Armor of God | Week 5 | Message

The big idea

When you and I use the right weapon, we will see real victory over our enemy.

Every believer is in a real spiritual battle against an unseen enemy, but God has given us a weapon greater than any sword: His Word. The Bible is a battle-tested, offensive, defensive, and transformative weapon that, when actually used, brings real victory instead of the defeat we settle for when we fight with the wrong tools.

Point 1 of 6

Pastor Rocky walks through Ephesians 6:10-12, noting Paul's closing charge to the church he planted. He says the American church talks a lot about God's love and grace but often fails to teach that the moment someone says yes to Jesus, they gain an enemy that wants to kill, steal, and destroy — an enemy that is spiritual, not a neighbor, coworker, or different church.

Point 2 of 6

Building on the series, he notes Paul was under Roman guard when he wrote this and used the guard's equipment as a picture of the Christian's armor. Of all the pieces described in Ephesians 6:13-17, the sword of the Spirit — the word of God — is the one offensive weapon given to fight the enemy up close.

Point 3 of 6

Pastor Rocky shares his own season of doubt in college and how studying textual criticism — comparing the gap between when ancient works were written and their earliest copies, and how many copies exist — reassured him. He contrasts Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, Plato, and Homer's Iliad with the New Testament's 30-year gap and over 23,000 copies, and describes the 1947 Dead Sea Scrolls discovery confirming the Old Testament's reliability, plus the staggering odds of Jesus fulfilling Messianic prophecy.

Point 4 of 6

Using the movie Inception as an illustration of losing track of what's real, he points to Colossians 3:2 and says the enemy wants us distracted by things of earth while God calls us to focus on heaven. He points to Rock Point's 6,000 salvations last year and church plants like Echoes Church and Flatiron as evidence of a church choosing to stay on offense rather than playing defense.

Point 5 of 6

He reads 2 Timothy 3:16 and connects the phrase God-breathed to Genesis, where God breathes life into man, showing Scripture carries God's own life and truth. He tells the true story of a man who grew dangerously comfortable with his pet anaconda, not realizing it was preparing to eat him, as a picture of how we get too comfortable with things in our lives that Scripture warns will destroy us.

Point 6 of 6

He tells a story of a chauffeur in Vegas who couldn't recognize him because he no longer matched an old photo, and prays that our lives would increasingly match what Scripture calls us to. He reads Isaiah 53's prophecy of the suffering Messiah, ties it to the cross and resurrection, and moves into communion, explaining the bread and cup as symbols of Jesus' body and blood given for us.

Take it into your week

Pastor Rocky's charge is to actually pick up and use the weapon God already gave us instead of fighting the enemy with something weaker.