Married Like Jesus -- Fighting the Right Enemy

Good morning to all of you who are outside under the tent and inside here or joining us at home. I have a couple of reminders before I bring us to the sermon.

We have a congregational meeting immediately following our service today. If you're a member at Christ the King, we ask if you'd be willing to stay after. We're going to meet under the tent. That'll be a time for us to vote on new elder candidates and that'll last from 10:30 to 10:50. If you're joining us online, you have to be present to actually be able to vote, so you can still make it if you want to join us after our service.

A couple other things: we're going to be starting back in two indoor services on June 6 in two weeks. We have not had an opportunity to follow-up on Governor Cooper's recommendations as a group of elders. Our elder meeting this past week was delayed a week, and so we will be following up on how and when we're going to be enacting those policies for Governor Cooper moving forward. I just want to keep you up to date on that as well.

Let me pray for us before we turn to God's word. Lord, we pray Father. We thank you for your word. It is like nothing else that we read. Father, these are not just words on a page. They are living words that come from you. We pray Father that you would give us this morning hearts to hear, minds to understand, and wills that are soft and willing to obey you. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Do You Know We Are at War?

Question for you this morning: Do you know that we are at war? Now, that's a strange question to start a sermon with, but I want to think with you about the history of modern warfare.

My grandparents' generation fought World War Two, and everybody knew that we were at war. There were rations. There were tire drives. An entire generation of women who had stayed at home previously went to work in factories. There was this war effort that meant everybody not only knew we were at war, but was involved.

My parents' generation fought the Vietnam War, which was a very unpopular war. There were demonstrations. There were draft dodgers. But everybody knew we were at war. It was unpopular, but everybody knew.

When I was in college, we had the first Persian Gulf War with General Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf. I remember staying up in our dorm rooms with friends and asking, what's going to happen? Is this going to end up with us having a draft again? Is this going to be another Vietnam? It was another war, and yet it was a different war. It was a war where a lot of people in the country, it didn't seem to affect them personally.

And that's only increased over the last several decades where we've had the war on terror, war in Afghanistan, another Persian Gulf War. And this is only going to continue as we have smart weapons and drones and increasingly, we're a country that doesn't know where we're at war. If I ask the average American citizen, where is US military personnel involved in active skirmishes? Most people couldn't tell you.

And I'm afraid that the same thing is true for Christians. Many Christians don't act as if we know we're at war. That's what our passage is about this morning.

We're going to look at Ephesians chapter six, verses 10 through 20. This is the last message in our series on Married Like Jesus. And as is our custom, we like to read out loud together. So if you would join your voices with me this morning, we're going to read together out loud: Ephesians chapter six, verses 10 through 20.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil 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 firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. — Ephesians 6:10-20

We've been doing a series on "Married Like Jesus," which has been both about earthly marriages but also about the connections and relationships that we have in the body of Christ. This is a series that's been for all of our church—married or unmarried—and this is the final one. I want to think this morning with you about knowing these two things in our heart of hearts: knowing that we are at war and understanding our real enemy. Because the tendency we have is to fight the wrong enemies.

I want to read you this. This is from a book called After the Honeymoon by Dan Weil, and you're going to have to listen closely and pay attention to this, but this is meant to be a funny illustration. Here it goes:

Paul married Alice, and Alice gets loud at parties. Paul is shy and hates that. But if Paul had married Susan, he and Susan would have gotten into a fight before they even got to the party. That's because Paul is always late, and Susan hates to be kept waiting. She would feel taken for granted, which she's very sensitive about. Paul would see her complaining about this as an attempt to dominate him, which he's very sensitive about.

Now, if Paul had married Gail, they wouldn't have even gone to the party because they would still be upset about an argument they had the day before about him not helping out around the house. To Gail, when Paul doesn't help, she feels abandoned. She's very sensitive about that. To Paul, Gail's complaining is an attempted domination, which he is sensitive about.

Now, the same is true about Alice. If she'd married Steve, she would have had the opposite problem because Steve gets drunk at parties, and she would get so angry at his drinking that they would get into a fight about it. Now, if Alice had married Lou, on the other hand, she and Lou would have enjoyed the party, but when they got home, the trouble would start because Lou wanted physical intimacy—because he always wants physical intimacy when he wants to feel closer—but physical intimacy is something Alice only wants when she already feels close.

I know this is a ridiculous illustration from a book, but do you understand his point? To choose a partner is always to choose a particular set of problems. There's no problem-free person in this world. There's no sin-free person in this world. We speak of a confession of sin as part of our worship. We talk about people bruised and broken by the fall. We are all of us fallen, broken people. There's nobody out there for friendship, for marriage, for a roommate that's not marred and broken in this way.

And here's what's confusing about that: because our tendency then is to look at other people as our enemies, to demonize other people. My wife is studying in a counseling program, moving toward getting her license in marriage and family therapy, and she's used this phrase to talk about marriage. She says what attracts couples initially ends up over time being something that they attack each other over. So, for example, if you were attracted to a spouse because that person was so even keel at the very beginning, that can become an irritant. Later on you're like, "You're so even keel, and I can't ever get a reaction out of you." Or if you're attracted to someone because they were so fun and free and so different from your family, over time, you may find that to be an irritant where you're like, "I'm so annoyed with you. Can you ever be serious?"

Do you see what happens to us? The things that attract us, my wife says, often become the things that we attack each other over. In other words, it's easy to make the wrong person the enemy, or rather to demonize people.

Our Real Enemy

Now, we read in this passage that Paul tells us our real battle is with a real enemy. He says this:

Our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces in all the heavenly places. — Ephesians 6:12

Like I said at the beginning, maybe you're not aware of it, but there's a war going on. There's a battle going on. There is a cosmic battle going on for the soul of every person on this planet. And that's not preacher hyperbole. That's Scripture.

Is that so hard for you to believe? If you've not been in the church before, if you're not very familiar with Christian faith, that may be kind of jolting to you. But I don't think that's a naive statement at all. Look at the systems of evil. That's not a naive thing for Christians to believe. Look at all the damage and destruction in our world right now. Is it really that hard to believe there are spiritual forces at work? Is that hard for us? And that should be obvious for us.

When we're unaware of spiritual forces at work, the tendency is always to demonize other people. We do this in a bunch of ways. Devalue, degrade, detach, dehumanize, dissect—all D words. That's what we do with other people. We move away from them.

I know some of you probably loved that Netflix movie that came out about a year ago called The Marriage Story, with Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. It's about the slow breakup of a marriage and it's brutal to watch. But honestly, it's nothing compared to what we've seen in the American church this year. We've watched incredible breakup and destruction in the American church this year.

I would say it this way: it's like the body of Christ has a spiritual autoimmune disorder. An autoimmune disorder is when the white blood cells of the body attack the body. There's infighting. The body is at war with itself. And haven't we watched this over and over in the body of Christ this year? All the arguments about how we handle coronavirus and whether it's real. All the arguing over politics, all the reshuffling of people within the body of Christ. All the arguing about race and about justice. We've watched the body of Christ attack itself this year and what have we seen? Devalue, dehumanize, dissect. It's been hard to watch. Unfriending. People unable and unwilling to even have conversations with one another over these things.

This isn't specific to CTK. I'll tell you this—regularly, every other week with a group of pastors, and one of the regular conversations is that one or the other is tempted to quit. It's so discouraging. I read a statistic that twenty percent of pastors will leave the ministry this year. Another twenty percent will be let go by their churches. The body of Christ is at war with itself. This is a crisis for us and what are we doing? We're fighting the wrong enemy. Are we aware? We're fighting ourselves. We have an autoimmune disorder in the body of Christ. This is a big deal for us.

Know Your True Enemy

It's really important that we know who our enemy is, that we're at war, and how he is at work in the world. I want to speak this morning briefly about Satan and unseen spiritual forces.

If you're not a Christian, if you haven't identified yourself with Jesus, you are in incredible danger. There is no protection for you. There is no armor of God for you that we're to read about in this passage. There are spiritual forces in this world. There is a real sentient being, Satan, who seeks your destruction and there is no protection for you apart from Jesus Christ.

I think it wouldn't be a great deal of denial to admit that there's a war going on. Why do you think we love movies that have monsters and zombies and superheroes in them? It represents something about us that we know on a subconscious level throughout the world—that there's a war, and there's a war that's larger than just people. It's happening in our universe and what you and I need is a king on the throne who has the ability to defeat evil.

This is what we celebrate this very day. David mentioned earlier—this is Pentecost Sunday—and we just rewind the last days of Jesus' life: his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead three days later, his ascension into heaven. His ascension to heaven was him taking the throne, but Pentecost Sunday was the day he sent his spirit and poured it out on the early church, and it's still poured out on Christians. This is the hope for protection and help that we have as people of God. We have a king who's won. We know that there's a battle going on but we already know the outcome of the war. Isn't that right?

This is good news to us. In Jesus, only in Jesus is there safety. Here's the question: Are you with him or not? Are you in him or not? Are you for him or not?

For those in Christ, God has provided not only victory in the future but also present ways of dealing with spiritual attack, and that's what I want us to look at this morning.

If you know that there's a real war going on with a real enemy, then you need to know what are his tactics. This passage about the armor of God—if you read it carefully—actually tells you the weapons of the enemy. I was in a Bible study in high school and my Bible study leader had this little acronym for this: Belt, breastplate, booties or boots, bonnet, sword, shield—you've already won it.

Paul tells us to fasten on the belt of truth. Why would we need a belt of truth? Well, because we are people, one of the enemy's greatest weapons against us is self-deceit. We are so prone to deceive ourselves. We're so prone to be blind to our own predispositions. One of the last authorities we ever doubt is self. We're so self-trusting. We need the belt of truth. We need a truth that's beyond us.

The Armor of God

Second, Paul tells us to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Now, this is a little confusing. The Bible speaks of the righteousness of Christ—that a Christian is clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And that refers to how God deals with us. He deals with us on the basis of what a lot of theologians call an alien righteousness. That's a righteousness that is not coming from within you. It comes from outside of you and God imputes that to you. He counts it as yours. But that's not what is being talked about in this passage.

What's being talked about in this passage is that righteousness which is Christ's—forming something in your character. You becoming a person of righteousness. Now, I know the word righteous is not one we use, but think about the opposite of wrongness. Righteousness is the character of Christ forming in your character over time. You growing more and more sanctified.

If you think about a breastplate, it covers over your internal organs, your vital organs. And this breastplate of righteousness is more and more becoming a person who's like Jesus—more and more growing in holiness and sanctification in your life. And what this means is, if there are areas that are uncovered in you, those are areas which are vulnerable and weak. Whatever is uncovered in your life is vulnerable. Put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Third, as shoes for your feet, what does it say?

Having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

I love this visual of shoes. Picture a soldier wearing some high-end running shoes—Hokas, Brooks, whatever you like. Picture this soldier putting on high-end running shoes, ready to quickly deal with division. The gospel of peace. Ready to deal with reconciliation.

I think the bride of Christ this past year looks like it's wearing high-heeled shoes, not running shoes. We have not been fast to deal with division. We've been slow to deal with division. Picture somebody running in high-heeled shoes—it doesn't work. You can't go very fast, right? This is being a person who quickly goes to make things right.

I've heard from some people with regard to our church and our vision. "I'm tired of CTK dealing with racism and that being something that y'all are talking about all the time. That feels so divisive." Let me just speak to that briefly. We're not trying to create division. We're calling out what's been a centuries and centuries-long division in the church. That's why we're talking about that so much.

Fourth, Paul tells us to put on the helmet of salvation. The helmet protects the brain, your thinking. The picture here is a person who lets the knowledge of their salvation dominate the way that they think about life.

Why would we need that? Because we're prone to the attacks of the enemy who uses our thought life against us. Beats us up over our past failures. Allows us to go down the road of comparison. Have you ever played this game? "I wish I had gifts like that person. I'm not as... I just don't matter here in the body. I'm not that important like this other person." Our thought life is one of the things that we need to continually say, "Lord, we need this to be challenged and brought to you. We want it more and more to take every thought captive, to bring it to Christ." This is a person whose thinking is fixed on who they are in Christ. That's what defines them.

Fifth, take up the shield of faith. In contrast with the helmet—the helmet is your defense against accusations and condemnations of the enemy, internal—the shield of faith is a pick. You get this picture of the flaming arrows, right? It says the flaming arrows of the enemy coming at you.

Flaming arrows are a different type of temptation. Have you ever had those thoughts where you're like, "I have never struggled with that before. Where did that thought come from?" Thoughts of self-pity or self-destruction. Thoughts with temptation with sins that you've never struggled with before. Those are flaming arrows of the evil one coming at you.

The shield of faith says, "Oh yes, I have a real enemy. I'm at war. I need to remember this."

These are the temptations that come from without us. And finally, take up the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. I know I've heard some people talk about this as an offensive weapon, but I think this is a defensive weapon. This is taking up God's word. God's word being rooted in God's word is one of the best defenses we have against the enemy.

We are people who are convinced we're right about everything. One of the good things about being a person who's in this book regularly, whose life is saturated with this book regularly, is that God's word can correct you. Second Timothy 3 tells us that God's word is useful for correcting and training us in righteousness. We're people who get off track. We need a God, and we know we're worshiping the real God when we have a God who can contradict us, who can tell us that we're wrong.

So here are the weapons of the enemy: self-deceit, uncovered parts of your life, things you haven't dealt with, division, accusation, condemnation, temptation, self-trust, blindness. And you need to play defense. Put on the armor of God. And how do you do this? The last part of this passage: pray yourself into it. Pray one another into this.

Fighting Together

How do you fight the enemy? First, together. All this language about the armor of God is really secondary to a larger point. What's being described here is not an individual soldier but a group of soldiers—a Roman legion. All the "yous" in this are "y'alls." This is not written to a singular person.

I remember reading this growing up and I thought these were all singular—things that you were to do by yourself. But what's being pictured here is the Roman Legion. A Roman Legion, a group of Roman soldiers, were known throughout the world for their group fighting techniques—their ability to stack shields on top of one another in order to create a defense. Their strongest defense was one another. Their strongest armor that they had was the strength of the unit.

I think this is really powerful for us because here's the problem: we who are tempted to make other people the enemy have to realize that other people are some of the greatest assets that we have. When we're tempted to compare ourselves, we're tempted toward isolation and distrust. We're tempted to just withdraw from the body of Christ. We're actually giving our enemy room to attack us. A single soldier can be picked off. But fighting together—this is where our strength is.

Here's how you fight. Here's my simple tool for you today. I gave a tool every week in this series. Here's my last one. Really hard to understand, but this is sophisticated: pray together.

Listen to Paul in verses 18 through 20:

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 Lord's people. Pray also for me that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I may fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should. — Ephesians 6:18-20

Do you hear how many times he's asking for them to pray?

Here's a statistic for you: while fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce and seventy-eight percent of second marriages end in divorce, less than one percent of couples who pray together regularly in their marriages end in divorce. Less than one percent. Isn't that crazy?

My wife, Susan, did a whole research paper around this thing and pulled lots of people and looked into all this, and it was amazing the number of couples who were like, "We know we should pray. We don't." But knowing and putting this into practice are two different things.

Here's why you should pray together. I'm going to focus this on marriages, but this applies to every friendship, every relationship, every roommate relationship.

Prayer keeps you humbled in front of God and your spouse. Just the very posture of bowing your heads together says, "There is a higher authority than me in this marriage. I'm submitting myself to someone bigger than me."

Prayer removes you from continuing the cycle of hurting each other. When you bow your heads and pray together, it takes you out of a place of accusation. It takes you out of a place of anger at one another and takes you before the throne of God.

Prayer speaks your heart language. One of the great things about praying—we read this throughout all the Psalms—David just opening his heart up to the Lord. It's speaking your heart language before the Lord. When you pray out loud with another person, you're allowing God and that other person to enter into your emotions with you.

Prayer unites us.

When you join hands, it's very symbolic of what you're doing when you come together and pray with another person. You're saying, we're together before God. The two of us coming together. Prayer breeds appreciation. When you thank God for the blessings in your life and you put your spouse on that list—I mean, no matter how mad you are at them, it's really hard to stay mad at someone you're praying for. When you pray for that person, you're saying, "Oh yeah, this person is a gift from God to me."

Prayer is an invitation to change. When you pray before God, you're opening yourself up to say, "God, you can have your way here. I don't even know what to pray right now, but Lord, I'm asking you to do something here. And I'm open to what you have to do in me."

Prayer removes selfishness. Your prayers may be about you and your problems, but as you articulate those things out loud—"God, I really need you to do this"—it allows God to sift those things in your life. It allows him to say, "Well, this is what's really important to me for you right now. I may hold off on that for you because I'm actually about something bigger in your life."

Finally, prayer gives you hope. When our hearts are united together in prayer, we know that God hears us. He may answer us—it may not be in ways we wanted him to—but he hears and responds to us.

Getting Started with Prayer

If I can give you some advice on how to pray, if you want to start this as a pattern in your marriage, here are a couple of rules: One, keep it short. Second, pick a time that you think will work. Three, when you miss a day or a week, just start over again. Keep at it. Keep trying.

I know that many of you may feel a sense of, "Yeah, I know we should do this. I know I should do this," but you may not feel equipped to do this. You may feel like, "I don't know how to pray out loud. I don't know how to pray with other people." Here's where I want to encourage you and help you learn to pray: join our prayer ministry.

We have a really dynamic prayer ministry in our church, but it's really small. A number of us have been praying with another church for years, and it's only picked up the pace during the last year, during the pandemic. So we have a prayer meeting with Mount Pleasant Worship and Outreach Center, a sister church in Southeast Raleigh. We pray together on Wednesday mornings, 5:30 AM to 6:00 AM, and then Sunday mornings, 8:00 to 8:30 AM. Both of them are on Zoom calls. They used to be twice a month, but now it's every week. We did a fast together the first couple weeks of this year, and it was incredible. I want to invite and welcome you into that. We're taking next Sunday off because it's Memorial Day weekend, but we'll be back after that, all summer. I want to encourage you to step into learning to pray together. It's been powerful to our church and our leaders as we've partnered with this congregation who has over years built such a faithful prayer ministry.

In fact, these past couple weeks, our staff got together with Pastor Apostle Phil Walker, who's the pastor of that church. He's been there for twenty-seven years, and he told us the history of that church. They're on Sawyer Road in Southeast Raleigh. Together, they prayed over a building that was falling down twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five of them raised money and built the little building that they're in now. They've continued praying for that block, and over the years, God has given them all the properties on both sides of that street. They're in the middle of a $135 million building initiative to build low-income housing on both sides of that block. How did that happen? That was prayed into existence. This is a little tiny congregation, much smaller than CTK, and yet the faithfulness of their prayers over years has been incredible to watch. If you want to be blessed, if you want to be encouraged in the Lord, I just want to invite you into that. It's been such an incredible place for me—just a personal testimony this morning. I want to invite you into that.

Prayer as the Engine Room of the Church

I want us, and I've said this about a hundred times from the pulpit, but I want to say this again: my longing as your pastor is that prayer would be the engine room of our church. And it hasn't been that. In general, we're a very self-trusting congregation. We have a lot of gifted people, a lot of education and resources. We know what to do, right? We've got it. And the reality is we don't got it. We desperately need to be people who are led by the Spirit, not leading the Spirit—who are listening to God, not telling him what to do, but following him.

I long for our church to be a praying church. My challenge to you is that every time you get together with somebody else from our church, for any length of time—whether you're on a play date or playing tennis—that you pray together this year. Even just a minute, but joining hearts before the Lord. Asking the Spirit to be at work. You don't know what to pray? Ask him what to pray.

Let me close with this. A little boy one day was trying to pick up a big rock in his backyard. His dad was doing yard work nearby, watching his son do this. The little boy says, "Dad, it's too heavy." The dad says, "Son, you can do it." The boy tries again. He says, "Dad, I can't do it. It's too heavy." The father insists again, "You can do it. I know you can." He tries a third time. "Dad, I'm serious. I can't pick it up. It's too heavy." And then the dad says, "Well, here's why. You need to use all your strength." The boy says, "Dad, I am. I'm using all my strength. It's too heavy for me." The father says, "Son, you're not using all your strength." The boy asks, "Dad, why do you keep telling me I'm not using all my strength? It's too heavy. I know you're not using all your strength because you haven't asked me yet."

Brothers and sisters, look to the Lord. There's a real battle going on. There's a real enemy who wants to destroy you, and God longs to pour more of himself into you and into your relationships. Will we ask? Will we go to him?

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for this word this morning. We thank you that you're at work all the time in this world, and yet Father, we don't have because we don't ask. Lord, we come to you this morning as weak and foolish people who are prone to self-trust and pride and independence and isolation. We think we've got it or we don't have it. Lord, we need more of you and more of your strength and power poured out in us. Lord, we beg of you this morning. Lord, teach us to be a praying people. Lord, help us as a congregation to put on the full armor of God together. Help us to believe that our greatest strength is with your people. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.