Ephesians 6

It's important because Jesus urged us to take heed both how we hear and what we hear.

But it's also very important because we need to heed Paul's appeal in Ephesians 6:18-20.

Right after his teaching on the Christian spiritual armor, he urges the Ephesians to pray for preachers and to pray for their preaching.

When students begin courses on preaching at seminary or theological college, their teachers often give them a preaching grid by which they can assess each other as they listen.

[clapping] And he expects more out of you.

Wield the two-edged sword, Ephesians 6 says, and that sword is the Word of God.

Amen.

You use it.

And it's still while I'm relatively young.

Ephesians 6, 1 to 20.

Children.

What you do in union with the master is obey your parents, for this is right.

Cyprian tells his brother Cornelius, Christians prepare themselves through fasting, vigils, and prayers in common as heavenly weapons and spiritual defense in the martyrdom they are called to live.

My friends, that's exactly what Paul talks about in spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6.

We receive the panoplia, the full armor of God.

Because the decisive Christian battle, we all try to glamorize it and sensationalize it.

And lastly, in the Christian work ethic, work is to be done as if the boss was the Lord Himself.

It says in Colossians chapter 3 and Ephesians 6 that we're to work as unto the Lord and not men.

So the Christian faith does not sanctify the kind of attitude we're seeing in our own country toward work.

Years ago, this message may have seemed a bit obscure.

He's an author, he's a pastor, podcaster, and his book, Your Story Has a Villain: Identify Spiritual Warfare and Learn How to Defeat the Enemy.

And I wish we had a whole nother hour, because I feel like we're just getting started, but let's tackle with this last segment, and especially in thinking of the person who still feels afraid of the enemy, how do we overcome in battle? How do we, how do we stand in faith with the weapons of our warfare, Ephesians 6? Just give us kind of the strategy for overcoming when we're under fire.

Yeah, okay, I'm gonna do this really quick, because it, it is directly from Ephesians 6, and so, uh, you know, I'd encourage anyone to open the, open the word, uh, later and just kind of work through this.

But it, it starts in verse 14 with the belt of truth.

And so the belt, you know, holds everything together.

So, so our faith is what protects us.

Our belief in God is what protects us from the enemy.

And if all it was here in Ephesians 6, that would be one thing, but in 1 Peter 5 he says, "Your enemy, the devil, prowls l- a- around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

We don't fight, like physically fight them.

It has to happen inside you, okay? Anyway, and I read from Ephesians 6, and I read from 2 Corinthians 10, and I explained those things to you, okay? I didn't do Ephesians 6 last, in that last part.

I did it previous, earlier.

But I mean, th- th- that's, they say the same thing, okay? [laughs] Paul said the same thing to the Ephesians that he said to the Corinthians.

All right? So whatever I said about 2 Corinthians 10, same thing applies for, for Ephesians 6.

Understand that, all right? And so let's be careful with this.

Let's just understand that we're, we're not seeing this correctly, okay? If you are healthy in your psycho-emotional health, which you can become, none of this stuff happens to healthy people.

Does that make sense to anybody? Yes, you can clap for that, okay? [audience applauds] You want deliverance from all that stuff? Muscle up in here.

And it's Colossians 1.

It's Ephesians 6.

And so looking at Pauline terminology— for these demonic entities.

And there's a context that Paul is drawing from, and he's drawing from an Old Testament understanding of the sons of God.