As someone said to me after our service last week – “We’re in a battle!”   The thing about the battle we - as people who are in Christ – are in is:  The war’s already been won.   The outcome is already known.  There’s a lot of military imagery going on in our passage today, and it may be off-putting to some.  It also may not.  There’s something to keep in mind here before we begin.  When we are talking about the battle that we are in as followers of Christ – as people who are in Christ – we are not talking about a battle against people.

There is much talk in our culture about culture wars.  They’re not new.  The term was first used to describe the political conflict between the Roman Catholic church and the Kingdom of Prussia in the 1870s.  I don’t engage in culture wars and I’m humble enough to say I may be wrong in this.  I’m in no way here to impose a personal view on them.  I will say that they separate people based on ideology.  They divide people into camps which tends to lead to feelings of superiority and often hostility.  The demonization of opponents, and so on.  They’re the personification of evil and so on.  When Paul describes the armour of God here to close Ephesians 6, he is not talking about culture wars or any other kind of war against people.  In Christ, our enemy is not people.  Our enemy is the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  We’ve heard about them before in Paul’s letter.  We come back to them today.  They’re powerful but not all-powerful.  They’re invisible but not invincible.  They’re real, and the struggle is real.  We are called to stand together, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Today, we hear Paul’s call to the church – Stand strong in the Lord, sisters and brothers.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we long to hear a word from Him today.  Let’s pray.

Remember when we started all this 7 weeks ago?  We talked about Paul raising the curtain, telling it like it is – no matter how dire, discomforting, discomfiting, dismal things may seem.  We talked about all those P’s!  Praise.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who had blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  Destined for adoption as children of God from time immemorial.  Purpose.  God’s purpose is to gather up all things in Christ at the end of time.  God’s great restoration project.  The renewal of all things.  Our purpose in Christ – to live for the praise of his glory.  Our purpose as the church is to stand as an outpost against the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places – to whom we return today.  Those forces working to thwart God’s purposes.  We stand like an outpost in enemy territory, and we stand together.  Remember the power of which Paul wrote.  The power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand of God the Father, all mighty from whence he will return.  That power in you, in me, in us.  The power that has broken down walls of hostility.  Remember prayer.  I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and understanding as you come to know him.  I pray that you may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fulness of God. We’re not messing around!  We want to take this more seriously than we take anyone or anything in this world. 

Reviewing these P’s I thought we could add a couple.  Praise.  Privilege. Predestined.  Purpose.  Plan (God’s).  Power.  Prayer.  I should do more of these alliterative lists.  Today we have another P.  Panoply.  All the arms/armour.  Panhoplia.  Putting it on.  It’s a gift, just like those new clothes we talked about.  Taking up the whole armour of God so that we can stand and withstand.  Stand against.  We’ve talked about walking worthily.  We’ve talked about wearing those new clothes well.  Today we’re talking about standing.

We stand together, of course.  I was given this figure as a gift from our friends at Southeast Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, TN when I was installed/inducted as Senior Pastor here.  It brings them to mind.  Pastor Joe and his wife Lori and everyone who came through our doors.  In my imagination, I see a bunch of these lined up. Like a hundred. 

Stand and withstand together against the wiles of the devil.  We believe in the devil.  We believe in the cosmic powers of this present darkness.  Some would say that we’re beyond such things in the post-Enlightenment materialist West.  Nice to have that privilege, I guess.  At the same time we’re not to pay undue attention to these cosmic powers.  We needn’t spend more time praying against them than we do to God, for example, look on things like our car not starting as a demonic attack.  It may be that I just need a new battery.  C.S. Lewis has a great line about this in The Screwtape Letters – “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”  There’s a line to be walked here as we stand together. 

It’s significant too that, apart from closing with these words, Paul puts them right after his description of what being in Christ looks like in our households.  Husbands/wives.  Parents/children.  Slaves/masters employees/employers remember.  Where the ways of God are being made known and shown, there is nothing the devil would like more than to ruin things, whether in our homes or in our churches.  There is nothing more the devil would like than to have us turn against one another.  We may read a line like the wiles of the devil or the spiritual forces of evil and think of things like persecution.  Many of us may know that it’s often in our homes that our greatest spiritual failures and hypocrisies happen.  How often do we fail, and our failures happen close to home?    Up close and personal.

Up close and personal is how wars were fought in Paul’s day.  We get this even today.  We can watch Gladiator and Gladiator 2.  I will bring in another analogy that I hope will help.  Paul is speaking here of being prepared for battle.  Being ready.  Think of a hockey game.  Think of the training and diet, and practice that goes into being able to step out onto the ice.  Think of the equipment that is indispensable.  Imagine the start of a Leafs game.  The other team has taken the ice, doing their warm up laps (say it’s Boston).  The announcer’s voice booms out, “Ladies and gentlemen, your Toronto Maple Leafs!”  The first Leaf steps out onto the ice dressed in a tracksuit and running shoes.  No skates.  No protective equipment.  No stick.  You can imagine how things would go. We’re being called to stand.  We’re not being called to triumph over these evil forces because the battle’s already been won.  At the same time, the battle rages.  The already/not yet of the Kingdom of God is the already/not yet of Christ’s victory.  The outcome is known and we wait for it.  We are tasked with standing in a victory that Christ has won.  Thanks be to God that we are given equipment which enables us to stand.  Let us put it on, take it up.  Stand up.  Stand firm.

Starting with fastening the belt of truth around our waists.  More than simply for holding trousers up, ancient belts were used to tuck in loose-flowing garments when it was time for action or travel.  The Roman soldier’s belt acted as protection and support to help one stand, much like the leather belt that people who lift heavy weights use.  Standing in Christ is standing in the Truth.  Remember who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Remember the God to whom we belong.  Standing together and speaking the truth in love.  As someone has said: “The truth of the gospel reflected in lives of love-infused honesty.” 

Putting on the breastplate of righteousness.  Of justice.  Of right relation with God and, by extension, humanity and all of creation.  We find here that in taking up this metaphorical armour, God is giving us his own metaphorical armour. Isaiah 59:15b-17a

 “The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. ^{He saw that there was no one and was appalled that there was no one to intervene, so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him.} He put on righteousness like a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head;”  Being brought into a right relationship with God that we may do the good works that God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.  This is our uniform!

“As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.”  We’re standing in Christ.  He is our peace.  Remember those words that we’re going to hear again in a few weeks from the angel choir – “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”  Remember those words from John the Baptist’s dad Zechariah – “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us; to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”  Take it back farther to Isaiah – “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, who announces salvation (the helmet), who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” (Is 52:7)  Do peace.  Speak peace.  Do the good news.  Speak the good news.  Don’t speak the good news and be the bad news (which brings us back to righteousness, and you see how these work together).  With the gospel of peace on your feet, always be ready to give an account of the hope that is ours in Christ.

Stand firm.  Stand fast.  Stand with one another so we can withstand the attacks of the cosmic powers of this present darkness.  Take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  The flaming arrows of the accuser, the slanderer.  The lies.  You’re not good enough for God to use!  You’re good enough on your own!  You don’t need God!  Take the shield of faith – not simply intellectual assent but an ever-deepening trust.  The shield of faith that says, “Your grace is sufficient for me, Lord.”  The shield of faith that says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)

Here's the other thing about the shield of faith. The Romans used a tactic known as the tortoise (testudo) in battle where they would move with their shields together.  We are not called to do any of this on our own but to encourage and remind one another of truth, the one who is our righteousness and who he enables us to be, our peace, our trust, our salvation.  Take the helmet of salvation.  Living confidently in the truth that we serve a saving, delivering, rescuing God.  Living confidently in the truth that our stories have been grafted into God’s grand saving plan in which, at the renewal of all things, all things will be gathered up in Christ.  Living confidently, knowing that there is an eternal weight of glory coming that is beyond measure.  Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  Listening to God’s word and for God’s word to strengthen and guide and encourage.  Remembering Jesus’ own reliance on God’s word in his own temptation – One does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Do not put the Lord your God to the test.  Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.

1. Pray.

These are among Paul’s closing words.  We said from the beginning that what Paul wants for his readers is to come to an ever-deeper understanding of what it means to be in Christ.  We are in a battle and the battle is a spiritual one.  How could we not turn meaningfully and often and always in prayer to the one in whom is our privilege, purpose, plan, and power?  “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.  To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplications for all the saints.” (6:18)  Someone has described what Paul is talking about here as “the adoption of prayer as a lifestyle of alertness… an attitude of constant dependence upon God” which is of critical importance.  Battles can create in us an overriding sense of self-preservation.  Paul reminds us that in Christ, we share a common uniform and a common cause.   Our concern for one another must be expressed in prayer for one another.

Paul’s last request is that they pray for him too.  “Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.  Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.” (19-20)  Paul has been declaring it boldly, and it’s been a blessing to sit with his words over the last seven weeks.  As we go from here to stand together, let it be with Paul’s benediction echoing in our hearts – “Peace be to the whole community, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Grace be with you all who have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Our lives – our life together – characterized by the peace, love and grace of God, and immersed in God’s eternity.  Thanks be to God for his word!