Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Putting on God's Armor: The Christian's Ultimate Defense Against Satan's Attacks | Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Learn how to put on the full armor of God to stand against spiritual attacks and the schemes of the devil. In this powerful teaching, we break down Ephesians 6:10-18 and provide practical strategies for spiritual warfare in your daily Christian life.This episode explores:- Why understanding Satan as your enemy is essential for spiritual victory- The six pieces of God's armor - belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, gospel boots, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit- How to maintain personal integrity as your first line of defense- The power of Scripture memorization to combat specific temptations- Why your position in Christ is your strongest protection- Practical applications of faith in daily spiritual battles"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." - Ephesians 6:12Subscribe for more biblical teaching that equips you to stand firm in your faith and live victoriously through Christ!Watch VideosVisit the Website Buy Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

We need to have a view of Satan to the degree that the scripture speaks of, where we are desperate for the resources that God provides, or we will not stand a chance against the devil and his demons. The first thing that we do when we put on the armor of God is that we make a total commitment to live a life of integrity. It's not just the truthfulness of God's word here, it's the truthfulness of our own spirit. Because you can't fight sin, you can't fight the devil if you're currently compromising in sin and falling

consistently, I would say, and secretly into the devil's schemes. I don't think people think about the reality that my failure to preach the gospel actually makes me vulnerable in spiritual attacks from Satan because God uses my own proclamation of the gospel to others and to myself as this tuning fork and as my footing in the battles I'm facing. All right, Hank, question for you as we begin. Your thoughts on me buzzing my head for the summer?

I'm going to have to take a pass. And I think that's more of a wisdom question that the Bible probably doesn't speak to specifically, but I would counsel you against it. Listen, I'm just telling everyone preemptively, I'm considering it. I've been wanting to buzz my head for about five years. And I think it's time. I think the dial-in audience should actually weigh in, maybe below. Maybe. All right, let's get started. What do we got here? Well, maybe an administrative announcement for people tuning in with us. Just want to redraw people's attention to on the dial-in webpage, which is? dialinministries.org.

Dot org, major key. And that is you can sign up to the newsletter. So the dial-in newsletter published Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays, great resource for folks. I highly encourage folks to check it out. It's part of Dial-In's broader ministry, and that's just to provide biblical resourcing to the next generation. And so we hope those equip you, encourage you. But maybe to pivot to our conversation today, Johnny, we're going to pick up the thread we started last episode, which was introducing to your point that the story of scripture actually has an enemy. And so we spent some time dedicated to who that enemy is in Satan and some of his attributes, some of the things we should be aware of. You closed the last episode by

saying, Paul tells us we should be aware of who our enemy is, but he doesn't leave us there. So maybe set us up for the conversation today. Where do we go from considering maybe our enemy in Satan? Well, I think, yeah, as far as the setup, I think I'm going to remember a movie I watched at my cousin's house when I was a kid. It's the movie The Ghost in the Darkness, if you remember. It's a deep cut. It had Val Kilmer in it. It's the story of a railroad that's being constructed in Uganda in the late 1800s. And the story goes of these two lions

that are systematically hunting and killing the railroad workers that are constructing that railroad. It's a true story. And so General Patterson, he, or Lieutenant Colonel, he tries to recruit the necessary help to hunt down these lions because the story is obvious. If you are being hunted by an apex predator, it would change the way you lived.

And that's the story of the movie, The Ghost in the Darkness. And it would be foolish to live as if you weren't being hunted. And yet for so many Christians today, this is what they do as it relates to the predator of their soul, the one who is hunting them.

We examined this last week in 1 Peter 5.8. It says, be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Now, in reading 1 Peter 5.8, we just examined two names of Satan. It's the adversary and the devil. But in Scripture, he's also known as Beelzebul in Matthew 12 the evil one in Matthew 13 the tempter in Matthew 4 the ruler of this world in John 12 the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2 the god of this world in 2nd Corinthians 4 4

the ancient serpent in Revelation 12 the dragon in Revelation 20 the deceiver the accuser the destroyer the father of lies. And last week we examined, he is called Lucifer in Isaiah 14, verse 12. And we looked at his mission. Satan is a real being who is seeking to blind the minds of this world to keep them from seeing the glory of God. That's 2 Corinthians 4.4. He wants to devour. We just read Christ's sheep. He wants to deceive. He wants to learn your weak spots, exploit your vulnerabilities. He wants to devour. We just read Christ's sheep. He wants to deceive. He wants to learn your weak spots, exploit your vulnerabilities. He wants to attack you when your defenses are down. He wants to disunify the church of Christ. He wants to disorient you, deceive you. He wants

you to think righteousness is strange, to trivialize and normalize sin. He wants you to doubt God. I wrote down a little list, but we could go on and on. But bottom line, Satan wants to make war with the people of God. And that's why Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones once said, I am certain that one of the main causes of the ill state of the church today is the fact that the devil is being forgotten. And I just mentioned this as a backdrop to this episode, because we're going to talk about the armor of God, but the armor of God is only something that someone puts on when they understand our enemy. And I'm afraid that in our cultural context, maybe in your life, in my life, we've significantly underestimated the enemy we have in Satan.

But I think there's a tension, right? We want to biblically view the power of Satan, right? Like how serious our enemy is without falling in the ditch of making it seem as if he's God's counterpart in this battle of good and evil. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a point you've made in prior episodes, but there are key differences in the person of Satan. He's not omnipresent. He's not sovereign. He's a created being. And yet, it's very clear. We walked through this last week. We definitely don't want to,

we want to respect that challenge to our own hearts and derailing our right standing with God and kind of the day-to-day process we live. But also, we don't want to grant him too much power and all of a sudden take our eyes maybe off some of the truths revealed that we're going to be looking at today. Yeah, we don't want to grant him too much power and all of a sudden take our eyes maybe off some of the truths revealed that we're going to be looking at today. Yeah, we don't want to look at it as Rocky Drago is what we've talked about previously, where it's God throws a punch, Satan throws

another punch. But we also don't want to underestimate our foe who is significantly damaged and wounded. Peter, David, Moses, Samson, a host of pastors, you know, Christian people, people in our families. So we need to have a view of Satan to the degree that the scripture speaks of, where we are desperate for the resources that God provides, or we will not stand a chance against the devil and his demons. So we need to, in Ephesians 6, it says to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. It says, put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. A couple of things here. We're going to go into the imagery that Paul uses regarding the armor of God. You know, if you grew up in Sunday

school, you have an idea of the armor of God, but it's actually something as an adult, you don't really talk about that much because you almost forget this idea that you're in this battle. But Paul is gathering this imagery, not just from a Roman centurion, but from this picture of God in the Old Testament. It says in Isaiah 11, 5, that the Messiah is going to come with a belt of righteousness and faithfulness. It says in Isaiah 59, verse 17, that the Lord comes and he's wearing righteousness like a breastplate. So Paul's going to gather that. But one thing to just talk about real quick, because I think people, and you've talked about this before, it's the Lord's armor, but we have to put it on.

There's agency or obedience. We're to take part in putting it on. Yeah. And I think people get confused there because there's a lot of spirituality that's maybe like, go like God. And then there's all the, you know, if God wants me to be holy, he'll make me holy. Everything's, you know, happening in the sovereignty. But Paul says, this is an imperative command. You put on the Lord's armor. You are to be strong, not in your strength, but in God's strength.

One of the things that just in this regard, because I think there's tension here that John Stott says, he says, some Christians are so self-confident that they think they can manage by themselves without the Lord's strength and armor. Others are so self-distrustful that they imagine they have nothing to contribute in their victory in spiritual warfare. Both are mistaken. Paul expresses the proper combination of divine enabling and human cooperation. The power is indeed the Lord's, and without the strength of his might, we shall falter and fall. But we still need to be strong in him and in it, or more accurately, to be strengthened. Meaning, you know, there's ditches there, right? So Philippians 2, is it verse 12 says, we're to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But then, you know, the next verse is God who works in and through you. So this idea that we're pulling ourself up by our bootstraps. No, you work it out, but it is God who's doing that. Maybe just from, you know, reflect for a moment, Hank, in regards to some of the analogies that we wrote down, Paul describes the Christian life as a farmer.

Yeah, an athlete. Yeah. I was going to say a runner or an athlete who trains his body or a boxer. Yeah. Yeah, a soldier, a fighter. He said he buffeted his body in order that after preaching the gospel, he wouldn't be disqualified, which we take to mean this, that Paul seriously battled sin, right? So I just want to set it up to go, yeah, he's trusting in the Lord, but there's a real emphasis here on us being reliant and dependent. And that's what this whole language is about, being reliant and dependent upon God's grace, his power, his strength, his armor. And so Paul's going to provide six pieces of armor in this passage. And I would maybe just to put a bow on this and then we'll dive in. I think

I would imagine folks in our audience would fall on either side of those ditches. It's, as I reflect, it's also true of my own life and my own spiritual journey in different seasons and different chapters. But if we were to simplify it, what Paul's calling us here to is not a passive behavior, rather it's an active leaning in, putting on, I think is the thrust. It's active dependence. Active dependence. Yeah. And I think that's probably a good way to put it.

And you said like, sometimes our spiritual life is either or, and sometimes people will be, you know, I'm doing this all by myself until they read something about God's grace. And then they'll jump to the other side of the spectrum, but then no longer put the necessary effort that they need to put in. Right. So they, they kind of go from ditch to ditch to ditch. And what we need to find is there's a, there's a healthy tension in scripture where Kent Hughes says in disciplines of a godly Man, it's a spirit-fueled sweat. Yes, spiritual sweat. Yes, spiritual sweat.

Like we're depending on the Holy Spirit, but we're also making ourselves available to don the armor of God. And there are six pieces of armor in the passage, a belt, a breastplate, boots, a shield, helmet, sword. The first five are defensive in nature, and the last is our weapon. Would you just read for us verses 13 through 17? Absolutely. So this is Ephesians 6, verse 13. Starts, therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day,

and having done everything to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, having taken up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Also receive the helmet of salvation. And then finally, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. And I would just add prayer being such a critical component of that.

It says with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the spirit. And with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. So prayer we would add, and we're gonna talk about that in a future episode. But the first one is the belt of truth. It says that our first piece of the armor is that we are to put on the belt of truth. Now in ancient warfare, guys wore, like you and I do occasionally, loose tunics. And the way that those were snug around their body was the belt of truth.

And this kept them from falling and tripping in battle. And this was huge because if it wasn't tightly fastened, it would impair their movement, their ability to wage war and wrestle. I'm picturing our three and a half year old getting out of the shower and wrapping a towel and then promptly tripping over it and falling all over the place.

It would impede your ability to run. So Paul says the first thing here before you even put on your armor is to fasten your tunic. And he says that it is the belt of truth. Now I think he's talking about the scripture, but he's going to talk about the scripture being the sword in just a moment. So he's talking about, yes, the truthfulness of scripture, but I think Paul is talking and many of the commentators would affirm this. He's talking about more than anything, the truthfulness of our own lives. Meaning that the first thing that we do when we put on the armor of God is that we make a total commitment to live a life of integrity. It's not just the

truthfulness of God's word here. It's the truthfulness of our own spirit. It is a commitment to live without compromise. It is a commitment to transparency. It is to make a radical devotion to not lapse into any sort of duplicity. Because once we do that, we've begun to play the devil's game. It is to lose before we even start. I think this is a question to consider because it's right here in the text. Paul says, put on the armor of God, fasten that belt of truth, and the question must be, is there anything in your life, before we talk about the rest of the armor, before we talk about the word of God,

is there anything in your life that you're hiding or concealing? One of the first things we need to do is commit to confessing that to the Lord, because the prince of darkness loves to keep sin in the dark, right? So we have to bring it to the light. This makes sense because you can't fight sin.

You can't fight the devil if you're currently compromising in sin and falling consistently, I would say, and secretly into the devil's schemes. Yeah, just, it strikes me when we take communion at church, one of the first refrains you always make is, let's take a moment of silence and maybe reflect on your own heart. Is there anything impeding your spirit before the Lord that needs to be confessed? Because when you enter, to your point, into communion with him, one of the first things is to look inward and wonder, is anything hypocritical in my own life? Is anything tugging at the spirit? And this is one, when you have the Holy Spirit in your life, I feel like every person's probably nodding along

for like, oh man, you know when something is impeding and that's really the lowest, the first rung in the ladder of putting up a fight against Satan. And I think it's worth, you know, you have to ask the question, well, wait a second,

I thought this was the Lord's armor. And you go, well, it is the Lord's armor, the belt of truth, because this is God's gift to you. God's gift to you is to live in total transparency. God's gift to you is the ability to confess your sins. God's gift to you is to know that you don't have to live a double life and that you can confess your sins and have a clean conscience. But it's going to be difficult to engage in warfare with a soiled conscience.

It's going to be difficult to engage in the schemes that the devil's going to throw at you today if you're currently compromising in his other areas of attack. So belt of truth is the truthfulness of our own life, a commitment to integrity and transparency is to refuse to lapse into any sort of duplicity. The second thing here, Paul says, is that we are to put on the breastplate, verse 14, of righteousness. Now the Roman breastplate was this large kind of shield that covered your vital organs, your heart. That's where you're most vulnerable. It was leather, chain mail, and it would be unthinkable for a soldier to engage in battle without the breastplate, right? And so consequently,

we have to think through it. It would be unthinkable for a Christian to go into the battle, the real spiritual battle we face without the breastplate of righteousness. Well, and so the immediate question that's jumping out to me is maybe clarify whose righteousness are we putting on? Well, yeah, again, it's the Lord's armor. So it's the breastplate of righteousness, which means it's not our righteousness. It's God's righteousness, which means that we go into the spiritual battles

we face every day with the conscious recognition that we are closed with the righteousness of God in Christ. This is the ground upon which we stand. And this is because of this is so crucial. And because the breastplate protects what is most vulnerable, that being our heart, this is an area of particular attack from Satan, right? There is a scene in the book of Zechariah where Joshua, not Joshua and Moses, Joshua, the high priest is brought before God. And Satan makes this claim and looks at him and he's wearing dirty rags, Joshua is,

and he makes a claim that no one this dirty, no one this wicked can serve the Lord. This is what Satan does. He shoots arrows of shame and condemnation and he says, this person's too sinful. And in that very scene, God says, take off his filthy rags, take off these filthy garments, and I will clothe him with fine garments.

And this is a picture of our spiritual standing before God. Satan comes at us and says, look at your sin. Look at all you've done. Look at your shame. You're not worthy of God's love. And the Christian can say, you're right. You're right. I don't wear my own righteousness. My breastplate is not my righteousness. It's God's righteousness. So this is very important from a battle perspective, because if we're not grounding ourself in our positional righteousness in Christ,

then every single day we're going to try to be earning our way to God. There's only two possible answers to the question, what makes a man or a woman a Christian? It's either one, something I've done or something Christ has done. And I think we invert that so often, even if we affirm that salvation is by faith, you know, in Christ, you know, it's all the grace of God. We can start to think like my standing is based on what I'm doing. Yeah. And so maybe help us ground this or apply it, bring it into reality. So how does this

help us maybe in a real spiritual battle? How does our positional righteousness, as you just said, equip us in more of a practical day-to-day sense? Well, I would just say that your pursuit of holiness as a Christian is not to achieve righteousness. It's from a position of righteousness, which means that we have a different set of motivation. You know, we've already been adopted. This is why Paul says, reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to righteousness,

because it's not that we're trying to be more like Jesus so we're more accepted. We're trying to be more like Jesus because he loves us and we've already been accepted because of what he's done for us. And that changes everything about the compelling force. That's why Paul says, it is the love of Christ that constrains me.

It's not this idea that I'm trying to earn his favor. And it just goes back to where we were before. It's such an important point. We can't overemphasize it enough. It's an active receipt of what God has already done on your behalf. There's nothing to be added to the equation. We can rest easy in the fully completed work of Christ, but maybe keep going. And people affirm this, you know, you know, like, yeah, it's all God's righteousness,

but it's just interesting to go, hey, well, the way Satan is going to attack you in particular is by getting you to either one, doubt that, forget that, live like that's not a reality, and that's going to make your primary vital organs exposed, right, spiritually speaking. The next one, verse 15, it says, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. The soldier's footwear in ancient times was just a piece of leather wrapped and stuffed around the soldier's feet

and had nails kind of coming out the bottom that functioned almost like an athlete's spike. Cleats. Yeah, it protected them from jagged rocks, you know, the boots did, but it also gave them stability to stand on. It gave them traction because to lose your footing in a battle was to lose your life. And so our footing in our real spiritual battle with Satan

is the gospel. It is our peace with God. It says, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel. He could have used a number of different types of ways to describe it, an adjective here, but he says the gospel of peace. And the footwear here, I think, refers mainly to our readiness, because it's your footing. You got to be able to move quickly. It refers to our readiness to be

able to preach the gospel, not only to others, but probably also to ourselves. When we read in 1 Peter 3.15, always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within you. I think that is obviously to the people you meet on a plane or in passing, but it's also just preaching the gospel to yourself. Always be ready to share the gospel. And one of the realities that verse 15 draws our attention to is that part of the reason people are prone to fall in spiritual battles is because they have become inconsistent and uncommitted in preaching the gospel at every turn. Inevitably, if you stop preaching the gospel, the gospel becomes a thing to you. It's not your passion.

It's not your greatest aim. And when the truth of Jesus Christ and the gospel becomes a relic, rather than the reason you live, your footing in a spiritual battle becomes unsure. And so I don't think people think about the reality that my failure to preach the gospel actually makes me vulnerable in spiritual attacks from Satan because God uses my own proclamation of the gospel to others and to myself as this tuning fork and as my footing

in the battles I'm facing. Yeah. And it just strikes me. The gospel is something, no level of Christian maturity. It's not something you move past. Yeah. You don't go to deeper theological truths and kind of, oh, the gospel was for beginners, but now we're, we're advancing into kind of the headier topics of the Christian faith. No, the gospel in the same way that you put your shoes on every single time you'd go into battle, every single time you go outside.

That's our peace with God. Yeah, I'm at peace with God. I'm at peace with God. The gospel is the grounding reality on which we stand. Anyway, keep going. Verse 16 says, in addition to this, the fourth is in addition to all taking up the shield of faith with which we are able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Now, the Roman shield was four and a half feet long,

two and a half feet wide or something like that. It's essentially- It'd barely cover me. Yeah. No, it would cover you. Ancient Hank would have been covered. Yeah. It is essentially a door,

and it would have been covered in hide, soaked in water prior to battle to be able to extinguish the arrows that were set and shot at the enemy from a distance. And it says here in the scripture that we are to take up the shield of faith, which we are able to extinguish all, keyword, the flaming arrows of the evil one. Satan hurls a lot of different arrows our way. It could be that God's word can't be trusted. It could be that God's love cannot satisfy. It could be that God's sovereignty cannot be relied upon. Satan wants to drive us. This is an arrow, arrow, arrow towards doubt, despondency. He wants to make us depressed. He

wants to make us proud. He wants to get us to lust or to laziness, greed, malice, gossip, slander, bitterness. He wants you to be bitter. He wants you to not forgive. And the shield of faith is what we employ to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. And it just strikes me to your point. Arrow, the type of weapon, that's not a one and done thing. There's volleys and volleys and volleys. And you're dependent upon that shield, not just for one, but that list you just went through, lust, despondency, depression, anxiety,

and on and on and on. Yeah, you go on and on. And we see this idea of God being a shield throughout the scripture. It says in Psalm 119, 114, you are my refuge and my shield. It says in Psalm 33, but you, O Lord, are a shield.

Proverbs 30, verse five, every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. I love this one in Psalm 28, 7. The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in him and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy. And with my song, I praise him. I guess this is the last one, Psalm 18.

I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my the last one, Psalm 18. I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge. He is my shield. So we see this idea over and over again that God is a shield and we are to employ the shield of faith. And we already touched on this, but I want to give you a chance to really drive it home. So the shield of faith, what does that look like practically? How would that be used in the Christian life? Is this a one-time thing?

Is this an ongoing, just kind of maybe drive that point home? Yeah, and obviously there's overlap here because we're talking about faith. We were just talking about the gospel. Obviously our faith is in the gospel, but I think it's driving us towards an important reminder that our faith is not something we place in Jesus Christ once upon a time. Our faith is not a thing. Our faith is a constant exercise. We read in scripture that the righteous shall live by faith. And that is the language of reliance. It's the language of dependence.

And it means that it's more than just the affirmation of truth because it's one thing to affirm God loves us. It's another thing to live with this belief. God, help me to be grounded and rooted in your love today. Would you help me to believe that? It's one thing to live with this belief. God helped me to be grounded and rooted in your love today. Would you help me to believe that? It's one thing to affirm that God is sovereign. It's another thing to go, I'm going to live my life, not leaning on my own understanding, but leaning on God's control and providence and sovereignty. And so I think it's so important that we're walking by faith, which means that our perspective is filtered through what the

scripture says about our every reality in life. It means that it's not just that we believe in God, it's that we believe God. And in order to walk by faith, in order to put on the shield of faith, it means that our, I think, our minds, as we're going to talk about in a moment, are grounded in scripture, grounded in truth. And if you're referring to the endless volleys of arrows that are coming after us all the time, it just draws our attention to the fact that there's no moment in our life where our shield can be down, which means that faith can't be relegated to the Sunday mornings in our life or the 15 minute devotional. It means that we're fixing our attention and locking in our gaze on the author

and perfecter of our faith. That's very well said. So you laid out, there's six tools or pieces of equipment given to us, five defensive, one offensive. I think we've got one more defensive to bring us home. The last defensive one is just the helmet of salvation. It says in verse 17, it says,

and take the helmet of salvation right there and put it on. And if the shield of faith protects us from Satan as tempter, you know, to get us to sin, I think the helmet of salvation, Ferguson says this, protects us from Satan as deceiver. And this helmet of salvation is the last thing we put on, but it may be the most important because this is the area in our life where I think the Christian is most attacked, that being our mind. You can be stabbed multiple times and live,

but one blow to the head would kill a man. And the helmet for the Christian is the salvation that is extended to them in Christ Jesus. And there is overlap here, but the emphasis, I think, is really necessary. And I would say this, and the reason is this, Hank, because one of the surest aims of the devil in the everyday battles we face is to get you to doubt that you truly belong to God. He says you don't belong to him.

He says you're no good. He says you're a sinner. You're a failure. God's disappointed in you. What's wrong with you? More than any other strategy of Satan, he wants to rob you of your assurance. And this is, I think, a reality in my own life.

I think when I was younger growing up, really battled with assurance. And so in our spiritual battles, it says put on the helmet of salvation, which means as a Christian, every day you're fastening, you're putting on the helmet and fastening, and you're basically just saying, I'm a Christian. I belong to God. My sins have been paid for. It's not just that God is willing for us to have this assurance of salvation. He actually makes it a command in 2 Peter 1. He says, make your calling and election sure. God's not like kind of toying with people. He wants you to know you're a Christian because

this is your stability in the battle. It's your most important piece of armor. I belong to God. My sins have been paid for. And so we put that on as our last piece of defensive equipment. Yeah. And maybe just to zoom out, I would say this is a trademark, I think, of your broader ministry. And I mean this in a positive sense of, I think you've helped me at least on a brother to brother level of re-fortifying me that like the Christian faith is a thinking faith. It's one that we don't check our intellect at the door. It's one that in many ways begins in our minds. And obviously it's our heart, our soul, it's so much more than that. But this helmet of salvation is such a critical,

critical piece to us. But maybe let's switch directions now on the offensive. What does Paul equip us with here? Yeah, he just says, and take on the sword of the spirit, which is our only piece of armor or our only weapon. He says, which is the word of God. Thankfully, we are not just on defense. We're on offense and we have a weapon, the most powerful weapon that enables us not only to withstand Satan,

but to overcome him, to kill him. And there's a lot, you know, obviously we could talk about regarding the word of God. We've done episodes on the power of scripture in our life. Psalm 19, we've done that. I've done a series or an episode on meditation with Harry, worth considering. But one thing to highlight here that I think is cool

is when it says in the sword of the spirit, it says, which is the word of God. There are two different words for word in Greek. the first would be logos that would refer to you know just god the scripture yeah the word here though is not lagos it's it's ramas which means when he says to take up the sword of the spirit it's actually referring not just to the totality of god's word he's not saying and pick up the bible he's referring to the specific say totality of God's word. He's not saying, and pick up the Bible. He's referring to the specific sayings in scripture. He's referring to memorized scriptures that we employ in the battle. For instance, when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness,

Jesus responded each and every time, it is written. Have you not heard? It is written. It is written. And he doesn't just say the bible says not to he's responding with the memorized truth of scripture and i think one thing that we've done hank in our contemporary environment is we talk a lot about the preaching of the bible we talk a lot about maybe the study of the bible we've talked about the meditation on in the scripture but in ephesians 6 when it says and take up the sword of the spirit, it's referring, I think, largely to memorized portions of scripture that we wield in the moment of temptation. A sword is no good lying on the ground and we need it. Oh, I got to go get my sword. No, no, no. We need it in the moment, which means that when we're tempted, we don't always,

we don't always have the ability to go grab our Bible. We respond with the truth hidden in our heart. So we know in the Word of God that it satisfies, it warns, it rewards, it convicts, converts, comforts, offers guidance. But when we are despairing, the thought that we can have in our mind, the verse in our mind is, why are you downcast, O my soul? Trust in God. When we're anxious, we can remind ourselves of the truth. Be anxious for nothing, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. When we are tempted to lust, we can remember Job, who says, I've made a vow not to look lustfully upon a woman. And how can a young man keep his way pure,

but by keeping it according to your word? We hide that truth in our hearts. And that is, this isn't the long sword. This isn't the broad sword. This is our dagger. It's, it's, it's close combat. It's I'm in the thick of it. And I've kind of fought off volley after volley. And now I'm slashing and you're slashing with not just general truths, specific, memorize truth, uh, from the word of God. And if we don't have this, you can only be on the defensive for so long. Well, and I think it's worth you went through that so well, but I think the observation that jumps out to me is if our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when he's tempted is going to scripture, how much more am I prone to, I need that same equipment. I mean, he laid us the path and I need to not neglect to follow the same. I guess my heart is, I don't want our listeners to hear this in a legalistic sense

of like, we're not saying, hey, go memorize X, Y, Z verses so that you're a better Christian because you're in jeopardy of losing your faith. No, total wrong thrust, but rather our Lord and Savior to fend off Satan when he was tempted three times went to scripture. How much more so do you think you should be doing the same? Yeah. And the playbook is given to us. How can a young man keep his way pure by keeping according to your word, which means I need the truth memorized in my heart. I need it hidden in my heart. And some people, memory comes faster than other people, but it's amazing. Like even with my daughter, she knows song lyrics. i never even knew we listened to when you're exposed to something

for long periods of times it begins to impress itself upon you and so i think we need that you don't have to memorize certain translations necessarily but it's no i know this and i'm able to respond to the devil and this is my my sword, my lance. Which maybe does relate back to, you said it there, but we need an exposure time to God's word. So it needs to be a regular point of our appetite, of our daily appetite. And that's why I just like that terminology. It's hidden in our heart. We know it. Then prayer. We want to talk about this in a future episode, but bottom line, it says in 18 that in this battle, we have to pray at all times. Bathe your family in prayer. Bathe your at all times. Bathe your family in prayer. Bathe your life in prayer.

Bathe your church in prayer. This is your lifeblood in the battle that you have a God who's there and who hears. But two things, I think, as we conclude. One being that the Roman shield draws our attention to the fact that the Romans used to conduct a shield wall, right? And if you're not putting up your shield of faith, you know who that leaves vulnerable? The person to me. Yeah. Right. And so they would say shield wall because you're responsible for protecting not only yourself from the arrows of the devil, but those around you. And when one person's shield of faith

is down, other people actually can, can take an arrow. There's no such thing as private sin. Your sin affects me actually, because we're in the battle together. I think maybe I would be thinking like, if someone's, if this is falling heavy on a listener, who's maybe in the dumps of recognizing they've maybe lost the battle and they're kind of at the base of the mountain feeling pretty hopeless and struggling with a sin that seems particularly acute in their life. What would you counsel them? I would just say for someone that's recognizing that they've lost the battle, then they find great comfort in first John one night, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And I would say also praise the

Lord. You recognize you've lost the battle, which means that you're, you're in it. And you understand that I don't want to lose. I want to honor the Lord and you confess your sins. And there's an element where the battle's already been won, right? And one day when we meet our captain and the victor, Christ Jesus, face to face, we may stand before him bloodied, but nevertheless victorious, because the reason we won the battle isn't because of us. It's because of what Christ has done. So I would say if there's discouragement and despair, we confess that to the Lord,

we gather with our other fellow soldiers, and we put back up our shield, we pick up our sword, and we get back in the fight. Awesome. Well, I think that's a good place to stop. Thanks so much for this second part of this conversation, Johnny. Thanks, Hank.