Finally,
my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the
whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil. 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. 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. Ephesians 6:10-13 NKJV
Today
being Super Bowl Sunday, I suppose it seems appropriate to write a football
themed article. While watching this past
week’s State of the Union address, like many of you it was readily apparent to
me that some in this country are just looking for an excuse to spew hate and
discontent with little or no justification whatsoever. Seeing this level of hatred, and looking
forward to the Super Bowl, my mind being what it is could not help but put the
two together and think of an interesting correlation between football and what
we can expect from Satan as the Church age approaches its end.
Let
me attempt to explain what I am thinking here.
If you follow football at all you are certainly familiar with how the
game changes as you approach the last minutes of the game. In football, not only does the play calling
get more aggressive in the fourth quarter, we normally see the two minute
offense utilized, where the team that is behind stops using the huddle to call
plays and does whatever it can to speed up the game and try to catch the other
team off guard. To the uninitiated, what happens on the field in the last
minutes looks like total confusion as two teams pull out all the stops and try
anything and everything in order to win the game. In other words, if you are
behind, the closer you get to the end, tactics change in order to try and pull
out a win.
Consider
if you will, that if we are approaching the end of this age as many believe,
then certainly Satan knows that as well. If we think seriously about it, we
should readily admit Satan probably knows the Bible a lot better than we do.
This is, of course, the individual who tempted Jesus by using scripture to
justify his arguments. There is no question in my mind that Satan is fully
aware that his time is running short, so it should be easy to believe that he
will change his tactics the closer we get to the end. He will do whatever he
can to take as many down with him as he can. So as believers, is it too much to
expect that attacks on believers will increase in frequency and severity?
Knowing
this, I thought it might be appropriate to look closer at what Paul had to say
to us in the book of Ephesians about our fight against Satan and his forces of
darkness. In this passage, Paul outlines all we need to know about defending
ourselves from these attacks. Here we
see that Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus and explaining God's purpose
for the church, as well as outlining what God expects from His people. God
knows what we can expect from Satan, so He goes to great lengths here to teach
us how to defend ourselves. In verse ten Paul's tells us that our strength is
from the Lord, and it is His strength that will fight our battles for us. How
often do we fail because we think we can fight our own battles rather than let
God do it for us?
Paul
then tells us that we need to "put on the full armor of God". Paul's point here is that to be successful we
need to wear the whole suit. It may sound funny, but I remember something that
happened when I was playing football in college back in the dark ages. I was a
receiver, technically in that particular offense called a split end, and my job
was to catch balls over the middle of the field rather than out by the
sidelines. I had missed a few balls that were over my head, and I decided that
it was my shoulder pads that were hindering my ability to stretch my arms as
high as they could go. So I decided a little modification was in order, and
after taking some of the "excess" padding off, I could then catch the
passes that had up till then been a little out of my reach. All was well and
good until the inevitable collision occurred which convinced me that removing
part of my protection was a really bad idea. This is Paul's point. To succeed
in defending ourselves from the "wiles" of the devil, (or
tactics), we need to put on the complete armor leaving nothing off. Why?
The
answer to that can be found in verse twelve where he tells us we need to do
this because of who and what we are facing. He tells us our struggle is not “against
flesh and blood". You see, if it was, we would probably only need
to be defended from our front where an attack by a person would probably come
from. But we are facing a fight from two fronts; rulers, forces, and powers of
darkness of this world, and spiritual forces of wickedness from the heavenly
places. So there are at least two fronts to defend ourselves from, and these
attacks can come from any direction. There is no way we are capable to defend
ourselves in this kind of war. We need to put on the complete armor God has
provided, and let Him do the fighting for us.
If we do this, we are told in verse thirteen that we will be able to
stand, and not be defeated in that “evil” day.
I
think it is entirely possible that the events we are seeing not only in this
country, but around the world are a sign that we are in the “fourth quarter”
where we see Satan trying anything and everything to try and win the “game”. As disturbing as it is to watch our own politicians
and citizens exhibit what can only be described as outright hatred, that could
truly only come from Satan, how reassuring it is for us to know that our
strength comes from the Lord and our victory is already won. We can literally watch as God does our
fighting for us and stand firm knowing that our deliverance, the rapture of the
Church, is but moments away.
Keep
watching.
