The Believer's Armor
The Sword of the Spirit
Ephesians 6:17
This morning we come to our last study in the armor of the Christian. We've discussed the belt of truthfulness in verse 14 which is commitment. And we've discussed the breastplate of righteousness which is holiness. And we've discussed the shoes of the gospel of peace which is confidence In the Lord's power and presence. We've discussed the shield of faith which is believing God. We've discussed the helmet of salvation which is confidence in the eternal salvation yet to come. And now we come, finally, to the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.
Now watch what happens here in verse 17. Does anyone see the difference in all the other pieces of armor and this one? The other pieces are primarily defensive but now we come to a piece of armor which is both defensive and offensive. Some say it is offensive, and that is true, but it is also defensive as well.
Now the word sword here is a very interesting term. There are two different words in the Greek that we translate “sword”. One refers to that large broad sword we talked about last week. It could be as long as forty inches plus, longer than a yardstick; a great, broad, two-edged sword that was wielded with two hands. That is not in the word here.
This is the more normal sword carried by the soldiers which was anything from the six inch long daggers to 18 inch swords or so.
They were put into a sheath or a scabbard by the side of the soldier and were used in hand-to-hand combat.
That's the picture Paul uses to talk about the Word of God. In fact, this is the word used to describe the swords in Matthew 26:47 that were in the hands of the Romans when they came to capture Jesus while He was in the garden. It was the normal Roman soldier's sword.
It is the same word used to speak of the sword which Peter cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest.
It is the same word used to speak of the sword used in Acts 12:2 to kill James the brother of John.
It is the same word used to speak of the sword used against the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11.
It is the normal, everyday, routine sword used by soldiers. But here’s the first thing I notice about this sword: In order to be effective, it had to be used in a precise way. Peter simply cut off an ear with it. I'm sure that if he had the bigger sword, Jesus would have had to put on a whole lot more than the guy’s ear!
But this sword had to be used as a precise weapon.
So this is what Paul has in mind. Now notice this, verse 17 says it is the sword of the Spirit. It could also be translated “by the Spirit” or even as “the spiritual sword”.
The translators have all these options. I think a couple of things stand out: first of all we can use it as an adjective and take the spiritual sword, small s not referring so much to the Holy Spirit but the spiritual sword because we know well that Paul said to the Corinthians in II Cor. 10:4 that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. That's his implication there. And so, when we are in battle, we are using a spiritual sword.
That would find agreement in the context of what he’s saying because in verse 12 he says we are fighting spiritual wickedness. We have a spiritual belt and a spiritual breastplate and spiritual shoes and spiritual shield and a spiritual helmet. So that could be used in that sense. That would be a fair way to translate it in the context of the book.
But I think a better way to look at it is describing where it comes from. It is the sword given by the Spirit, therefore it is the sword of the Spirit in the sense that the Spirit has given it. And I think you don’t have to limit it to one or the other. In fact, if you put them both together, you get this idea: our sword is spiritual because it was given to us by the Holy Spirit.
Now when you became a Christian you received the sword in what sense? You have the Bible.
Someone says, “Well, even an unbeliever has the Bible.”
Yes, an unbeliever may have a Bible but he does not have the resident truth teacher, the Holy Spirit, who can make the Bible meaningful, nor the capability to understand what the Bible shares.
Listen: A lost person, the Bible says, cannot understand the things of God. It is the Spirit of God living in the life of the believer who makes the Word of God available to that believer. And so when you become a believer you receive the word of God and the Spirit of God and in conjunction with those two you have the sword. And so the sword becomes ours as believers.
But that’s not all there is to it. Even though as a child of God you possess the Sword of the Spirit, and have the capability of comprehending what it says, it's a matter of how we learn to use the sword that will help us in the conflict.
And once we become adept at using it, then it becomes a weapon of warfare in our hands. Listen, the Bible in your life is a weapon. It's only a matter of whether you know how to use it. And learning how to use it is dependent upon how diligently you get involved in studying the word of God.
That's why the apostle Paul spent three years in Ephesus and said, "I have not failed to declare unto you the whole council of God". Why? He wanted to teach them how to use the sword. He wanted to give them the whole thing so that they would be able to use it effectively.
So we have a spiritual sword that has a divine origin, a powerful, effective, amazing weapon that is so powerful that nothing can withstand it and nothing can overpower it.
Now, as I said earlier it is both offensive and defensive.
Let's talk about its defensive capability. If you've ever seen anybody use a sword you know that a sword is used as much to block an attack as it is to inflict one. That reminds us that the way you use the word of God defensively is extremely vital. When Satan comes to attack you with his temptations, you need to be able to defend yourself with the Sword of the Spirit.
For example, Satan comes to the Lord in the wilderness to attack Him three times with three different temptations. Jesus responds everytime with Scripture.
Number one is the don't trust God, make stones into bread don't wait for God to supply your needs, grab it on your own. And Jesus comes back and quotes Scripture exactly related to that temptation out of Deuteronomy.
Satan comes a second time and says, Furthermore I'm going to tempt you now to trust God where you have no business trusting God, dive off the temple and let Him catch you. And He uses another Scripture from Deuteronomy exactly dealing with that temptation.
Third time, Bow down to me. And He uses another Scripture exactly dealing with that temptation.
In other words, precision is the key. He directly and specifically addresses the attack with a precision response. He doesn't flail It around indiscriminately He uses it precisely to deal with exactly the temptation that Satan shot at Him. He doesn’t just use the Lord’s Prayer or the 23rd Psalm for everything that comes His way.
Listen, you have to be able to defend yourself at whatever angle the temptation comes from. And there are Christians who own Bibles and they've sat in churches and they've been in classes and they've even read it but they don't really know the principles and so they can't stop the attack at one point or another. And listen, Satan loves to find out what you don’t know and that's where he'll start hitting.
Use the Bible as a defensive weapon by learning how to apply the specifics of the word of God to the specifies of temptation.
Let me go a step further. Notice at the end of verse 17 it says the sword of the Spirit is the word of God.
The term word here is not logos, logos is a term meaning word that speaks of a broad or general reference. The word of God, the general idea. It is the word which means a specific statement. It isn't talking about a broad knowledge it's talking about a specific statement.
The sword of the Spirit is the specific statement of God. And if you don't know what God specifically says about that temptation you can't deal with it. So to effectively defend yourself against specific temptation and attacks, you’ve got to learn the specific word of God for the attack.
That's why when I teach you the Bible I don't just read you the Scripture, tell three stories then send you away. What I try to do is teach you the principles in the text. Because the principle is the specific statement that God wants you to understand so that you can put it in your reservoir to use against Satan.
Ever get discourage? Then find out what the Bible says about discouragement. Have financial worries? See what God says about it. Issues in your family? God has a word on that.
For every potential attack and temptation from Satan, there is a Word from God and you will overcome Satan when you know the word.
The reason so many Christians fall to temptation is because they just don't know how God's word deals with things. They just aren't equipped with the sword.
Secondly, it's an offensive weapon. And I love to think of it this way. I can and should use the word of God in my life to defend myself against Satan's attacks.
But what about the offense? This is the exciting part. I'm glad it's both because I'd hate to live my whole life just trying to be defensive. That gets old.
I used to play basketball, and I loved playing defense. One of my favorite parts of the game was blocking shots. What a thrill to be able to jump up and slap the ball into the stands and humiliate the person who had shot!
But there’s nothing like scoring points. Somewhere I’ve got a trophy for being the most valuable offensive player my senior year of high school. I had to take a lot of shots to get it, but I got it!
And in my Christian life, I just like to get on the offensive every once in a while!
That's why I love to preach because when I'm preaching I don't have time for any temptations. I don't have much opportunity to mess with that stuff up here. I've got my offensive sword going and all I'm trying to do is whack away some of the jungle in Satan's kingdom. And that's what's exciting.
Every time I take the gospel to an unsaved soul I see myself with the sword whacking through his dominion. Every time somebody is redeemed I see a swathe cut through his dark kingdom. When you stand up and proclaim the word of God, you teach it to your children, you talk about it to your friends, you say it on the job, you talk with other students at school about it or you stand in a pulpit like this and preach and you have in your hand the word of God as an offensive weapon and you're cutting your way through Satan's kingdom.
I love to be able to stand up and proclaim the truth of the Word of God against the backdrop of all the lies of Satan. People want to say it is arrogant to say there is just one way and it is Jesus. It’s not arrogance at all. It is the confidence that only the Sword of the Sprit can provide that will enable you to stand against the opposition and say this is what God's truth has to say.
Now Satan knows the word is effective so he tries to stop it. Satan will do anything to silence those who preach the word. He'll do anything to try to undo what they do. You remember the parable Jesus told about the sower and the seed?
Matthew 13
The sower is the preacher or anybody who has the word of God, the seed is the word of God. You go out sowing the seed. In a sense you're using your sword. What is the result? You get on the offensive and things are going to happen.
Verse 8 says when it finds good ground, boy, fruit's going to come forth a hundred fold, sixty fold and thirty fold.
So Satan knows it can do this so he’s busy trying to make sure it doesn't. So when you sow it and it falls, for example, in verse 4 on the wayside, immediately the fowls come and devour it and it seems to me this has reference to Satan's demonic hosts.
Somehow they move it and snatch the word away so that the person has forgotten what he's heard. And somebody will come and hear the word and maybe you've talked to him or I've preached, whatever, and they go away and they just forget about it. Satan snatches it out of their mind.
On the other hand verse 5 says some of it falls on stony places and what happens? It doesn't have much earth so it springs up for a little while, there's no deepness of earth, the sun comes up, burns it, it has no root and withers away.
And later on the Lord says this has to do with persecution. Somebody comes along and says - Boy, this Christianity is interesting. I'm hearing what you're saying about this Bible truth and Satan will bring into their life trouble and they'll bail out and walk away from it under the pressure of persecution or tribulation or whatever.
And, finally, some of it falls among thorns and the thorns spring up and choke it and our Lord says that's the kind of people who come and they believe for a little while but the deceitfulness of riches.
They are not willing to say No to the evil system. They want the world so they walk away from the word.
But the point that I want you to see is Satan is busy, whether by twisting the perspective back to the world or by bringing heat to bear on their life or by snatching it away so they don't remember it. He wants to stop the sowing of the seed. Why?
Because he knows that if it finds good ground it will produce. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Satan believes in the power of the word of God more than a lot of church members. They come to church expecting that nothing will happen. But Satan knows.
And I’ll tell you this: if I didn't believe the word of God would produce I'd quit preaching and do something else. But it's so fantastic that you can know that when you go out the word of God will never return void but will always accomplish what I please.
This is a powerful word! So it is defensive as we know it to defend ourselves, but it is also offensive as we go out and conquer Satan's dark kingdom.
And again, the key is in the specifics. Just as the defensive strategy is to know the specifics as they relate to the temptation, when you use the word of God offensively it has to be specific also.
Have you ever gotten into a conversation and you didn't have any answers for the person because you didn't know what the Bible taught about a certain thing?
That’s why Jehovah Witnesses love to come to your door. They know the average Baptist can’t defend himself scripturally. And they guide the conversation.
That’s why I’m always harping on taking advantage of every opportunity to study the Bible. Come to Sunday School and stay for church so you don’t have to back down from anybody anywhere when it comes to discussing the Bible and defending the faith.
The tragedy of tragedies is for someone to be a Christian for a long time and not be able to use this incomparable source that God has graciously given us. We just really don't know the word like we should. Because we don't know it like we should we can't defend ourselves and we can't use it as an offensive weapon. The more you know the word the more you're going to march through Satan's kingdom because God's word has answers that cut right into the core of his lies. And so we need to know the word.
Somebody says, well I’ve tried to understand the Bible and all those big words and this and that. . .Don’t give me all that baloney, don't tell me you don't understand it. He not only gave you the book, He planted in your heart the resident truth teacher and He'll teach it to you if you'll submit to His teachings. You can understand, God will enable you to understand as much as you need to understand to win the victory. It isn't that tough to understand.
You’ve just got to work at it, and most people don’t want to do that. They would rather just stumble along through life and let the devil beat them up than take the initiative to be a student of the Word of God.
Just because you own a Bible doesn't mean you have a sword. You can own a Bible warehouse and not have a sword if you don't know how to use it defensively and offensively.
H. P. Barker was a master of illustrations. One day he described himself looking out a window and watching a garden full of plants and flowers. And he said I saw three things in the garden. First, I saw a butterfly. The butterfly was beautiful. And. it would alight on a flower and then it would flutter to another flower and then it would flutter to another flower and only for a second or two would it sit and it would move on and it would touch as many lovely blossoms as it could but derived absolutely no benefit from it.
Then, he said, I watched a little longer out my window and there came a botanist. And the botanist had a big notebook under his arm and a great big magnifying glass. And the botanist would lean over a certain flower and he would look for a long time and then he would write notes in his notebook. He was there for hours writing notes, closed them, stuck them under his arm, tucked his magnifying glass in his pocket and walked away.
And then be said the third thing I noticed was a bee. The bee would light on a flower and it would sink down deep into the flower and it would extract all the pollen that it could carry. It went in empty every time and came out full.
And H. P. Barker said. So it is with people who approach the Bible. There are those who just flutter from lovely sermon to lovely sermon, from class to class, fluttering here, fluttering there, bringing nothing and gaining nothing but a nice feeling.
Then there are the spiritual botanists who take reams of notes who are trying to make sure that all the vowel pointings are correct but they don't have the capacity to draw anything out of the flowers, its pure academics.
Then there are the spiritual bees who draw out of every precious flower all that is there to make the honey that makes them so blessed to those around them.
Which are you?
You can come to this church everytime the doors are open and flit from class to class, Bible study to Bible study, seminar to seminar, book to book, flipping your little pretty wings, never changing. Or you can be a botanist; some of you have enough notebooks to sink a small battleship. Or you can be a bee coming in empty and going out full and turning it into the honey that makes life sweet. Which are you? The sword is there, it's available. Are you using it?
Let's pray together.