For the Sunday school, we're doing the armor of God and and
in this particular class, we're going to be looking at the the
shield of faith and this is an interesting one.
And we've we normally apparently had had slides which I did not
get prepared. I, I have been ill and kind of
under the weather for a period of time and that's a lousy
excuse, but that's kind of what I'm sticking to other than
technology isn't my gig. So I'm not real good at the
slides, but we have had some great discussions on the the
different elements of the armor. And one of them that I was
recalling was when Pastor Mike talked about the breastplate of
righteousness and putting on this breastplate.
Sometimes we hear in the scripture talking about the
breastplate of faith as well. So this isn't a piece of armor
that would have been worn A breastplate protecting the
individual. Also, you would have seen other
items such as shodding of this shoe or however, your version of
the Bible talks about putting on the on the your feet, the the
gospel piece and and so forth. And then even prior to that, we,
we look at these various the belt of truth and so forth.
So when you look at a soldier, when you look at today somebody
in the military or whatever these kind of items they have on
and you look at them and you say, oh, they're soldiers or
they are, they are fighters, warriors, or however you want to
define them. You recognize them by the gear
that they they have on right now.
Today we start a an element such as the shield that you're, you
don't always wear that as a soldier.
It's something you take up. And and I'm going to cover that
a little bit in my my meager notes here.
But also, I'm going to be reading a lot of Scripture, and
I may ask for some assistance in doing that, just to change up
the pattern of reading. I'm feeling really good, but I'm
not sounding really good. I still got all that nice stuff
in my lungs and I, I fear that it may distract.
So please overlook that a little if you can.
And I think we'll get through this just fine.
I want to just open and start by saying, yeah, you know what?
We cannot hope to stand against or up or before Satan.
I'm looking out here and I'm seeing people and, and I'm
making this assumption that we are all regenerated, we're all
believers and we are in a walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. And I am stating the fact that
we cannot hope to stand against and be or stand before Satan.
Paul's going to give us some imperatives direction, but we
can't do this in our own strength, OK, that's the key.
We can't do this in our own strength.
We're told to stand forth and and do this and put on this
armor, but it will not be on our own strength, not even for a
moment. So let's take a look here real
quick. I'm going to flip to Acts 1911.
So this time I remembered there the Bible comes alive when you
get the right glasses on. It's just amazes Acts 19 and I'm
looking at roughly 11 through 20.
Well, this is an odd, odd verse and bear with it because we have
a a church, a new church and and a lot of things going on with
the the gospel of Jesus Christ and all of that.
And so starting in verse 11, it says and God was doing
extraordinary miracles by the hand of Paul.
So the clothes or the aprons were even carried from his body
to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits
went out. But also some of the Jewish
exorcist who went from place to place, attempting to invoke over
those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus
saying I am poor. I implore you by Jesus whom Paul
preaches. Verse 14.
Now the seven sons of one name Skiva, a Jewish chief priest.
They were doing this, the seven sons, and the evil spirit
answered and said to them, I recognize Jesus and I know about
Paul. Who are you and the man in whom
the evil spirit, who and whom was the evil spirit, leaped on
them, subdued them, all of them, and utterly prevailed against
them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.
And this became known to all, both Jews and Greeks, who lived
in emphasis, and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the
Lord Jesus was being magnified. That was an attempt to take on
the evil spirits in your own power.
These people, they weren't followers of Christ.
They went in there and they were trying to X.
What do you call it? You know, an exorcist.
Get rid of these demons out of this people.
This is a wealthy thing. If we can do this, we're seeing
it happen with Paul and we're seeing it happen with others and
that are apostles and we're like this, I want in on this.
They got in many versions here, they got mastered by the demons.
They they severely got brutalized and if you were to
watch this in the news you would see this horrific bloodied
people coming out of a house, seven of them 7 coming out beat
up and naked. Now how does that happen?
It had to been chaos and crippling in there.
The demon definitely master the the seven boys.
So we start with that just knowing that we cannot do this
alone when we will start looking at this introduction of
Ephesians and chapter 6 of Ephesians and 10 through 16
again. It was kind of a repeat of what
we've been doing, but it worry it warrants a quick look at it.
So if you're turning to Ephesians 6 in just a few
seconds here, OK, in Ephesians 6 and I want to
look at starting at 10. Just just hitting this
highlighting this. By the way, if you're wondering
if this doesn't match your versions, the Bible I'm reading
out of it happens to be the the legacy standard Bible one.
We probably don't hear too much in churches right yet, but it's
it's kind of developed out of the of the 1995 new American
standard and the ESVA little bit.
So you're going to find very similar to that.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and be and in the might of his
strength put on the armor of God so that you will be able to
stand firm against the schemes of the devil and we were putting
on the armor of God. This is that recognization that
I started with talking about. When you look at a soldier and
you look what do they got on that makes them identify as as
as a soldier or as a warrior. And verse 12 says, for our
struggle is not against flesh and blood.
Our struggle isn't against anybody in here, but it's
against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world
forces of the darkness, against the spiritual forces of
wickedness in the heavenly places.
Therefore take up the full armor of God as you will be able to
resist the evil day and have done everything to stand firm.
These are imperatives. These are things that Paul is
saying that we must do they they're an imperative and
especially in the Greek language, it's it's a must do,
not a suggestive. It's a good thing to have this
and you won't have as much trouble.
He's saying, no, put them on. And then we get into this, this
area here where verse 14, he's going to say, stand firm.
Having girded your loins with truth and having put on the
breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
the preparation of the gospel of peace, in addition to all,
having taken up the shield of faith with which you will be
able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil. 1
Some will say the wicked one also received the helmet of
salvation, the sword. And we're going to talk about
that more in the week or two to come.
But I want to point out to you as we look at this and we're
putting on these items and we're identified now, but now we're
starting to use Paul changes from going from that word into a
new word. And it's take on, not put on,
but take on or or put in your hand, so to speak, a
distinguishingness of weapons. So we're, we're looking like a
soldier. But now we are taking with that
the, the, the, the shield of faith and, and next week or so
we'll look at the sword and that they're going to fly up here.
So if you seem to me fling into my arms and all that, it's not
like I'm you know, it's it's not the I forgot the name.
When, when you have the D TS, you know what I'm talking about.
It's not all that guys. It's it's an annoying fly that
has found me. So that's the introduction, the
physical analogy or or oh, what's what's the other word is
analogy, and you make a reference to something.
It's called A at any rate, let's use an analogy until I think of
that word. But it was mentioned that this
shield that was used by the Romans, it's like about a four
foot tall and it's about 2 1/2 feet.
It is something if it were the size of this podium that you
could hide behind and as Pastor Mike talked about it and that
study school lesson, several of us could line up and get down
behind it and we and there was a name for that.
You can know the the yeah, failings.
So this is a a good name to say it's, it's a big role of these
and we're protected. And so it's defensive because
it's going to stop things from hitting us, but it's also very
offensive in that we can do a big rush towards the opposing
people, the other side and gain ground, right?
All right. Paul's using this because of the
people of the day that he's preaching to in, in this case,
to the Church of emphasis, Ephesus.
They would understand that. They would know that completely.
Excuse me, That's another one of those great things of recovery
is you, you need more water than you did when you were sick.
So there it is lying out there in front of us.
This these Shields. And we, we, we need to have
this. But we're talking about the the
shield of faith. All right?
This isn't a Roman shield. This is a spiritual nest that
we're going to learn a little about today.
And this is going to be more of where we need to be in our
hearts and in our walk as Christians than just physically
picking up a, a shield and, and that so I want to go to another
quick reference. Can somebody find First Samuel
And it'll be chapter 10. And then and then when you get
there, look for verse 21 B. It'll be the second-half.
You'll see kind of where it where it should start.
But while you're doing that, and I'll look to see who who was
successful in finding that. I'm going to go to first Samuel
as well, but I'm going to look over in in chapter 17.
So you're looking for chapter 10, verse 21.
B Hang on one second, Corey. And I'm and I'm going to have
you read that because I want to make a point when you say that,
what did I say? First Samuel 17 for myself and
here we go. You know, this always works out
easier when you're at home and you're at your desk and, and
everything's kind of laid out. And, and my wife, bless her, she
is a good support to say the least.
She did all my cross references. She she does all of this stuff.
Guys, I'm so blessed. And I tell you that today
because right, right now our marriage, everything's going
great, right? I can tell you times when I
might not have said that to you guys because, and we're going to
get into that when we start talking more about these darts
because those are the darts that I'm getting pelted with now and
again. All right.
So, Corey, if you would read that first Samuel, I think I
said 10 and starting with 21, the second-half there, we're
talking about King Saul. Guys, go ahead.
Yeah, He couldn't be found. Is that the next verse tells us
where he was. What was he doing where he
couldn't find this guy? Yeah.
So here's our leader that we just got by lot.
And of course, you read Proverbs.
Well, when lots are chosen, we pick, you know, here it is.
Oh, OK. But God determines the outcome
of the lot. Well, the outcome of this lot is
Saul. And Saul is not a man of my
height. He happens to be an
extraordinarily taller man, a man who I don't say his height,
but as you look, he's probably in the range of seven feet.
What do you think? 7 feet He he could be a little
shorter, but none the less, when you're looking at that group of
people, 7 feet is they describe it as he's head and a shoulder
above everybody and he's hiding in the baggage.
So they run after him like get him out of there because he's
our leader. You know, we can't have the
leader hiding in baggage. So this is what starts it.
I go to chapter 17, so flip a few pages and and this is going
to be familiar because we are going to be talking about David,
who happens to be a little, a little shepherd boy.
And I say Lil, He's he's in stature.
He's not a very big guy. And standing next to Saul, he
is, yeah, noticeably. And, and so let me tell you,
when I graduated from MBTS and, and the seminary there, the
president of that seminary is Jason Allen.
And he is a very tall man, very tall man.
And I want to say that he's, and I look out there and I and I see
Daniel Danny there. He's 6 foot 5.
That's tall. And this and this president is
about that height. Maybe he's 66.
He's tall and he stands next to you.
You know it. Well, Saul is like Shaq O'Neal,
you know, he's big. So we get him out of the
baggage. We're here.
He's up against the Philistines. And David shows up there and
David has a heart for God and is like listening to what's going
on a young boy. And in verse 36, David's talking
about this out to to them. Whoa, whoa, you know, come on
David, what do you got here? He says your servant has struck
down both the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised fellas,
Philistine will be like one of them, since he has reproached
the battle lines of the living God.
And David said, Yahweh, who delivered me from the hand of
the lion and from the hand of the bear, he will deliver me
from the hand of the Philistine. And Paul said, or Paul, I'm
sorry, Saul has said to David, go and may Yahweh be with you.
Then Saul clothed David with his robes, A bronze helmet on his
head, and clothed him with armor.
And David girded his sword over his armor and tried to walk, for
he did not, for he did not test them.
The armor. Come on, do you imagine this guy
putting on a 7 foot man's clothing?
We have children and they've all dressed up in our clothing, you
know, And it's funny and we laugh and we chuckle about it.
But in this case, we are at a point of the nation in a, in a
war. And this giant Philistine, who
is even much taller than Saul, is bringing on repulsive things
against the God, against God. And David is struck.
He's he's absolutely enamored with this and asked to do
something, but he can't wear this armor.
So David said to Saul, I can't go with these for I have not
tested them. And David took him off.
He took him off. And Paul's telling us to put on
this armor. David took this armor of Saul
off because this is not the armor of God.
This is the armor of Saul. It was selected for him as the
best armor you could get for your, your, for your leader,
right? That's what you want.
You don't want your, your king to be killed.
So you get the best, but it's no good for David.
So he goes out there without that armor.
And we got to recognize that when the David goes out there,
he didn't go without armor. He went without Roman or worldly
armor, but he did have armor, God's armor, right?
This this has got to be seen because when we read Ephesians 6
is the word I was thinking before is metaphor.
So what Paul was making a metaphor about this armor he's
not physically talking about. Grab this shield and coat it
with water so that when these flaming darts hit, they get
extinguished. We're looking at a shield.
Anyone wanting to guess what the shield is, it is faith.
But who and who? It's in essence what we're
looking at is it's Jesus Christ. It's in our relationship that
now we have this faith in Jesus Christ.
We have this faith, this protecting shield.
And then also with all of that there, there lies a, an
extinguisher on the outside that puts out the flaming dart.
That extinguisher, if you will, if in your mind is you, we don't
use water, we use the blood of Christ.
That's what we see. So any of these darts from the
from the evil one hit it, it's extinguished.
And we are now preparing ourselves for the battle by
having this. Now we just had a little bit of
prayer and all of that and, and, and one individual mentioned in
the prayer that we are already victorious.
Christ has already won these battles.
So Paul's telling us to get ready for battles and we are to,
it's not a suggestion. We are to get ready for it.
But we also understand that our battle does not belong to us.
It belongs to the Lord, right? And so we see that and we know
he's already victorious, but we ready ourselves for this none
the less. This is how we do it.
So let me move to something here.
One more reading real quick. If somebody wants to grab the
Gospel of Luke chapter 22, this is Luke 22 written by the
apostle. And I'm sorry, not the apostle.
He's written this in penning it for an apostle.
Generally, we think of Paul, so Luke 22 verses 31 through 32.
And when someone gets that, raise your hand and just start
belting it out, if you would. All right, Leanne, please.
Yeah, so we're reminded that before Peter even knew this,
before Peter, he is a real strong individual.
And what he's looking at there is the fact that I'll do this,
I'll go out and take care of this.
Well, then seven young boys say that and they were mastered.
OK, but before this is even really brought out, Jesus says
Simon, Simon and and you know, we've we've heard our pastors
tell us why we say it twice in the in the New Testament is
emphasis. It's bringing home this is
important. So he says Simon, Simon Satan
has what asked. Oh, he has to get permission and
he wants to I got to get some water in here.
Sorry. There.
Now I can say he wants to sift you and he wants to tear you
apart. He wants to master you.
Simon, you don't know this yet. It comes out and and acts.
You'll see this. But you can't do this alone.
And Satan's asked me that he would do this.
But I prayed to you or prayed for you.
OK, Good thing to know. Because as we get into this this
more into this, this shield, we've got to look at some things
that we can do with this shield. It's not just a a force field
that you put around you and you're good to go.
You have to be active with it in the sense you have to be
prepared. You have to know what it's doing
and you have to be able to lifted up the darts are coming
and and they're. So I want to grab some notes out
of a commentary that I use quite frequently.
I'm sure it's a common one that most pastors, in particular
pastors of this type church. This is the the, the, the series
of commentary by Martyn Lloyd Jones.
And this one is out of Ephesians, obviously.
And so I'm going to read some of his stuff in here so that that's
who I'm citing if you hear some of this.
But you're going to be able to pick up real quickly the the
idea in the context of this. And we're thinking of faith more
so than we're thinking of this podium protecting me from fiery
darts from you guys, right? So, so here we are.
The first thing he points out is when Paul was talking about our
our, who we were fighting. It's personal.
We know that our almighty God is a triune God.
And we know that when we look at this, it's not an idea or
concept. It's reality in a person of God.
So we look at God the Father, the person, the God the Father,
we look at the person, God the Son, and we look at the person,
God the Holy Spirit. We see that and hopefully and
and I'm sure as regenerated heart believing Christians, you
got that. But what gets overlooked at in
particular at a time when, when Martyn Lloyd wrote this, but we
could see it today very quickly, is we often look at the evil as
as a another one of those theories or things you come up
against. It's, it's not personal.
It's, it's evil. We got a lot of evil today and
we generalize it. But let me just say that it it
is important. And we we kind of get that from
an older version of scripture the like you might find it in
the King James Version where they talk about evil as a
generality versus our newer versions where we talk of either
the wicked one or the evil 1, specifically a personality, a
person. And the extract, the translation
is, and this is talk about the, the King James is particularly
important here because the apostle has reminded us that we
do not fight evil regarding it not as something abstract or
impersonal. And we are fighting spiritual
persons. We have to see this because in
this group of body, this of believers, we got to recognize
this. You may not feel today the
attack, but the person next to you or across from you or
wherever in their lives, they're feeling this.
And it's very personal and it is very, very dangerous.
So we are confronted, as he says, the Wiles of the devil.
And these are the, you know, that's a word we don't use
today, Wiles. But it's much like the his
person, his personality. We're we're confronted with that
and he talked about the wicked one is the devil and he commands
and controls a diversity of powers and agents.
Of course we see this. He wanted to sift Peter.
So and we see it in Job. He wants to do this stuff to
Job. But Satan needs permission.
He has to, he has to get authorization, if you will, to
master seven guys. Oh, yeah.
You wouldn't think that you would get that approval, but it
did. And there's a good reason for
it. And we learned from that.
But he also wanted to do something to to Joe, but he was
given restrictions. He's given that.
Remember we talked about that line of battle.
Yeah, He's not to leave that line of battle and neither is he
to do that here. So never was it more important
that we should realize that we are involved in this tremendous
spiritual warfare. We believe in the Triune God and
I and I went through that. The Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit 3 persons and one God had God is not a force or a power As
believers, we know that right and but do you not contend with
others in your daily walk? This is these are powers.
I'm not I don't have a relationship with Christ, but
I'm I'm I'm spiritual little ass.
I'm spiritual. I follow this.
Oh yeah. OK, so, but neither are the
forces against only in a, but neither are the forces against
us only a force or a power. But the personal agencies,
personal intelligences, all have been pointed out.
We do not begin to understand the problem of a life in this
world at the present time unless we understand this teaching.
And this is what we get picked up and we're learning it in
Matthew and we're moving forward in this stuff.
This is real. It just isn't 2000 years ago,
Old Testament acts and all of that time frame.
This is real today. Our church here are contending
with personal attacks. Let me move on.
And here we look at it again. He says you must not think of
evil and wickedness as something abstract.
The whole teaching of the Bible is that evil is manipulated and
propagated by these things and these entities.
These are persons. So if you haven't got it yet,
these are these are realities that come in and today would be
kind of a interesting day to mention this.
But when you think of Martin Luther as in the one of the the
keys behind the Reformation, that Martin Luther, he was so
aware of this and right. And at some point in his
writing, he felt that in his room was this presence of Satan
himself. And he could not rid himself of
it. It was there and you know, don't
go into mythologies and stuff, but he was there and he felt it
so much. He picked up his ink bottle here
like example. He grabs he grabs his ink bottle
and he throws it at what appears to be the Satan.
OK, so that seems a little strange, but then you have a
very similar thing to a Puritan down the road in time who his
name is John Bunyan and and he has the same situation.
So we sometimes feel this sickening presence.
All right, now remember the seven sons of Siva that the sons
of that high priest, they didn't they weren't believers, all
right, So their feelings and their presence with Satan is
kind of like one of their own, right?
They're they're kind of one of his own and he mastered them.
But nonetheless, we don't want this to get into something about
the demonic other than Christ. Is victory victorious?
Nobody goes into battle without Christ.
He's already won the battle, but we don't go in without him.
All right, all right, so we'll talk about these fiery darts a
little bit and and we need to wrap up.
But we did not know something of what it is.
Perhaps wake up in the morning and define that.
Before we have had time to do any thinking, thoughts come to
us. Evil thoughts, perhaps even
blasphemous thoughts. So as you wake up in the
morning, have you ever had those thoughts?
Yeah, I have. And and before you, This is why
we pray for pastors and and people to get up and preach the
word of God to you because, oh, you don't think they're getting
some of that in the morning And you don't think some of that is
there to distract them from bringing the word of God.
Yeah, of course. And who's who's put these
thoughts in who's who's there? Satan, demons, agencies,
whatever you want to define, it doesn't really matter, but it's,
it's not of good. So are you?
Were you not thinking you were doing nothing?
You had just awakened, but suddenly these darts are
reaching you. What is the apostle mean by the
fiery darts of the wicked one? We can go on and say, have you
not found that you have been engaged in prayer and then
there's something that's distracting you while you're
praying? It's coming in in different
directions from things that never distracted you before.
Or how about an experience when you're reading the Bible?
I don't know how many times I get read in the Bible in the
morning and I remember, oh, I sent my coffee over here and I
put it down and go get my coffee and I come back and I said, man,
I forgot to do. And I do this, but in the
meantime, I've been distracted and I haven't concentrated.
And Martin Jones says you can read a newspaper and
concentrated on it, but when you start reading the Bible,
thoughts and ideas come from all directions and you find it
almost impossible to concentrate.
Come on. Been there.
Right. I want to move quickly because
I'm afraid I'm running out time. But But when you start getting
these, the devil is hurling doubts.
These are doubts. These are darts.
These are flaming darts and some of the greatest Saints have been
plagued from time to time by horrible doubts.
And we have, we think of it a lot of times in depression.
We think of it a lot of time and our abilities.
And I can't do this, man. There's no way I can get up in
front of this group and talk about Scripture.
This is this is hard, right? These are doubts we got.
So we doubt them. And they get so pervasive that
we sometimes doubt that we are believers.
Wait a minute. What do you mean?
No, I'm not sure because I have these thoughts.
Did I? I remember it was 1975 when I
came to the Lord, right? But it didn't come like there it
is. I wrestled with it.
Well, imagine a 14 year old wrestling.
It's a lot different than what we may be going through today as
older, but I got to tell you I wrestled with it and in my mind
I knew exactly what it was and the gospel and how it was to be
taken into my heart. But I was asking myself, am I
doing this? Is it did it set and and little
prayers and all of that that was there to help me was actually
detrimental in some aspects. But any rate, the bottom line is
when searching scripture, you come to that very quickly that
like first John chapter fours and fives read it if you haven't
there, there's in there what we call tests and and maybe it's
testing the spirits, whatever you want to call it.
But these are the things that we should be looking at as
Christians and saying where do I fit in or out and and we should
know that and we should go with that.
And if we're still wrestling with that, seek out your
pastors, seek out those strong Christian brothers and sisters
and get that answer. And then also the other thing is
while we're going through this, we need to look at our selves
and how can we preach the gospel to ourselves?
We do that not because. We haven't learned it, but we
don't think we're safe. We do that so that it confirms
and holds us faithful to the beliefs.
And if we have doubt, we pray about it and say, Lord, I know
and this happens and I know about regeneration, but am I
feeling this well? Is it a feeling or is it what is
it? Is there fruit?
Maybe you don't recognize your fruit, but want to US others
would look at it and say, are you kidding me?
Look at you and how you're doing this and who you're talking to.
That's fruit. All right, So I want to conclude
real quickly here. There's some great scriptures,
of course, and I say great scriptures.
That's oxymoron. But first Peter 58 and 9, first
John 54, Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11 is a chapter of faith.
Heroes, we've got to look at faith.
Why? Because are you seeking faith
for the sake of faith, or are you seeking faith in the one who
gives us faith, the Lord Jesus Christ?
There are cults out there that seek faith for the sake of
faith. I got faith.
That's great. If it's not faith in Jesus
Christ, it's nothing. So then lastly, we know that
Jesus encountered temptation. This is a Jesus, the human
right, Yes, and and not with the Holy Spirit in them, right?
This is that Jesus and and he's with the devil now face to face.
Well, if you remember, the Son of God is from all eternal.
Satan was once a not a fallen God or fallen Angel and his
demons were not fallen angels. They worshipped and served the
Lord Jesus Christ. And from from that perspective,
well, now they're in the wilderness and they're seeing
him in flesh at a weakest point. And why is that important?
Because if we can cause Jesus to fall, we have no salvation.
And so Satan is hard at this is the king of the deceit, the
father of deceit. So we should probably study a
little bit about that and get the idea that this, this priest,
this Jesus is without sin in the human flesh.
OK, obviously he's without sin. He's the Son of God, but he's he
is in the what's quick, what's the word for?
And it's not incursion. They say he's he is when we when
the Spirit or the Holy Spirit comes into Christ Incarnate
words lose your you lose words when you're up on that stage.
By the way, any rate, this is now Incarnate Jesus Christ 100%
flesh. He could fall just like anybody
else could fall and be mastered by Satan.
And I and I say that this is a is is a proposed possibility.
But having that being Incarnate with the Son of God, it can't
happen. You see why because he's the son
of God, right. But what I'm just saying this is
a a possibility we should consider and here we go and we
should be upholding our our shield.
You, you don't sit with the seal shield at your side.
You don't sit at it here. It's not over there.
This is immediate. You have it on and you are there
behind it. You are there relying on it.
And this shield isn't the box. It is the Lord Jesus Christ.
So holding up the shield of faith reminds us that you are
looking to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. It means that you're depending
upon God and His is grace in Christ.
It means that you think yourself in your mind and thought to Him
who has all power and who is able to do more than the
conquerors. There are times when we are so
hard pressed that we can do nothing but call on the name of
the Lord. So I got to tell you, if you're
in that situation and your faith is small or it's not there
because you're not a believer, call upon the Lord.
Don't just shrug it off. When I was that young man in 75
and I couldn't get it, I called upon the Lord constantly.
I, I understood what was there. I didn't understand all the,
this, the nuances, but I called upon the Lord and, and he was
faithful. He answered and regenerated my
heart and brought the Holy Spirit into me.
And there's this union through the Holy Spirit with me and
Christ. This is where we survive.
That shield, that's Christ, that union, that's between you and
Christ and Christ and you. If you don't have it, you're at
danger, you're at risk, and you need to do something to at least
cry out to the Lord. I'll tell you that's important.
And I'll also tell you that you need to seek those that you can
trust in your Christian brotherhood.
I don't want to swat that in my Bible.
I'll leave them alone. So that's what we got.
And now that's it. It's it's 5 after I'm going to
ask, you know, we're going to take questions.
But but I got to read this one. You know, your your your shield
well enough to know that a lot of them are claiming the
promises of God. A lot of them are just claiming
the scriptures of God. And we need to do that.
So I'm going to you can turn to Hebrews chapter 12 and and I'll
read this just as soon as I get to it.
All right, let's let's change that to Hebrews 4 verse 14.
OK, if you don't have it in front of you, if you remember,
just think of 414 and let me read this to you.
This is the the inspired word of God.
This is given to us by what we call an unknown author.
Some say it's Paul, but whatever this is what is said.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who is passed
through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us take hold of
our confession. For we do not have a high priest
who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who
has been tempted in all things like we are.
These are the darts. He's had all the darts thrown at
him, but he was without sin. Therefore, therefore, that
meaning reaching back to before this in in verses 14 and 15 is
is what the therefore is there for.
Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that
we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in the time of
need. This is what that shield of
faith does. We can reach in the time of need
and be protected from those flaming dirt dirts.
All right, I'm sorry, I'm over. I'm real sorry.
However, I'm not sorry that we all got to hear the gospel
again, right? Who thinks in Ephesians 6 verse
16 that it was my topic? Who thinks of that as the
Scripture that brings us the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Well, it does dig in. You'll see it.
Any quick questions or if if you want to come and ask them on the
sides of the music team and everybody can get ready.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
And again, next week we're going to get the sort of God.
Wow. All right.
Thank you.