00:00:00:03 – 00:00:22:39
Clint Loveall
Hey everybody happy Monday. Thanks for joining us again. Thanks for being with us through this, thing we do where we go through a book, in this case, Ephesians. We find ourself in the sixth chapter, starting with the 10th verse and just a little bit of background, I, I don’t know, for those of you that are listening to this or will listen to this, I don’t know if these are well known verses.

00:00:22:44 – 00:00:49:22
Clint Loveall
In my small circle, particularly in my college life, I attended Northwestern College and went to the Iowa Church affiliated College. And people of my day and time and space. Michael, people loved these verses. I don’t know if it was the kind of the, the, the fresh air at the end of the book being at the end of the book.

00:00:49:22 – 00:01:21:24
Clint Loveall
And you’ve gone through all this stuff about, you know, wives and husbands and children and parents and slaves and master. Now you just get something you kind of hold on to. I don’t know if it was the kind of, military or battle type in imagery that people sometimes gravitate toward. But, I, I my experience with this passage and, and I enjoy it and I’ve preached it, but this is a popular this is a popular image.

00:01:21:28 – 00:01:26:15
Clint Loveall
Paul, Paul really captured something here for people.

00:01:26:20 – 00:01:47:45
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. I think that you’ve got to take a moment before we jump into the text here to recognize, especially if you come from that kind of circle. And I came from a different side of that equation, but equally interested in this text. I think I think you’ve got to recognize is someone like a Frank Peretti has done a lot to help people imagine what this might be.

00:01:47:45 – 00:02:13:21
Michael Gewecke
You know, he wrote an entire series of books in which the there are actual angels in this story that that wear armor, and there’s fighting and prayer leads. There’s a kind of direct application of the text. And I’m not at all taking away from reading those books and enjoying them. But my point is, if you import them onto the Scripture, what you’re doing is you’re taking an imagination from several thousand years later and you’re putting it over.

00:02:13:26 – 00:02:33:58
Michael Gewecke
What was an argument embedded inside a letter that was delivered to a group of Christians who would have found it inherently meaningful and applicable to their lives. So the question that hangs over our discussion here today, I think, is can we set some of that stuff aside and learn here from what is being said to these Christians, because it stands on its own, I think.

00:02:34:03 – 00:02:54:12
Clint Loveall
I think Christian bookstores, you see posters with these verses on them. I know that at one point I had a sweatshirt that had this on the back of it, because in some translations it has the word wrestle in it. So it was, a wrestling themed. Yeah. It’s just it’s captured a lot of attention. Maybe for better, maybe for worse.

00:02:54:12 – 00:03:20:48
Clint Loveall
But, let me read this to you. Hopefully it will be somewhat familiar. Then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about it. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God. So that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

00:03:20:52 – 00:03:43:30
Clint Loveall
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day. And having done everything, stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist. Put on the breastplate of righteousness as shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

00:03:43:35 – 00:04:09:18
Clint Loveall
With all of these, take the shield of faith with which you can quench the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. So, if you’re not familiar with these verses, what we have here is essentially a Roman soldier outfitted, and Paul is taking that very common, very familiar imagery and spiritual izing it.

00:04:09:18 – 00:04:53:54
Clint Loveall
So here he has the idea of being being armed, being armored, standing strong against a battle. And in that battle, he says, is not, as with those soldiers, a battle against other humans. It’s a battle against evil, against darkness, against the authorities and cosmic powers and the present darkness and spiritual forces of evil, even in heavenly places. And we’re not exactly sure what all of that would have meant to him or to the early church, but certainly the clear idea here is that Christians are called to make a stand against that which is not of Christ, and to do so they have to be equipped.

00:04:53:54 – 00:05:22:30
Clint Loveall
And if he just said that, Michael, I suppose it would be less visual and maybe less attractive. Something about the military imagery, I do think, not only helps this passage, but makes it certainly memorable. But I think it’s important to to remember it, maybe to state here on this front end that the word he uses consistently for the point of all this is to stand.

00:05:22:30 – 00:05:45:22
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Not not to attack, not to conquer. But to stand, in other words, not to be moved and to be protected. And it’s interesting that a very defensive, a passage that is very much steeped in defensive language has so often been heard as an offensive rallying cry. Yeah.

00:05:45:27 – 00:06:07:37
Michael Gewecke
Right. I think one thing. You got a name right from the start here is that that part of the reason this is so compelling to us, I think, is because it plays into a long standing tradition that we have in the New Testament, in which the church has to reckon with the fact that the world stands as a part and even against the church.

00:06:07:37 – 00:06:28:28
Michael Gewecke
And we’ve said this so many times in our studies, if this is your first time with us, and you said again that in the scriptures and in the book of Ephesians, certainly that there is no surprise when the world is when the world, when the world is divisive, when the world takes offense at the things of the church, when the world belittles the church.

00:06:28:33 – 00:06:52:15
Michael Gewecke
The church in the first century existed in the cracks of society. It was an offshoot of an offshoot, and there was actively persecuted and it was sought out. And Christians didn’t become a Christian because of advance their life story or help them in their career, they became Christians because they were compelled by the good news that Jesus Christ had done something for them that they couldn’t have done for themselves.

00:06:52:30 – 00:07:23:37
Michael Gewecke
And the world reacted against that in a negative way. So this imagery of stand, it makes sense in that context. Christians understand that when they become Christian, they will be beset by a variety of different kinds of real changes in their lives. There are some people who are disowned by their family. Clint. There are some people who can no longer practice their profession because those professions are connected to what worship of idols.

00:07:23:42 – 00:07:57:51
Michael Gewecke
There’s so many different ways in which the Christian transformation puts you outside the realm of the normal culture that surrounded you, you no longer had access to it. And so because of that, this idea that you would be standing shoulder to shoulder and called to stand firm, not alone, but equipped. But given the things that you needed, the supplies that were required for that day’s standing had been given to you, that this would have made, implicit sense to those who heard it.

00:07:57:55 – 00:08:27:19
Michael Gewecke
But it’s fascinating, as time has gone on and different cultures have read this in different ways, there are Christians today who will read this as that. The Christian task is to put on the armor so that we can do warfare with the world, however we define that. And I think that that’s the exact turn of what would have been meant in the original giving it is letter, because it assumes a kind of ability that the early Christians just simply wouldn’t assume they what they did not know that in their lives.

00:08:27:21 – 00:08:55:55
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And, this is one of those passages. So I’ve preached this passage many times, studied it several times, and there is just, an abundance of material out there on this passage. It is well loved. But what’s interesting, Michael, is that so much of it is what kind of shield would we are we talking about here? What is the breastplate?

00:08:55:55 – 00:09:22:04
Clint Loveall
What does it look like? How would it have been shaped? What kind of shoes and how would they have been tied? And we we have at times been overly interested in the military aspects of this passage, while not giving as much weight to what does righteousness mean? What does truth mean? What does the gospel of peace mean in a passage about military items?

00:09:22:10 – 00:09:50:04
Clint Loveall
So, I think, you know, the disconnect is that we read this and, and we get gung ho about, you know, Battle Hymn of the Republic kind of ideas. You know, his truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah. But if you read this carefully, what it seems to me that Paul is saying is that Christians have to stand against whatever is wrong.

00:09:50:09 – 00:10:23:44
Clint Loveall
Christians have to not be moved by the authorities and the evil and the wrongness in the world. And they do that by committing themselves to truth, by holding on to righteousness, by embracing peace, by praying, by the word, quenching the arrows of the evil one. So, I see the appeal of this passage, and it is good. It’s really good.

00:10:23:49 – 00:10:36:06
Clint Loveall
But I sometimes think we’ve paid far more attention to the image than the reason the image is being used. And I think that that makes it tricky.

00:10:36:10 – 00:11:01:49
Michael Gewecke
This is one of the confounding parts of reading some of these letters from the New Testament is because there is an amazing flip that happens between the practical and the spiritual, and it’s not always clear what’s happening at any given time. We just literally to remind you, we just literally had a very difficult conversation about the relationship between slaves and masters.

00:11:02:02 – 00:11:25:42
Michael Gewecke
Yesterday we talked about parents and children. We talked about husbands and wives. These are very earthly relationships. Today we immediately flipped into put on the whole armor of God so that you can stand against the wiles of the devil and our struggles, not against enemies of blood and but against rulers, authorities, powers present darkness, spiritual forces of evil, where in the heavenly places.

00:11:25:42 – 00:11:48:29
Michael Gewecke
So we flit from this very earthly conversation about human relationships and right order in those relationships, and the way that that reflects God’s intention of self-giving in the world, much as Jesus gave himself for the world. You know, all of that conversation that we suddenly flip to these heavenly places, and this is the shift that happens. It doesn’t just happen in Ephesians.

00:11:48:31 – 00:12:16:09
Michael Gewecke
It happens in other letters where it’s almost as if you’re pulling the curtain back to see the thing that’s been behind the scenes the whole time. Right? Because when Jesus takes on flesh, the physical and the spiritual become intertwined in a way that no one had considered before that point, that incarnation is this never before thought idea that is in flashed and now being lived out by the church.

00:12:16:13 – 00:12:40:30
Michael Gewecke
That sounds very high tone and theological. I just think the point that we need to make here is this switch into the heavenly powers, the thing that Christians stand against. Know this, that when you take care of this, that it’s not flesh and blood that has a way of going back to old earlier in the book and reminding the people who are erecting walls of hostility or, you know, the idea that those have been torn down in Christ.

00:12:40:35 – 00:13:04:52
Michael Gewecke
This is quite a word to say stand shoulder to shoulder with one another, because the thing that we stand against is not one another. It’s not other Christians. It’s not Gentiles and Jews. It’s not people who practice Sabbath this day and not another day that fundamentally we stand against the evil that is Satan’s work himself. It is the work of evil against the believers.

00:13:04:53 – 00:13:30:00
Michael Gewecke
And I think that is a transformational movement in the text to say that this is relational, it we rely upon one another. We stand in the power of God. And that is a remarkable word to Christians that we to your previous point, we get off track if we become so fixated on the metaphor, we miss the point of the metaphor, which is unto itself a point worth hearing.

00:13:30:05 – 00:14:00:27
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I push back on this because if it’s overstated, but I would generally say that I think this stands in a long line of Scripture which teaches not that we are at war with the world, but that the world is at war with Christ. The world is at war with faith. The world is opposed to the things of Jesus, the authorities of the world, the practices of the world, the spirituality of the world.

00:14:00:32 – 00:14:40:22
Clint Loveall
All of that is at odds with the sacrifice of the Messiah, the gracious resurrection of the living Christ. And because that’s the case, what I think I hear Paul saying to Christians is so be ready, be outfitted with righteousness and and peace and evangelism and, and salvation and Word of God. And then I don’t want to steal tomorrow’s thunder, but he’s going to say, and ultimately pray so.

00:14:40:28 – 00:15:31:40
Clint Loveall
So this is not so much a call to arms as it is a call to faith, a call to resistance, to stand up to the world’s tendency to, undermine and attack and dismantle the faith, stand up to the attempts to make Christ something other than Christ, stand up to divisiveness and division and all the things we’ve been talking about in this book, and that ultimately, one is equipped not to go be some kind of spiritual Navy Seal, but to pray in the spirit to to pray and stand firm.

00:15:31:40 – 00:15:56:42
Clint Loveall
That really is the best in many ways that we we can do and the very thing we’re called to do. And I think, it’s just easy to get carried away with a passage like this. I think I certainly have done it. I think many have. It’s a great passage. It’s it just should be. It should be tempered a little bit.

00:15:56:42 – 00:16:04:21
Clint Loveall
And I feel like the church is often gotten a little, maybe a little, ahead of the cart with this one.

00:16:04:25 – 00:16:21:21
Michael Gewecke
You gotta be careful of this. Okay? But let’s say you have a proportion here. And let’s say that the church has historically kind of lifted up the armor side of this. The military side. This, I mean, and you hear that? You’ve got the belt, got the breastplate, got the shoes. Then you keep going. Everybody loves the shield. Right?

00:16:21:21 – 00:16:38:33
Michael Gewecke
Then you’ve got the helmet. And then of course, you end with the big one, right. The sword. Right. We think it’s a lot of play time if we’re going to ramp that up on this side. On the other side, what you have to recognize is every single one of these is connected to a spiritual fruit. Right. So let’s let’s look at that eye.

00:16:38:34 – 00:17:05:15
Michael Gewecke
Right. We know that truth right? Righteousness. Right. The gospel of peace has going to be proclaimed. Then you’ve got the the flaming arrows are protected. You’re protected from those. Then you’ve got salvation. Then you’ve got the Spirit of God. And then fundamentally, friends, you have salvation, right? So like if you’re going to raise up these things, I think you have to recognize that what we’re talking about is peace is that powerful.

00:17:05:20 – 00:17:27:10
Michael Gewecke
Righteousness is that important. Proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s an essential part of the faith, right? I think sometimes we made it out to be like, this is this big call to arms. And if it is, then it’s a call to the kind of arms that is letting go. And it’s peace and and it’s these things that we struggle to do.

00:17:27:25 – 00:17:52:53
Michael Gewecke
And I think that that’s where our temptation gets us out of line is, is we make this to be an attack oriented thing and we forget, well, all of these are gifts. We’ve been given in spiritual practices. We’re called to inculcate in anyone who’s lived of faith for any period of time, will tell you that any single one of these things takes a lifetime of work and discipleship and devotion and effort to live out in meaningful ways.

00:17:52:53 – 00:18:07:44
Michael Gewecke
And so if you’re going to take this metaphor seriously, take seriously the things that is literally listed as it represented, because those things are worth pursuing, and they’re often not the things we think of when we think of the metaphor.

00:18:07:48 – 00:18:35:24
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And to use the metaphor, those things are listed as our protection. It is it it is those very gifts of God. It is the very practices of our faith that protect us from the evils and divisions and problems of the world, and allow us to stand firm instead of drifting, instead of being carried away. So, a great passage.

00:18:35:24 – 00:18:59:13
Clint Loveall
And again, I would just commend you, if you are interested in the blow by blow of each piece of equipment. The simplest web search, I promise you, will get you untold results of what kind of shoes and what kind of helmet and what does it mean that the helmet is the helmet and you can. That stuff is so easy to find.

00:18:59:18 – 00:19:09:34
Clint Loveall
We don’t need to really repeat it here. And some of it is very helpful, but I think it has to be tempered with these other realities.

00:19:09:39 – 00:19:24:36
Michael Gewecke
That’s going to be where we leave it for today is already referenced. There’s some really interesting and important stuff to come tomorrow which connects to this, so don’t miss that. But we are nearing the end of Ephesians, so if you stuck with us to this point of the study, I go to the comments, let us know. Is there another book you’d like for us to study?

00:19:24:36 – 00:19:38:52
Michael Gewecke
Because, here in a couple of weeks, we’re going to begin a new series that we’d love to hear from you. What you would like to study with us? Certainly. Like this video if it’s been helpful, subscribe. If you’d like to stick along with studies like Ephesians and other things like it, we will see you all tomorrow.

00:19:38:54 – 00:19:39:34
Clint Loveall
Thanks for watching.