting these things that keep popping up and we wonder why the moment we hit one, two more pop up and eventually you do that long enough, you get exhausted and you realize you are fighting an uphill battle that you can't win. Paul says, you better stop fighting

with what you know and he says, I'm going give you some weapons that you don't know

but they will work and they will give you victory in this battle. Amen? So let's keep reading, here's what he says, here's the armor to put on, here's how we fight this battle, verse 14, he says, as you stand firm in the fight, you have to put on the belt of truth that's 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 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 and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and pray in the spirit on all occasions that with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Pray also for me

that whenever I speak, words may be given to me 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. Paul lists

six things that we've been given and man, I wish we had two hours together this morning that I could go through all of them in detail, I just can't. I tried to last service and we went long.

I can't go through all of them, so I'm going to encourage you this week, you have to go through all of them and really understand them. I'm going to fly over all of them and give you a general overview. We're going to focus on two of them.

You have to understand what Paul says is you've got to put on the full armor of God. He says it multiple times, make sure you have all of it on because the moment you're missing one piece, that's where he's gonna attack you.

The one piece of armor that you're missing, I guarantee you, it's gonna be where Satan's going to attack you. He says put on the full armor of God because you have to protect yourself and

what's happening right here in Ephesians chapter six, Paul says, pray for me that I'm an ambassador in chains. He's writing this letter literally in prison. He's doing the quintessential preacher thing. He's going, hey, something bad happened in my life and this sucks, but the good news is at some point this will make a great sermon illustration. Okay? That's what all of us do who get up in front of people. We go, hey, this sucks but eventually I'll be able to use it in the story and it'll redeem it a little bit. Okay? Paul is in prison

trying to write a letter to first century Jews trying to tell them how to fight this spiritual warfare and in front of him in this prison is a Roman soldier.

He knew that all of the Jews would know exactly what he's speaking about because these were figures that were ubiquitous in their society. They were everywhere. Everybody knew them. So as he references all of this stuff, he knows exactly what he's talking about.

But the other thing you have to understand, Paul is going to talk about the armor that a soldier is wearing, but what he's also referencing is something that is really important for us to wrap our heads around.

The same Jews that Paul was writing to, at the moment of conversion to Christianity, they would have started a rigorous study of the Old Testament and at some point in their studies, they would have gotten to Isaiah chapter 59.

And Isaiah chapter 59 is a is a story that the prophet Isaiah uses to talk about God coming to battle his people. He's coming to battle the nation of Israel who is in rebellion to God and he says he's going to come like a mighty warrior and on his head will be a helmet of salvation

and on his chest will be a breastplate called righteousness and around his waist will be a belt called truth. What Paul is saying

is that the weapons that we've been given to defend ourselves against the schemes of the enemy are the exact same weapons that God used in the Old Testament to fight us when we were in rebellion. Here's why that matters. A lot of times I think we just go, this weaponry is second class, this is some church excuse, this is

something that they've come up with so that we can fight and do stuff but is this going to actually work? And I need you to hear if it was good enough for God in the Old Testament under the covenant of Jesus, the blood that was sacrificed and now we stand in the new covenant.

If it was good enough for God, then it has to be good enough for us today. Paul starts to talk about the way to fight in this realm. Now again, if I had a Roman soldier standing here and I said, Hey, what is the first thing that you notice about this soldier?

I would have accepted as an answer the crazy helmet with the feathers on it, like that would have been an acceptable answer because it would have been some massive helmet that this guy was wearing. Or if you said, you know, it's the four foot long sword that he's carrying with him, that's the most impressive thing about him. I'm cool with that answer. If you say, man, it's this crazy shield or breastplate that he has on, all of those are acceptable answers. But if I asked you, hey, what's the most impressive thing about the soldier that you see in front of you? And you said his belt.

I would think something was wrong with you. I would question your mental sanity. Right? Like you're like, hey, what's the most impressive thing about your soldiers? Like he's got a tight belt on. There's something wrong with you. Yet Paul is going to say, hey, here's the first thing you have to do,

get yourself a super cool belt, it's called truth. He addresses this thing that he says if you want to fight this battle, it's all going to start with this belt that's called truth, the rest of the armor falls apart without this belt. The belt holds the breastplate

in place, it keeps the sword in its sheath, the belt is the most central piece to what the soldiers have been given but it's almost the one that we so easily overlook and what Paul says is that your life better be centered around truth. Here's why that's important, here's why that matters.

When we talk about who we're fighting against, Satan, the devil and his schemes, Jesus says multiple times in the New Testament, when he's speaking, he's lying. Lying is his native language. The greatest tool the enemy has against you and I is this thing called deception.

He's going to deceive us, he's going to manipulate us, he's going to convince us that what he's presenting to us is his best. He's going to lie to you and manipulate you and if you are not surrounded by the truth of God, if your life is not built on God's truth, you will fall for the schemes of the evil one.

You will fall for the schemes of the devil. So Paul says everything else does not matter if your life is not surrounded by truth and here's my fear. My fear is that right now in your pockets and in your purses, have access to more information than any culture ever at any point in history.

We live in a culture where information is everywhere yet truth is at an all time low. We live in a culture where truth has become subjective. The idea of walking into church and allowing the word of God to be the final authority of what truth is in our life is not the culture that we live in today. Truth

is subjective, it's based on what I feel. And I'm telling you the enemy would love for you to hear all of this, lift up the name of Jesus and walk out of here believing that your feelings are the ultimate truth but they're not. Truth is true regardless of how you feel.

In a world where truth is at an all time low, we have to be the people who lift high the banner of truth, who go above everything else. We are going to build our lives and our families upon the truth of God because our culture and our world, truth is always a moving target.

It's always changing and it's always moving, but God is the same yesterday that he is today and that he will be tomorrow. He does not change. He is the same. And Paul says,

if you want a guarantee that you lose in this battle, you want a guarantee that you do not live the fullness of life that Jesus has come to give you, walk out of here and believe that the way that you feel is the ultimate truth. My fear

is that as our church continues to get bigger, we do what other churches do and I praise God that that's not who Rock Point is. As churches get bigger, it's so easy to water down truth.

To take theology, to take the big thing of what the gospel really is and to kind of water it down. We don't talk about things that are controversial

and man, I am so thankful that we come to a church where our senior pastor gets up week after week and punches us in the throat and he just says these things because he knows the truth is not easy but the truth is what we need.

The truth of God is the only thing that gets us through and as I was studying this week, I kind of had this picture, you've seen the movie Inception, okay, it's this kind of bizarre movie with Leonardo DiCaprio

and I don't really fully understand it but somehow this guy is able to dream and then inside of a dream, he's able to fall asleep and dream and then he's like awake and what he's doing in these dreams is affecting his real world and Then somehow he's able to do it again in like the second dream world. He falls asleep and dreams again. He's like three levels deep of dreams. I'm like, you've officially lost me. But he's somehow

in these dream worlds and what he's doing in these worlds is affecting his real world. And what he begins to lose is he begins to lose truth, to lose touch with what is true.

He doesn't know any longer how to differentiate between the real world and the dream world. And he knows that they're connected, but he doesn't know how to know and distinguish which one he's in but he comes up with a brilliant plan and if you've seen the movie, he takes with him a little top

and everywhere he goes, if he can't figure out where he is, if he's in the real world or the dream world, he'll take the top and he spins it and if the top is affected by gravity, if it falls over, he knows that he's in the real world but if the top keeps spinning, he knows he's in a dream world.

It's a really silly illustration but it is this, you need an objective type of truth, you need a truth that your life can hinge on that is not subjective to the people and the opinions that are around you, it is the only way that you will see through the deception

that the enemy is going to present to you because inbred with deception is the inability to know you're being deceived.

If you sit there and have a conversation with somebody and start to tell you about something they're doing and you're like, how do you not see this as just a terrible idea? Like why are you dating this guy? Why do you think that and they give you more information and the more information they give you just further

compounds the idea that this person is crazy in your head? It's because when you're being deceived, you can't see it. It's why deception is such a powerful tool and what Paul says, everything else has to be centered around truth. If we're not dealing with truth, the rest of this thing doesn't

matter and then Paul says, here's the second thing you have to do, Here's the second weapon that you've been given to fight this battle and it's called a breastplate.

It would have been this massive piece of armor that soldiers would have worn that would have protected all of their vital organs.

It would have protected the most important parts of who the soldier was. If you told me, 'Hey, you're going to go hand in hand combat with a Roman soldier but you get to pick one piece of armor to take off of them before you fight, I'm taking the breastplate.'

Because I can chop an arm off and they'll keep coming but if I stab them in the heart, I know they're done. Okay? I know that if I can get their vital organs exposed and just attack there,

I can get the rest of them to stop and be destroyed and Paul says, for you as a believer in the spiritual realm, the breastplate that is going to protect the most important organs inside your body, the most important parts of who you are, it's a breastplate that's called righteousness

and when you first look at it, it doesn't really make a ton of sense but as you begin to understand what righteousness is, it makes complete sense. What Paul is saying is here's what the enemy is going to do,

the same way that I believe that I would remove a breastplate before I fought a Roman soldier, I think if the enemy can remove one piece of armor from you and then get you to go into battle, it will be your breastplate and here's how he's gonna get you to do it. He's going to convince you to stop living righteously.

He's going to get you to make one small mistake, one step away from God and what you do is you take off your breastplate, you set it to the side and you go back to battle with a sword but all your vital organs exposed. He says, if you want to guarantee that you're protected,

here's what you have to do, you have to live righteously.

Now I grew up with parents that had a cabin up in the mountains and at the bottom of the hill that the cabin was on, there was this little lake and we would go down and we would go fishing every now and then and every now and then my dad would be adventurous and we would get this little boat but you have to know my dad was a bit of a pansy. He had a rule with my mom that he made the bacon and she killed the spiders. That was like the house rule.

And

my dad hated anything that crawled, anything that slithered, anything that jumped and somehow every time when we would go to get these boats, have you ever seen like the little metal boats that are next to the lake and they're just there? They've been turned over so the water can drain out of them. And who knows how long they've been there? It doesn't matter when you do it, the same thing happens every time you flip the boat over and something comes crawling out or slithering out of there. And my dad would always run back and kind of scream and it was always a joy for us as kids, but here's

the part that I was thinking about this week. You know what we did not have to do? We did not have to call the snakes and the gross animals and go, Hey, guys, 01:00, we're going to be there.

We need you to make sure you're there before hide and then when we flip it over, right for my dad, go and freak him out and just go get him. We didn't have to tell them yet almost every single time when we flipped the boat over, there was something that was gross that was underneath there that would come out because here's what I need you to hear,

something about a boat that is turned upside down creates the perfect scenario with darkness and moisture to breed all of the dark and gross things and here's what Paul says, righteousness basically is,

Righteousness is when we choose to not live lives that are upside down and to live lives that are turned over to be exposed to the full glory of the goodness and the glory of God. Righteousness simply means that we don't live with spots of our lives that are hidden

Because what is going to happen is when we have places in our lives that we're hiding. When we have things that have caused us to hide in our lives. In those places, dark, gross things are always going to grow. By the time we get to a place where we turn them over, it's always worse than we thought it was going to be.

If Satan can convince you to do and settle for the deception, he's going to force you to go into hiding to protect those things that you've screwed up. And what we have to do again as a church, my my hesitation as a pastor to the next generation

is we have a culture that is being raised that ultimately is desiring infamy and popularity and fame and fortune. But the idea of us pursuing holiness above everything else has completely left the building.

That this used to be the banner that the church was known for, That we came in and we weren't apologetic to say we are trying to live holy just like God is holy. We are trying to do everything that we can to live lives that matter. That what we do matters not because it's how we gain the approval of God but it's how we stop the enemy from the enemy from having a foothold into our lives.

I'm telling you, if you want to fight against the enemy in your family, if you want to fight against the enemy and his schemes in your marriage, you better stop living in the dark because as long as you do, he will always have a foothold into your life.

He will always be able to tell you, look, this is who you are, you go to church, you try to say that you do this but let's be honest, this is who you really are

and my fears that we come to church week after week, we raise our hands in worship and we walk outside of these doors and we live no differently than people who don't know Jesus.

My fears that if I looked at your life and I followed you around, your life would look no different than people who don't know Jesus except for about an hour and a half of your weekend.

For most Christians, our lives don't look any different because we've believed a lie that grace covers everything and what we do doesn't matter. It's just a bachelor party. It's just a bachelorette party. It's just one time. It's just this.

And all of a sudden, we make one small misstep and then we wonder why when we come to church, we used to feel things but we just don't feel anything anymore. And then we start to go, you know what? This whole church thing isn't working for me. I tried it and it didn't work. I'm telling you, the way you live matters.

The reason that God is after your money,

the reason that we get up week after week and go, you, your money's not your own. God is not trying to take something from you. It's because the enemy is going to deceive you and to tell you this is where you find your real worth. The church is trying to take from you. The church is trying to get from you. I'm telling you, it's not about any of that stuff.

It's about relinquishing control of your life to a God that you don't understand completely. That is faith

and what the enemy is going to come in is he's going to pervert the things of God, he's going to present them back to you and go, look, they're just trying to take from you and he will convince you to live unrighteously and you have to know at that moment you are engaged in a battle with your most vital organs exposed.

You are going to battle and you are going to be destroyed because the Bible says above everything else, protect your heart, guard your heart above every thing else because the moment he gets into your heart, he will destroy all of it.

My hope, my prayer this morning is that there would be a bit of you that would rise up as we walk out of here that is almost that Joshua moment where we stand and we go, not today.

For me and my family, we will choose to serve and honor God. That we will build our lives on the truth of God even when we don't understand it. We will live righteously even when we don't feel like it. That we will pursue the fullness of what God has for us even when it doesn't make sense because here's my proposal to you. What's the alternative?

What's the alternative? Just turn in the cards and I think most of us are like these kids on the back of the truck going, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired. I tried church and it didn't work.

What Paul is saying, the reason you're getting your butt kicked is because your life is not built on truth and you're not living rightly, you have to repent. Repentance is simple, just as we take the things that we've made

mistakes in the places that we've screwed up and we apologize to God, we ask for forgiveness and in that moment, he cast our sin as far as the East is from the West. But repentance is a two sided coin.

We have to remember that asking God is how we get forgiveness but it's confessing our sins to other people is how we find healing. You have to confess and tell somebody else because here's what the enemy knows that he doesn't want me to tell you this morning,

the thing that you think makes you so ugly, the thing that you think makes you so despicable, the moment that you just say it, the moment that you just speak it, the power that it has over your life is gone.

The moment that the thing that is controlling you now is spoken to somebody else, all of sudden it has no power over you any longer because what grows in the darkness always dies in the light. The truth of the gospel, my fear is that you will hear this morning what I'm not saying.

What I am not saying is that you have to earn your approval with God, that you have to work to be holy, that you have to try to be approved by God. Just like the spiritual battle, we don't fight for victory, we fight from victory. We don't live holy to prove to God that we're worthy.

We live holy because we've already been approved by God that we're holy, not because of what we've done but because Jesus has done it. We've got to move quickly. Let's go over the rest of these before we close.

Here's the other four that Paul says that I would really, honestly, I would encourage you. I wish we had more time to go through these. I would encourage you this week to study. Here's the third thing he says is you got to protect your feet. He says you are in the kingdom of God that is an advancing kingdom that is going forward and as you advance, you better have something that protects your feet.

He says you need to carry the shield of faith. It's kind of that gladiator moment where they all put their shields together and they have the ones up top, and it becomes this impenetrable force. He says that's what your faith with other believers should be. It should be like a wall of faith that you stand and the fiery arrows that come from the enemy, that's how you stop them. And then he says make sure you have a helmet of salvation. This one is so important, I wish we had time to go through it.

He says the enemy is going to try to get into your thoughts and the way he's going to do it is he's going to try to convince you that God does not want you. He's going to convince you that you're not good enough to be saved, you're not good enough for heaven or what he's going to do is he's going to convince you that you just need to work to gain the approval of God. He's going to go after your salvation. You better know that salvation is a free gift through grace that we receive by faith.

It is not by our own doing, which means that if we didn't earn it, we can't lose it but you better have a helmet that protects your thoughts because he's coming after them and then he says here's the one offensive weapon you have in all of the armor, it's called the sword of the spirit.

The one weapon that you've been given to go on the offensive with is a sword and it is the Word of God. He says here's the greatest weapon that you've been given in this battle, it's called the sword of the spirit, it is the weapon that you have

and if you look multiple times through the Bible as people fell to the lies of the enemy, what he did, We talked about a little bit last week with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. What Satan's not going to do to you is come to you with some overtly obvious lie. He's going to come with a slight manipulation of God's word and he's gonna go, isn't it all grace? Can't they not judge you? Can't you do whatever you want and ask for forgiveness later?

And if you don't know what the scriptures really say,

you won't be able to fight back. You'll do exactly what Eve did and you will be succumbed to the deception of the enemy or we have the option to do what Jesus did in the wilderness when he was tempted by Satan. Satan came to him and said, hey, doesn't the Bible say this? Shouldn't you do this? And Jesus goes, you're not saying the whole story, you're not giving the full picture of what scripture says and because Jesus knew the word of God, he was able to fight back with the sword that he had been given.

You need to

spend time in your bible not because it's how we gain the approval of God but it's the way that we prepare for battle in the mornings. The reason that devotions are so important is because it's the way that we unlock the keys that heaven has for us. It's the way that we sharpen our sword and we get ready to walk out of the door with the full armor of God on. We are not walking into a battle unprepared.

Most of us are just meandering through the day and what I'm telling you is every morning you better get up and sharpen your sword because you are going to battle whether or not you know it. Paul says make sure you put on the full armour of God and then he ends and he says make sure at all times, everywhere,

that you're a person of prayer. If you are here this morning and there's any part of you that wants breakthrough but you are not a person of prayer, I don't believe you. Prayer is the greatest thing that we've been given, it is not how we manipulate God but it is how we connect

to the fullness of the riches of what God has for us. This is not the two minutes before you go to bed just thanking God that is awesome and it's a good place to start, but what Paul is saying is that you better be a person that is committed to prayer because this battle in the spiritual realm happens primarily

in prayer. Some of us are here today because we had grandparents that were prayers. They were prayers. They were people who stood there and they prayed for hours and they battled in prayer. Paul says you better pray all the time because you have an enemy that's out to get you.

As we wrap all of this up, I have to be clear and make sure you're not hearing what I'm not saying. I don't want you to walk out of here this morning and believe that what I said is that holiness is above everything else, the most important thing. Therefore, you have to go and work to gain God's approval.

That is not the gospel, but I know that the enemy is the deceiver, and what he's going to do is he's going to manipulate and twist my words into your thoughts, and so I have to just say it blatantly clear. You can't gain God's approval on your own ability.

Part of what was happening to the Roman soldiers is that the armor that they would wear in combination weighed almost 80 pounds

and these guys would have to walk for hours, sometimes days, just to get to the battle, but because what they were carrying was so heavy, by the time they got to the battle, some of them would literally just keel over and die. So what they had to do is they had to figure out a way to rework the armor and what they did is they took the belt from being underneath the battle shield and they actually put it on top of the breastplate of righteousness and the way that they put the belt actually carried the weight of

the breastplate so it wasn't completely resting on their shoulders. It's a perfect picture of what the enemy would love for you to try to do, to try to walk out of here this morning and carry your righteousness on your own back. To try to be right in your own ability.

To try to go, I am going to be right by the way that I'm going to live. I'm going to be perfect. I'm going to do everything perfectly. I am going to go out there and make sure that I am right before God. I'm telling you,

what it will do is it will get you to a place that by the time the battle actually comes, you will be too tired to fight. The reason that it matters in the book of John that Jesus says that he is the way, the truth and the life, we have to remember in all of this, when it comes to spiritual warfare,

we fight not for victory, we fight from victory. Jesus is the belt of truth that we wear. Jesus' righteousness is the breastplate that is protecting us. Paul said in Romans 13, here's what you have to do, boil all of this down to one thing simply. Every morning you have to clothe yourself in Jesus.

He says, clothe yourself in Jesus because that's the only way that you can be protected and I don't know about you but I don't have a skin suit of Jesus at home so we have to ask the question, what does that mean?

How do we clothe ourselves with Jesus? How do we live rightly? One of the greatest tools that He's been given is the thing that you walked in and got this morning. This little juice and this little cracker the juice is not the greatest tasting thing in the world but it's okay because it's symbolic.

He says, here's how you put on Jesus. Just like he did with his disciples at the upper room the night before he died, he took his disciples and he went into a room with them and said, guys, my time here is limited. It's running out.

I'm not gonna be here to help you fight in this battle any longer, but I'm going to give you some weapons. I'm gonna place in you my very spirit, the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave. But here's what you're gonna have to do over and over and over again. You're going to have to remember what I did.

You're going to have to remember that you don't fight for victory, you fight from victory because what Jesus did on the cross in his subsequent conquering of death gave us the freedom to fight this battle. He said, here's what you have to do. He said, take this bread and eat it. Remember the body that was broken for you.

Remember that my body was pierced, beaten, mocked, and scorned. Hung on a cross for three days so that you can be victorious. So that you can win this battle. Do this to remember me. And then he said, take the juice. Take the wine and drink it. Remembering the blood that was shed on your behalf.

Remember that it was my blood that was shed in this fight, not yours. And that is through the power and the covering of my blood that you are made new. Jesus, this morning, God, we take communion as a family. We put on Jesus. As we engage in this spiritual battle,

Father, we remember that it is not from victory, it is not for victory that we fight, but it is from victory. It is Your victory. Father, I'm thankful this morning that You are my righteousness, that You cover all my mistakes and all my shortcomings, That God, where I lack, you are sufficient.

Where I am not enough, you are more than enough. Father, this morning, would you remind all of us of how good you are? Of how sufficient the penalty on the cross was for us. Would we remember what you did this morning? In Jesus' name, everybody said, amen. Hey, if you haven't taken communion,

go ahead and take it and then the band's gonna lead us in one last song as we wrap all of this stuff up.

Trust your way higher than our own. We trust, Jesus.

God, we praise you that this is the truth.

That you are faithful and unfailing, that our victory is in Jesus today.

And that victory cannot be shaken, cannot be taken, but is steadfast and secure. And we praise you for that today, God. Help us, Lord, in this moment to begin to put on the whole armor of God, that we may stand in the power of God. Lord, because we fight from victory, not for victory. And we rejoice

that you have won the victory, God. So fill us, Lord, with your spirit. Give us your might and power to stand, and may you be glorified in our lives, we pray, God, because yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. And it is in Jesus' name we pray all these things and all God's people say. Amen.