2024-06-02 Covenant CRC-sermon

Ephesians 6:1-18

Last sermon on Ephesians as a guide to the church in difficult times.

Transcript:

  Our scripture reading this morning is from the epistle to the Ephesians, chapter six, beginning at verse one, reading through verse 18. And we're in the last Sunday of what's been a couple of months of looking at the epistle to the Ephesians as a guide to the church in difficult times. And I think we'll hear our Lord speaking to us in really wonderful ways through this reading.

The sections are going to sound a little bit different. And they are different in some ways but they are all part of the one message of God and we'll look at how they interact with each other as we get into the message. But for now, let's just listen to these words, Ephesians 6, beginning at verse 1, going through verse 18.

Hear God's word. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise. that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, But like slaves of Christ doing the will of God from your heart Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord not men Because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does whether he is slave or free and masters Treat your slaves in the same way Do not threaten them since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven You And there is no favoritism in heaven.

Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the mighty power, in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this 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've done everything to stand, stand firm then with the belt of truth 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 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 with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, friends, as we just heard in our reading, our Lord today promises to give us strength. Our Lord promises to give us even something that's called the full armor of God. And we need that strength. We need that armor because as Paul also share. In our reading, we live in a situation in which we need to stand against the devil's evil schemes.

We need to stand and even struggle against powers in this dark world, against spiritual forces of evil. And we can add that this struggle against These spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms That struggle can sometimes be translated as and it can broadly be understood as what we often call spiritual Warfare, so that's our situation.

We're living in a world of spiritual warfare And I think we can pause here for a moment and acknowledge that when it comes to these spiritual struggles against powers in the heavenly realms, when it comes to spiritual warfare, we can feel quite limited in how much we understand that. And many of us, including me, can feel a little bit anxious when we start to get into thinking about and knowing that kind of realm is all around us.

And still. We can trust the Lord who gives us that message and who gives us his words today. And we can trust our Lord, even as we're still going to not know everything, we can trust our Lord to give us that message. The words and the knowledge we need to receive in order to stand against the evil one and follow Jesus and I think one way we can open our minds to this a bit is to work with this metaphor About what it's like to be in a place not only of spiritual warfare But all kinds of warfare is physical military warfare They get described often with the term we live in the fog of war Because the fog of war refers to how when soldiers are on a battlefield, when people are going through a war, there's so much going on that they don't know, that's hidden, that's dark, that we just can't, uh, understand.

There's this fog of war, and that's certainly true regarding the spiritual warfare in which we live. There's all kinds of dark fog that's blocking what, what is the fullness of what's going on. But in that fog of war, What our Lord does through His Word and Spirit, He breaks through with a flash of sunlight, the light of Jesus Christ, whom the darkness cannot overcome.

And that's what our Lord is doing through us through His words today, through His Word and through His Spirit, through His Son and through His Spirit. Our Lord is giving us light, sunlight in the foggy complexities of spiritual warfare and all kinds. of conflicts and to get one glimpse of how that light can break into a foggy, dark place, we can look at a gospel scene.

And the gospel scene we're going to look at here comes in the gospel of Luke chapter 10. And the connection between that Luke 10 reading and the Ephesians 6 reading is that in both cases, we see the scriptures portraying conflict. what we could call family life, home life, everyday life. And then we also see a revelation that in that family life, home life, everyday life, all kinds of spiritual realities and conflicts are taking place.

So that's what we're going to try to be helping. Uh, we're, we're our Lord can help us understand Ephesians six. through this story from Luke 10. And you may know that in Luke 10, what our Lord does is He takes some translations say 70, others say 72. In either case, it's just kind of a representing of a, of a complete new group of people.

Our Lord sends out 70 or 72 people and He commissions them as disciples and He says to them, I want you to go to all the towns around here, the towns to which I will be coming. And I want you to visit people in their homes, Jesus says. Jesus says, when you go to visit people in their homes, the first thing I want you to say is, Peace!

Peace to this home. Because man, every home needs peace. So our Lord says, say to people, peace to this home. And if there's people of peace there, they can receive that peace. It can come in and give them the kind of life our Lord wants for them. But if they reject that peace, if they reject you, If they reject me, well, then they're rejecting the kind of peace that our Lord brings by bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth, the kingdom of God to overcome evil.

So that is the kind of thing that Jesus says is going on in our homes, in what we call home visits. There's just all kinds of things going on and what our Lord would so much want people, including us, to do is to be open to his word of peace, to his presence of peace, to the kind of reality of his spiritual power.

That overcomes evil spiritual powers and leads us into the life that our Lord wants for us. So that's how Luke 10 starts to unfold. And I can add that as Jesus sends out his disciples, he does tell them, well, look, you are going to face rejection. There's going to be all kinds of complexity there, but you just continue to speak and live by what I say.

And things will happen. And so Jesus sends his people out into that complicated, foggy situation. And then, as Luke 10 continues, what we read is that when the disciples come back to Jesus, that group of 70 or 72, when they come back, they're rejoicing. They are so glad when they return because they say, Lord, even the demons, they said, Lord, even the demons were submitting to us in your name.

Amen. And do you remember how Jesus responds in regard to people visiting these homes and bringing peace? Jesus says, when that was happening, I saw Satan falling like lightning. In other words, exchanges, prayers. spiritual presence in a home that was overcoming the evil one, bringing the kind of life and peace that our Lord wants.

And that's again, the kind of thing we want to be open to today, the peace, the victory, the presence of Christ. We want that into our homes, into our everyday lives. Of course, we want it for the whole world, for the whole new creation. But it's very interesting that Paul starts with parents and children. He goes to slaves and masters, which would be more equivalent to employers and employees in our world.

So again, it's family life. It's work life. It's everyday life. These are the kinds of things that are going on. These are the kinds of places and situations in which we're going to need the strength, the power of God, the full armor of God. And to help that come home, my hope. To help it come home a little bit more personally and to come home to you in a more kind of literal way.

What I'm going to do is turn us to back to Ephesians chapter 6 and relate it to a personal experience. Because what Paul does in Ephesians chapter 6 is he will talk first again to families and to workplaces And then he'll say well look In those workplaces, there are these spiritual realities and conflicts going on, but our warfare is not against flesh and blood.

I mean, there's going to be differences, there's going to be disputes, there are going to be physical wars in our world, but our ultimate warfare is not against flesh and blood. It is against the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil, And that again is this both and, there's everyday life, there's spiritual reality, they're both at work.

That's what I think Paul is wanting to emphasize for us. By going through something like Ephesians 6, the first part, everyday life. Ephesians 6, the second part, spiritual reality, spiritual battles. And, believe it or not, I was led to focus on Ephesians 6. In which after talking to children, Paul talks to fathers.

He doesn't feel led to tell mothers how to be good mothers, but he tells fathers, listen fathers, do not exasperate your children. That is, do not irritate them into anger. Instead, Paul says, speak to them in ways that they can hear the training and the discipleship of God. of our Lord. And as Paul gives that instruction to fathers for centuries, I heard him speaking to me and the Lord brought into my memory, uh, a place where I really could have used the word of the Lord.

and the armor of God as I was seeking to be a good father and not quite getting there. Instead, going more into the exasperation side of things. See, this happened quite a few years ago. Our children, I don't know the exact date of it or exactly a lot of details, but they were probably around 7, 9, and 11 years old.

And so Trish and I were raising them, and the five of us were at our dinner table, and there was some kind of back and forth going on between our children, which I did not approve of. And so as they're going back and forth to one another, I broke in with the loudest voice at the table, and I started to lecture them in a very strong way, with what might have been a right anger to begin with, but became a kind of a burning anger that wasn't helping, and I just lectured them with a loud voice for a while, And then eventually, our seven year old son spoke to me in a way that I've never forgotten.

I think our Lord was speaking to me through him. Because our seven year old son said to me, Dad, Dad, don't you know that when you yell at us like that, we hate it? In other words, he was saying, Dad, when you just lecture us with a loud, yelling, angry voice, that's not really helping us hear our Lord and go in a better direction.

That's just, Exasperating us. You probably didn't know that word at age seven. That's just Irritating us into anger and as I was preparing our passage for this morning I wished that back then 20 plus years ago I wish that before I just burst out with my burning anger I wished I had thought about what paul says In ephesians 6 verse 4 fathers do not exasperate your children, but into the training and discipline of the Lord.

And I wished also that back then, I wish that for my whole life I had been practicing putting on every day the armor of God, the full armor of God, which enables us again to stand against the evil one and to have the strength and the sources we need to follow our Lord Jesus into the kingdom of peace.

Because what if when my kids were going back and forth, what if I thought to myself, well, how can I speak? with the belt of truth to them. How can I speak truth to them? Not full of anger, but as Paul says in Ephesians 4 verse 15, speak the truth in love. What if the love had been more prominent than my irritation and anger that would have helped our children hear the Lord.

And that kind of thing that goes to every piece of In the armor of God. And so here I would just ask you, is this a list in the scriptures that you're familiar with? Maybe do you even, do you know it by heart? And even if you know it by heart, is it an everyday practice for you? Is it an everyday habit for you to put on the full armor of God?

Because it's not just this abstract thing on a page. It is a reality. That changes how we live and that brings Christ's peace into our lives. So if we just think what I would encourage you to think about people in your lives, think about your family, think about work. Maybe you have some family reunions coming up this summer.

Maybe just there's all think about everything, but maybe the spirit will bring some specific relationships and encounters coming up in your life. And then just think what a difference it makes when we put on the full armor of God. So again, it starts with the belt of truth. Now, the truth is, my kids were probably not being perfect little children at that time.

They did need some teaching. And, you know, a father can be angry in a right way, but my anger had gone too far. And, can a father ever yell at his children? I think so, but that's the kind of thing we need the spirit to make this word come home to us very personally. What's the truth our Lord wants us to share?

When we talk to family members, church members, workers, all the people in our lives, our neighbors, we want to put on the belt of truth because what does that connect to? The belt of truth connects us to what Paul calls the breastplate of righteousness, which can also be translated as the breastplate of justice.

And that's the kind of thing where I think it's good to have both those words in our mind. Because when we put on the breastplate of righteousness, we can think as we did in the prayer we offered earlier, we are righteous with God only because we've been forgiven by grace. That's this justification, this righteousness by grace.

So we can put that on. But what our Lord would want for us to put that on so we can, with humility, seek justice. Which is also what the Greek word dikaiosounai means. Put on the breastplate of righteousness, where as a forgiven sinner you can work towards a justice, which flows from truth leading to justice.

Which, what's the third one? The boots. It's a little bit unclear. The shoes. It means that something on our feet can help us move forward. Stand for peace. So think about things we talk about. Think about, again, this thing going on in Sheldon later this week. I used to remember when I was a young kid around seven, I heard people say, don't talk about race, religion, or politics.

It's just going to lead to a bunch of fighting. Well, regarding race, religion, politics, family life, work life, everyday life. We need discernment as to what is the truth. How and when do we speak it? What are ways in which the truth is going to lead us into righteousness and justice? The kind of justice that leads to a true peace, not just an avoidance of conflicts, but a true peace of harmony and working together for what is right and good.

And now, our Lord gives us also the shield of faith. Because faith can help us stand against the arrows that the evil one throws at us, where the evil one could say, Boy, if you say that, just think, this might happen, this might happen, people might, you know. With the shield of faith, you're not afraid. You can have courage.

And faith can also be translated as faithfulness. You can have a courageous faithfulness with the truth, with righteousness and justice. With peace through the shield of faith and then you put on the helmet of salvation. That's your mind being open Yes, again, you're saved by grace But salvation is also a whole new creation and that whole new creation comes right into your home life It comes right into your personal relationships social political all these things you're thinking about that with the helmet of salvation.

And what's going to shape your brain and mind there? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And what Paul does there is he brings the Spirit and the Word together in just the way we need them. Because when I hear a word like truth or righteousness or justice, It means one thing when I'm talking to a seven year old son.

It means something else when I'm talking to a congregation. It just, it means all kinds of different things. I mean, there's central to's to it, but it takes a different form. Well, the Spirit can take God's words and say, this is what it means for you today. This is how you can live it out today, or this is how you can pursue it by seeking discernment with another group of people to help you understand what to do, which way to go.

So let's, let that be how we take all these six pieces in the armor of God. How do we bring them together? How do we live them out in a way that is personal, in our personal situation? Well, as Paul says, we pray to God. in the spirit with all kinds of prayers for all the people of God. So please read the word of God.

Listen to the word of God, but also pray for the Holy Spirit as we do with the children. Every Sunday, Holy Spirit, help me to know what that word means for me at home at work. In my neighborhood in this nation in this election year in all the things that are going on Pray in the spirit for the words and the armor of god to help you stand against the evil one so that you can follow Jesus to whom we're going to turn now in prayer.

Let's join in prayer

Lord jesus We praise and thank you as the light of the world You shining through the fog with a light that darkness cannot overcome. And King Jesus, as we praise and thank you for defeating evil and delivering us from the evil one, we pray with and in your Holy spirit for the full armor of God. So father in heaven, we lay before you everything going on in our everyday lives, at home and everywhere else.

We lay before you the dark fog and all the conflicts of this world. And with, and in the Holy Spirit, and in the light of Jesus, as the word of God, it became flesh. We pray we can live out the words you give us today. So triune God, we pray your spirit giving us wisdom and power regarding the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness and justice, the boots that equip us to stand for peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which comes to us with the word of God.

So save your God with thanks for all this and with trust that you'll bring it home to us. We offer this prayer in Jesus name. Amen.