Thesis 63- We must put on the full armor of God.
The devil, we are told, is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. It is likely the zenith of craftiness, when you are at war, to persuade your enemy that there is no war. We remember that Jesus tells us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, and the devil leads us to this deadly conclusion- therefore the war isn’t real. There has been a fierce war going on from Eden between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The Bible, which has every true answer to answer every lie of the devil, reminds us time and again that the war is real.
Paul tells us:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; (Ephesians 6: 10-17).
His wiles have led us to believe that only people given to fits of holy laughter, people knocked down by Benny Hinn’s jacket are engaged in what they think is spiritual warfare. The rest of us, while willing to acknowledge that demons exist, think they left the planet in the first century. He wants us to disregard Paul’s warning, suggesting that if we do so we won’t look like kooks to our neighbors. Paul, on the other hand, wants us to stand, and knows just what it takes.
We need truth. Not my truth or your truth. We need true truth, God’s truth to free up our legs for battle. We need the righteousness of Christ to repel the accusations of the slanderer. Our hearts are protected by the righteousness we did not earn. We need our feet beautified by the gospel of peace, making us immovable on the one hand, and unstoppable on the other. We need faith, to believe Him and every one of His precious promises, for such puts out the discouragement of the devil. We protect our minds with the helmet of salvation and attack the gates of hell with God’s Word unsheathed.
Reformation is nothing more or less than waging the war for the kingdom. We do so by faith, and with good cheer, knowing He has already overcome the world. We make manifest, by His grace and in His power, the glory, the beauty and the wonder of His eternal reign.
Is there really any question that within the evangelical church there are churches where substantive study and teaching are foreign things and others where such are front and center to the mission of the church? Theological weightiness is likely a bigger divide than any particular theological issues. Those on the brainier side of this divide think the solution is for their brothers and sisters to repent of their disinterest in theological study. Those on the heart-ier side of the divide feel the solution is for their brothers and sisters to repent of their pride in their theological study. I would like to suggest that both sides are right.
The truth is that the study of theology is destructive when it is an end in itself and its absence is destructive whatever end we might have. The first bit of theology we all must learn is that to love Him is to know Him. If we are learning more and not loving more we are doing it wrong. It we aren’t learning more, we are not loving Him more, and are doing it wrong. What gets in our way, among both groups, is the same problem, pride. With the more scholastic folk that pride is pretty obvious. They are proud of all that they know, especially of how much more they know than others. When our study of the things of God leads us to greater pride, we can be sure the devil is in the mix somewhere.
With the less scholastic folk, however, there is also pride- pride in their purported capacity to love God purely, powerfully, passionately, all without going to the trouble of studying Him more fully. Imagine if a husband is so busy talking about how much he loves his wife that he doesn’t take the time to listen to her, to study her ways, to grow in his capacity to understand her. That’s almost as foolish as studying theology and coming out the other side with more pride than you went in with.
Pride, however, is not through with its destructive work yet. For the more scholastic, pride also leads us to refuse to acknowledge that we’re doing it wrong. When we suffer from theological constipation, filling our heads with more and more knowledge that gets clogged up before it reaches our heart, instead of reaching for the plunger, we simply fill our heads more. For the less scholastic, pride works in the same way, leading us to refuse to acknowledge that we’re doing it wrong. We just keep looking for something newer, louder, more emotional that won’t require us to make the effort to actually study the things of God. We show ourselves full of it when think ourselves better than those dry and dusty theology wonks whom we know must be full of themselves.
To know Him is life itself. He is the font of wisdom, love, knowledge, glory, power, beauty, wonder. He makes Himself known to us that we might better magnify His name. Let’s come together in worship.
The devil, though His fall from grace was rooted in pride, knows how to use humility. Being craftier than the other beasts, he knows how to use nigh onto all things to bring about his nefarious purposes. He is resourceful, and overlooks nothing. His first attack upon man was to deny the very truth claims of God, to first cast doubt upon the word of God, “Has God indeed said…” until finally he claims that the very word of God is false, “You shall not die.”
As western culture began to lose its moorings in the revealed word of God, as enlightenment positivism posited itself as the arbiter of truth, that same strategy continued. God says we were made from the dust of the earth. The devil says we descend from single-celled chef’s surprise that popped out of the primordial soup. This strategy began to fall apart, as it became painfully obvious that the devil’s truth claims didn’t hold any water. His wisdom showed itself to be foolishness. But he did not give up.
Now instead of holding up his version of truth as a competitor for God’s version, the devil has determined to assault truth as an idea. Instead of offering an alternate vision of reality and pridefully proclaiming that his is true and God’s is false, he now humbly denies that his vision of truth is true, and pridefully says that neither is God’s vision of truth.
This is how our culture has moved from modernism to post-modernism, from the conviction that truth only comes through the application of our senses and our minds to external reality, while God is silent, to the conviction that truth is not real, that we each create our own truth, and all we can know is that which we create. On the surface it looks like a bad deal. What could a culture gain by giving up truth? It gains the façade of peace, and with it the façade of humility.
Wars, both literal and figurative, are fought over competing truth claims. Whether it is two small children fussing back and forth, “Did too!” “Did not!” or nations bombing each other over a truth claim that a particular piece of real estate is theirs, we find ourselves disagreeing, and, with only ourselves to serve as the final arbiters, with no transcendent source of infallible truth, settle our arguments through battle. How much better if our son Reilly says to our son Donovan, “To me you shoved me”, and Donovan replies, “To me, I did not shove you” and they agree to disagree. How much better is Germany says to Poland, “To us, that region belongs to us”, and the Poles reply, “To us, it belongs to us.” And then children and nations pat themselves on their collective backs for their humility. No one is making an exclusive claim to the truth. No one has the arrogance to suggest that they have cornered the market on truth, that the other is wrong. And as both sides agree to disagree, swords are beat into plowshares.
It is the devil’s bargain. And when we trade with the devil we always lose what we offer, and never gain what he has promised. Is there peace and humility in relativism? Suppose Donovan did shove my Reilly. Suppose I explain to Reilly that to him Donovan may have, but to Donovan he didn’t. What is to stop Donovan from shoving him again? What is to stop Reilly from shoving back, when the glorious humility from relativism removes objective guilt (which by the way, is the real reason it is so popular)? Now my children are no longer arguing over whom is shoving whom. Instead they are shoving each other all over the yard. What happens when tax collectors from Poland and Germany enter the same region? We can’t agree to disagree when we finally have to act. If you think the right way is north, and I think it is south, all the humility in the world will not make the car move.
My concern, however, is not with the foolishness of the world, but with the worldliness of the church. The supposed humility of relativism resonates with us because we know we are called to walk humbly with our God (Mal. 6:8). We find ourselves caught between a rock and a soft place, as we are called to press the truth claims of King Jesus, yet seek to mimic His meekness. If the devil defines meekness for us, if he confuses relativism and humility in our minds, the battle is lost. The gospel of the Kingdom, if it is merely true for me, is the gospel of the devil’s kingdom. If it is only true for me that there is only one name under heaven by which a man might be saved, then it is not true that there is only one name.
We are indeed called to be humble. But true humility is that which bows before the truth of God, not that which would negotiate it. It is pride that leads us to humbly offer up the gospel as one alternative among many, when the one who paid for us says He is the way. It is humility to say with our Savior, “Repent, or perish.” It is pride to turn He who is the truth into a mere “true for me.”
The world tells us that we are arrogant, that we are love-less, that we are judgmental because we claim to have the truth. The accusations sting, in part because we are arrogant, loveless and judgmental. But it is pride that causes us to seek to wiggle out from under those accusations, by wiggling away from truth. Humility means being willing, like Jesus, to be persecuted for righteousness sake, to be willing to be thought proud because we feed upon the truth, and will not eat of the devil’s mock humble pie.
God knows our hearts. We speak, and we think coram Deo, before the face of God. He knows whether we are proclaiming truth for our glory or for His. And He knows, as we should, that every time we refuse to stand, we do so for our own sake. We are to be humble about ourselves. We are sinners still. We err in our thinking, and in our doing. We are a jumble of sins and lies. But we are to boast in Christ, who is the only way, the only truth, and the only life. If we will not proclaim Him before men as the only way, He will not proclaim us before the Father.
For all the hardships connected to COVID- sheltering in place, riots in the streets, economic implosions, none of us, I suspect, have found ourselves giving thanks for having the head of a donkey or dove droppings to eat. That, however, was the situation in Samaria when the Syrians laid siege to their city. No one could come in and no one could come out and soon the city’s food supply dwindled. Elisha the prophet gave, however, a prophesy of blessing, promising that in only a day the cost of food would plummet. Everyone thought him out of his mind.
Outside the city gates several lepers did some hard reasoning over their situation. “If we go into the city,” they thought, “we’ll starve with the rest of them. If we stay here outside the gate, we’ll starve just like those inside the gate. If we go to the Syrian camp they might kill us. But they might not.” They made the obvious choice. The Syrians did not decide the spare the lepers. Neither did they kill them. Rather, they just weren’t there. They had already fled, leaving behind their tents, their horses, their weapons, and all their plenteous stores of food.
The lepers began to partake of these blessings, until their consciences accused them. They knew all too well that inside the city gates a whole city was in fear, and starving, when the cause of their fear had fled and the need for their want was ripe to be picked. They returned to the city and let the people know. Almost everyone came out to the feast. The one exception was the guard of the gate who, when Elisha had made his prophesy, insisted it could never happen. He didn’t go because he couldn’t go. He died, trampled by the people of the city on their way to the feast.
Who are we in the story? That depends. Though sin is central to what we were, and such would make us good candidates to be the Syrians, sin is not central to what we are. Though we are given to doubting, we are not the gatekeeper who was trampled to death. We may be the people of the city. Once starving, as good as dead, surrounded by the enemy, desperately hungry and then, invited to a feast we didn’t prepare, eating of that feast with joy and thanksgiving, now alive and secure, just as the prophet had foretold.
Yes, that is who we are. Rescued and redeemed. This, however, is not who we are called to be. It is one thing to be rescued, and we certainly needed that. Having been rescued, however, our Lord calls us to call others. He rescues us and calls us to be used by Him in the rescuing of others. We are supposed to be the lepers- no better than the people of Samaria. No better than the Syrians. But those who, by His grace, understood that their only chance was to throw themselves on the mercy of the ones who would likely kill them. Only to find the mercy of the One who gave them life. We are beggars all. We are feasters all. Let us show forth our gratitude by telling other beggars where the Bread finds them.
